ZBrushCentral

Wish: Gradient brush

ZBrush Artworks
#1

A nice feature for future zBrush could be the Gradient Brush! It would work like this:

  • First create or select a gradient curve (color or intensity curve), with the ability to store curve presets similar to how alpha presets work.

  • Then make a stroke between two points. This creates a linear gradient (various brush options control what happens before and after the two points like wrap, bounce, or stay at the same value)

  • In addition to linear gradient mode, It could work in circular mode (inside-out) or radial (like a pie-chart), something rectangular could work too. There would be an option to choose if the brush works in 2D screen space or 3D space (I think screen space should be the default)

  • The brush would work in polypainting or masking mode

  • various strokes can be combined. A new stroke wouldn’t delete the existing polypaint or mask. For masks it will be added (or subtracted with the alt hotkey). For polypaint the gradient’s transparency would be used to blend into the existing color.

Now I know something similar can be done with alphas more or less, but there’s quite some effort to it.

It would be so nice if such gradients were a default function in ZBrush. I promise for masks I would use it every 25 seconds!! :wink:

-sculpy

#2

I think you can do it already with textures and dragrec etc simply using gradient texture. The same with subtraction of masks.

#3

Yes you can use alpha27 and drag out a gradient filled mask rect somewhere. But I think a “real” photoshop like gradient brush could be a lot more useful.

#4

The real difference with photoshop is the gradient editor that Photoshop has and Zbrush doesn’t. But obviously you can create a bunch of premade gradients. Also Zbrush has curves for intensity in radial gradients that can be edited.
Image 1412.pngImage 1414.pngImage 1418.pngImage 1416.png

#5

Yes, gradient editor is a big difference. But also that zbrush is limited to the rect area, and that the gradient brush could be computed in a ‘volumetric’ way, like projecting through whole 3d space. You could quickly mask something off with a smooth falloff by applying a 2 or 3 strokes in different directions.

Something like this, ca. at 1:40
[video=youtube_share;KJDPNb1qFws]https://youtu.be/KJDPNb1qFws?t=89[/video]
(without the pose stuff)

There’s good workaround solutions for all this in zBrush but I think a simple and easy to use gradient brush would come in really handy for a lot of cases.