■ Alphas 127
- Turn on the Roll modifier in the Stroke menu. Activating the Roll button will draw a
single instance of the alpha tiled along the stroke. This is useful when you have a tile-
able alpha to draw on the surface.
- Click Stroke from the main menu bar at the top of the screen. At the bottom of the
Stroke menu you can access the sliders for each stroke. Freehand has only one slider:
Mouse Average. By default, this is set to 4. Raising this value smooths the stroke more
and adds a slight draw delay; lowering it reduces the delay but can create a stagger in
the stroke if your computer’s memory is being taxed by numerous subdivision levels.
- This Freehand stroke behavior can be used to create interesting wrinkle effects. Change
your alpha selection to Alpha 58. This alpha consists of several sketched lines running in
one direction. Use the Freehand stroke to draw circular patterns on the plane. Notice that
the instances of the alpha rotate while you draw, thus creating a realistic crosshatched
wrinkle pattern from this very simple alpha. You may need to adjust your ZIntensity if the
effect is too strong.
Now that you understand the Freehand stroke, let’s try a different one. We’ll now look at
the DragRect stroke. DragRect is great for applying alphas as stamps to include surface detail.
- Create a new 3D plane or undo your strokes from the previous section. Select the DragRect
stroke from the Stroke menu and Alpha 07 from the Alpha palette. Alpha 07 is a bumpy
alpha (Figure 4.16).
- Click and drag on the plane. This will draw an instance of the alpha. You can rotate
while you draw by moving the mouse to the left and right, allowing you to scale and
rotate the alpha to fit as you like.
- Continue to add strokes to the surface. Notice how quickly an area can be textured
with surface details using this stroke. You can also easily vary the scale and orienta-
tion (Figure 4.17).
A useful trick when adding alpha texture is to
use the Replay Last command under the Stroke menu
(Figure 4.18); this will repeat the last stroke, which
is helpful when trying to detail skin. When stamp-
ing a texture with an alpha, it can be easy to make
the texture too strong, causing you to have to undo
and reapply. Using Replay Last in conjunction with
the DragRect stroke can help you create more subtle
surface details by gradually building strokes at a low
ZIntensity setting. In the following section, we will
apply an alpha to a 3D plane using multiple instances
of Replay Last.
- Create a new plane3D on which to draw or
undo your previous strokes.
- Make sure the DragRect stroke and Alpha 07
are still selected.
- Set your ZIntensity to 60 and draw an instance
of the alpha on the surface of the plane. It will
be overstated at this stage. The point is to
get the size and placement where you want it.
Once the stroke is complete, undo and lower
your ZIntensity at the top of the screen to 4.
Figure 4.16
Alpha 07
Figure 4.17 DragRect instances of Alpha 07 on a plane
