I followed the prescribed Alpha’s Import protocol in order to begin experimenting creating fine freehand 3D mesh calligraphy in ShadowBox using ZBrush’s own Pen tools because they appear to offer the kind of calligraphy-friendly brush paths I would want to use. When I hit the Import button on the Alpha Palette the customary folders search panel opens up, then I activate ZBrushOSX 4R6 folder, then go to & activate ZBrushes folder, navigate to Pen folder ,BUT the damn Open button is all grayed out so I am totally prevented from accessing ZBrush’s own pen tool folder. Matter of fact I find ALL of ZBrush’s ZBP brushes in their respective folders are grayed out and thus totally inaccessible. What the hell is this? I hate when following instructions only to find that the program fails to deliver after following its own prescribed protocol. Don’t tell me some assembly required to activating something as simple as a brush import which should perform straight-forwardly. Obviously this ain’t in the manual , I’m thoroughly frustrated because I just want to actually get some work done having already outgrown the already provided alphas for the simple brush tool ( yes, all else works just as it should right out of the download ) ,and I’m left wondering out loud just what custom UI work-around back-flip slight of hand did I miss?
ZBrush Brush flies (ZBP) are loaded through the Brush palette, not the Alpha palette.
Grateful Thanks for the correction .I was loading directly from the Alpha Panel! I just tried again and found the problem. When ZBrush opened the folders panel I immediately went to the ZBrushes folder since I associated alphas as a packaged function with brushes and did not even notice the ZAlphas folder. I opened that and there were all of the already provided alpha footprints in .psd. Am going to hunt down any ZBrush.com alpha libraries to download some alternatives.
Well having just spent 2 1/2 hours enjoying experimenting with all brush, alpha , lighting ,and , material settings as just plain Simple Brush paint program with crafting calligraphy using the truly amazing fluid metal brush materials and loved the brush responses, BUT I had no idea how much of the some assembly required ordeal one has to go through to import new alpha footprints individually through Photoshop while ,so unlike Photoshop’s brush engine, I discover that the orientation setting in the brush drop menu does not reorient the direction of the alpha image footprint. I now find that have to go back into Photoshop to manually re-orient the angle of ,say, the 3 notches alpha faces every to every basic point on the compass individually and do the whole export /import exercise in order to arrive at true reorientation of the angle of the brush footprint in order to accommodate the execution of calligraphy brushes . Unlike Photoshop’s brush engine , ZBrush appears to have no ability to directly reorient nor reshape the brush footprint except when expressed as a 3D mesh sculpt. For calligraphy Photoshop’s brush engine allows the squashing of the perfect circle brush to simulate the flatter tip of a calligrapher’s brush and direct dynamic re-orientation of the brush’s direction. So , some artist’s brush assembly required. How can contributing artists towards the advancing of ZBrush’s development not have suggested this assuming all were professionally familiar with Photoshop’s brush engine performance?
I don’t think it’s possible to stop the sculpting brushes aligning the alpha with the stroke direction, so the shape of the alpha can’t be used in the way you suggest. It may be possible but I don’t know how.
It is possible to do what you want with the 2D features of ZBrush. For example, the PaintStop plugin (in the Document palette) has a Calligraphy pen (the Pen & Ink section). Changing the Brush Adjust slider will rotate the ‘nib’.