ZBrushCentral

Subtool Frustrations

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

All righty, so I’m still something of a Zbrush scrub, I got my hands on Zbrush 4R6 sometime ago and I hadn’t messed with it except for a few silly things. I decided to dive into it head first by looking at some basic tutorials and I had the brass to try and tackle this particular tutorial by the very talented Nacho Riesco. The tutorial has been pretty straightforward so far and here are own results, of course I deviated from Nacho’s own alien, but I’m trying to lay the eyes down using subtools and it’s not making much sense how he did it. Unless I missed a step or misread something.

He doesn’t explain it, which is a shame because I’m almost half-way through finishing this, sans the lighting coloring and junk later on.

What I’m getting at is, I’m laying down two Sphere3D spheres for the eyes with two other extracted spheres acting as eyelids. I can switch to Draw Mode which is fine, but I can’t go back to Edit Mode with my alien dude. So, I’m confused as to WTF is going on.

And then if I Ctrl+Z far back enough my alien disappears too. Seriously, what the hell? Any ideas or tips will be GREATLY appreciated!

Also, I remember I hit a key on my keyboard on accident and it activated a set of XYZ handles on my alien like in a traditional 3D modeling program, anyone know what I’m talking about and if it works like I think it does?

Thank you for your time, guys!

#2

Ok I think I see the problem, nice work by the way, and cool tutorial.

First of all you don’t need to make two eyes, you only need to make one, and then replicate it, but we will get to that in a moment.


  1. Make sure Perspective is OFF.
  2. With your creature on the canvas and in Edit Mode, go into the SubTool Palette and click once on Append.
  3. Select Sphere3D, suddenly there’s this great big ball in the way right? (if not its too small, see below at the *)…
  4. Look at the rows in the Subtool Palette, you should have at least two, select Sphere3D and then click the Eye Icon on whatever other ones you have to hide them.
  5. In the Geometry Palette under DynaMesh, turn off Project and turn Blur up to 100.
  6. Turn on Dynamesh, nice and smooth right?.
  7. Hold down Control, click and drag from above and the the side of your sphere till the amount you want to be an eyelid is selected, and let go, you should now have some part of the top of your sphere masked.
  8. Go into the SubTool Palette again, and open Extract.
  9. Turn OFF TBord (this is annoying and won’t work, but its a good habit for when it does in the future, more again on that below… at the **'s)
  10. Turn on Double.
  11. Leave Smooth and Thickness where they are for the moment.
  12. Hit Extract, this gives you a preview.
  13. If you like the thickness and smoothness GREAT! If not, screw with them till you do.
  14. Once you have it how you want it in the Preview, hit Accept.
  15. Look in the SubTool Palette, you should have an eyelid, an eye and your head.
  16. To sculpt or screw with your eyelid you would just select it in the Subtool Palette and go nuts, but thats up to you, for now we need to get it where it belongs, in its socket before it gets dust or glass on it or something.

Heres where I run in to a slight snag…
Do you know how to use the transpose tools?
You do?
YAY!
Ok before we get to that heres these:

  • If you cant see it, hiding your other subtools will help, that comes up next, however there are other ways, the most simple being on the lower right, look there and you will see a button labeled Transp, click that and you should be able to see everything in a nifty sort of X-Ray view.

** TBord makes a “thin border” also known as a Crease, we don’t want it, its nasty, picture your eyelid being as sharp as an ice skate and you get the idea. This is something to fix later since we actually dont care right now, we just have this poor blind bastard wallowing about on the canvas and we need to get his eye into place. The problem with Tbord is that its button does exactly NOTHING, its broken.

Ok back at it.


  1. Make your subtools visible, and use the Transp thing.
  2. Select each SubTool and clear any masks, I forgot about this earlier so doing it now would be good, use Control Shift A on each tool.
  3. Select your eyeball (IN THE sUBTOOL pALLETE), your eye lid should be directly below it.
  4. tURN OFF cAPSlOCK. Isnt that better?
  5. Where was I? Oh yah. In the SubTool palette under Merge hit Merge Down, your eye and eyelid are now one tool.
  6. Up near the top next to the Edit Button you will see Draw Move Scale, and Rotate, select Scale.
  7. Assuming your eye is stupidly huge we will shrink it click and then hold down shift and draw outwards from near the middle of the eye to somewhere outside of it.
  8. You will now have a yellow line with three circles on it Click and Drag the OUTER one inward till your eye looks about right size wize.
  9. Now turn on Move and use the MIDDLE circle to move the eye into the RIGHT eyeball socket (assuming your beasty is facing you this would appear to be moving it to the left). Screw with Scale again if you need to.
  10. In the Geometry Palette under Modify topology, hit the Mirror And Weld Button.
  11. Pooof! You should now be failing to stare down your beasty.

If you have any trouble let me know, if I have understood your problem wrong hurl me into the sun, I hate high temperatures.

