This tutorial goes over how you can connect your new tile-able texture into a vray mtl and play with the settings to create a material that acts like fish scales.  1.) Setting up your Material.  Scales are more complex than we think. They have a level of iridescence , subsurface scattering and micro- specular detail to them that is hard for our eyes to see. These three attributes make all the difference when trying to pull off an interesting and believable scale material. Lets call them cornerstone attributes.  Exploring cornerstone attributes of scales:  This section will go over the definitions of the cornerstone attributes of fish scales. It will brush a little on the biology of fish and how we can use this information when building our material, Feel free to skip this section if biology isn't you thing. :)  Iridescence :  Iridescence basically occurs when the hue shifts with the angle of observation (...

Today, I wanted to share my process for creating a seamless, scale-able material that can either be projected onto Zbrush models or applied as materials to UV'd models inside of programs like Maya and 3Ds Max. I used this when creating my unique stylized scale surfaces. You can find breakdowns for them here : Stylized Scale Materials This is a tutorial that will be split into four parts. Below is an outline on what we will cover.  This post will be addressing part 1.            Part 1:  Approaching Scales and Creating a Pattern.           Part 2:  Refining your pattern in Zbrush.           Part 3: Creating a compelling and believable scale Material inside of Maya I will be using the following programs to create my Scale material : Adobe Photoshop (optional) , Adobe Illustrator (optional), Zbrush , Vray and Maya.  Part 1: Approaching and Creating A Pattern ...

In part I of this tutorial, I went over my process for creating a tile- able texture mask using photoshop and illustrator. We ended with how different applied effects done in photoshop could alter the basic outcome a sculpted tile inside of Zbrush. In this lesson, I want to go over how to apply that texture in Zbrush and then further refine it using Zbrush's robust sculpting tools and a combination of masking techniques. While I will personally be working with a mask that I did indeed create in photoshop, this process can be easily applied and used without having a mask at all.  We will go over some helpful tips and hints that can help us keep our texture seamless and furthermore, expedite the sculpting process so that we can get great results with less effort.  For this tutorial, you will need the following programs : Zbrush. If you created a seamless pattern from the first part of this document, then be sure to have that file as well!  Setting up y...