I haven’t been using image ref in the background of Zbrush for a while now. So I was pretty surprised when I tried to do it in 3.5 R3 to poly paint a model. Certain things don’t work like they used to.
No longer is the Import Document Image friendly.
This is how I used to do it.
I would set the matcap to “flat shade” important a jpeg image, change the width and height under document, click resize so it would be the same pixel value as the source image. Drag my mouse over the canvas and my model would be pulled in front of this new image, RGB morph brush the background image onto my model.
What I really liked about this. I could save these imported images as views in Zapplink along with my with my model positions. That is missing now. You can save positions but not images.
This would let me load several images- line my model up to them, and then I could click back and forth between those views to get to the image and model positions I wanted at anytime. When you load an image in this way now. As soon as you drag your tool onto the canvas it erases the image behind it.
OK, so now I have to use Image Plane. Gotcha, and to resize it so it becomes the same size as the source image you click on the loaded image in the texture tab and click on crop and fill.
Downside. I cant save this image/images as a set now with the model positioning/pose I want.
But what really hurts, the worst change of them all.
The transpose line.
It doesn’t work with the morph brush anymore. Why???
Use to be you could click “W” pull a transpose line starting over the area of model you wanted with the end point of the line falling over the exact image area of the canvas you wanted, hit “Q” And that paint job started exactly where you wanted it to.
I loved this because I could position my model to match the image ref. Then I could offset it to the side, do the transpose line trick and paint the image ref onto the surface of the model while comparing it to the image ref, to insure that it was positioning itself correctly onto the exact area I was trying to map it to- if a shape was in that area was off. I would stop rework it and do it again.
I love this trick so much that I begged pixologic to make an controllable visual guide only transpose line marker for the sculpting brushes. Allowing the user to pull visible lines off of the center point of the brushes circular target point icon to any location they wanted on the canvas.
This way they could drop it over image ref of a face, and in real time while moving the sculpting brush over the model affecting it’s shape. They could also see how lined up the end is while it surfs over the surface of the image ref.- real time calipers/autopen trick. This would make recreative sculpting work more like tracing. Made even easier with the quick stored image&stored position swapping feature that Zapplink used to offer.
Going off topic, but it seems like the Transpose line is losing some of it’s cool powers, unless I missed something.
What’s up, Is the transpose line gone now when it comes to poly paint morphing options?