Curves in zBrush - a lot of questions and problems

[Knacki]

Hi there,

From very first moment curves were implemented in zBrush there was an “Ahhhhh” and soon an “Ouch” here on my side.
First, what we have is cool, but so many things are just working somehow, but maybe I just don’t know some features?
Maybe some of you have an answer if I do something wrong, or if maybe the actual state is more a workaround than final?

Clip, Trim, Slice- Curves

-Problem N#1 - Draw more complex sharp corner slice shapes and refine them before executing. Possible?
Answered - not possible in 4R7
-Problem N#2 - Draw slice curves ON the object and rotate and move them with the canvas before execution. Possible?
Answered - not possible in 4R7
-Problem N#3 - Slice, cut, crease, trim curves are controlled different than Stroke curves. Sometimes very good sometimes very annoying if you want to draw complex cut curves. Any solution for that?
Answered - not possible to cut complex curves in 4R7
-Problem N#4 - Execution of trim & clip curves is not working precise. Clip often leaves artefacts, trim doesn’t trim sharp and precise in 3D space (Sphere). Result is an unexpected “curved” surface. As Trim Lasso is the only curve of those curves who makes it possible to draw complex shapes easily, the resulting artefacts are double annoying.
Answered - not possible to cut complex curves in 4R7

Wouldn’t it be at least possible to draw the the contours of an invisible boolean body (“endless” on the “depth” axis) which could be subtracted by one click to avoid this?.

The result of trim is sometimes good for organic modelling, but for hardsurface not.

-Problem N#5 - Draw sharp corners - you only have one chance. Missed and you have to resart again to double click ALT in the right position.
Answered - not possible in 4R7

-Problem N#6 - Direction of execution. Can that be switched while drawing the curve?
Answered - hold ALT while release mouse button. Still it is depending on the curve and some zBrush intern circumstances what finally will turn out.

There are some more things like the slice curve is not always slicing the complete figure etc. etc.
All this problems make a tool which could be one of the strongest tools in zBrush to always a bit of compromise and less used in cost of workarounds.
The curve of upper functionality can not be turned into a stroke curve, isn’t it?
Answered - not possible to cut complex curves in 4R7

The stroke curve.

This is a monster cool tool and very innovative,
#7 - but what if I just want to click at certain points on my mesh to form the curve quick and partly straight?
Not answered, but I guess not possible
#8 - a square curve (after frame mesh) doesn’t keep square when executed for i.e. Insert Mesh. Why?
Not answered
#9 - I have lock start & Lock End, but what if I just want to lock lets say 80% and edit the rest? I very quickly feel like playing with earthworms.
Not answered, but I guess not possible - any suggestions
#10 - the lathe curve i.e. is super cool, but it should be possible to lock most of the curve and just edit a part of it. A kind of dynamic interpolation, by adding stroke elements where needed as an option.
Same as #9
That’s it for the moment. I would be very happy if most of my problems are just my problem, not of zBrush.
Saw a lot of cool functions in 3D coat with curves. Would be too lovely to have them too.
I will work through documentation and practise. I’ll delete the points I could explain by myself.
Thanks for your time & help.

[Altea]

This is the script that I mentioned. I was able to do a jpg screenshot of my partial response above after Chrome crashed.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?172391-Useful-small-ZScripts-and-Macros-for-ZBrush-4R6&p=1027128&viewfull=1#post1027128

[Knacki]

Dear Altea,

thanks so much for taking your time, specially when the browser crashes it is super kind to post.

Ok, I edited my questions. If there aren’t some tricks left, most of what I am missing is simply not possible at the moment.
To move curves with spacebar is something I missed. Thanks a lot.
Anyone has more answers about only editing one part of a stroke?

For the boolean I will ask in the script area if someone can realize my idea, unlikely but can’t harm

[Knacki]

Ok - this is my workaround so far.
Please, if you have some suggestions I would be very glad to hear.

