ZBrushCentral

Transpose Master & Masking issue?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi folks

I’m having some trouble posing my first scuplt. So what I did was I started with the average male tool as my base, then I masked and extracted his clothing, and now I’d like to pose him. I’ve seen a bunch of videos where you start with the Transpose master zplugin, then you mask everything you don’t want to move, and then you can draw your transpose line and use move and rotate to reposition. The problem I’m having is after all the subtools are joined together, when I try to mask off an area, all it’s doing is selecting the subtools rather than letting me click and drag all the way across to mask it. Seems like the only way I found to make it work is to switch back to draw mode, paint on my mask the regular way, then switch back to move or rotate. It just seems like a bunch of extra steps for what looks so easy in the videos I watch.

So am I doing something wrong? Is there some other setting in transpose master that I missed to make it treat all of your subtools as 1 big tool as far as the masking and selecting goes?

#2

Did you read(and do you understand all that is here)?>> http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/zbrush-plugins/transpose-master/

#3

Transpose Master merges the separate subtools but it doesn’t change their actual geometry, so masking with the transpose line might not work as you intend. It’s far simpler to use the Mask Lasso (hold Ctrl and click on the Current Brush large thumbnail to select from the pop-up). You can the switch to the transpose line to do the posing.

Note: I’ve moved this thread to theOther Questions & Troubleshooting forum which is the best place for questions.

#4

Ah, ok thanks… I think my problem was that I was doing ctrl+click&drag to make my mask… that was in the video I was watching. I was able to mask some parts with the box you drag over, but I forgot about the lasso :slight_smile: that will probably work much better for me.

Here’s another question… is there a way to keep things from warping too much? Like I noticed after I got my arm in the position I wanted, the hand was suddenly squished flat, no idea how that happened. What I was doing was masking all the way up to a joint like the shoulder or elbow, then rotating, and then moving it a little bit if it got dislocated. There were also a few parts where it looked like the body tool under the shirt started to poke through it, but I was able to fix that with the inflate brush.

Am I better off using zsphere rigging? Though, I’m aiming for small miniatures that need to be 3D printed, and I read somewhere that the rigging can mess things up with the print somehow. If that’s the case, couldn’t you just delete the zspheres after the pose is all done the way you want it?

#5

It’s really only something you can learn by experience. You may find that blurring the mask (Ctrl+click on the mesh) helps. Also, models that have a large number of polygons (hundreds of thousands) at the lowest subdivision level are going to be more difficult to pose, so developing a working method that takes account of that will help.

ZSphere rigging is certainly worth trying and a lot of people like it. It really does need a fairly low resolution combined mesh though, otherwise there can be unwanted distortion.

As for the rigging messing things up for a 3D print - with Transpose Master the rig is associated with the combined mesh, not the original mesh with its subtools, so it won’t affect any output.

There are several videos on Youtube that may help with getting the best out of Transpose Master. Here’s one on the ZSphere rigging method:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li4Q4XlkPlE

HTH,

#6

I’m still waiting for them to answer my question :wink: