Noob zbrush rocky/brick surface sculpting question

alan1990 · Jun 2013

Im having a really hard time sculpting a readable brick with a surface like the following examples

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/105235115/4.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/105235115/5.jpg

Ive watched tons of videos including Tate's from Naughty Dog that helped a ton as far as how to create a tiling texture but I still find myself struggling. Ive created a few "surface noise alphas" with the help of some tutorials but they always end up feeling to simple and stylized (orb style) or way too noisey

here is an example of my latest attempt

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/105235115/2.jpg

any workflow sugestions would be appreciated.

Elodin · Jun 2013

Well. Use alphas.

You can also try to store morph target, beat it up mercilessly, add cracks and etc. Then use morph brush to get some of the changes back and it should be looking good. Always break the hard edges - they don't look so good. Use pinch brush to make cracks vary in places.

Tates tutorials are really good - they should help you a lot.

That's how I do it, at least - with morph and alphas.

Eric Chadwick · Jun 2013

One thing I found helpful is to sculpt the basic forms with the Clay brush, then use Trim Dynamic to get that hard-chipped rock kind of look, then for fine detail use a custom alpha made with the Photoshop clouds filter and a negative Z intensity. That way it creates semi-random small pits. If I sculpt that in a new layer, I can dial it up/down easily. Here's an example http://ericchadwick.com/img/farmhouse_stairs.jpg

sprunghunt · Jun 2013

You're sculpting it like it was granite. The first piece of reference is a shale floor. Shale is made up of layers of compressed sediment. So it's going to break into a series of flat layers with rough edges. So think about sculpting a more layered look if you want to look like that.

the second piece of reference is limestone blocks. It's two different kinds of rock. Your attempt is more like that but I'd pay more attention to keeping harder edges on the facets. You might want to think of it being like a series of pyramids sticking out of the wall. The bricks all are larger in the center than the edges.

chriszuko · Jun 2013

trim smooth border brush. Its like.. the planar brush meets the mallet brush and will blow you away! You can find it in the brushes/trim folder in your zbrush install directory.

You can easily create that layered effect with it just by going back and forth along your bumpy surface. Give it a try. See if that helps? Maybe it will? Maybe it wont? (:

fr0gg1e · Jun 2013

if you want to easily layer planes before detailing you can store a morph target then use the layer brush (rinse and repeat for each layers). With this the layer brush doesn't keep on layering but stay on the same level. If you want to add another level then del morph then store a new one and add on top.

Noob zbrush rocky/brick surface sculpting question

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