MatCap in Action: Capturing Other Materials

From ZBrush Info

Capturing another ZBrush Material

Use the MRGBZ tool to capture Material Maps from the canvas.

To do this,

1. Select a Sphere3D.
2. Press Tool:Make Polymesh to convert it to a polymesh.
3. Draw it on the canvas and press the 'F' key to center the sphere.
4. Enter edit mode 'T'
5. Divide the sphere several times to make it smooth.
6. Select the Basic Material and modify it or load the material you wish to capture.
7. Select the MRGBZGrabber tool and, when ZBrush asks you for confirmation about leaving 3D edit mode, press OK to drop the sphere to the canvas.
8. Drag out a rectangle around the sphere to select it. By default, AutoCrop is on so the texture will be cropped tight around the sphere.
9. Now, to add the cavity map properties, adjust the material properties of your basic material to your liking.
10. Press and hold Ctrl and, using the MRGBZ tool, drag out a rectangle around your sphere.
11. The new texture will be added right next to your previous texture and you will have two sphere to represent your real-time cavity enabled material!

Capturing a Material From Another 3D Application

Keep in mind that MatCap will only capture basic material properties such as diffuse color and specularity. It won't handle complex properties like transparency or procedural coloring effects.

1. Open your other application and create a sphere.
2. Apply your desired material to that sphere.
3. Set the camera/render settings so that it will output a square document. 1024x1024 is good for most purposes.
4. Scale the sphere so that it is very slightly larger than the render. (So that it just barely goes outside the render frame.)
5. Render the image and export it as a PSD.
6. In ZBrush, load the image into the texture palette.
7. Select one of the MatCap materials and open its modifiers.
8. You'll see a small texture patch that shows the current MatCap source texture. Click that and select the new image that you just imported.

That's it! You can now draw a sphere on the canvas and apply your new MatCap material to it. It should look just like how the sphere had rendered in your other application.

To Learn About Using the MatCap Tool Click Here.

To Learn About MatCap in Action: Photo Integration Click Here.

To Learn About Modifying MatCap Materials Click Here.