Creating Tileable Textures in ZBrush

Overview

This 14 part video-tutorial series will guide you through the process of concepting and creating a tileable normal, ambient occlusion and height map within ZBrush, Knald and xNormal. This tutorial is intended for those that have a base understanding of the modeling process and are aware of the uses of various texture maps. We will discuss setting up all of our software before we use it to ensure that it's as easy as possible for you to get started!

Software needed for this project:

• Adobe Photoshop
  
• 3D Studio Max (or preferred 3D program)
  
• ZBrush (4R2 or later)
  
• Knald/xNormal
  

Content 

Planning

We will begin by creating a preliminary outline for the planned texture in Photoshop, before moving onto 3D Studio Max where we will be generating the base mesh and preparing it for sculpting.

Sculpting

We will then move onto the sculpting stage inside of ZBrush, where we will use a mixture of standard and non-standard brushes in order to add detail and variation to our sculpt.

Baking

After we have created our final sculpt and processed it for baking, we will create a low poly target mesh in 3D Studio Max and bake out our Normal, AO and Height maps within Knald and xNormal.

Closing

We will finally discuss the re-use of the assets and ZTools that we have made, and look at ways of creating more variations of our tileable textures within Photoshop and 3D Studio Max.

Links/Resources

to products used within the tutorial series will be included, along with all of the project files for you to follow along with and my contact details should you have any questions.