I have a plane 3d that I masked, then coloured and so forth, and distorted to make rivets. is there anyway i could mke a body, and then have it plate those all over, or do I need to move them one by one, and if I do is there any way I can attach them together(If i use marker tool, I cant figure out how to make it a tool, the object,not just the multi marker thing) or make a frame and have it skin.
also is there any way of using zsheres to make angled objects, not organic like, zsquares?
thanks
I’m not sure about your first question, but Aurick would probably know how to do that, or IF you can do that… 
As far as your second question, check out Cubic Skinning in the ZSphere tutorial that comes with ZBrush, and also if you set the Adaptive Skinning to a setting of 1, you will get that result…
never mind. the damn thing quit on me as I was making a zshere frame for the tank . (was trying to make a minesweeping tank for the monday night challenge) I had the balls with bumps, the links of chain(2 pieces linked at opposite angles.) the rod, and a very modified gear thing as the rotating bit around the rod, the armor plates, coloured in army green, with rivets.
I suppose thats a not so subtle hint that I should buy Zbrush, so i can save tools 
lol time for try three(first try, it froze completly instead of just quiting, lol) on the plus side im getting better at making these objects 
EDIT: time for try four, the damn thing quit again something to do with Sys_Mac_ResizeMem
according to macsbug
and then the entire sys froze, as I tried to post this edit. lol. don’t think im gonna try again today 
I got farther I had a radar mount for the top zsphered and skinned, and textured. as well as part of the main body and the stuff I already had redone. At least im getting less dumb(i take screenshots of all my settings for each tool so i can remake it fast :))
I like your spirit, Reyd! 
That is a fact…If it screws up, at least the next time, you can get to the same place much quicker! 
Good luck!
EDIT: Here’s a thread Marcel started a long time ago, and I posted some skinning experiments as well…You might find these techniques useful in construction…
http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008266
hi, Reyd!
i think thehydra posted something similar to what you are up to… i dimly remember that the technique was explained in another thread, but i couldnt find it right now. i think it was placing rivets one by one, though.
as for some special use of zspheres you might want to check out this fantastico scripts by Pus
hope this is a little inspiration!
- juandel
This is one way to make angled objects using ZSpheres. For the first step, I created the shape with extra spheres close to the angles to ensure sharp edges. I then skinned it with Adaptive Skinning and a Density of 1 (middle image). I then selected the skin and used Unified Skinning with Skin Smoothness (Smt) set to 0 for cubic skinning and a Resolution of 8. The result is the perfect cross in the lower right corner.
Another approach would be to paint a black and white alpha in the shape that you want and then use Alpha Skinning with an MSm setting of 0 and MRes of 8 to create the model.
Regarding the matter of the plates, you can’t use the MultipleMarker tool to create a mesh since mesh creation is disabled in the demo. However, there is an easy way to paint the plates on manually. Simply draw the first on to the size that you would like. Then activate the Move gyro and click on the canvas inside of it (not on the rings). Now when you drag your mouse over the canvas, the plate will snap onto the surface of anything that you move it across, angled according to the surface orientations. Move your plate into place, press Shift+S to snapshot it, then move it to where you want the second one, Shift+S again and repeat as often as needed. The trick is to make sure that the plate is oriented correctly in the Tool preview window so that it snaps onto the surface correctly. You can use the Rotate deformation to accomplish this. Now, one thing that you will notice is that as you get several plates laid down they will start to interact with those already on the canvas. An easy way to overcome this is to draw your main object and then create a new layer. In the Picker palette, turn on Other and then draw your plates on the new layer. The Other command causes ZBrush to ignore anything on the current layer and instead use the depth from the other layer. So as far as ZBrush is concerned, only the tank will exist. The other plates will be ignored the moment that you snapshot them. Just be sure to turn Other back off again when you’re through. 
You can also merge the layers after you’re done. In this case, make sure that you have MRGB and ZADD turned on before you click the Layer>Mrg button.
Hope that helps!
thanks aurick. Im going to try that. do you have any sugestions on a way to build it, so that i can have it active as one unit after, to rotate scale etc. should i just do every link by hand, and mark all the parts. is there a max number of markers?
edit: also, the middle one is exactly the type of effect im looking for, thanks very much again