Hi
In this tutorial, you will learn a fun and effective method to use the Fiber Tool in order to create a coat of fiber that contains an intricate color patterns.
(The example images have intentionally kept very simple as the key to this tutorial is in the utilization of the Auto Picker mode and the Fiber Tool)
Letās get startedā¦
Step01: First, we need to create a surface that later will be covered by a coat of fibers. Select the Sphere3D tool, select a color similar to the image above and draw a sphere in the center of you canvas.
Step02: Place few more spheresā¦
Step03: and few more spheresā¦.
Now we are going to apply color to the surface, which will later be used as a means of controlling the color of each fiber.
Step04: Select the Simple Brush tool. Set Brush Size to 16. Set MRGB intensity to 100%. Select Yellow/Orange color. We will be applying only color therefore we need to turn off ZAdd.. Apply brush strokes similar to the image above.
Step05: Continue using the SimpleBrush with Brush Size set to 8 and color set to white. Apply brush strokes similar to the image above.
Okā¦ we now have a the base surface and it is time to prepare the surface for fiber paining as well as setting the properties of the Fiber tool and the picker paletteā¦
Step06: Preparing the surface: For best results, we need to ābakeā the image before we apply fibers (Baking is a term that is used when describing a texture that has light and shadows pre-painted into the image). In order to bake the image, we need to press the LAYER.BAKE button (or by pressing ctrl+b).
Step07: Preparing the Fiber Tool: Select the Fiber Tool And modify its properties as followsā¦GARAVITY=60 ,GROOMING=0, TURBULENCE=25,THICKNESS=4.
Set the Draw Size to 50. Select Material 0 (Flat Color). We are using flat color material because in most cases, fibers look best when unshaded.
Step08: Preparing the Picker mode: A standard color picker allows you to āpickā existing colors from you drawing area in order to be used for further application of paint. In ZBrush, you can pickup several properties from the canvas (Colors, materials, depth and orientation). To manually pick a color from the canvas, you need to click on any of the color selectors and drag (while still keeping the mouse button down) your cursor to the canvas area, if done properly you will notice that the color selector will āpickā up the color which is pointed to by the cursor. Releasing the mouse button will confirm your selection and you can use this color for further painting.
This mode of color picker is quite basic and common, but ZBrush has more advanced color-picking modesā¦ in this tutorial, we will be activating the continuous picker mode, which will cause the Fiber Tool to continuously pick colors from the canvas. In order to activate this mode, you need to press the Continuous button within the PICKER menu (see image below)
We are ready to use the auto-color-fiber modeā¦
Step09: Apply a fiber coat to the canvas using one continuous brush stroke (as shown in the image above). As you apply the brush stroke, youāll notice that each of the fibers is automatically given a color based on the existing color in the canvas. This auto-color selection is a result of the Continuous-color-picker being activated.
Before moving to the next step, the continuous-picker-mode needs to be turned off by pressing the color icon in the PICKER menu (see image below)
Step10: add few more detailsā¦ and we are done.
Here are 2 more simple examples of images before/after fiberā¦
If you try this color-fiber method, please post your image/s and findings.
I hope youāll find this info fun and helpful
-Pixolator