ZBrushCentral

Sketching in layers?

ZBrush Artworks
#1

Question for anyone who knows…

I would not doubt that there is more than one way to do this, but I’m having trouble doing it at all.

Is there a way to be able to sketch a drawing in ZBrush, and then change to a different layer and continue sketching, with the first layer visible. It would be nice to be able to switch between ‘layers’, but it’s not necessary. I say ‘layers’, because I realize that maybe the solution involves turning the sketch on one layer into a texture on a 3DPlane or something like that.

What I am trying to accomplish is to sketch guidlines and a rough form, quickly. Then have that in the ‘background’ while I refine the sketch on a different ‘layer’. Then the guide lines or rough initial sketching can be deleted or ‘turned off’, so that only the refined sketch remains.

It would be great to be able to do this with ZBrush’s layers, so that different elements could be on different layers, and yet all visible at the same time, but I realize that ZBrush wasn’t designed to be a 2D sketch gizmo.

Examples:

I would like to be able to get rid of the guidlines or rough sketching with out always having to erase it by hand:

And the final…

#2

The problem is, pixols don’t have an Opacity value, so you cannot overlay a flat color over another so that the one behind the other would show.

Maybe you could create the lines with the Single Layer brush, by disabling the Picker and switching it to a constant Z value?

#3

Hi :slight_smile:
Yes, it is possible, I’ll post a mini-tutorial later today/tonight :slight_smile:

#4

Thank you Pixolator! I was wondering about this also sometime ago, not relegated to drawing but I gave up. :slight_smile:

#5

whoa very nice ending sketch
cant wait for the tut.

#6

Hi Jay
It’s the reason of Layers :slight_smile:
You have perfectly resume the possibilities of Zbrush !
What have you don’t try that you have describe ?
It was excactly the answer :slight_smile:
Just draw on 3 layers !
Have you don’t see the little :small_orange_diamond: on each layer icone : if you Enable it or not it’s visible or not :smiley:
I have describe this for Vikki, if I remember :wink:
But in a short time you will have a “Pixo tut” on the subject :sunglasses:
Pilou

#7

Frenchy, I tried using two layers last night, filling each one with a base color, and then trying to sketch on each, and I always had a problem that prevented me sketching on one of the layers.

Today, I tried it again, since you posted that it could be done. Now it’s working just like I want it to, which is great! I don’t know what I did differently.

I hope to see Pixolator’s tutorial to see if there was a step that I was prone to leave out.

#8

I’m looking forward to seeing Pixolator’s tutorial, too!

But one idea that I have relates to the fact that materials remain live until baked. If you turn Flatten Layers off in the Render palette, you can then put your lines one one layer and do your drawing on the second. When drawing, use a material with the Transparency modifier, and set it to a value that allows you to see through to the guide layer as you work. When finished, delete the guide layer, turn Flatten Layers back on, and change the material transparency back to 0.

#9

Hi Jay
A little trick is not filled a layer : just keep a black background and all is easy :slight_smile:
Pilou

#10

just an idea for staying inside one layer… and i realize it wont be possible in all cases, depending on backgroundmaterial and colour used: fill the layer with basic material or any other that has colorize diffuse in its modifiers. save basic material as basicmateriala and load it into another slot. set colorize diffuse to 100, which will make it kind of black without changing paint-colour. draw helplines. draw cubes or whatever with another material. when you want to get rid of the helplines (all of them) just set colorize diffuse back to 0 (so as to get same properties as basicmaterial used for fill layer) and they will vanish into the background :slight_smile:

  • juandel
#11

Juandel, that is a good idea :+1:

I had the same problem again with multiple layers, and I haven’t figured it out yet. I started out being able to do what I wanted to do with two layers, and now I can’t, and I can’t reproduce the steps I took to get back to where I was. :frowning:

#12

Good trick Juandel :cool:
Pilou

#13

A lot of information is already available in this thread and in here and here

Jaycephus: I thought you had it solved :slight_smile: Can you post more info about the problem that you have encountered? I may be able to determine which step is missing.

-Pixolator

#14

OK,

I am using the Simple brush, ZAdd Off, RGB On, to sketch with. This requires that I fill a layer with pixols. As far as I know, from reading the ZBrush manual, I can’t use two layers with this method, and have each layer’s pixols visible at the same time. And if I don’t fill a layer with pixols, then there are no pixols present in that layer upon which the simple brush can operate.

#15

Jay, I just tried an experiment that seems to work:

Fill Layer 1 with FlatColor material and background color of your choice (select them first, then ctrl-F)

Fill Layer 2 and any others with Basic Material (with some positive Transparency)

Render: Preview mode with Flatten Layers Off

Picker: Active Layer

SimpleBrush with everything off except RGB

[P.S. – make sure all layer thumbnails have their visibility triangles turned on]

#16

Hi :slight_smile:
Here is a 640x480 two-layers sketch document (preset with black background )…
Click here to download the document (only 2k in size )

Open this document in ZBrush, select Simple Brush, set drawing mode to RGB only (not MRGB) and turn off the ZADD.
To start, set RGB intensity to high value (100), select white color and paint in one of the two layers. Layer 1 is the ‘dirty’ layer, and layer 2 is the ‘clean’ layer.

About the document…

  1. Layer one is filled with black color and modified FastShader material (this material is not transparent). The layer has been ‘pushed’ one pixel deeper than the default (by using Layer :small_orange_diamond:Displace Z).
  2. Layer 2 is filled with black color and a modified ‘BasicMaterial’. The material has transparency set to -100 and the transparency curve has been modified to allow low-intensity colors (black) to be transparent and high-intensity colors (white) to be opaque.
    In order to activate the material transparency, the Render :small_orange_diamond:Flatten Layers has been turned off.

After experimenting with the above document, you may want to further modify it to fit you needs by adjusting the transparent curve for material 2. This curve will allow you to control the minimum and maximum transparency and the sensitivity to various color intensities.

In the image below, horizontal white lines were drawn in layer 1 and vertical white lines in layer 2…

Snapshot 1: The default settings of the above document. Black is fully transparent while white is fully opaque.
Snapshot 2: Modified transparency curve. White strokes in layer 2 are partially transparent.
Snapshot 3 & 4: Modified transparency curve emphasizes stroke edge (outline).

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

-Pixolator

#17

Okay, I first thought that it might be limited to black and white but then I tried it and it works very well, with color! :slight_smile:

Thank you Pixolator for another great tutorial. :slight_smile:

You know this Zbrush is like a blind man’s diamond? :smiley:

#18

This works pretty well. :+1:

I’m doing black on white, though.

Now we could really use an elipse, circle, and arc Stroke!!! :slight_smile:

Thanks, Pix.

#19

I’ll post a white-background version shortly :slight_smile:

#20

Here is the white-background version of the sketch document…

Click here to download the ‘white’ version (2k in size)
OR
Click here to download both (black and white) versions (4k in size)

About the document…

The settings for this document is similar to the black-background version with the following exceptions…

  1. Layer 1 and 2 are filled with white color (instead of black).
  2. Layer 1 uses a Colorizer material (instead of fast shader). The colorizer shader of this material allows you to control the amount of fading that will be applied to layer 1.
  3. Layer 2 transparency curve is reversed. i.e. Black =opaque and white=transparent.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:
-Pixolator