When using alpha brushes in the viewport (not in projection mode) the brushes seem to be always radial faded (even when the Rf is set to 0)
It kinda makes this sculpting feature usless for bricks or other mechanical details ???
Curently im forced to go back into crappy projection mode for these details 
Hello Jim,
One trick is to shrink your square alpha inside of the circle that zbrush uses for brushes and set focal shift to -100. That will give you a hard edge.
r
Thanks for your reply mate.
Can you please describe how you scale the alpha size with in zbrush?
Ive been poking around and seem to be missing something ?
cheers
jim
Inside of Photoshop or some other image editor you can simply make the square or hard edged alpha you want to use smaller so that it fits in the circle that ZBrush automatically uses for sculpting.
Support
The problem I am having with this āhackā or workaround is that I still end up with a deforming alpha value in the remaining circle area. Unless there is a ātransparencyā for that area the suggested hack is only a method to allow the depiction of the entire square texture/alpha contents, but does not solve but introduce additional problems around this topic. While we are at itā¦ a perfect solution would be the ability to select an alpha to control the shape of the projection. Like you can do with the fog alpha. An alpha slot for the mask and the modeling would be fantastic.
Lemo
Hello Lemmonado,
If you post some images, I will be better able to help with this.
Thanks
Support
Its strange that there are some nice controls under the alpha menu for radial fall off etc , that not used ? Real time alpha brushes seems like a rushed feature ā¦ it makes no sense to not use a convention and menu that is already there ???
Lemmo, do you mean you still get the edges of the square cut off? I think your square is not small enough. Did you try that alpha I made that I uploaded in this thread? Wait, thereās only one m in lemmonado and two nā¦ LOL 
just realized that. Everyone seems to love to write your name with two mms 
Perhaps the reason behind the circle mask for brushes is because the pointer weāre using is circle shaped (that red circle around the pointer) so that the mask would fit entirely within that circle. Am I right?
PS. Sweeet. Thereās an official Support mod now. Itās even a super moderator. w00t!
it would be nice to at least have a slider to turn that off
My problem is with the DragRect stroke ā¦ which doesnāt drag a rect.
Hello. 
Sorry for the lag responding.
first, I hear and understand the crux of what is being discussed here. There are reasons for both options. Lets see what we can fit into development among all the other options still being worked on.
Ryan
This looks like the right thread?
Two questions. The first I think is what Lemo was asking, not sure.
I create a square alpha in PS. 16 bit. No anti-aliasing so perfect edges. Small enough to fit inside the circle. Pure white on black.
I then started with a 6 poly cube and UV Tile. Divided to about 1.5 million poly and then HD to 6 to make sure there is enough polyās to get a smooth edge. Then I use Deformation Offset to try and pull out a flat surface.
I end up with what you see below. When I applied the mask using the alpha I could visibly see the dithering even though it was a 16 bit alpha with no focal shift and no anti-aliasing when it was created. Iām not posting a shot of the visible dithering because it is only visible on a high contrast monitor. You can also see the little triangle thingy (technical term :rolleyes: ) that pops up.
Now you could say just use the smooth brush but - The smooth brush does not give clean edges on the five raised sides that Iām trying to get.
I Ctrl>Shift Drag to hide the one side. I then Ctrl Drag and release Ctrl to get a solid mask over the remaining 5 sides of the cube. Then I Ctrl>Shift and click in the document to unhide the hidden side. I get what you see above 100% of the time at any poly count. This is also true of any other mesh I try but I thought it would be easier to show with a cube. Getting clean edges when I mask unhidden polyās while others are hidden does not appear to be possible.
Any help with this???
The lack of sharp masks, low res alphaās in some functions, and the circular alpha default shape are a real issue. It would be a problem if that stays like that for the coming few years.
Lemo
Yes, I agree. Now with HD Iād just as soon leave the Deformation alone and do most things with alphaās. Even so, Iām very happy with the new version overall. It should be really something when the wrinkles get ironed out. I love the feel of modeling with it. Iām already curious about what 4 will look like?
Hi Lemo if you make in ZB an alpha with the Plane3D an square less big than the default square alpha you have anymore the circular shape when rectdrag.
Andreseloy
Hello Blaine91555,
For your second image, the issue at hand is that we are masking verticies, not polygon faces. Each vertice can have only one masking value.
For example, the vertices at the corner of the cube are shared between the polygon faces around them. Depending on which vertice it can include the top, side and front. This is why your masking appears to bleed over the edges. It is still a hard edged mask but the vertice you have masked is shared between multiple faces.
For your first image, I would suggest using tranpose to get exact movements of the polygon faces as opposed to the brush. You can also use the flatten brush with its elevation setting for a loose but more uniform positioning.
If you have a more real-world example of what you are trying to do and unable to do please post the images and Iāll check it out.
Best,
Ryan
lemonnado, Iād like to help as you seem to have some concerns here but your comment is too vague for me.
The masks can be sharp so Iām not sure I understand this.
Low res alphas can be avoided by bringing in higher rez alphas, no? If you mean the default alphas in ZBrush, I would love to know which oneās you are finding too low rez and under what circumstances.
The circular alpha ādotā for sculpting is fairly standard technology. You can see it in Photoshop if you increase the spacing of your brush and you can see it in Mayaās paintfx if you do a similar action. There are also many advantages that you may not have considered. Either way, there are always pluses and minuses.
Best,
Ryan
Was going to post this:
"Iām trying to apply square alphas (in sculpt mode, not PM), with no fade. My Focal Shift is set to ā-100ā and my alpha āRadial Fadeā is set to ā0ā and Iām using the DragRect stroke, but despite all this, theyāre always coming up round, so Iām missing the corners of my alphaā¦
Any idea where Iām missing the āmake squareā option?"
But came across this threadā¦
Hmmmā¦just wanted to lend my voice to the folks who think the ādrag rectangleā stroke making circles is a little counter-intuitive. 
It would be nice to have full square alphas. Hopefully that gets worked in.
Iām about to release another alpha packā¦ this time with many tileable alphas, but it kinda works against tiling them if they come up as circular, regardless of RF and FocalShift setting. 
Issue with having to shrink alphas to fit within the ācircle of effectivenessā to counteract the unwanted radial effect, is that by shrinking pre-existing alphas, weāre effectively lowering their resolution and removing details.
For large hi-res alphas, this may not be much of a concern. But for pre-existing alphas that are less than 512x512, this can dramatically reduce the quality and effectiveness of the alpha.
I raised the issue of alphas suffering forced vignetting during beta testing and was kinda hoping the radial fade would be made optional in the release. There are numerous reasons to allow square alphas - DragRect brush application of textures to polypaint on the model for instance.
In effect the Radial Fade slider could be set to default to 25 or 50 on startup giving all alphas a circular drop off by default, but preserving the option that the user could set RF to 0 and use the square alpha when needed.
Unless there is an inherent technical limitation to the use of square alphas I sincerely hope this issue is reconsidered for the coming update.
Sven