HOW CAN I GET IMAGES OUT OF ZBRUSH WITH A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND FOR PRINT?

Ronald asked how he could get his images out of Zbrush with a transparent background and use them in print projects. There are a few things to consider if you want to do this, and they include the resolution of the image inside Zbrush, and an understanding of different render passes.

Let’s first consider the size of the documents. To print an image you need to have a high DPI, which means dots per inch. On a computer that translates to PPI, pixels per inch. To get really high-quality, magazine-ready artwork, you need to have lots of pixels or a high PPI. When Zbrush opens it gives you a very small canvas usually, and the first thing you would need to do is set your canvas to the size of the project you want to output (I’ll cover that in the tutorial section on the right).

Once you’ve set the correct image size, you then need to make sure that you are only creating the elements that you want to output: so no background images, planes to catch shadows or even background objects. You will then need to pose your model and add a lighting setup that works for your design.

Next it’s time to render, which gives you the final image, but also all of the render passes. If you don’t know what these are you can find them in the Render tab under BPR Renderpass. The passes are a series of image files in different formats that you can use in other programs to re-composite an image that you have rendered in different ways. For example, it gives you a composited image, a shaded image, a depth pass, a shadow pass, an ambient occlusion pass, a mask, a subsurface scattering pass and even a floor. These won’t mean a lot to you if you’ve never tried to do it, but each of those passes can be saved and used to create different effects in a 2D package such as Photoshop. The most useful one would be the mask pass, as this is the pass that allows you to cut out your image perfectly in Photoshop, making it ideal for use in a layout work. The depth pass helps you create things like fake depth of field or cool lighting effects.