50 Ornament Trim Brush + 3DModel — VOL 09

Volume 09 is the seventh instalment of the ornament toolkit, and it is aimed squarely at the part of a sculpt that eats a day: detailing a scene or a prop with ornament that has to follow the form rather than sit on top of it.

Each of the fifty designs arrives twice. Once as a 16-bit alpha at 4096 x 4096, for stamping and for height work. Once as an insert mesh brush, so the same design can be laid down as geometry.

What is in the toolkit

• 50 alpha brushes
• 50 IMM brushes
• 4K, 4096 x 4096
• 16 bit
• ZBrush brush, IMM, PSD, PNG, TIF, OBJ, MAX, JPEG preview
• 3D models in OBJ and MAX

Working with the IMM set, the fastest route is curve mode. Draw a stroke and the ornament repeats along it; adjust the curve afterwards and the whole run follows. On a curved surface — a helm, a vessel, a column — that is the only way to keep the spacing even, because stamping the same alpha around a curve gives you stretched copies at the ends and an obvious seam where the run meets itself.

The alphas take over where the surface is flat enough not to need geometry, or where the ornament belongs in the material rather than in the mesh. They go into Substance Painter's height channel and stencil slot, into Photoshop as a brush, and into any package that reads a height map at all.

The ZBrush brushes require ZBrush 2018 or above. Outside ZBrush, the OBJ and MAX models cover Blender, Maya, Mari and 3ds Max directly, which is the practical way to use the set if your sculpting happens somewhere else.