ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

■ Alphas 129

2. Raise the LazySteps slider to about 1.25. Apply the stroke to the surface. The texture
   will apply in concentrated single stamps along the direction of the stroke. Using this
   technique, you can quickly and easily cover a large surface area with fine texture.


3. Stroke quickly around the surface of the model with various Draw Size and ZIntensity
   settings. It should now be clear how this brush setting helps you cover large areas with
   a texture.

Alphas as Stencils

Alphas can serve as brush shapes or texture stamps, but they can also be used as stencils. In
ZBrush, stencils function much in the same way as they do in the real world. A real-world sten-
cil is a piece of flat material such as cardboard with one or more shapes cut out. Typically, you
will spray-paint through the openings in the stencil. Some areas are blocked while the openings
allow paint through. Stencils allow you to paint complex shapes quickly. Stencils in ZBrush
function the same way, but they can be used either for painting or for sculpting. The stencils
are complex movable masks that can be interactively placed and rotated on the surface as well
as tiled and wrapped to the shape beneath them. In this demonstration we’ll use a ZBrush
alpha as a stencil.

1. Open the demo head ZTool from the Lightbox​ZTools menu. Draw it on the canvas
   and enter Edit mode. From the Alpha menu at the top of the screen, select Alpha 62.


2. In the main Alpha menu, click the Make St button to create a stencil from the current
   alpha (Figure 4.19).


3. The document window will now be light gray with a red box in the center. Inside this
   box is the Alpha 62 (Figure 4.20). This is the stencil.

Figure 4.20 Alpha 62 as an active stencil. I pressed the spacebar in this

shot so the coin operator is visible (at the bottom right).

Figure 4.19

Click the Make

St button.