ZBrushCentral

Boolean Cutter ZBrush function suggestion

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,

I was wondering if someone could create a script, or — even better — if the Pixologic developers could add a ZBrush function to do this:

1: Draw a shape in front of an active subtool, using any of the strokes you can use for creating slices and masks, such as the lasso stroke, circle stroke, etc…
2: The drawn shape is then extruded into a mesh that extends through the active subtool.
3: The extruded mesh is subtracted from the active subtool using Live Boolean.

For a script I guess a possible way to go might be to use the CurveTriFill brush to create the shape, then extrude it, assign a Group As Dynamesh Sub to it and use the Remesh By Union deformer. The disadvantage of this route is that you have to rely on drawing with a ZBrush curve for the CurveTriFill brush, in stead of being able to use the different strokes.

Many thanks in advance.

#2

You can extrude the masked area with “Extract” function, then use that for the boolean.

#3

Thanks for your reply. That’s a possibility indeed, but it requires many actions. Each time you want to make a cut you’d need to create a plane in the view’s orientation, subdivide it, draw a mask on the plane, extract or extrude the mask, activate Live Boolean, create a Boolean mesh, append the result to your active tool, etcetera.

It’d be great if you could draw arbitrary and precise cuts through a subtool simply by using one of the available stroke types.

#4

For inspiration here’s a video about a free add-on called Carver MT that’s included in the Blender release.