Environment artist and Zbrush!

easterislandnick

Hi, Ive been working for a low poly internet game for the last couple of years but need more of a challenge! Im working on my portfolio, mainly making environments in the Roboblitz version of Unreal Ed. My main problem is Normal maps. There is a lot of focus on Normal Maps for characters but not too much about an effective workflow for an environment artist.

Most of my textures are layered photo-sourced images and Ive been generating the Normal map using Crazy Bump and the Photoshop plug in. They arent great and I havent got the amount of control I would like. Ive played with Zbrush and its great for modellling but I want to be able to load in a fully textured model and scuplt it with the texture applied to it. At the moment, modelling a brick wall and then trying to get a photosourced texture to fit is a nightmare.

Is it also possible to load in a normal map generated from a texture using the NVIDIA photoshop plugin and tweak it in Zbrush?

Any help would be much appreciated!

PolyPutty

Hope these help

http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/files/Rorshach_SciFi_SupportBeam.pdf
http://www.chrisholden.net/tutor/util01.htm
http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/ArtReference_CreatingTextures

Sage

Here is a tutorial on how to makes seamless textures in Zbrush.

http://www.zbrush.info/zbrush2_wiki/index.php/Seamsless_Textures_by_FP

There is a video tutorial that show how to load up your seamless texture made in photoshop bring it into Zbrush and once there you can used models primitives and other models to create an accurate height map for your texture. The important step is to get zbrush to act like the offset filter. Says in the wiki

Another way to approach this if you are not familiar with Zbrush is to model your bricks or whatever in your favorite 3d app. In one of the views. I just pick the view the responds best to perspective navigation tools and gives me the typical tangent space colors. You load a blue print if you have one of your texture and then model the parts, or design the texture on the fly. Make a plane that matches your texture size, for example 256 x 256 then once you are done you can project this onto a normal map. I like to leave enough room for cropping just in case the software adds extra shit to the edges that screws up tiling.

Alex

Ape.of.Gods

Any tips or follow throughs to see the process in Zbrush?I noticed in some of these they are getting like panels and complex geometry out of it... this could all be a skill thing, but everything I tend to make is sloppy/organic.

easterislandnick

Whoa! Cheers Sage but slow down a second!;-)
The link to the wiki is awesome, thanks very much. Do you know where the video tutorial that expalins how to load images into zbrush is? Do you know where this is described in the wiki, it looks like a perfect solution to my problems!

ps I love the tanks on your site, theyre ace!
Thanks for the help!

Popeye9

If you are using 3.1 you can use the wrap mode of a brush to create tileable textures and then zmapper or displacement to create your maps. Is a lot simpler then it was in zb2.

Here is the wiki page for it.

http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Wrap_Mode_Tutorial

The other great thing is the zproject brush to bring in several objects and put it on one mesh.

Sage

Easterislandnick I think all you have to do to bring the image into zbrush is to go to the texture pallete and hit load and apply it to an object. In zbrush 2 this was a bit crude for my taste, that said you should be able to either make a plain or use their cube to use as your 3d tool. if you go into edit mode you can apply the texture to it. Then you leave edit mode and make a layer. Load the 3d object you want to be your brick, stone, whatever it is. Then position it. With it selected hit the snapshot button or use the shortcut which is shift s. The snapshot button is found in the transform pallete and it looks like a camara icon. If you have zbrush 3. I would try that wrap model texture thing and see how it works. Pixologic used to have a series on their site called artist in action, in their zbrush in a classroom section. I did look for but they seem to have taken it out after zbrush 3 came out. I don't know which artist made them but maybe someone knows. I don't think I have it in my hardrive. I found some of them on zbrush central, but not the one I was talking about. Have you ever made seamless textures before? If not just start puting a random pattern of whatever in the center and avoid the edges. When you get to the edges offset it the way that tutorial in the wiki said. Add more stones and repeat as needed. You might be better off doing it in a 3d program cause zbrush was kind of crude with their layers and selection tools.

I would design the texture first, make it seamless and trace it in a 3d app then go to zbrush to add more details like cracks and bumps. I'm sure people at zbrush central would be able to help you find those tutorials.

Alex