Palette Reference

From ZBrushInfo

The subjects below give descriptions of the ZBrush palettes (menus) and the controls within them. Many of these descriptions include conceptual overviews and examples. Particularly large palettes have been split into sections.

Alpha Palette Manages alphas, which are ZBrush intensity maps. This is an important palette because alphas can be used for many more operations than in other programs.

Brush Palette Contains all of the 3D sculpting brushes. Color Palette Allows setting or selecting of colors, and also filling the canvas or an object with a selected color. Document Palette Provides document operations; opening, saving, resizing, etc. Draw Palette Controls and gives information on aspects of the currently selected tool. For example, Draw sets brush size. This is not an extremely complex palette, but it is important, and many of its controls are made available as shortcuts in the area surrounding the ZBrush canvas. Edit Palette Controls Undo and Redo operations. Layer Palette Layers allow you to organize a complex ZBrush scene into different layers; each layer contains part of the scene. Since ZBrush brush strokes contain depth information, layers provide a powerful scene management tool without the need to consider if elements of one layer might block elements of another. Layers can be made invisible to more easily work with other parts of a scene. Light Palette Controls scene lighting; this in turn affects rendering, both in interactive and batch- rendered views. Macro Palette Allows easy recording of sequences of actions. This is particularly useful for recording actions that make a number of settings that define, for example, a favorite brush combination. The macro menu may come with useful or example predefined macros. Marker Palette Markers allow you to remember various aspects of onscreen models or paint strokes, such as colors, position, orientation, etc. You can then later redraw that model or another, using any of these same properties. Markers are also used for combining multiple models into a single mesh. Material Palette Materials allow you to apply complex and powerful effects to your drawings or models, giving them the appearance of fire, glass, metal, rust, skin, or many other things. Movie Palette Used to make mini-movies about ZBrush, for illustration and distribution to other users. As of ZBrush 3, can export to Quicktime .mov format. Picker Palette Controls how properties (material, color, depth, orientation) of the pixols underneath the mouse cursor affect the current brush stroke. For example, if you want to draw across part of a scene in such a manner that the pixols in that stroke are 'flattened' to the same Z-depth, but retain their original materials, you'd adjust the settings in this palette. Preferences Palette Allows setting of many, many user preferences. This includes UI configuration, tablet preferences, and configuration options having to do with several of the other palettes. Render Palette Controls ZBrush renders, both in the normal interactive mode, and in batch rendering mode. Stencil Palette Allows masking using 'stencils'. These can be not only stencils in the standard meaning of the word (the standard stencil is the 'french curve' drafting/drawing tool), but stencils that include gray scale intensity. Stroke Palette Controls how mouse strokes are applied. This is a powerful but sometimes overlooked feature of ZBrush, and well worth learning. Texture Palette Provides for texture management.

Tool Palette Provides the tools (paintbrushes, models, filters, etc.) that can be used to draw in ZBrush, and many operations relating to those tools. This is one of the most important palettes in ZBrush, and its many submenus are described below.

Transform Palette Contains operations for transforming 3D objects into different forms; sculpting, repositioning, snapshoting to canvas, and others. Zoom Palette Allows viewing the canvas at different zoom factors. ZPlugin Palette The default location for commands added by ZScripts. However, many ZScripts will put their commands in a more appropriate location in the ZBrush palette structure. ZScript Palette Allows you to load, run, and otherwise work with scripts written using ZScript, ZBrush's built-in scripting language. This is likely to be used mostly by users who write their own scripts; if you commonly use a predefined script, it's usually better to install it so that it loads into ZBrush automatically.

Tool Submenus

The Tool menu is a core part of ZBrush's functionality; its various submenus can be accessed below.

Tool:SubTool Subpalette Allows a mesh to be considered as made up of many different parts. For example, a monster could have a weapon, clothing, etc. This also allows easy construction of full scenes.

Tool:Layers Subpalette Allows multiple different sculpts of one model, and combining those sculpt in different ways.

Tool:Geometry Subpalette A very important submenu, concerned with creating and working with multiple levels of subdivision.

Tool:HD Geometry Subpalette Analogous to the Geometry submenu, but functions with the new very-high res (hundreds of millions of polygons) features of ZBrush.

