ZBrushCentral

Masking out geometry

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I give up, I can’t figure this out. I’ve been searching here and through the practical guide. Anyway, here’s my model from Modo:

Questions:

  1. How do I mask the hairs and the knobby bits they come out of so they don’t get mangled when I’m in PM?
  2. Can I save this mask?
  3. If you’ve painted a mask (hold cmd and paint) and want to unpaint part of it, how do you do that?
#2

Answers:

  1. the only way that PM respects masking is if you turn your mask into a stencil and place it on your model before you drop into PM
  2. you can save your mask under Tool - Masking Create Alpha - this will make an alpha of whatever mask you have made and slap it into the alpha slot, you can then hit the make stencil button under alpha to turn that alpha into a stencil
  3. on a pc you hold ctrl + alt and the left click and drag over your already painted mask to unmask it, not sure what that would be for mac.
#3

Thanks for the answers. For #3 I was thinking of deselecting by painting. Sometimes you can have pretty intricate geometry that a click drag just isn’t going to be sufficient

I also discovered that Parts in Modo = Selection Sets in Maya so I can have polygroups that I can then hide/unhide.

#4

Sorry if I was unclear but when I said ctrl + alt + left mouse click and drag I meant paint, it paints off your mask, I did not mean the marquee box. Sorry if I was unclear

#5

Is there any way you can define those hairs as a separate group? If so, you can Ctrl+Shift+Click on the main body to hide the hairs. This will prevent them from being affected by PM (although it will be important if you’re painting deformations to be sure to avoid touching the edges where the hairs are hidden).

#6

aurick: yeah, that’s what I ended up doing. That’s what I meant when I mentioned Parts in Modo = polygroups in ZB. Ideally I would rather a smoother transition which I would have got if I could hand simply mask or is it convert mask to stencil? I’m also confused a bit with the terminology. Basically, what would be idea is a feathered mask so there would be falloff for when I painted deformations in PM. The exact process to achieve that and the terms to define it I’m unclear on.
Hiding the polygroups worked, but I would like to know the better way for future reference.