Texture Palette

From ZBrush Info

The Texture palette mananges textures. It can import or export them, manipulate them in various ways, and convert their intensities into Alpha maps.

There is another subpalette that is often used with textures, the Tool:Texture Subpalette, and if you wish to make use of textures, you should read the reference for that also.

Also, ZBrush materials (see Material Palette) also affect the surface appearance of ZBrush objects, but materials cannot be used across programs. However, it is common to use materials to generate textures. For example, one could create a ZBrush plane, fill the canvas with it, apply a 'wood' material, and then do a Texture:GrabDoc to end up with a wood texture. That texture can then be applied and exported.

Painting and Modeling with Textures

When the selected texture is not the TXTR OFF texture, ZBrush paint tools will paint with the currently selected texture, and ignore the Color palette setting. Each paint tool remembers which texture was last used with it, so changing the tool may also change the current texture.

When you create a 3D object, the currently selected texture will be applied to it. If you go into 3D Edit mode (Transform:Edit) with that object, then selecting a different texture will apply that to the object, replacing the previous texture. 3D tools remember the last texture they were used with, so changing 3D tools may also change the currently selected texture.

Creating Seamless Textures

When repeating textures over a 3D object it is important that the right edge matches the left edge and that the top edge matches the bottom edge. If they do not, a seam will be visible where they meet when tiled over the object. A texture repeated 4 times vertically and 4 times horizontally with visible seams.

Here is a simple method for creating seamless textures in ZBrush:

1. Use any brushes or objects to create the texture. Do not draw to the edge of the canvas. You will probably want to resize the canvas to a size appropriate for a single "block" of your repeating texture.
   
2. Hold down the Tilde (~) key and click and drag on the canvas to offset the image.
   
3. Fill in the blank areas, being careful not to go to the edges again.
   
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the image is completely filled in.
   
5. Grab the completed texture with the Texture:GrabDoc.
6. Choose the “grabbed” texture in the Texture Palette and tile it onto a 3D object by setting Tool:Modifiers:Texture:HRepeat and ...:VRepeat to values greater than 1 and then creating the object.

Controls

Import: Imports .bmp, .psd, .jpg and PICT (on Mac) images into the Texture Palette. ----

Export: Exports the selected texture as a .bmp, .psd or (on the Mac) a PICT file.----

The following four controls are represented graphically in the Texture palette:

Flph: Flips the texture left-to-right.

Flpv: Flips the texture top-to-bottom.

Rot: Rotates the texture 90 degrees per click.

Invr: Causes inverse coloring. (White becomes black, black becomes white.)

Clear: Clears the texture to the currently selected main color.

Grad: (Gradient Colorize): Changes the colors of the current texture by mapping the primary color to light areas of the image and the secondary color to dark areas of the image, with intermediate intensities interpolated between the primary and secondary colors.

Transparent: When active, portions of the texture that are pure black (rgb 0,0,0) are rendered as transparent.

Width: Displayed when the cursor is over the slider. Move the slider to the new value or click to turn red and then type in the new value. The current value is also shown when holding the cursor over the small thumbnail previews.

Height: Displayed when the cursor is over the slider. Move the slider to the new value or click to turn red and then type in the new value. The current value is also shown when holding the cursor over the small thumbnail previews.

Clone: To create a copy of the current texture at a different size, set the new width and height and click Clone.

New: You can create a new texture at any time by selecting a base color with the color picker, inputting the desired height and width and clicking New.

MakeAlpha: Adds a grayscale version of the current texture to the Alpha palette and selects it as the active alpha.

Remove: Removes the currently selected texture from the visible palette (but not from the hard drive.)

Cd: The Clear Depth button affects the way the CropAndFill button behaves. If pressed, all depth information is cleared from the canvas when it is filled with the current texture. If this button is unpressed, the texture is drawn on the pixols and depth information is retained; this has the side effect that blank areas of the canvas will not be filled with the texture, since there is nothing between the clipping plane and the viewer in those areas.

The Cd button also affects the Fill button in the Layer palette and the Fill Layer button in the Color palette.

CropAndFill: Crops the canvas to the size of the current texture, and then fills the canvas with that texture. This has the effect of erasing whatever else in on the canvas.

GrabDoc: Creates a new texture from the canvas contents and adds it to the Texture palette. The new texture has the same size as the canvas.