Tool:Preview Subpalette Allows one to redefine the model's default orientation and center point. Tool:Deformation Subpalette Can apply a wide range of deformations to a model; noise, skews, etc. Primarily used when first creating models.

Tool:Masking Subpalette Controls Masking, the ability to choose or paint parts of your model to define if and how much they will be affected by subsequent operations.

Tool:Polygroups Subpalette Operations relating to standard mesh groups, as are understood by most 3D programs. Create, hide, and show particular groups in your mesh.

Tool:Texture Subpalette Operations relating specifically to 3D texture application; see the Texture Palette for more general operations on images.

Tool:Morph Target Subpalette Operations related to setting, removing, and restoring a sculpt to a previously defined form.

Tool:Displacement Subpalette Operations related to generating or using displacement maps. ZMapper is a plugin that can provide much more sophisticated functionality.

Tool:NormalMap Subpalette Operations related to generating or using normal maps. ZMapper is a plugin that can provide much more sophisticated functionality.

Tool:Unified Skin Subpalette Operations to generate a polymesh skin over top of a ZSphere model.

Tool:Display Properties Subpalette A simple submenu affecting certain display properties, such as if and when normals should be flipped.

Tool:Import Subpalette Used to bring in 3D models from other file formats; .OBJ and so forth.

Tool:Export Subpalette Used to save 3D models in other file formats; .OBJ and so forth. The next two sub-palettes are specific to ZSpheres.

Tool:Rigging Subpalette Controls rigging, which can be used both for modifying models, and as part of model retopoligization.

Tool:Topology Subpalette Operations to do with mesh topology manipulation, primarily used when building a new topology atop an existing one.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Palette_Reference"

● This page was last modified 23:31, 3 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 20,020 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Alpha Palette

From ZBrushInfo

In ZBrush, grayscale images used for masking are referred to as alphas. You'll probably be used to alphas from the notion of an "alpha transparency" in other painting or imaging programs, but in ZBrush, they can be used for far more than that Contents

● 1 Selecting Alphas

● 2 Alpha Palette Controls

❍ 2.1 Main Controls

❍ 2.2 Creating Polymeshes From Alphas

❍ 2.3 Converting Between Alphas and Other Objects (Stencils, Textures, the Document, Other Alphas)

● 3 Related Controls in Other Palettes

● 4 Further Links

Selecting Alphas

The inventory of all alphas, which can be brought up by clicking on the large thumbnail in the Alpha Palette, or the large Alpha thumbnail to the left of the canvas.

Alphas can be selected from either the Alpha palette, or the large Alpha thumbnail on the left of the ZBrush canvas. In either case, click on the large thumbnail to bring up the full selection of alphas. Within the palette, you can also click one of the small thumbnails that show recently used alphas, to select it.

The inventory of alphas works the same as others in ZBrush, such as those in the Tool and Material palettes. The active alpha is grayed out to indicate that it is already selected.

Note: In the Alpha Palette, click one of the small thumbnails and then select an alpha from the resulting popup of the alpha inventory, to have the selected alpha replace the clicked thumbnail, rather than be added to the list of recently used alphas. To see the name, size, and bit depth of an alpha, hover the mouse over its thumbnail.

Alpha Palette Controls

Main Controls

Import: Imports .bmp (Windows Bitmap), .psd (Photoshop), .jpg (JPEG), or PICT (Mac). You can select multiple alpha images and load them all at one time. If you import color images, they will automatically be converted to grayscale.

Export: Exports 8- bit .bmp (Windows Bitmap), .psd (Photoshop), or PICT (Mac).

Ep: If pressed, then any alpha that is exported will include the modifications made to it by the AlphaAdjust curve. (This is the same as the alpha that appears in the large thumbnail preview.) If not pressed, then any exported alpha will have its 'original' appearance, without modification by AlphaAdjust.

DE Options: Brings up options having to do with how the Alpha Displacement Exporter exports alphas. This includes options concerning TIFF file format, and some modification options.

DExporter: Exports an alpha using the currently selected options in DE Options. This differs from Export in that Export does not apply any of the options that can be set using DE Options.

Brush: Slider that gives an alternative way of selecting alphas.

