ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

174 chapter 5 ■ Texture Painting

Making a Custom Spray Brush

We’ll use a custom brush for this exercise. This brush is designed

to behave in a manner similar to an airbrush. By using a spray

stroke and a paint spatter alpha, we can apply color in broken

patterns similar to the airbrush described in the previous sec-

tion. This ability of ZBrush to mimic real-world tools helps us

utilize traditional techniques to achieve great results in a digital

medium. To create your airbrush, follow these steps:

1. Select the Standard brush from the Brush palette. Make sure
   that ZAdd, ZSub, MRGB, and M are off and RGB is on.


2. Open the Stroke menu from the top of the screen. Dock
   the Stroke menu to the right of the screen and click the
   Radial button. Select a spray stroke. Be careful to select
   Spray and not Colorized Spray. Scroll down in the Stroke
   menu to the options (Figure 5.19). Turn Color and Flow
   down to 0. If Color is above 1, it will modulate the inten-
   sity of the color you have selected, which can cause prob-
   lems when you’re trying to establish color temperatures.

Figure 5.18 These characters were painted with many of the techniques we’ll discuss in this chapter.

more pronounced than in women because of the beard line and the presence

of hair in the follicles under the skin.

Airbrush Techniques

The technique we’ll use to paint this creature skin is based on airbrush paint

techniques from the practical makeup effects world. An airbrush sprays paint

on a surface in an adjustable fine mist. Changes to the brush can cause paint

to be applied in broken-up, spotty patterns. This kind of paint application

is ideal for optical mixing and for giving the skin a realistic look. Look at a

close-up photograph of a face and notice how it contains many colors and

temperature variations. It is not a single flat hue.

Figure 5.17 and Figure 5.18 illustrate this technique applied to practi-

cal creature effects. Just as ZBrush allows you to sculpt with real-world style

tools and techniques, it also allows you to paint this way as well. Using an

airbrush tool in ZBrush helps you apply some of the same techniques and

approaches used to paint prosthetics and animatronic creature skins.

Yellow

Red/warm

Blue/cool

Figure 5.16 Zone theory

Figure 5.17 This creature mask was painted
with several broken-up colors and squiggly
lines called mottling.

Creature by Lone Wolf Effects/Bill Johnson

Painting by Javier Soto. Balrog collectable prop head courtesy of Gentle Giant Studios— special thanks to Weta Workshop