Hi,
is it possible to have sth like a mask blur brush? I want a sharp mask and need certain areas to fade out smoothly which I want to paint in by hand. Is it possible or do I need to create a b/w texture to load as mask?
Cheers
Hello @ceend
You can blur a mask by just Ctrl-tapping on a mesh with a mask painted on it. So if you were masking a cylinder on the middle and wanted one end to be soft and the other sharp, you could simply mask the soft end, blur it, then paint the sharp mask.
If you want a complicated mask with a combination of sharp and blurred edges, you can paint it that way–remember that the active masking brush can be adjusted independently of the main brush for alpha, falloff, and RGB intensity. You can also certainly apply a texture and convert that to masking.
However, in ZBrush Polypaint = Masking = Polygroups. When you understand that each of these can be converted into the other via functions like Tool > Masking> Mask by Color, it opens up infinite possibilities for creating complicated masking or polygroups. Simply paint your intended masking as polypaint, using the many tools for applying and manipulating color on a mesh in ZBrush, then convert it to masking. When polypainting, you can blur the underlying colors by using the smooth brush with the Zsub component deactivated so there is no softening of the geometry, only color.
As always, polypaint or masking resolution is dependent on mesh resolution, so high quality blurring will require significant polycount as well as decent topology.