ZBrushCentral

Beginners Q - Drawing a Smooth Ridge

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all

I am trying to draw smooth ridges on a sphere, and want it to turn out smoothly - for example - putting a pair of brow ridges on a head.

As per the image, you can see that the result is uneven and beaded. How can I get a perfectly smooth ridge ? … or how can I smooth this out ?

To be more specific, I am trying to follow Southern Gfx’s “Purple Meanie” tutorial, but don’t seem to be able to attain the level of smoothness that his character has.

I’ve tried all different combinations of z-intensity and draw size when in Edit/Draw mode, but cannot seem to get a satisfactory result.

I’ve also set the hdivide=512 and vdivide=256.1

Any help appreciated.

regards,
Andrew

#2

You should try the symetry hotkeys x,y,z.

You should not have so many polys on screen at once ( hide the back of the head ).
Subdivide your mesh ONLY when you have used
all the polys at a particuler level. Treat each level like a poly cage. Dont waste polys.

Control the speed of your stroke across the canvas. If you want to scribble use projection master and choose the correct stroke.

Above all just continue to play with it.
You will get the hang of things :slight_smile:

#3

Skycastle,

Thanks for replying.

The x-symmetry is already turned on for the example.

I don’t understand what you are saying about not having so many polys on the screen at once. I am not having a problem with memory, the performance is OK. The reason why I set the hdivide and vdivide as such was because SouthernGfx’s “Purple Meanie” told me to.

In any event, I thought that higher polys would yield a smoother result - which it seems to, but is still not good enough.

Also…what do you mean by hiding the back of the head ? … how would you do this, and for what purpose ?

regards,
Andrew

#4

Ahem … let me elaborate on one point.

I used hdivide and vdivide because SouthernGfx’s “Purple Meanie” tutorial told me to … not because the “Purple Meanie” himself told me …

#5

I’m pretty new to Z-Brush myself but maybe I can give you a couple of tips! To clarify one of Skycastle’s points. Move your cursor slowly when sculpting, it’s tempting to try and work more quickly because Z-Brush can keep up but you will get a smoother result by taking your time. To demonstrate this try moving the Draw Pointer rapidly across a surface. You should see a series of raised dots created. Move it slowly and you get a smooth ridge.

Keeping the poly count as low as possible will help when using the smooth command or smoothing brush (ZB2)

Keep a low Zadd value and build up features slowly, if you increase the size of your model with the deform menu/size slider the tools will have a more subtle effect too.

Finally, practise! You’ll find it easier to create smooth features as you get used to ZBrush.

Hiding parts of the mesh? If you’re using ZB2 I can’t help, though it has something to do with selection and is explained in the Practicle guide. In 1.55 you mask (press Cntrl while painting with Draw Pointer) and then press a button in the selection menu if I remember correctly. Sorry I don’t have ZBrush on the machine I’m surfing on! - Baz

#6

Thanks, BazC

A lot of good advice here.

I think the theme that is coming thru’ for me here is that I should work slowly and patiently.

regards,
Andrew

#7

the reason for only clustering certain areas with high polys is that it is expected that you work in a high polygon environment for best results, but you also don’t want to waste them, which can get big after several sub divisions.

of course you can ignore that, and just do it like you did, but after deforming a while, you may notice the the heavily deformed areas start to look faceted. This is just from not planning ahead for heavy deformed areas. think of it like this. If you are working on a humanoid, and subdivided the whole thing equally, you will get alot of overly polyed areas in the body, and under polyed areas in the head. You should have known this, and at a low sub-d level either divide regions that will need it, or you can make edge loops.

In addition, you can use PM for smooth deforms. imo, it’s smoother with pm than with normal brushstrokes. only drawback with pm is that symetry is limited to front/back. with regular edit, all sort of symetry options are available, including radial.