R: As alphas are selected, they will be added to the "recently used" set of thumbnails that appears in the Alpha palette. In time, this may cause the palette to become too long for your preferences. Pressing R resets the recently used section of the palette to display its original number of thumbnails.

Blur: Blurs the alpha image to smooth it. Negative values will sharpen.

Noise: Adds noise to the alpha image.

Max: Maximizes tonal range of the current alpha. Like an auto-level setting, it adjusts the lightest part of the existing alpha to pure white and the darkest part to pure black.

MidValue: When applying a displacement map, tells ZBrush what alpha intensity to use as the neutral (no displacement) value. This is useful when applying displacement maps that weren't created in ZBrush and don't conform to ZBrush's standard of 50% gray meaning no displacement.

Rf: Radial Fade. Higher settings cause the alpha to fade out faster as it approaches the edge from center.

AlphaAdjust: Click to expand this control to an editable curve. Once open, you can add points and otherwise adjust the curve to cause different radial effects with the same alpha. For example, to the right are a simple alpha without AlphaAdjust modified, and the same alpha with a different AlphaAdjust curve. Note effect on selected alpha.

Flip H: (ZScript name is Flh) Flips the alpha left-to-right.

Flip V : (ZScript name is Flv) Flips the alpha top-to-bottom.

Rotate: (ZScript name is Rot) Rotates the alpha 90 degrees per click.

Invers: (ZScript name is Inv) Produces an inverse image of the alpha. Creating Polymeshes From Alphas

MRes: Sets the resolution of a mesh created using the Make 3D button. Higher values result in a greater level of detail at the price of a greater number of polygons and larger file size.

MDep: Sets the thickness of a mesh created using the Make 3D button.

MSm: Sets the smoothness of a mesh created using the Make 3D button. If this slider is set to 0, the mesh is created using Cubical Skinning, wherein the object appears to be composed of many tiny cubes.

DblS: When pressed (the default), a 3D object created using Make 3D wll be mirrored along its Z axis. For example when using a radially faded alpha such as Alpha:Brush 01, setting this to on will produce an object that looks like a sphere or ovoid; with it off, the result would be an object like a flattened hemisphere with a flat bottom.

Make 3D: Creates a 3D mesh skin from the currently selected alpha. The skin has symmetry along the Z axis, and is automatically assigned Adaptive UV Tiles coordinates.

Converting Between Alphas and Other Objects (Stencils, Textures, the Document, Other Alphas)

Make Tx: Creates a texture from the currently selected alpha and adds it as the active texture to the texture palette.

Make St: Creates a stencil from the currently selected alpha and activates the stencil.

Make Modified Alpha: Creates a new alpha which is derived from the original alpha by "baking in" the modifications made by AlphaAdjust. In other words, if you start with an adjusted alpha and do a Make Modified Alpha, the new alpha will look the same when AlphaAdjust is in its unadjusted (original) state, as the old alpha did with the adjustment applied.

Cc: (Clear Color): This option works in conjunction with the CropAndFill button, and then only when the current alpha is the same size as the current drawing area. When it is on (the default), pressing CropAndFill will clear color information from the canvas, meaning that the resulting canvas will have depth but no color. If it is off, then the resulting canvas will have the same depth as when it is on, but pixols will assume any colors that were on the original canvas. If you CropAndFill a canvas with a differently sized alpha, then colors are always cleared.

CropAndFill: When pressed, resizes the drawing area to the size of the currently selected alpha, and then adjusts the depth of the pixols on the canvas according to the intensity of the alpha at the corresponding points. If the alpha is the same size as the canvas, you have the options of preserving canvas colors; see Cc above.

GrabDoc: Creates a new alpha the same size as the current canvas, with intensities determined by the depth of the pixols on the canvas.

Alpha Depth Factor: This affects the intensity with which the CropAndFill operation is applied, causing alpha intensities to map to greater or lesser depth displacements according to this scaling factor. It is also of significant importance when generating displacement and bump maps using ZBrush, when it gives a number that is used in an external renderer as a scaling factor. See The Alpha Displacement Exporter for further details.

Related Controls in Other Palettes

Below are tools that appear in other palettes, but that relate to alphas in a significant way.

Draw:Current Tool Preview: With the SimpleBrush selected in the Tool palette,you can view and rotate this preview to get an idea of the depth effect of the alpha.

