Good dirt on ZBrush?

armagon

Do you guys use a specific brush for dirt when modelling tilling textures in ZBrush? Or do you prefer to use a base texture and displace from it? I'm trying to achieve something like this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1482056/zbrush_texture_a_001.jpg

armagon

Another example: http://gametextures.com/natural/ground/eroded-dirt-patch-with-grass.html

Eric Chadwick

Some ideas here
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/EnvironmentSculpting

Obscura

Well, I'm probagly not the best person to tell you the exact brush, but I can explain you what you see and you can reverse engineer it. The first thing that came to my mind is that I'd like to see a clay render from these...

After leaving that, I would concentrate to what you can see on these images. Bigger and smaller stones, are subtools, polygroups, elements, submeshes, or whatever... You can do this with a good basemesh, or later extracting in zb. also he had a plane mesh, and probably first he defined the main heights. Almost any basic brush can be good for this, like move, topological model , standard, etc. You still have to work in wrap mode (tiling) then he probably used some alphas (and not brushes) to make the smaller stones, "cracks" , unevenness, and so. The bigger stones are probably used a secondary or third sculpting pass.

armagon

Thanks, very useful info. I'll keep trying until i get a good look.

Treece

Armagon

You could use nanomesh on a plane. IE create the rocks and dirt of various size etc then apply them to a subdivided plane with nanomesh. Good tutorial in zclassroom on pixologic.

You could then make an alpha from your creation. You could also randomize the nanomesh to make an unlimited amount and unique alphas if you wish.