//youtu.be/eijwEK1PNTs

I am stuck in - how to draw a circle curve, or a rectangle curve.
Finally I found this Picker Palette - amazing where pixo hides stuff sometimes. Orientation wise it could help sometimes.
Anyway As soon as the curve is bend, I only found a way by masking and extruding the subtraction mesh. This is leading to those extrusion typical jigged lines.

Often, I feel not comfortable to use primitives as booleans.

1. Drawing a curve is quicker (when it is properly working)
2. Inserts orientation need to be heavily adjusted - that’s my experience so far. Maybe I can get them strictly view orientated like the curve fill brushes with this “picker” palette??

Still, I am not happy with those zBrush Stroke curves.
Sure they are innovative and for many purposes excellent and unique, but they struggle in very basic functionality.
Square like shapes ie. Very quick creation by just clicking on several points of the mesh wich will be auto conected.
Sometimes good old bezier stuff could come in handy - still.

But maybe I am still missing something?

I want to achive the workflow I saw in 3D coat speedsculpt here:

I would be very happy about some suggestion to go through it in zBrush.
I am here but semi happy because of very round edges due to often needed polishing - even with polishing crisp edges.

But there is maybe another mistake I did??

[Altea]

In what way did you used the picker palette for your advantage?

I’m not sure that the process that follows the 3d coat video is ideal. I would be worry to have a hard surface of a ship like that without any low res topology. And to extract the low topology from that model could be a lot of work. I think that in long term Zmodeler would give better results. But it is only an opinion.

The advantage of clip and trim is that they don’t need immediately a Dynamesh iteration. Also I have not seem to many operations in that video that could not be done with these tools, even it looks evident that has less limitations than Zbrush.

You could try to keep the polygroups when doing the Booleans as then you can use polish by polygroups. But for a model of that type lots of Dynamesh iterations inevitably would soften the result. Also it is related to the resolution that you are using, that initially doesn’t look too high in your model. Double check the options that you have for Dynamesh (group, polish, blur, resolution etc) as they could affect the precision of how you are doing it.

[Knacki]

Thanks for your answer Altea.
BLUR!! I often reopened that project and blur is set on 2 by default. That’s the reason. Thanks, I forgot that.

Altea In what way did you used the picker palette for your advantage?

If you want to use primitives as substraction meshes it doesn’t come in handy that they are surface orientated like in this example:

You see the picker says once orientated.

If you choose the option on the left, you can define the orientation by yourself:
Click on the pen and move it to change orientation, or keep it as default and mesh will be inserted in view direction like here:

As we have the circle trim function, this example is not that interesting as if I would have used a gear i.e.
Anyway, I was searching for the orientation in the brush option, not somewhere else. Not logical and unfindable if you don’t know that.

But while I am asking, - Michael Pavlovich uploaded tons of videos for beginners - but I guess also for advanced users, as there is always something on could learn. Specially if you are not working on zBrush on a daily basis.

Most of my questions about clipping above is answered in these videos:
https://youtu.be/cOzDBOs-MFE?list=PLkzopwqcFevYqrk_0MKIaUwrWYILzYsp6https://youtu.be/mSE5qlC5NCU?list=PLkzopwqcFevYqrk_0MKIaUwrWYILzYsp6

Anyway, if you see the way Michael has to dance around the problems (elegantly) , my way could be sometimes the quicker option

//youtu.be/zMaRJD0yvco

But yes, zModeler is for sure a complete different and maybe better option, but I like to fiddle around without taking care about any geometry and zRemesher does such an fantastic job with quickly drawn zGuides (where curves are a blast to use) , that an low poly is not too hard to reach.

Now I will search, if I find something useful about curves in his videos

[Altea]

The way you do booleans with extruded curves is interesting and I have not seem it until now.

I was watching today some new videos from him but I didn’t realized he had so many new. He is good as normal but I’m tempted to slowdown his speech in youtube. He always talk so fast.