ZBrushCentral

Help Needed

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’m sorry if its the wrong section for this but I’m new and I need some help.

First of all I’m unclear on how to find the button thats the last one on the right side for the polygons to show, (different colors and such) as I cannot move it down or up, is there a short cut to it ?

Also I want to learn how to group stuff for example if I painted something and I wanted to create each color as a separate groups so I can work on them specifically, how do I do that ??

Than, I have a question, lets say I take a picture of a gun, and use the spotlight to draw it in the plane or cube, would that work ? how do i cut out the stuff that I don’t need (i tried using standard brush and i elevated the gun (colored dark) and the rest was white so it stayed down, how do i get rid of the rest and only have the gun? than how do i make it so i can fill in the other side of it )

THose are some of very few questions that I have, help asap will be appreciated, even tutorials. Thanks alot!

PS: ZBrush, the most wonderful software ever. ZBrush is made so easy to use, and you can Create your imagination and beyond in it. Good Stuff :+1:

#2

First of all, you are in the right Forum for asking questions.

The shortcut for showing Polyframe is Shift+F (That button is in the Transform menu called PolyF)

A better way for creating Polygroups instead of painting would be to use selection brush and hiding then making a Polygroup for what is visible. i.e.

  1. You must be in the lowest subdivision level first.
  2. Hold down Ctrl+Shift and click on the Brush icon and select SelectLasso brush.
  3. While holding down Ctrl+Shift, draw the selection mask on the portion of your mesh that you want to create a group for. Everything but the selection will now be temporarily hidden.
  4. Go to Tool > Polygroups submenu and click Group Visible. This will now be one Polygroup.
  5. Hold down Ctrl+Shift and click on an empty part of the canvas to unhide everything and repeat the above proceedure for more Polygroups.

For the gun, it would be better if you did that using Shadowbox. Watch this Shadowbox tutorial to see how it’s done.

Originally posted by kici,

First of all I’m unclear on how to find the button thats the last one on the right side for the polygons to show, (different colors and such) as I cannot move it down or up, is there a short cut to it ?
What do you mean you cannot move it down or up?

#3

Well you know how if there’s too many things, for example the polycount, i cannot see it and i cannot get to it unless i move other things around, the way I look at my polycount is thru my preferences as its too much hustle to move it to a spot where i can see it every-time, and I do try click and drag to get to it, but the drag part doesn’t work, or maybe there’s another way for that ?

But also I’m interested in the polygroup as in paint, because for example if i make zphere character and go to A to start editing, if i go to ****+f I can see different colors and than I want to select those different colors, maybe it will work with ctrl+shift+mouse, i have not tried it yet, but what if I paint my character and than for each paint I want to create the same thing, a separate polygroup is that also possible and how ?

and dam, yesterday I worked on a chracter, made it super alien like and so much details, in about 8 hours , unfortunately I saved it as a zpr, so I did my research and yeah its all gone now :(, gonna have to start over lol. So much to learn but i’m loving zbrush!

#4

Also, I really want to know how to add subtools, for example I have a character, I want to make the head its own tool, so therefore it should be a subtool ? so I can apply different mats to that and different mats to the rest,

and I also want to know, lets say I have my character but I also have a hand made as another tool, how can I include that as a subtool in my scene without losing control of editing the rest, thanks

#5

Before I forget, there’s another stupid question, how do I do the texture for example I painted on my character and now I want to make it a UV, but it tells me to lower the subdevide and such, any steps for this ?

#6

Hi Kici.

You may want to check out Eat3D’s introduction to Zbrush. It’s for 3.5 R3 but still worth taking a look at for many of the basics of Zbrush.

#7

Well can’t nobody take away 2minutes of their time and quickly explain to me those things… ?

#8

Originally posted by kici,

Well can’t nobody take away 2minutes of their time and quickly explain to me those things… ?
Well, I took 5 minutes of my time to answer your first questions and you immediately asked 4 more questions. Sounds to me like you want a personal tutor and not somebody to take 2 minutes of their time to answer your questions. I think maybe you should take the time to utilize the abundant resources available on the web for learning ZBrush, You can start with ZClassroom.

#9

Nevermind forget I ever asked. You’re right my apologies that I thought somebody is friendly enough to answer some questions, I did look thru those tutorials and I forgot that part which now I didn’t wanna go back to look for it as I’m looking into new tutorials so I thought I’d ask here, but its fine, I’ll research it thanks.