Is there a Zbrush work around for what is listed in the image?
TIA
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Simply choose your desired alpha, then press Alpha>Crop and Fill. This will fill the canvas with depth, based on the alpha. Now if you use Smudge or the other 2.5D brushes (with Rgb, M or Mrgb turned off – only Zadd on) you can edit the canvas. When done, use Alpha>Grab Doc to get a new, edited alpha from the canvas.
Your work through is making some nice alphas. However, I am not sure what is causing some to have visable square shape to them and others not. It seems when I use the Earser brush it goes to black and these seem to be to alphas that have the visable depth to them when used. Am I using the Earser brush incorrectly? I also noticed that when I applied them to a 3d primative made into a polymesh that I had to Geomerty divide 6 times with out getting jaggies and in pspc4 I used the Gaussian blurr 3 times and when applied to the 3d primative I have to only geomerty divide 3 times - not sure why. What am I doing incorrectly here. I tried the blurr brush and it did not seem to do anything. Back to using the Earser tool when I creatyed the hole it became very jagged and the blurr brush did not blurr or smooth it out. I have enclosed an image to show you the jaggies.Also how do I get the the b/w gradiant back (as you can see in the image it’s a solid color with some shading). I think the Hook brush works kinda like psc4’s Liquify tool but does not do a swirl.
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For the Blur brush to work with depth, Zadd must be turned on. I believe that it’s only Rgb by default.
To understand the Eraser brush, you need to understand how depth works. When you fill the canvas you are essentially creating a volume that extends all the way from the closest pixols to the clipping plane way at the back. (A few thousand pixols deep.) When you use the Eraser brush, it tunnels back to the clipping plane. Now what happens when you grab the document is that ZBrush is calculating the alpha based upon the closest pixol and the farthest pixol. In this case, that’s very deep indeed.
There are a couple things you could do regarding this. One would be to change the Focal Shift to -100 when using the Eraser. This means that the brush has no falloff, and so it cuts cleanly without leaving any deep pixols around the edges.
Alternatively, when you’re done with the Eraser you can draw a Plane3D on the canvas and scale it larger than the canvas. This will have the effect of filling the hole so that its deepest part is the canvas depth rather than the clipping plane depth.
aruick I tried this method of using the ereaser tool and could not find a way to use the hook tool in the area where I used the eraser tool. Least wise I could not see a change.
I used the eraser tool and drew around the image and that did away with the square alpha.
One of things I am doing is using model drawing it onto the canvas and maybe use the Tools> Deformation tools to design it into a shape. Once the shape is formed I use graddoc to make and alpha then I clear the canvas and I use DragRect or DragDot to redraw the the image onto the canvas. I can not find a way to scale the image once drawn onto the canvas. How is that done. Is there a hot key to get the scaler to work with the drawn alpha image?
I have my model at a High poly count. When I create a mask, it’s not ‘crisp’. I have tried ‘sharpening’ the mask but, it still leaves ‘jaggies’. See image below, you can see that the extruded circle still has ‘grooves’ into it. Is there a way to get rid of this. Another way to smooth the model so this does not happen. You know, like when you make a mask in Photoshop, their CRISP (unless you zoom in at an ungodly rate). But, at normal viewing, the edges of masks in Photoshop look very clean. I have also seen it made possible in ZBrush. What am I doing wrong. How can I fix this?:
Image 1
Attachments
for the little raised circular detail - how is that detail produced in real life? if it’s stamped, it’s not likely extremely sharp or if it is, it’s likely a separate part that is attached/welded etc.
so you could just subtool it on as a separate piece or if it’s a weld, you could boolean union it on… that might provide the closest approximation to what you seem to be going for.
if it’s stamped on, see if you can make the alpha LESS sharp and see if you can gradually bring that detail out.
for the front of the chassis, that looks like an area where you would have to create edge loops at lower res and then deinflate.
ahhh… and if i remember correctly, you created the chassis from shadow box right? if so, you might have to retopologize… otherwise, you won’t be able to get away from the hacksaw look unless subdivide to a molecular level…
luck.
