ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

200 chapter 5 ■ Texture Painting

Control Painting Tools

You can exert some control over the placement of seams and the density of the UV resolu-

tion by using the control painting tools available in UV Master. Control painting has four

modes. Protect mode will protect some areas from UV seams, such as the front of the body

or face; Attract mode will help guide ZBrush to place edges in areas such as the back of the

head or legs; Density allows you to paint areas where you want there to be more UV resolu-

tion, like the face; and Erase simply lets you erase and rework areas you have painted. In

this exercise we will look at using control painting to adjust the UVs created for the were-

wolf ZTool.

1. Load the werewolf ZTool from the DVD. Step to the lowest SubD level and click the
   Work On Clone button under the UV Master menu.


2. Click the Check Seams button to see where the seams were placed by default
   (Figure 5.70). As you can see, the seam placement is not ideal. We will use control
   painting to correct this.


3. Click the Enable Control Painting button under UV Master and click the Attract
   button. You can now paint in blue on the surface of the model. Paint a stroke down
   the back of the trunk arms and legs to help attract the UV seams to these areas
   (Figure 5.71).


4. Click the Unwrap button to recalculate the UV layout. Now you will see the seams
   have been placed in the areas indicated by the blue paint strokes (Figure 5.72).


5. From the Lightbox select one of the checker textures and apply it as a texture to the
   werewolf. This will help illustrate the density of texture space applied to each part of
   the model as well as the placement of the seams. In Figure 5.73 you can see that the
   density of UV space in the face could be higher.

Figure 5.70: The automatic seam placement is not ideal on the werewolf.