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Z Sphere Question

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I was just watching an old pixolator video that was a fish being sculpted from Z Spheres. In it, the artist was going back and forth between the states of the Z Spheres and Preview mode and doing adjustments on the mesh with different brushes. Any time that I have ever tried to do this, my mesh explodes. Most times that it has happened it was because I made a minor adjustment to a Z Sphere and then switched back to preview.

I guess my question is if you are going to model a Z sphere mesh and still want to see it in preview mode, do you have to make sure that your mesh is in the position that you want it in before you start?

#2

You should never do what Pixolator was doing. Like you said, it will make your mesh go nuts.

Anyway, don’t think of Zspheres as the end, think of them as a means to an end. Basically you’re getting the geometry you need to sculpt it. Not setting up perfect geometry that doesn’t need sculpting.
Anyway, always make an adaptive skin before you start sculpting.

Worded funny, but I think you get the point.

#3

Thank you once again goast. You are always so helpful.

#4

i agree with goast, but just to clarify i believe that video was for zbrursh2 back before rigging and transpose so if you wanted to pose your model you would do all your sculpting on the zsphere skin.
i think if you want to try that now you must make a morph target and then not to add any more zspheres because it will recalculate.
but it is much safer as goast says to just make a basic skin and work from there then use transpose etc to pose your model.

#5

To sculpt or polypaint on a ZSphere preview, you must first bake the preview. This is done by turning the preview off (so that the ZSpheres are visible) and pressing Tool>Morph Target>StoreMT. This tells ZBrush to calculate a final preview mesh and store it in memory so that it can always be used when you turn the preview on.

Failing to do this means that ZBrush calculates a new preview every time you turn it on. If any points come out different, then any sculpting or painting you might have done would be scrambled because these things rely on a consistent point order.

Do not add or remove ZSpheres after baking the preview. Doing so would force a new mesh calculation no matter what. You can freely move and rotate ZSpheres, however.

#6

Ahhh!!! Thanks Aurick. I knew there was a way.