Following the concept, our character should have some fur as well as feathers. So, we'll try to get a smooth transition from a feathered head to a furry chest and back. To create convincing fur and feathers, we'll create custom alphas for each:
Alphas are just grayscale images, so we can easily create our own in any image editor. As this is not ZBrush-specific, here's only a short breakdown of how to create the alphas for the feathers and fur. This is not a step-by-step tutorial, but rather an explanation of how to build custom alphas to create more realistic sculptures. You are encouraged to create your own alpha, but you can also download both of them by following the link at the end of this section.
First, let's have a look at the existing alphas to better understand how they work. Here are two examples that come along with ZBrush. The first one is the alpha of the Snake brush, found in the brush list. The second one is the ScalesFish brush that can...