ZBrushCentral

Newbie question about masks

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Well, I’m following the tutorials on the pixologic site (i’m on the sword one). In the video, when the mask is drawn on the plane, it comes out as a very dark and shapr looking square (just like the alpha). However, whenever I try it it looks much liter and blurrier and I can never achieve the effect the tutorial has (making it as you can imagine, follownig the tutorial rather troubling). Any help is appreciated! :wink:

Here’s how it looks in the tutorial:
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/1683/screenshot005iu.jpg

And here’s my sad attempt:
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/2448/screenshot004cs.jpg

#2

Hi

There are a couple of things affecting your masking. First of all the display of masks has changed slightly in 3.5 making a 100% mask a bit lighter. You can change this by increasing Preferences > Edit > Masked Object Dimming to 5. Note, this does not change the strength of your mask but is only a display effect.

But more importantly, you should set the Focal Shift of your brush to -100 before drawing your mask. This will prevent the radial fall off being applied to the currently selected alpha. If you still get blurry results it is mostly down to the alpha itself (might have a blurry edge), any settings you have applied in the alpha palette and also how large an area you are trying to mask. Masking with an alpha over a large area might require a higher resolution alpha.

After you have drawn a mask you can fine tune the result by holding CTRL and clicking on the model to soften the masking or holding CTRL + ALT and clicking on the model to sharpen the mask. This can be repeated as many times as you wish. The amount of blur/sharpen applied by each click is determined by Preferences > Transpose > Mask Blur Strength and Mask Sharpen Strength.

Hope that helps.

#3

Helps ALOT! Thank you very much! :smiley: