ZBrushCentral

Textures for Large Scale Illustrations (answered)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello Everyone,

My impression is that if I paint with any bitmap texture (using Spotlight, Projection Master, stencils, or whatever) , I am, in effect, wrapping polygons with pixels. If I export that canvas (e.g., as a .psd) for use as a large scale illustration (say a 23x35 inch poster), I would have to consider all of the usual issues regarding pixelation. Is that correct?

DocPit

#2

Creating a textured model and creating an illustration featuring that model are two different things. The quality of the texturing will certainly impact on the illustration but you also need to consider the document size. If the image is to be printed then you need to consider the pixel dimensions, so that you can get the right image resolution for the printer.

ZBrush doesn’t use image resolution, so all renders are 72 dpi. That means you must create a larger document in the Document palette so as to get the pixel dimensions you want in Photoshop. (You can create a blank document in Photoshop to get the dimensions.)

For example, an image of 8.5 inches x 11 inches at 300 dpi has pixel dimensions of 2550 x 3300. So in ZBrush:

  1. Turn off Document>Pro.
  2. Set Document>Width to 2550 and Document>Height to 3300.
  3. Press Document>Resize.
  4. Use the Zoom>Zoom Doc button to scale the canvas so you can see it all.
  5. Draw your model on the canvas and position.
  6. Use BPR and Render>Create Maps to create and export the maps. Note that they will be created at the correct size - zooming to show the whole canvas has no effect.

(A resolution of 300 dpi is typical for magazine quality printing.)

HTH,

#3

Many thanks, Marcus.