Texturing Your Sculpture with Materials, Polypaint, and UVs

In this chapter, you will explore colors and materials in ZBrush, which will let you take your sculpture to the next level and present it in the best possible way. This will set you up for the next chapter, in which you will create beautiful renders and videos of your demon bust.

In the first section of this chapter, you will learn about two types of ZBrush materials – Standard Materials and MatCap Materials – and understand their strengths and weaknesses so that you can implement them into your workflow accordingly. Furthermore, you will be able to create and save custom materials.

Next, you will learn about Polypaint, ZBrush’s color system, which will enable you to take your sculptures from good to great by giving them a finished look. We will start with some basic color theory tips to help you effectively apply the coloring tools, and then go through a variety of powerful polypainting techniques...

Technical requirements

For the best experience, it is recommended that you have a strong PC that meets the minimum requirements described in the Technical requirements section of Chapter 1. However, you can work on this chapter with just a mouse, a functional PC setup, and a ZBrush license.

To follow along, you will need the demon sculpture we started creating in Chapter 2 or a suitable model of your choice. It is recommended that you have a low-polygon model so that UV creation will work well.

You can find suitable models in LightBox, which you can use to practice UV creation.

Exploring ZBrush’s Materials

In this section, you will learn about ZBrush’s Materials and see how different materials can affect the look of your 3D models. We will start by discussing the two types of available materials: Standard Materials and MatCap Materials. Both types of materials have unique properties and solve different goals.

You’ll also learn how to apply materials to your models, as well as how to modify them and save those custom materials for later use. By the end of this section, you should have a good understanding of the available materials and how to use them in your workflow.

Standard Materials versus MatCap Materials

There are two types of materials available in ZBrush: Standard Materials and MatCap Materials.

The main difference is that MatCap Materials have Light and Specularity information baked in. This means that objects with MatCap Materials applied do not react to lighting in your scene and always look the same, except for...

Adding color to your model with Polypaint

Besides its vast sculpting and modeling functionality, ZBrush also gives you the ability to color your models using an array of different tools and techniques. In this section, you’ll learn about ZBrush’s Polypaint feature, which lets you add color to your demon bust.

What is Polypaint?

Polypaint is a tool for painting on the surface of a mesh, storing color information in the vertices. It lets you paint on any mesh without the need for UVs, which makes it very flexible and great for concept sculpting:

Figure 6.12 – A sculpture created with Polypaint in ZBrush

However, adding detailed color information requires a high-resolution mesh with a large polycount since the number of vertices determines the amount of color information that can be stored. If very sharp color textures are needed, Polypaint might not be the best choice – the maximum polycount of a mesh is limited and your...

Creating UVs and exporting textures

In this section, you will learn how to create UVs using the UV Master plugin. First, we will take a look at what UVs are and why they are important. Then, we will take a look at the UV Master plugin, and its strengths and weaknesses compared to other UV tools. By the end of this section, you’ll be able to export texture files for the demon character using the colors you painted in the previous section.

What are UVs and why do they matter?

UVs are markers that link the vertex information of a mesh to the pixels of a two-dimensional texture file. This allows you to apply textures to your model and get different effects, such as displaying color or adding detail in the form of normal or displacement maps.

UV mapping is especially useful for game characters or animated meshes, which need low-poly models. UV mapping enables these low-poly meshes to display height and color information that makes them appear as detailed and complex as any...

Summary

In this chapter, we covered material, color, and UV creation. We also saw how to export textures from ZBrush. First, we introduced materials in ZBrush and the differences between the two available types of materials: Standard Materials and MatCap Materials. You learned how to modify them and create custom materials.

Next, you explored Polypaint, a tool that allows you to apply color to your sculptures in a variety of ways. The section provided some color theory tips and showcased the various texturing techniques on the demon model, allowing you to follow along with your model.

Finally, you learned how to create UVs using the UV Master plugin and polygroups to optimize the UV unwrapping results. After testing the results of the unwrapping process using a checker texture, you were introduced to the texture export setting, as well as a variety of useful maps you can export.

Now that your demon model is complete, the next chapter will show you how to light and render it...