General help - Fresh blood

[Chris Watkins]

Hi, I downloaded the demo earlier and after playing with it awhile and checking the FAQ forum I have an unanswered question or two.
Searching such an active forum is pretty tough when you dont know all the exciting keywords, so bear with me if someone else has asked similar ones.

First, when you start working with and rotating your view to see the model it tends to start getting tilted to one side, Is there a way to sort of reset the 'camera' so we're looking at it dead-on again?

Second, I cant seem to figure out how to draw on the sphere. I suspect Im using the wrong tool as the single layer brush was just drawing on the background. I'd like to draw some reference lines and such on the sphere like where the eyes and such go, then go back to editing the mesh. Could someone post a process?

Cant think of anything else at the moment :)
Thanks in advance to anyone who answers.
Chris

[DLee]

Click that "Quicklinks" button up there on the top of this screen. Trust me that will keep ya going for months. ~G~ I'm still not through it all.

turn add, sub or cut off when you're in edit mode to paint. (do not drop the mesh)

also their is texturemaster by Southern, for more detailed painting. Works in both demo and paid.

Hope I helped a little. I'm sure someone with a lot more experence can help more.

Just my little thrill.. could actually answer a question. Enjoy... you're life now belongs to Z...

[aurick]

Welcome to Z-land! Hopefully you will become as happily addicted as the rest of us.

To answer your first question: When you are working on your object, pushing and pulling polygons around or adding/subtracting depth, you are in Edit mode. The full name for it is Transform:Edit because it's a function of the Transform palette. Also in the Transform palette are Move, Scale and Rotate. Exit Edit mode and click on one of those four buttons to get a gyro. The button you click depends, of course, on what you want to do. In your case, you want to change the rotation of the object, so you would click the Transform:Rotate button. When the gyro appears, you can use it to rotate the object or you can do the easy way: Click the Info button in the Transform palette to expand that menu. You will see numbers for the X, Y and Z orientation of the object. And you can change those numbers numerically.

The default orientation for an object drawn on the canvas is 0,0,0. A word of advice for when you're modeling is to enter Transform:Rotate mode before you begin to edit any object, and change the X value to 90. This puts the poles at the top and bottom and the seam at the back, which gives better control over your modeling.

The image below shows a sphere while in Transform:Rotate. The gyro is plain to see, and the object is plainly square with the camera. To the right, you can see the Transform palette with the Rotate icon being the only one active. That is how it will always look when you are in Rotate mode. In addition, I've expanded Info and set the X orientation to 90.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1012215673cmt.jpg

For your second question, the thing to remember about ZBrush is that it doesn't work like any other 3D program that you're used to. It's a 2.5D program, combining elements of both 2D and 3D. Modeling is done in 3D, but as soon as you select any other tool, change layers, or such your object is "snapshot" to the canvas. At this point it is no longer polygons but is instead Pixols -- dots that contain info on position, depth, color, material and orientation. Once it's pixols, you can't select it again. Instead, you can now use the other tools to paint on it with depth and all the other neat ZBrush tricks.

There are still other things that you have available, though. For one thing, you can place a marker before you snapshot it. This way, you can later on clear a layer that holds an object, activate the marker, and immediately have the object as polygons again, ready for more modifying. Markers are very good friends! They can record an object's tool, orientation, material, color, draw mode, texture and more. Get used to using them.

The second thing, which doesn't help with modeling, is TextureMaster. This nifty ZScript lets you texture a 3D object by dropping it onto the canvas, painting on it with the various brushes, colors, materials, etc., and then picking the object back up again with everything that you've done being transferred to a texture wrapped onto the object. Rotate, drop, paing, pick up and repeat as often as you like to completely texture the object. It's very remarkable!

I hope these answers help you out a bit. We're all here to offer whatever aid we can!

[Chris Watkins]

Thanks so much for the quick replies and warm welcome too. My questions are both answered (wow, Texture Master is great)
The tutorial/movie is awesome too, anyone know of a modeling tutorial with a similar sort of movie? I saw a stone giant head tut that mentioned a movie but I couldnt find the file anywhere.
Right know Im fooling with trying to model, specifically making what I want to happen, happen. Alot of this has to do, I think, with my tablet and its very high range of sensitivity. Im curious what kinds of setups the rest of you have. If you have a tablet do you prefer modeling witht the mouse and drawing with the pen?

Ooh I noticed something in the Texture Master movie, when the view is rotating, it seems to be snapping to perfect top/front/side views nicely. Hows this done?

[aurick]

Glad that helped. Perfect rotation is done using the Transform:Info like I explained in my last post. Enter any number to get that exact rotation. The reason you don't see it during the tutorial is that it happens very quickly.

For head modeling tutorials in movie form, there are some already in your ZScripts\ModelingSamples folder. Southern created another one called the Grumpy Elf Script which you can download here (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1012220328vuu.txt). (Search is still having trouble, or I'd have sent you to the thread.)

When modeling, a lot of people use the pad for that as well. Use a low Z Intensity value in the Draw palette, and also play with the graph in the Transform palette to change how hard the edge of your brush is. The default graph is relatively soft. You can get harder edges by changing the curve to convex instead of concave.

[DeeVee]

Thanks for the information. It is always nice to read it again. Aurick you have a very special talent explaining things.

[Kaz]

You can also make the view "Snap" by holding down the shift key while rotating. This will constrain it to specific angles (0, 90, 180, etc...).

[Chris Watkins]

Thats what I was looking for Kaz, Thanks :)