Tool:Masking: The Create Alpha and Alp buttons in this subpalette allow you to create an alpha from a mask on the current 3D object, or to apply an alpha as a mask.

MRGBZ Grabber: This tool in the Tool Palette allows you to (among other things) grab a portion of the canvas and turn it into an alpha.

Further Links

Detailing Characters: ZBrush Alpha Library

Highend3D: ZBrush in Production Pipeline

Highend3D: Alpha Resources

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Alpha_Palette"

● This page was last modified 22:50, 28 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 11,823 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Brush Palette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 Brush Types

❍ 1.1 Basic Brushes

❍ 1.2 Tweak Brush

❍ 1.3 Magnify Brush

■ 1.3.1 Magnify Controls

❍ 1.4 Pinch Brush

■ 1.4.1 Pinch Controls

❍ 1.5 Blob Brush

❍ 1.6 Flatten Brush

■ 1.6.1 Flatten Controls

❍ 1.7 Clay Brush

■ 1.7.1 Controls

❍ 1.8 Morph Brush

❍ 1.9 Layer Brush

■ 1.9.1 Layer Brush Controls

❍ 1.10 Nudge Brush

❍ 1.11 SnakeHook Brush

■ 1.11.1 SnakeHook Controls

❍ 1.12 ZProject Brush

❍ 1.13 Smooth Brush

■ 1.13.1 Smooth Controls

❍ 1.14 Inflat Brush

❍ 1.15 Mesh Insertion

■ 1.15.1 Mesh Insert Tutorials

● 2 Smoothing Controls

● 3 Gravity

● 4 Cavity Masking

❍ 4.1 Cavity Masking Controls

● 5 Curve Controls

❍ 5.1 Edit Curve (Brush Shape)

● 6 Other Controls

Brush Types

Basic Brushes

Std: The Std brush is the original basic ZBrush sculpting brush, and when used with its modifiers at their default values, it displaces outward the vertices over which it passes, giving the effect of adding clay to a sculpture. It can be used with all of the various brush modifiers, such as Strokes, Alphas, an edit curve, and so on. Pressing the Alt key causes the standard key to carve into, rather than build up, the model.

Elastic: Elastic works similarly to the Std brush, but for some model types, is more accurate at maintaining the original shape of the surface as the surface is displaced. Experiment with both to see which is better for your work.

Nudge: Moves (nudges) points along the surface of the model, without affecting the shape. Useful for changing the flow of geometry, preparatory to sculpting on the surface. Tweak Brush

Tweak implements the functionality that, in ZBrush 2, was active when Transform:Edit and Move were active; it moves points under the brush. In ZBrush 3, this means you can move points without switching out of Transform:Draw mode.

● Tweak can easily be used to modify facial features; to indicate emotions, or to achieve a more natural 'asymmetric' face. ● Three brush strokes give the model a slightly crooked smile and one eye that is (exaggeratedly, to show the effect) higher than the other. ● Tweak conveniently ignores certain brush modifiers (strokes and so on) that don't make sense when using it.

The old Move mode is now used for Transpose functionality. Transpose operations allow very easy and powerful operations on your model, including all of the move, scale, and rotation functionality you are accustomed to from ZBrush 2, plus character posing, easy transforms around local axes, positioning of Subtools, shearing, and many other effects.

As a result, Tweak is a convenient way of moving points simply by switching brushes, but you should familiarize yourself with Transpose to take full advantage of the power of the transpose features.

Tweak: The Tweak brush moves points under the brush in the XY plane of the screen. The amount that points are moved depends on brush size and the edit curve. To move an entire model, you can simply increase brush size (or scale the model) so that the brush entirely covers the model.

Tweak respects masks, meaning that unmasked vertices are moves, masked vertices are not moved, and partially masked vertices are moved in proportion to their masking.

When Tweak is selected, simply click and drag on the model to move vertices.

Magnify Brush

The Magnify brush moves vertices away from the cursor, and optionally displaces them up or down; it's the inverse of the Pinch Brush. The name comes from the appearance of vertices as you move the brush around using the DragDot stroke; the vertices literally look as if they are being magnified.

