ZBrush allows you to modify and create your own brushes, but the key for a smooth work-flow is to understand what the brush actually does. In this quick video tutorial, I’ll show you the effects of 4 brush modifiers and how you can use them to create very specific brushes.
This is an example, I modified brush to create skin pores while maintaining a smooth surface. So you’ll notice in the first pass or stroke, the brush displaces the surface and produces a sharp noise effect; the second effect that smooths out the surface and creates that ‘bumpy skin’ texture is achieved by simply lowering the pressure of the stroke (using a Wacom tablet for instance).
And this other one has a different behavior but is creates more exaggerated details. It works great for creature bumpy skin:
So, in this video tutorial, I showed you what some of the brush modifiers do and how to use a couple of my “double action” brushes: The skin pores brush and the Creature bumpy skin (you’ll get these brushes in the resource pack). Here is an example of the effect of this brushes in context:
These images above, are just a couple of spheres with the “double action” brushes effect applied, a bit of colour (Polypaint) and rendered with ZBrush BPR. if you are interested in rendering skin all within ZBrush, check out the eBook Guide on: ZBrush Skin Material & Single Pass BPR.
Just so you know, “Double action” brushes is NOT a new ZBrush feature or anything like that, is just how I named the folder where I put this brushes in my computer and now I’m stuck with the name. I called them “double action” because they sort of combines two effects in one stroke.
I hope you find the information from the video on this guide useful and that it helps you can create your own “double action” brushes in ZBrush. There is a second part on this ‘Double Action’ series, so if you want to take your ‘DA’ brushes to the next level, go ahead and check out PART 2 of the series.
Here are some previews of brushes for Skin creature detailed, Skin base, Sharp semi-scar, and Quick flesh damage brushes.
You can change the effect of these brushes quite a bit by simply changing the alpha. Feel free to download some alphas from the ZBGs Alpha library and see what cool effects you can get.
Apply the brush’s effect to a simple plane with a high polycount and then create a detailed alpha using the 2.5D tool called MRGBZGrabber by selecting a portion of the plane (hold shift to make it a square). This tool will grab the depth of the details and automatically create an alpha.
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