jin
Darn, I was afraid someone was going to tell me to retopo (I fretted it all day at work). Not because it is hard, but time consuming. But jinchoung, thank you for the honest answer (answers). And yes, your correct, the car started as a shadowbox tool. I tried the project method, but that came out horrible. So again, I figured there could only be one more solution… the one you gave me. I was just hoping for “push this button and all will be OK”
. Listen, how would YOU have started this tool (model) as to avoid my issue? Any ideas? I am asking as I have many more ideas that I am planning to work on and they ALL involve vehicles of this type (cartoony i.e. stretched, warped etc). In other words, what would you recommend to me for my future projects? I know, I could start the base mesh in something like Silo or 3D Max, but, I would like to do it all in ZBrush.
And for the front of the chassis, I believe you are correct, I am going to have to use edgeloops. I will give it a shot tomorrow (as this is the area I was getting ready to work on, the grill). And again, jinchoung, many, many thanks for the reply. Best.
in the very top image, you have the state of your chassis immediately after the shadow box right? as the tool pop up?
if that’s the case, i would say that the shape was simple enough to try to box model it even inside of ZB with edge loops. something like that would probably be easier done in something like silo but i totally understand your desire to do it inside of ZB. i’m kinda like on that kick too… : ) i already know how to do it in lw so f it, let’s try to do everything for soup to nuts inside of zb like these other guys.
you could have started i think just with a box with a few extrusions, even ignoring the tapering of the nose initially - and then you’d be at a point where you’re low enough res to add edge loops for later inflating and deflating.
as for the final sculpted shape you’re aiming for, i think you could achieve that pretty easily on the box model by applying some global deforms.
but ACTUALLY - come to think of it, this might kind of negate all the cool quickness of doing it in ZB. everything i said above kind of involves forethought and planning and one of the really fun things about ZB is kind of sketching as you go.
i’d say that you’re NOT in a bad place NOW.
you did what was most intuitive to you to do and you end up in a state where the model’s mesh is less than optimal. i’ve actually ended up in that situation plenty of times on organic characters… and at that point, i either have to try a remesh and reproject which is usually the fix or RETOPO.
and RETOPO doesn’t have to be a huge deal. like with your model, you can pretty easily start a retopo of a LOWRES cage on top of what you’ve built. but with clean geometry. i daresay that wouldn’t be any MORE labor intensive than starting over. again, retopo a low res and not a high res cage with the proper edge flow and you should be ready to go in under an hour.
the really cool thing about zb is that there isn’t necessarily a wrong way to do something. just get as far as you can in whatever methods seem most appropriate to you at the time and then when you hit a dead end, you have plenty of options to rejigger things to continue.
and then as you do this again and again, you’ll figure out what things work for when so you’ll get faster.
luck.
jin
Your correct, the car could have been box modeled (see this link: http://sebleg.free.fr/tutorials/zcartut.htm) but (and you point it out below) I am just seeing if even that method could be bypassed (Shadow box still looks very promising, but then again, so does extruding like Pixolator is doing in his motorcycle movie). I like your idea below.
I am going to retopo the tool (as you point out, it’s really not that difficult of a tool to retopo i.e. no sharp edeges or tons of detail YET-and I had just thought of this at work today). Thanks for guiding me down that road.
I remember when I first started to learn Photoshop and Painter IX, I thought “man, these programs have a billion ways to do the same thing”. So I know what you mean when you say “…the really cool thing about zb is that there isn’t necessarily a wrong way to do something. just get as far as you can in whatever methods seem most appropriate to you at the time…” I will keep at it.
And your right, I want to do everything in ZBrush (I don’t animate, so it’s no big deal on that end). And the render ZBrush comes with now, heck, that will be just fine for what I am doing. I can do any final touches in Painter IX.
Again, thanks a million jinchoung for all your help and encouragement. Best.
Incase anyone comes up here and is having the same issue as mine, Retopologiez your model, it most certainly fixes the issue. Once you Retopo, just hit subdivide a couple of times and the rez cleans everything up. So again, if the projection method does not work for you either, Retopo and subdivide. All will be good. Thanks again Jinchoung-