ZBrushCentral

Zbrush 3.5 R2 smooth brush issue

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I have issue with smooth brush.
If i want to smooth out some surface inside of characters mouth, or any type of hole or bigger indent in mesh, smooth brush doesnt seem to work good.

As if it drops out the furthest and deepest point of mesh in that hole/indent out of his equation.

I tried playing with smooth brush preferences in brushes, but no effect for me.

Can anyone help?

Here is the image of mouth of a dinosaur. I wanted to make them deeper, to give appearance as if they go down to the digestion system, but this thing with smooth brush gives me hard time.

smooth.jpg

#2

Perhaps that small area is masked. Mask>Clear Mask. If that doesn’t work, I would suggest setting up some polygroups so you can isolate the mouth interior.

#3

I thought that initially when I first encountered this problem, that the mesh might be masked, but that’s not the case.
This could be useful, the polygroups solution, thx Dustin!!
Although, I would like to hear more thoughts on this smooth brush issue.
Does anybody else have that problem…

#4

you might want to turn on Stronger and/or alt brush size in the brush settings, strength of the smooth brush is also controlled by its edit curve now. usually for points that are so far in, its better to hide the surrounding mesh and do the smoothing from the inside, directly on the point.

#5

I tried to play with smooth brush preferences, all of them that are in the Brush/smooth brush modifiers , and brush preferences overall, but non of the options worked for me.
Thought it has something to do with backface masking, but it didnt, then as dustin mentioned, masking in general, and that didint prooved to be the case.
I switched from lower to higher subdivisions, tried to isolate the mesh, and what not.
I’m working with wacom cintiq 12", but I doubt it has anything to do with tablet, cos smooth brush seems to work ok anywhere else, except when I try to smooth some hole or bigger indent, than it gives me headaches.
Done the same thing in 3.1, just to reassure myself I remember it correctly, and it works like a charm.
This is something I never had problems with in 3.1

#6

Did you adjust the value of the “Min Connected Pts” smooth modifier in the Brush palette? Set it to 1 and re-test the smooth brush.

#7

I tried Min connected points as well. Several combinations, higher, lower, but I got no results considering indent part of mesh. it worked on any other part.

I thougt also, it might have something to do with the way how the topo of the low poly was done, but nothing to do with mesh triangulation.
Here is a pic of regular Zbrush sphere tool.

screengrab.jpg

I took standard brush, and with Zsub I sculpted small hole in sphere, and then took default smooth brush, and this is how it looks, no matter how big or small draw size or focal shift is, I cannot smooth deepest parts of mesh.
An it doesnt matter where I place the pointer center.

It is weird thing, Im trying to think of reasons but nothing occured to me yet.

As last option, I will probably reinstall 3.5R2 and see if that problem still exists.

#8

It turned out it has something to do with cintiq.
Im blushing now:o, shame on me.

Apparently , my cintiq sensitivity was set for harder pressure,
and I wasn’t pressing enough obviously, that’s why it seemed that smooth brush doesn’t work.
Why it happened, My friend came by and played with Cintiq, few days ago, as he likes his pressure set harder, he altered my settings, and I forgot about it until this smooth brush issue…

I hope this issue I had will end up useful sometime in the future for other tablet device users.

Thank you support for noticing my cry for help, and thx guys for trying to help out as well!

cheers!

#9

Ok, I thought I solved my smooth brush problems, but far from it.
It still is here.
I tried all kinds off settings with my wacom but nothing helped.
In case of the hole like in the sphere from the image above, it works, but only if the hole is not to deep, but If I have a hole that is deeper, or surrounded with more mesh, like from the first example in mouth of a character smooth brush is useless.

Is there any fix to this issue with smooth brush, does anybody else has the same problems, and if so, did he/she find way to make it work…

One other thing…
When I model, and use any type of brush, If I model for example piece of arm, or fingers or some sort of extremity, if at the time of modeling part of the mesh, there is any other part of mesh, expl. tail, in the background of the mesh that im working on, the brush doesnt react, so I have to rotate model to “clear” the background before applying any strokes.

#10

yep, ive got the same hole problem. i dont know how to fix it either. im also using 3.5R.

i was using the slash brush alot and smoothing as i went along. and ive smoothed everything. all appart from this hole.

your not alone…

Attachments

hole.JPG

#11

ok, simple enough…

ive just fixed it. dont know if this method will work for you though.

i pulled all the vertices out the way with the move brush. leaving just the one vertex point, i then by just using the standard brush on the highest z intensity for a while. visually it just looked like it wasnt going anywhere appart from dancing around in the crator i made. but eventually it came to the surface, and then i just smoothed it.

hope it works for you.

#12

…I have just come across another problem, that I cant fix.

think this will be the last time i use the slash brush.

I have developed a crease.

does anyone know the answer in flattening this problem out please. ive tried the smooth tool and even tried to pull the seams appart with the move brush. also just using the normal standard brush to enlargen the seam to try and smooth it out. but still I cant fix the problem.

anyone please? :frowning:

Attachments

crease.JPG