ZBrushCentral

How to get frame mesh around sharp corners?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

No matter what settings I apply to Curve, Curve Functions and Curve Modifiers, I can’t get Curve Tubes (or MultiCurve Tubes) to accurately follow a Frame Mesh…at least without it rounding off all the sharp corners:

Closeup of the edge in question.

What the application of Curve Tube results in.

This is the best I have been able to manage after hours of trying.

If I were able to create Zspheres at selected vertices I could do this fairly quickly…am I missing something obvious and going about this all wrong?

Thanks for any light you could shed on this!

Attachments

Edge.jpg

FrameMesh.jpg

CurveSettings.JPG

#2

Setting Curve Step to Zero in stroke palette and Maximum Bend Angle to 90 degrees in brush/modifiers is as good as I could get with that brush and it gave extremely sharp snapping to my curves but still not perfect if the transition was too extreme, like two 45 degree angle curves adjacent and parallel, if the stroke tries to follow that curve it does create a bezier curve to help it get over the gap from one control point to the next.

There may be some black magic somehwere that gets it to behave perfectly sharp but none I know of, this way though is very close and is simply two settings.

#3

I’m just trying to give some thickness to some one-sided geometry - if I could add panel loops or Qmesh it without ruining the UV mapping I would do that instead…I guess I could duplicate this subtool, make panel loops or edgeloops or whatever, (using Qmesh on the edgeloop would likely give the most precise results fastest) then just delete the initial geometry of the duplicate and leave it in place on the edge of the original geometry since it doesn’t need to share it’s UV mapping in any case.
I’ll try your settings first, thank you for that! Having so many ways to address modelling problems really is a double-edged sword.

#4

Well, Qmeshed edgeloop of a duplicate was what worked.

Qmeshed.JPG

Thank you for pointing out Brush Modifiers - a whole menu I had forgotten was at my disposal.

#5

Yeah what would we do without zmodeler haha and how did we ever live without it! I hear you about all the options being a blessing and a curse sometimes, I’ve forgotten more about this software then I think I know I’m sure no joke. Sometimes I look for a tutorial on something I’m stuck on here and in the google image search for my problem comes up an image that I myself created years ago with a tutorial of how to get it done. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t read solutions to problems I have written by my self in the past. I just keep moving forward and sometimes it’s hard to keep all this knowlege relevent if you don’t use it every day heh, anyway glad you got it sorted looked tricky!