ZBrushCentral

just start learning, a few questions

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,
I just bought the zbrush to start the learning of it, I have a couple of basic questions: suppose I made a basic mesh from other 3d software, I want to bring to zbrush to add more details, but
(1) The basic mesh I have is the triangulate mesh, does zbrush work on triangulate mesh, or I have to convert to quad first? If so, what software do you recommend?

(2) The mesh I made from other package has specific dimensions, When I bring to zbrush, I want to keep its dimension, so it can fit to other parts after it done. But it seems when I click and drag the mouse, it scales the mesh, how can I maintain the object size when bring into zbrush.

Thanks for help.

Wenqin

#2
  1. Zbrush does work with triangles, however because of the poles created by triangles they do not create the best topology to sculpt on. It is generally best for sculpting if your mesh is in quads and any tris are in areas that will not be noticed.

Certain brushes seem to work better than others when sculpting over tris, such as the clay brushes. As for how to convert your mesh to quads, I’m not really sure which is the best way, but zbrush does have tools built in to retopologize your mesh using your old mesh as a guide to draw new topology on. Depending on how detailed your bash mesh is this can take quite some time to do though.

  1. When you alt + click + let go of alt + drag the mouse or when you click and drag on the Zoom button all you are doing is zooming in/out from your model. This is not actually scaling the model. To actually scale the model, while in Edit ( T ) mode press E or click on the scale button in the top left. You should get an orange line with 3 circles. The location/angle of the line will determine the direction you are scaling on and the circles control scaling on multiple axis. So long as you don’t mess with the scaling/rotating/moving tools(note this is different than the Move brush) then your model should remain the same scale/dimensions. Although, every now and then I do run into a bug that sometimes affects the scale. I’m not sure what causes this though.