This was, pure and simple, and experiment to see if it’s possible to create the effect of stained glass using ZBrush.
The stained glass is not a texture or a picture. Aside from the initial pattern, it was created completely in ZBrush. There are about 55 individual objects and no fewer than 12 materials at work in here.
and you succeeded, Matthew!
great!
now you can try cutting down on objects and materials and develop an easier technique;
it’s the way it works for me 
btw, THANKS about that book on Flash! I think I’m learning!
love,
christos
Definitely stained glass, all right!
Nice one, Matthew!! 
Beautiful!
Nothing but ZeeStained Glass masterly done.
increbible, this is sooooo cool! it looks real! i would love to have a zscript if you have time to make one. amazing work, aurick, thanks for posting it.
josh
Just too dang cool Aurick! The intensity of the material color really makes it look like light is coming “through” it. Great work! I am inspired…off to try yet another project…will it never end?! I sure as heck hope not!! 
this rocks, aurick!!! it’s wonderful!!!
Wow!!! That is awsome glass! Perfect realism as far as I’m concerned.
You’re experiment to recreate stained glass was a success!
It’s Aliiiiiive! It’sss ALIIIIIIIIIVE!!
Now for the How-To:
My first step was a stained glass pattern brought into Photoshop. Using the Magic Wand, I selected each piece of glass and filled the area with solid black. I then inverted the selection and filled the rest with solid white. Each piece was saved as its own PSD in subfolder in the ZBrush Export/Import folder. The accompanying image shows the original, color coded to 6 of the resulting alpha maps.
Once I had all of my alpha maps, I finally started ZBrush. I created a Plane3D with super high density mesh and proportions the same as the alphas (which were all exactly the same size, of course). To do this, simply divide the shorter dimension by the larger dimension and multiply by 100. That will give you a value to plug into the H Radius or V Radius in the Tool:Modifiers:Initialize menu. In this case, I also set my main document up with the same dimensions. Anyway, save that tool!
Next, draw that plane on the canvas to the size and position that you want. Place a marker, and clear the layer.
The next step is to clone the tool and import a group of alpha maps. Selecting the first alpha map, go to the Tool:Modifiers:Selection and click the ALP button to mask your tool. Hide Points, clear the mask, and then activate your marker. The piece will automatically appear in exactly the right position. Repeat the process for every piece, using appropriate materials and colors (remember that stained glass often changes in color from piece to piece – even when the pieces are of the same type of glass).
When all of the pieces are placed, it’s time to create the lead. I used the SpheresBrush and a metal material with a low draw radius. It was just a matter of painting over the lines between pieces. It’s not desirable to be perfect with the lines, since lead never is.
For lighting, I dropped the ambient down to 2 and let the materials pretty much light themselves.
As for the materials, I’ve included a starter pack of 7 glasses. The main factors in creating them was that they have negative noise and a high ambient setting. When you use these, don’t be afraid to play with the noise radius, especially. Depending on your canvas size, it may need to be at all kinds of different settings to look right for your piece. It is also sometimes helpful to clone a material and change the noise radius a fair amount if two pieces are right next to each other. It’s not a good idea to have the pattern between two pieces match up. As you create your own, it’ll be easy for you to add them to the remaining 93 slots available in the pack.
Download the StainedGlass MaterialPack here. (380 kb)
Hope you have fun with it!
wonderful effect aurick… thanks for the tips and the material pack… perfect as always…
I see I’m going to have to read that a few dozen times to get it clear, but it is an awesome pic.
Great picture Aurick!
I’ve fiddled around with making stained glass windows in ZB previously and came up with two other ways of doing this …
1) Combining Pix’s 3d collage technique with the Material Pack glass material and painting directly onto the document window - and then repainting the black line onto at a differnt -Z level. (if you understand Pix’s collage technique this method should be pretty easy)
2) With the simple Brush tool set to RGB=100, Freehand stroke, Mouse Average=8, and a hard-edged alpha brush, Paint your black outlines on a white background to the design of your choice. Then grab the document with the MRGB Grabber (autocrop off) and then in the Alpha Palette click MAKE STENCIL. You could clear & fill the layer with a 3d plane and then it’s a matter of turning the stencil on and fitting to the screen with the HORIZ and VERT buttons, and painting your glass materials onto the plane without worrying about material jaggy edges!
I’ll come back later today and re-edit this post with picture examples!
Upham
Excellent, how to do it post. Thanks so very much for sharing your methodology.
Thanks so much for the how-to.
Excellent tutorial and yet another source of inspiration and reference.
Your exploration of the technical and artistic possibilities of ZBrush always make for fascinating and informative reading.
3 cheers.
Aurick, I used to make stained glass windows. This effect is gorgeous, and really captures that feeling. I always wanted to try this so your tut. is very useful to me. Thanks.
hey aurick im not sure if its just me but i wasnt able to get your stained glass material to work… the interface comes up but when i go to choose that material… it doesnt replace the default material like it should… if you have time can you help if not ill just place the material in my own pack untill you can… thanks again buddy…
I made this one ages ago when Digits first made the Animation Master ZScript, and I was so impressed I made this picture, but never finished it. I took it out today and threw a material into it. It’s about 95% ZBrush as I quickly threw Digits head and a body together in Photoshop and then imported it into ZBrush and traced it with a black line on a seperate layer. Then I deleated the original picture from layer one, and did all the RGB and glassey material painting in ZBrush! (it’s kinda hard to see the glass with the JPeg compression!)
Upham