The magnifying (pushing out) and displacement (pushing up) effects can be controlled separately. For example, to 'expand out' the vertices in part of plane, without offsetting the surface, set the Magnify value to 0, and Z Intensity to a satisfactorily high value.

Magnify Controls

Magnify: When the magnify button/slider is selected, sculpting will cause a displacement to the surface, at the same time that vertices are pushed outward along the surface. A value of 0 will not change the surface elevation, but points will still be pushed outward along the surface. The slider intensity determines how much vertices are pushed outward from the surface. The standard Z Intensity setting controls the magnitude of the magnification effect.

Pinch Brush Pinch pulls vertices together; it is, roughly, the inverse of the Magnify brush. It is very useful for sinking in detail for creating clothing and wrinkles, and for adding hard edges to any form. The Pinch brush has been augmented with an elevation slider which allows the artist to pinch in and out along the surface of the model to really sink in detail or harden the edge. Note: As in the example shown here, Pinch is often used with LazyMouse to achieve smooth, precise ridges, even with multiple passes.

Pinch Controls

Pinch: When the Pinch brush is selected, sculpting will cause vertices under the brush to be pinched together along the surface. In addition positive values of the pinch slider will cause the pinched vertices to move outward from the surface, negative values will cause them to move inward. The standard Z Intensity control controls the magnitude of the pinching effect.

Blob Brush

Blob: The Blob brush is particularly good at producing certain organic effects very quickly. In contrast to other brushes, the uniformity of its stroke is affected by irregularities in the surface under the stroke, which means that it typically produces short, irregular blobs; hence the name. This won't be so apparent if it is used on smooth surfaces. The blob slider determines whether the brush pulls the surface out, or pushes it in.

Flatten Brush

The Flatten brush allows you to easily 'press down' parts of your model into planar surfaces. In addition, you can raise or lower the surface as you flatten it.

Using the Flatten brush, you can add rough flattening to you model, such as enhancing the plane of a model's cheekbones. You can also achieve completely flat surfaces, for mechanical models, walls, etc.

Note: To achieve completely flat surfaces, ensure you are working with a pure white alpha, and that the brush is set to completely cover the area you are flattening.

Flatten flattens the surface towards a plane whose angle is determined by the area immediately under the center of the brush. As a result, using this brush with strokes or alphas that change the angles of areas of the surface may cause the flattening plane to shift around. To flatten to a particular plane, ensure you brush over a relatively smooth surface; for example, use the Smooth brush first, if needed.

Flatten Controls

Flatten: Causes the surface under the brush to be flattened; the area may be pushed in or pulled out at the same time. The flatten slider controls how much the area being brushed over will be moved out from the model (positive values) or into the model (negative values). The default of 0 causes the surface being flattened to stay, on average, at its original level. The standard Z Intensity control controls the magnitude of the flattening effect.

Clay Brush

The primary purpose of the Clay brush is to sculpt surfaces using alphas. While the other brushes may be used to do this, they can have side effects that come about as a result of their 'main' purpose. The clay brush is intended specifically for sculpting with alphas, and will not cause other side effects.

The Z Intensity and Clay slider values together affect the result of sculpting with the clay brush. See below.

Controls

Clay: The Clay brush is a general purpose brush for sculpting with alphas. The clay slider scales the alpha as a whole; this affects not only the intensity of the sculpt, but also the size (width and height) of the brush stroke. The standard Z Intensity control affects the magnitude of the alpha up/down displacement effect, but does not affect the size of the alpha.

In the image to the left, the Z Intensity settings (which differ horizontally across the image) affect only the 'bumpiness' of the sculpt. The Clay settings (differing vertically across the image) affect the 'size' of the sculpt. These two combine to determine the total displacement along the surface normal of the sculpt.

Morph Brush

Morph: The Morph brush is only active if the current model has a morph target set. In this case, the morph brush will brush the surface to which it is applied back toward the stored morph target surface.

Layer Brush

Layer: The Layer brush raises (or lowers, if ZSub is on) the surface on which it is used by a fixed amount, determined by the value of Z Intensity. The defining character of the layer brush is that when a stroke overlaps itself, the overlapping parts of the stroke do not undergo additional displacement. This makes the layer brush ideal for changing the displacement of an entire area by a fixed amount; simply scrub across the surface, without worrying about dragging the stroke over itself. Also, if you set a morph target on the model immediately before you start sculpting with Layer, then Layer will sculpt to a constant depth above or below the original surface, regardless of how many strokes you use and whether or not they intersect.

