ZBrushCentral

Noobie needs help before he freaks out!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

As you can tell from the title, I’m new to zbrush and need some help. I have quite the list of questions and many of them will probably be difficult to answer. I’ll list them as issues…

  1. the “quick sketch” button causes havok. it turns the whole canvas white with no apparent way to turn it back to what it was.

2.when i load the “demo head” to work on, it has sections that are nice smooth surfaces and others that have large polys. in the large poly areas it is impossible to create any sort of detail.

  1. if i lower the “draw size” to the size i think it should be for the detail i want, it doesn’t seem to do anything.

  2. how do i move, remove, resize, etc the eys and teeth from the demo head?

  3. how do i paint on the model once i’m done with it.

  4. sometimes when i try to smooth a section of the model it leaves certain areas untouched and creates a sharp “spike” in one spot that i cant seem to remove.

  5. sometimes when i smooth an area it will create holes in the surface where it appears that the material has disappeared.

Attachments

Screen shot 2012-02-09 at 7.40.57 PM.jpg

#2

1- What quicksketch is mostly doing is quickly creating a whiter planar mesh to draw on. If you were to right-click and drag or use the scale-edited object button, you’d be able to basically zoom out and see the rest of the document. If you were working on a different model prior to hitting the Quick Sketch button, then you’ll have to reselect it under the Tools Palette.

2- You can subdivide the mesh with Ctrl+D (or use Tools: Geometry: Divide). This will give you more geometry to sculpt in finer details, while letting you step up and down the subdivision levels incase you wanted to make larger changes to the shape (this can be done using the slider in the same location, or using the D and Shift+D keys).

3- Is this related to the previously mentioned lack of geometry?

4- The teeth and mouth are a seperate subtool (in terms other other 3d programs, it would be like having a seperate model that is a child of the first). Normally you can switch with the N key, but I’m not sure how well that works in Z4R2b with less than three subtools. Instead you can either alt+click on the eyes to select that subtool, or go to Tools: Subtool and select from the list there.

5- Tools: Polypaint: Colorize
You’ll want to make sure the brush mode is set to RGB instead of MRGB or M, and you’ll probably want to turn Zadd and Zsub off so that you’re not sculpting on the model while you paint.

I’m not sure about the last two : /

#3

I appreciate your quick response.

soooo. i’ll just avoid the quick sketch tool. i hate it.

increasing the subdivisions to the point where it looks like some of the other models i’ve seen slows my machine to unusable levels.

are there any tutorials that are really meant for beginners? even the tutorial on the pixologic site seem to be for people that have already used zbrush. all the vids I’ve found move way too fast or skip vital steps for basic function.

#4

You shouldn’t have to subdivide it too much unless you’re looking for some extreme pore-level detail. If your machine isn’t capable of allowing too much geometry, you might want to look into the HD Geometry feature. It would limit the amount of the head that you’d be able to see at a time, but as a result should let you handle more data.

If you were willing to spend some money on training, Eat3D had some pretty good introduction to Zbrush DVDs. They’re for older versions so they might not include some of the newer features, but a lot of the features they do cover (like subdividing and poly painting) still hold true today.

#5

Thanks a million! I did 1 subdivision and it made a huge difference!

#6

notice how the surface is really smooth on the forehead area but the polys are a lot larger on the chin area. why is that?

Screen shot 2012-02-09 at 9.54.06 PM.jpg
Screen shot 2012-02-09 at 9.54.06 PM.jpg1440×900 380 KB

#7

The forehead area is probably far more dense in polygons. With sculpting it can be better to have a wireframe/topology that has a more consistent density throughout the mesh ('evenly spaced quads), unless you know there are specific parts of the mesh that will require more detail.

Dynamesh/Remesh are good at creating new base meshes that have a more unified density.

#8

so how do you make it have more evenly spaced quads? I’ve never used poly based software so i have no idea how to do this stuff. where do i find dynamesh/remesh?

also. i saved a project and now reopened it and it is just stuck as a 2d image. i can’t hit the edit button to do anything with it. this software should have come with some tutorials better than the crap on the website.

#9

I’ll also mention that in the menu’s to the right there is a section display properties , if you want to look at your model smoothed out : slide smooth from 0 to 1 and then go into the transform menu and disable the option “quick edit” , you will need to re-enable it to be able to sculpt again.

About the 2d , its probably out of edit mode and dropped to the canvas , do layer -> clear and look in your tool palette, if you saved it as a file (not document), your tool should be in the list to redraw on the canvas and re-enter edit mode. If you did save it as a document , i’m afraid you lost your work. To save your model , either use Tool->save or File->save. Tool will only contain the tool , File will load zbrush the way it was when you saved it, with all the tools in the tool palette you made that session , materials , render settings , lighting settings.

Based on your questions you should really spend a day or 2 watching as many videos as you can though. Zclassroom.

http://www.d3d.it/resources/zbrushr2/
http://zbrush.info
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/
http://www.youtube.com/user/rkingslien

commercial dvd tutorials will most likely explain you a complete project from scratch. But some of the free videos out there are very informative too.

The problem with Zbrush’s manual/tutorials/videos/information on the net is the negative side-effect of something very positive. Zbrush versions are not like traditional 3d packages that change small stuff and charge 1000$, the difference between zbrush versions is immense and therefor information on the net gets outdated fast.

One example is modeling, there only used to be the method to start from a sphere and if you wanted a complete body , you had to make every piece seperately and compose them as a scene on the document as 2.5d, Then Zspheres were introduced allowing you to build a skeleton fast and generate a complete basic model out of it, this changed Zbrush into a completely different program. Then they added subtools, zsketch to build mass and now the most common method of building a model is dynamesh.

With this I just want to show that they don’t add a function or 2 in upgrades, they change the entire method of sculpting because they found an easier/more intuitive way of doing things.

#10

thanks for the input. i guess just like anything else, it’s always hard in the beginning. i just hate when it’s not intuitive.

#11

I’ll admit that zbrush functions/placement and gui has gotten complicated with stuff all over the place. Most of us don’t see it anymore cause we’re used to it. It’ll get better, just takes some time.