Is there any way to paint in ZBrush without having the objects to stick to the otehrs in the scene ? I was following one of the first ZBrush tutorials, the rusted golden idol, at the point where it says that i have to create a background, i follow the instructions creating a new layer, add a plane 3d with the plane 3d tool which is added most of the times in front of the idol, i scale it up, but when i arrive to move it in depth, it sticks to the idol on the first layer and is actually very difficult to place it behind the idol, sometimes it disappear or it just get rotated in some weird way.
in the layers palette you can switch two layers so that what was in front is now behind…perhaps that will help.
or instead of moving the background so far back move the foreground up closer.
or create the background first then new layer the foreground…
etc.
Hi, thanks for your reply, well i still don’t know how to move the whole foreground closer, it is made up of several obj and i don’t know if i can change their placement at this point. About background, even if it is in a different layer it still seems to snap to the first layer when i move it in depth, if i hide the layer below, i can handle the object on the second layer but when i show the first layer it doesn’t seems to have changed much. Using the Displace Z at the same way, it doesn’t seems to change much until the object suddenly disappear so i guess it is moved at infinite depth or something … how do you guys realize backgrounds on your ZBrush scenes ?
Hi Hard
Put your background on one layer!
The layer system of Zbrush is like the Photoshop layrs except in 3D 
A cube of 409640964096 pixols!!!
The space action of Zbrush!
So you can move any layer in any direction!
Menu Layer/ sub Menu Displace H V Z
For you that’s will be the “Z” 
(negative numbers move a layer go toward you!
Pilou
Wow i didn’t know the layers were so big, anyway does the Displace Z slider is in pixols unit so that if i set +4096 the layer should go really back right ?
I did as you say and i get a nice result, but i am wondering if i am missing some settings somewhere in the program to make this feature to work properly, on my example I did a 3d sphere on the default layer, created another layer and added a plane 3d on it, if i displace this second layer +xxx in Z nothings happens, if i move it +4096 in Z, it disappear. I menaged to solve doing as aminuts said, displacing the foreground to -4096 a couple of times. Is that normal ?
Hi HP,
A menu worth getting to know is called Picker. It provides you with a method to query the existing layers of Pixol information regarding object’s depth, object’s color and object’s material.
To place an object at a specific depth, adjust the Z slider: Select the slider, then type in a value and Enter. Note that negative Z is towards you and positive Z recedes. Now then, the center of the next object you draw will be at the Z value you typed in.
The Z slider is handy to interactively check the Z for any Pixol. Click and hold on the slider, then move the cross hair cursor over your canvas - the dynamic readout on the slider gives the precise Pixol Z depth.
By default, there is a clipping plane behind which, objects will disappear. In a 640 x 480 canvas, that clipping plane is at 1280 units. The depth of the clipping plane and the dimensions of the Z volume Box change relative to the dimensions of the canvas.
You can also interactively “pick” the color and the material as well. Click and hold on the color box, then drag over the canvas… tells what the “local” color of the object is… hold down Alt, then pick, will show you the shaded colors for Pixols on the canvas.
Click and hold on the material, then drag over the canvas to see what materials are already in use.
The Picker Palette is your friend .
Sven
Yo guys i think i am too stupid or just becoming crazy trying to get used to ZBrush2 … i wonder if my ZBrush is working properly or if is a problem of my system. If i create a second layer and immediatly set its Displace Z to high values behind ( something like 4096x3, it should be very far behind the default layer ) but when i arrive to add something to the layer it still seems to snap to the object in the default layer !!! It seems that tweaking the Displace value works just AFTER have added some obj to the layers. About the Picker, i tried that, i have seen the little pencil showing me the orientation of the object over which i drag it, but how to you set " Take this object here " so that changing the Z Depth value provide a real modification to the Z Depth of the taken object ? Because on the actual state, if i don’t change it, the Z value is always still to 0 and even if i drag the pencil over something and then change the Z Value, it doesn’t provide any visible change to the scene.