Cheers!
Mealea

#3

What I’m getting at is, I’m laying down two Sphere3D spheres for the eyes with two other extracted spheres acting as eyelids. I can switch to Draw Mode which is fine, but I can’t go back to Edit Mode with my alien dude. So, I’m confused as to WTF is going on.

Dont worry about that stuff, just draw your head onto the canvas, turn on Edit mode and start the tutorial above. (maybe orient it so its dead on facing you by rotating while holding shift)
At no time should you turn off Edit, and you can switch from Draw to Move, scale and rotate at will.
Just Switch back to Draw (no messing with edit) when you want to sculpt again.

Also when you want to separate your eye from its lid into separate subtools just go into the SubTool Palate and under Split, hit Split To Parts.

#4

Good tips, good tips. Thank you, sir. I shall work on this later tonight when I get back to my main Zbrush PC at home (currently at work, thus no Zbrush) and I’ll reply with results and screen grabs.

Once again, thank you for your time and reply! :smiley:

#5

I am NOT a sir!
Aside from gender related crap, I work for a living.
hehehehe!!!

I cant wait to see what you do with it.
Mirror and Weld is a VERY VERY cool thing!

#6

I am so sorry, Mealea! :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway woohoo! It worked! Thank you so much. Now I just gotta texture it and junk. But still, thank you! It worked. :3

#7

Thats awesome!
Mirror and weld can be used for ALL SORTS of stuff, its a lot of fun.
Sometimes things like this seem like a lot of work because of the number of steps but they become automatic soon enough and you don’t notice them.

Also don’t worry, people call me sir, bro, and man on this site all the time.

#8

Why not just use Insert sphere brush?:qu:

After insert sphere, just use “split unmasked points” to move it to it’s own subtool.
You can then use the extract method MeaLea describes to create the eyelids.

An advantage of this method is that you may be able to use X symmetry and draw both eyes in one shot.

insert-sphere-eyes.jpg

insert-sphere-eyes2.jpg

#9

Thor is totally right about that, leave it to the god of thunder to know how to draw a better eyeball!

#10

@Thor, that sounds like an interesting method, I’ll have to try it later sometime. What I’m having a hard time understanding there though, would I have to draw two eyes or just one and then split them after?

@MeaLea, well, he IS an Avenger, so maybe we should listen. :0

#11

@Thor, that sounds like an interesting method, I’ll have to try it later sometime. What I’m having a hard time understanding there though, would I have to draw two eyes or just one and then split them after?

Mikey,

It’s up to you.
If the model is symmetrical, you can turn on x symmetry with the insert sphere brush and draw them both at the same time.

That’s what I did in my screenshots of the demo head.

You can also just draw one and mirror and weld x if you really want to. But that seems like extra steps to me.

When you draw with an insert brush, everything else is automatically masked for you… so you can move or resize to position the eyeballs without disturbing the head. Optionally, you can split the unmasked points and that will move the eyeballs to a new subtool.

In my second screenshot I’m moving both eyeballs at the same time to position them (you can’t really see this because perspective is turned off.)

#12

Did you see the Hulk bop him in the torso?
That was so funny!

Anyhow, if you have Symmetry on you should be able to draw both eyes at the same time with his method.
Infact that is something you should seriously play with, its a blast!

#13

If the model is symmetrical, you can turn on x symmetry with the insert sphere brush and draw them both at the same time.

That’s what I did in my screenshots of the demo head.

You can also just draw one and mirror and weld x if you really want to. But that seems like extra steps to me.

When you draw with an insert brush, everything else is automatically masked for you… so you can move or resize to position the eyeballs without disturbing the head. Optionally, you can split the unmasked points and that will move the eyeballs to a new subtool.

In my second screenshot I’m moving both eyeballs at the same time to position them (you can’t really see this because perspective is turned off.)

I understand what you mean, makes the workflow quicker. One question, how do I get to the Insert Sphere Brush? :stuck_out_tongue:

Did you see the Hulk bop him in the torso?
That was so funny!

Anyhow, if you have Symmetry on you should be able to draw both eyes at the same time with his method.
Infact that is something you should seriously play with, its a blast!

I sure did see that. :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh I always have symmetry turned on! Also, I’m having a few other issues, I’m trying to texture the eyes seperately, but I can’t go back to my model, and if I do, the model (in this case, the alien head) reappears but with the wrong texture on it. And then I’m trying to use the Transpose Master to pose my alien, but it’s not making sense, so I’m sorry, Mealea, I don’t know how to use those Transpose tools. :frowning:

#14

One question, how do I get to the Insert Sphere Brush? :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s in your brushes menu.

On your keyboard, type b (this opens the brushes menu)

Then type i (shows all brushes starting with i)

Then type w (selects the insert sphere brush)

#15

Oooh, very straightforward, awesome!

And in case you were wondering, here’s the finished piece. :smiley:

#16

Mikey,

I just looked at your first screenshot…

Here’s a tip for your UI:

Go to Preferences > Interface

Click the button that says “Auto Hide 2d Tools”

Then, Preferences > Config > Store Config

You don’t need all those 2D tools taking up space when you’re working in 3D