Two quick questions, Hard Edge ZBrush sculpting and Brushed Metal texture

Tom Ellis

Hey there all,

I've got two quick questions.

Firstly, is there any way to avoid the 'creasing' you get when trying to sculpt a 90 degree angle in ZBrush?

I want to add a little bit of edge damage to an archway prop I'm working on for my current project. I can't figure out how the base mesh should be made, I've tried adding support edges to keep the shape, but of course this results in pinching whenever I sculpt right on the corner.

I've also tried chamfering which works well in ZBrush for adding the sculpted damage but I get too much of a bevel on the edge then and it loses the hardnes.

And secondly, has anyone got any tips for creating a nice looking brushed alloy look in UDK? I'm guessing a lot of the trick to getting it right is in the spec map rather than the diffuse. I haven't actually attempted it yet but figured I'd get a few ideas before I get onto it.

Thanks

tristamus

Hey there man,

I think the best thing to do for edges before you take them into ZBrush is use the Crease Edge tool. I'm speaking for Maya, however, I would imagine there is something similar to that for Max XSI etc.

Using the crease edge tool, just grab all the edges that you want to be sharper during the smoothing process in Zbrush, and crease it to about 3.0 or so. That usually seems to work for me. You'll see that once you take it into ZBrush the edges will stay creased without having to make a bunch of messy extra edges to keep it sharp on the edges in Zbrush.

metalliandy

I did a bunch of vids a while back for my fountain...maybe they would help a little?
http://vimeo.com/album/209796
I just used supporting loops and when it pinched, i just used the smooth/smooth stronger brushes to sort it out, and then re-sculpted over the top.

Hope that helps!

Ark

You could use the edge creasing then subdivide in max or whatever before you export to zbrush or try smoothing directly in zbrush with the smooth option (smt sp?) turned off for the first few levels.

For the brushed metal, you want to look at the anisotrophic shader.

Tom Ellis

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Aha! I knew there was a way to keep the edges hard without support loops I had just completely forgotten it.

And thanks for the link to your vids Metalliandy, those will indeed be a great help.

Ark, do you mean an anisotropic node in UDK? I work in Arch-Viz and I'd have gone straight for a material with anisotropic parameters if I was rendering offline, I wasn't aware that there was something similar for realtime. I'll look into it.

Thanks again