I have my model subdivided as much as I can and the alpha still looks pixelated. Close up the resolution isn't high enough to capture the detail. Far away it looks good, not up close.
Any way to fix this issue seeing as I'm at my max poly count in ZBrush?
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Depending on what you want to do with it, you can have you alphas way bigger (try 512).
Umm, are you sure these alphas are Zbrush standard? I don´t think so.
Can you show us the image file of that alpha? Somehow that looks familiar to me and I remember it beeing quite good.
Here's the Zbrush image file named "concrete"....
Here's what it looks like when I apply it...
That´s exactly what I thought it would look like. The alpha is quite noisy.
Maybe give it a try and reset/initialize Zbrush?
Again, reset Zbrush and try it then (preferences/init zbrush)
Another thing to note with alphas, but sometimes the brush type can make a difference in the result, or how you go about applying it. Using that concrete image I can get a pretty decent result if I apply it as a mask and then use some deformations to inflate/deflate, smooth, invert the mask, darken the cracks with a tiny bit of polypaint, etc.
Lastly the image itself can make a difference. A 16-bit psd like zbrush creates should give you the best results. If it's a PSD that someone else created, there's a chance it's just an 8-bit image (and worse yet, a jpeg that was simply saved as a psd). I'd wager that the older the alpha image is, the greater the chances are that it was created hastily, and for an era where it's quality might not have mattered as much.
Here's subdiv 8
I'd say that the density in polygons may be it looking at my subdiv 1...
Insert 2 more loops in the middle and it should be fine : )
I went back to Max and added a few turbosmooth iterations and that seems to have done the trick. I've been reluctant to add a turbosmooth cause I wanted to have a really low poly to work with from the start, but that doesn't seem like a feasible option.
With turbosmooth applied in Max then imported and sub divided more
On another note, how would would go about creating alphas like the cracks above? The concrete alpha looks like it was just converted into grey scale and doing adjustments from there, but what about cracks and divets? I've watched some videos on how to create brushes but it's more they tend to only cover what to do when you have the sculpt done.