ZBrushCentral

Filling Holes and Mirroring sculting detail...

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I had a few questions that I thought someone might be able to help me with. I wanted to work on an environment that has an indoor and outdoor details but I was wondering if it is possible to do it all in Zbrush without having to setup the file in another modeling package… Basically in theory say we created two cubes, masked off a door on each of them and deleted the masked area. Then I will flip the UVs on the inner cube so that the detail can be sculpted on the inside. What method could I use to connect the two doorways without having to bring in new ZSpheres and create the connecting geometry? IF any at all…

Also, I had watched a speed sculpt the other day and the person was working on teeth. He had modeled half of the teeth on one side of the face and then mirrored it in one swift move. How do you do that? I know you can clone the subtool, delete lower subdivisions, deformation mirror accross the right axis and then rebuild subdivisions. But this method often loses some of my lower subdivisions so if there is a better way I would greatly appreciate it :D.

Lastly, I seen he also had mirrored his sculpted detail with click of a button. Where is this feature?! I often turn of symmetry on accident causing my model to lose some of the detail I would like to be symmetrized. If I could just sculpt one half and mirror the detail only that would be a great asset!

Thanks in advanced guys and I appreciate any help you can give as I have been searching the forums for these answers and haven’t found anything like what I seen.

Dane

#2

As to your first question, I confess I’m a little confused, and could probably benefit from further explanation. Im afraid I dont understand why you couldn’t just use a cube primitive and basic box modeling to set up your “room”.

As to your second question, if you want to mirror symmetry across a model where the symmetry has become broken, simply use the mask function to mask off the “good side” that you want to copy, and use the “Smart Resym” button in the Deformation section of the tool menu. You will achieve the best results, the more roughly symetrical with similar vertex counts it is in the first place. Wildly disparate vertex counts/ asymmetrical models will tend to fail. It would still be best if you were to sculpt with symmetry on, and use this process to correct any errors or distortions.

#3

Thanks for the resymmetry using masking, that worked perfectly :). I have used that in the past to fix my symmetry with not nearly as great of results. That makes it much better :D.

Ok back to the other two questions. Lets do another example, say I am toying with the standard Average man model. If I remember correctly his eye sockets are cut out where you can see into his head. Is there a way to fill those holes so one could sculpt detail in that area if desired. This was what I was kind of getting at earlier. For a room I could box model it all but if I ever decided to cut something out later in the process how could I merge the outside and insides vertices so my mesh would be unified. I know about the unified skin feature but I don’t think it can be used for what I am trying to achieve.

And for the other question do you have a good way to duplicate and mirror geometry without losing the subdivision levels?

Thanks again as you have already been very helpful,
Dane

#4

For the eye socket situation you mentioned, the easiest thing to do in my mind, wouldbe to use ZB’s topology editing features to simply “stitch together” the mesh there. Read through the docs on how to “edit” existing mesh topology, not draw entirely new geometry.

I’m afraid I am still too dense to understand the room example. The turth of the matter there are probably several ways to to what you want to do there in ZB. Myself , being lazy as I am, for what sounds like a very simple geometrical construct…I would probably just import it from an external modeler.

[Edit] I found this old Box Modelling tutorial by Aurick that you might find helpful for this situation though. It sounds like what you want to do.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=20370

Clone the tool or subtool in question at the highest resolution, use the “Mirror” function in the deformation menu (you may have to delete the lower subdivision to do this"). Then use “reconstruct SubD” button in the geometry menu to rebuild the lower subD levels. Append it to your main tool if you want it as a sub tool.

Subtool Master makes this easier.

#5

-added tutorial ^

#6

Thanks Bingo, checking out tutorial now. I have used the duplication method you mentioned earlier but sometimes can’t reconstruct all my subdivisions… I geuss that is the only way to do so, was just wondering if there was another method out there.

Thanks again,
Dane