ZBrushCentral

Wiki MatCap outdated/unclear/confusing or am I missing something?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Just a heads up to the fine folks at Pixologic, or anyone who has a command of MatCap that the current version of various MatCap tutorials may be a little unclear/confusing (especially to new users) and there is also a bit of inconsistency between them…

1) The birth tutorial refers to making “shaded balls” in other 3D applications, but doesn’t provide instructions or information on how those are used in ZB3… and the materials modifier panel image in the tutorial looks nothing like what shows up for me in ZB3 (unless I’m just not looking in the right area - EDIT: Appears I’m not! All this time I’ve been looking at “Modifiers” thinking it was the title for the options below it. If you CLICK modifiers, it opens up additional menu options. Fooled by the interface again!), the modifier sliders are different names, etc…

http://www.zbrush.info/wiki/index.php/Tutorial:_Birth_3#Shading_and_Rendering

2) The MatCap wiki intro/tutorial spends a lot of space explaining how great MatCap is, but provides little with regard to detailed step-by-step instructions. For example, creating a MatCap from photo reference:

“7.1 Setup. -> Step 1. Place the reference photo on your canvas”, but provides no clear methodology for doing so. It may sound simple, but it took me a while to figure out…and a quick check of Meat’s tutorial confirmed it.

However, the rest of the steps don’t provide much for step-by-step instructions either. For anyone new to ZBrush, I think this is going to leave them lost.

http://www.zbrush.info/wiki/index.php/MatCap#Sampling_From_Photo_Reference

Section 8 has you draw a Sphere3D on the canvas and has you divide it to make it smooth… but skips over telling you to enter edit mode. And again, steps 1-10 are likely simple for old school ZBrushers, but anyone new is gonna be left wondering if they’re doing it right.

Same with section 9.

Also, the workflow of the steps involved in the sections under 9 is a bit confusing… create MatCap markers, then delete them, then create them… there should probably be a “clear all markers” button, if this is going to be a standard workflow.

Also, visual examples of an actual MatCap material being created (ie. reptile skin, metal pipes…) would be very helpful.

And it’s very confusing if you are going to work on slot “A” (there is no “A”, just a “B”) in one MatCap material, then clone it, delete all the markers (which freaks me out because the real-time matcap material is now changing on-screen to something I don’t want), then click and edit slot “B”…

So what happens if I don’t click “B” for the second matcap material and edit that? Or I do edit slot B of matcap #2, but then go back to matcap #1 to edit that…and the “B” remains pressed (it does!) and edit that… so now we’ve got 2 different MatCap materials and 4 potential slots to be edited… and it’s extremely unclear which slots have precedence. If you edit slot “B” of matcap 1, does it just ignore matcap #2?

3) Meat’s MatCap Skull tutorial is helpful and provides some info that doesn’t exist in the other tutorials (such as what material to select before placing your photo on the canvas)…

http://www.zbrush.info/wiki/index.php/Tutorial:_MatCap_Skull

But…

  1. It’s strange that the downloadable material looks much different than anything in the samples on the page.

  2. The main Wiki tutorial talk about how it’s important to copy your material before editing, but this one doesn’t mention that at all.

  3. In step 7, “Adjust the cavity detection and transition sliders in Material:Modifiers”… Um, where are those?

Things that might be helpful:

  1. Clearer and more informative steps for all MatCap tutorials
  2. Removal of outdated material that no longer applies and references to beta options that are not available.
  3. Consistency across the tutorials
  4. Visual images to go along with the steps in every section…because this is about material creation. It’s helpful to see what’s happening while it’s being explained.
  5. If you’re going to offer a downloadable material based on a tutorial, it would be good to have the material be the actual one from the tutorial or look like the reference images. If it is the same material from the tutorial, but looks different because I don’t have the same .ZTL it was applied to in the tutorial, then provide the .ZTL for download.
  6. Step by step instructions on how to create a MatCap based on a material created in another software…
#2

Most -if not all-these tutorials started when ZBrush 3 was a just a Beta, so perhaps it does not look a 100% like it does now, but i think it is more "cosmetic"different than "substantial"different !
As for making “shaded ball’s” …since that refers to “other” 3D applications there would be no way of giving information that would be correct for both “Bryce” AND “Maya” .
And the workflow for making MatCap materials has been explained in a good step-by-step way in the green "wolverine "material !
You have a point in MatCap slot “B” and it’s interaction with MatCap “a” …but i believe the feedback you get from the “on-screen” update’s of the material when changing slider-settings is more helpfull then text only !
The copying of a material is only optional…and it’s only use is to prevent you from saving your material under the name of the MatCapmaterial you use as a startingpoint !
I did not download the Meats material so i can’t tell…perhaps he used a texturemap AND the material ?
And i don’t think you can copy a material from another software program…only the color information…i mean, if the material you want to copy has colored veins and/or cracks you have to make these via cavity settings !

jantim

#3

To copy a material from another application:

  1. Open your other map and create a sphere.
  2. Apply your material to that sphere.
  3. Set the camera/render settings so that it will output a square document. 1024x1024 is good for most purposes.
  4. Scale the sphere so that it is very slightly larger than the render. (So that it just barely goes outside the render frame.)
  5. Render the image and export it as a PSD.
  6. In ZBrush, load the image into the texture palette.
  7. Select one of the MatCap materials and open its modifiers.
  8. You’ll see a small texture patch that shows the current MatCap source texture. Click that and select the new image that you just imported.

That’s it! You can now draw a sphere on the canvas and apply your new MatCap material to it. It should look just like how the sphere had rendered in your other application.

#4

Have yet to try it, but awesome. Thank you Aurick!

#5

Here’s an example with Cinema 4D’s Nukei shader. On the left is the C4D material. On the right is a ZBrush render of the MatCap material created from it.

C4DShader.jpg

Keep in mind that MatCap will capture basic material properties such as diffuse color and specularity. It won’t handle complex properties like transparency or procedural coloring effects.

Attachments

ZBrushShader.jpg

#6

Just to add to this…

But it will also capture lighting info, which I think is a vital part of while equation and something that may not be stressed enough when it comes to matcap creation.

I see a lot of pretty colored matcap materials available for download in various threads, but as good as they look on a rendered sphere, they may not on an actual object. Because, and I know it’s obvious, but…

You are essentially capturing lighting setups as well (which, as a photographer, I’m kinda aware of)… so if you want your matcap material to look its best on the model you’re applying it to, then that matcap material needs to be “lit” in a manner that would actually compliment the object.

There are certain lighting setups that are much more “universally” appealing than others.