CREATE REALISTIC TILEABLE TRIPLE-A MATERIALS
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Import into ZBrush Now it’s time to import all the
layers back to ZBrush. It’s better to organise the SubTools by elements or materials. In this case, bricks were separated into four chunks so we can subdivide without crashing our machine. Also bring a copy of the plane for the mortar. Solo mode is a very useful tool for working with SubTools, focusing only on what is selected.
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Fixing the tiling People usually struggle to make sculpted textures to tile. There are definitely a lot of ways to proceed. You can usually do this with repeated elements like bricks – the easiest way is to sculpt one vertical and one horizontal border using exported layers and then duplicate and move it to the opposite edge. We could also clone the seams in Photoshop to be completely unnoticeable.
Scale and rotation It is important to have some rotation and scale variation in our bricks, as this will bring an overall randomness factor as things are usually layered in reality. Also lighting will react diferently to the surface. Using the Rotation tool after masking some of the bricks, just move, scale or rotate. Don’t exaggerate too much or it will look unrealistic and don’t bend or deform the bricks in excess. Normal MatCap is usually a good way to check how the orientation of our elements is working out.
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Sculpt shapes Using ClayTube, TrimSmoothBorder and TrimDynamic, start to wear the edges from a lower to a higher subdivision. Try to treat every brick uniquely, looking for a common pattern in the overall image but diferent shapes when it comes to individual elements. Leave some of the edges intact, some with rounded corners and others with sharp cuts. Damage and wear and tear tell a story about the entire time that those bricks have been there.
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Detail with a sculpting brush When sculpting details, it is usually a good practice to analyse the surface nature. Usually black-and-white photos with a heavy specular component are good for giving us an idea of how porous or smooth it could be. With this in mind, create a couple of sculpts on a plane using the details you need for mimicking the material surface. To grab the depth of this, a brush was created so we could detail the bricks. 75