Hey guys, Happy New Year and welcome back. Well, this is the very first video of 2018 and before we jump in, I just want to thank you guys so so much for the sweet comments, the letters, the actual snowmobile cards I received and even packages. So the best wishes to all of you guys, I hope you have a great 2018 and that said let's get started with our first video. Alright, well today we're going to do something completely new. In 2018 I'm going to be starting with new ZBrush videos. They're going to be very very basic for beginners and this is going to be the first one. Alright, I'm going to show you how you can create alpha images in Photoshop and how you can use them in ZBrush. Okay, here we go. Alright guys, well this is a beginner's tutorial in ZBrush and what I'm going to show you is how you can create alpha images for use in ZBrush and apply them. Alright, so here we go. So we're going to start off in Photoshop because that's what we're going to create our alpha. So let's jump in, here we go. And what I got here is an image that I got off of Google. It's a free for commercially used image so it's okay to use it. And what I need for an alpha image is a black background with a white foreground. Okay, so what I need to do here is hit Ctrl-I to invert the black to white and what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a new layer. I'm going to go in, make sure this is set to white, that is set to black and then I'm going to hit Ctrl-Delete to fill that out in black and I'm going to drag that layer below. So we got this. So basically this is our alpha, alright. So I'm going to select both of them and I'm going to go in the two merge layers and I'm going to go up to file and let's see, save as. I don't have to save that necessarily as a PNG. I can use a JPEG if I like. So JPEG, I already have a copy here so I'm just going to overwrite it. Okay, cool. So now let's jump back into ZBrush. Alright guys, so we're in ZBrush. We need an object to work on obviously so I'm going to go in here and I'm going to go into cube 3D. Let's see, we'll drag that out. The whole shift to snap it, hit edit and hit make poly mesh 3D so we can work on it. Alright. Now whenever I use an alpha, I like to dine and mesh my object so I have enough detail to work with. So what we're going to do is we're going to go under geometry, we're going to go down to dine and mesh and then in dine and mesh we're going to click on this blur value, we're going to set that to zero, we're going to turn off projection and we're going to turn on polish and we're going to set our resolution to 512. Okay, and there we go. So that's all good. We need to activate dine and mesh of course. So let's do that. Yep. And what we're going to do is we're going to go in to where's yet, where's yet, where's yet perspective just because that's a preference for me personally. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn on poly frames so you can see that we have a bunch of detail. Okay, turn that off again. And now it's time to load up our alpha and use it. So first of all our brush, standard brush is fine. We're going to leave it there. Our stroke, we're going to set it to drag rectangle. Okay, and then our alpha here we can load that up. We can go in, we can go to import and here's our alpha and hit open. Now when we want to apply this alpha, a couple of things we need to keep in mind. We have the focal shift up here. Okay, we have the draw size and you have the intensity. Now a couple of things you need to keep in mind. First we're going to start with our focal shift at zero. Draw size looks about right and the intensity will do something. Let's say 15. Okay, now we're going to go in. We're going to start somewhere in the middle of our objects. So in my case I'm working with the tablet. So I'm just going to touch my screen and start to pull until I have the desired size and I'm going to let go. So now if I rotate my image, you can see that it has used my alpha on this object, but it's not exactly what I wanted. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to move over, hold on shift to snap it again. All right, and let's tweak those settings a little bit. So I'm going to do the intensity, let's say 43. We'll leave the focal shift at zero and draw size. I'm still okay with that, all right? So let's do that again. I'm going to position my pen and I'm going to start to pull and stop. Now once we rotate that around again, you'll see that this looks quite different. That looks pretty flat. This looks rounded in the middle. Now that is very much related to the intensity of course, but also related to the focal shift because if I flip this over and once again, I'm just going to put that right there. What if we leave the intensity but move the focal shift all the way to minus 100 and we'll do this one more time. Now if we have a look, you will see that everything is level. Okay? So here on the previous one, it was kind of rounded in the middle. This one is pretty level and the first one was pretty flat. Okay? Now, what if you want to tweak that in some way? So we've got one side left that we can play with. So let's just snap that. So we'll go with a focal shift of, let's see, zero. I believe everything else the way it was and we're going to do one more because that's basically the one that I like best. And now what you can do here is you can go in and you can tweak these settings a little bit. Okay? So if you go into the right, you can go to a tab called deformation and in that tab you have a couple of options for polish. Now the reason for that is if you look closely, you'll see that the edges are a bit rough here and you can go in and you can set that polish value. And once I pull that up, you'll see that what it starts to look like is more like a kind of a worn down coin feel if you like. This is maybe a bit much, right? So hopefully this will help you to get started with alphas. Like I said, it's a video for complete beginners. I am basically a beginner myself. So I'm just sharing my experience here as I progress. Hopefully you enjoyed the video if you did let me know, if you did not let me know as well. And that said, see you guys next time. Bye.