Layer Brush Controls

Z Intensity Determines the amount the layer brush displaces a surface outward (if ZAdd is selected) or inward (if ZSub is selected).

Nudge Brush

The nudge brush allows you to move vertices around while (to the extent permitted by the density of your model) those vertices remain on the existing surface. Contrast this to the Tweak brush, which moves vertices in the screen's xy plane, without paying any attention to the underlying surface.

For instance... Think of adding a knothole to a tree trunk. You'll likely want the original geometry of the trunk to flow around the new knothole, so you could use the Magnify brush to quickly move vertices out from the center of the knothole, do a local subdivision to add more geometry in the knothole area, and then use Nudge to get that geometry tuned just right for the slightly irregular shape of the knothole.

SnakeHook Brush

The SnakeHook brush allows you to easily pull out horns, tendrils, branches, and other extrusions from a 3D surface. This is work that previously would have required a good deal more time using multiple tools.

● Select the SnakeHook brush with a Z Intensity of 100. ● Use the Dots stroke type to pull out a single extrusion. ● Drag on an area of the model. Extrusions will be pulled out underneath the brush. ● Extrusions will be pulled out in a direction perpendicular to the surface from which they start. ● An important point about the SnakeHook Brush is that it needs to stretch polygons as it extrudes a surface. As a result, you need to ensure that the resolution of the surface you extrude is high enough to support the extrusion you make. You can: ❍ Subdivide the entire model to achieve sufficient polygons, using HD Sculpting if necessary.

❍ Locally subdivide the surface where you'll be extruding. This needs to be done while the subdivision level of the model is at its lowest setting, but will add far fewer polygons than subdividing the entire model.

SnakeHook Controls

SnakeHook: This brush pulls an extrusion out from the underlying surface. The slider value determines how an extrusion angles away from the surface from which it is pulled. A low value will cause the extrusion to be pushed backward (into the screen) as it is pulled out. A value of 0 will cause the stroke to pull perpendicular to the original surface, and a high value will pull toward the user.

When you are using SnakeHook on a surface that is facing you, ensure that SnakeHook intensity is set to a positive value, otherwise you won't actually be pulling out anything. When pulling on a surface that is oriented toward the side, the extrusion will follow the mouse; in this case, the SnakeHook intensity will cause the extrusion to bend away from or toward you as it is pulled out. Note: You can create spirals with SnakeHook by setting SnakeHook to a positive value, and pulling out from a surface facing you, using a circular motion of the mouse.

ZProject Brush

The ZProject Brush utilizes the Z axis of the canvas to transfer sculpting and texturing details either from the canvas or other from subtools. ● Your elevation is a mulitplier for how much depth you transfer. Put the elevation up to 100 to transfer 100% of the detail. ● Information is moved in the z-axis only, that is, in and out of the screen. ● Use the Transpose Action Line to clone from somewhere other than directly underneath the cursor.

Visit these Tutorials for more information:

● Tutorial:ZProject_Texturing

● Tutorial:ZProject_Bas-Relief

● Tutorial:ZProject_and_SubTools

● Tutorial:ZProject_and_Adjusting Photo Reference

● ZScript Tutorial: Basic ZProjection Sculpting

● Mastering the ZProject-Brush Thread (with PDF Tutorial by Rastaman)

ZProject: When activated, sculpting will transfer color, geometry, or both from the canvas or another subtool to the active tool or subtool. Detail is transferred in the global Z-direction, and the slider controls how much of the displacement or color is transferred. As an example of how you might use this, you could place a face model over a picture of a similarly shaped face, and then use ZProject to transfer the skin texture to the model texture.

Smooth Brush

The smooth brush smooths details on a surface towards an 'average' level of that surface. This is simple enough, but:

The Smooth brush smooths a surface by averaging the displacement of vertices with the displacements of neighboring vertices. This means that the 'scale' over which smoothing takes effect depends almost entirely on the subdivision level of the model. (But see the reference for the Smooth slider for a slight exception. Details of how to use this ability are presented below. ● Smoothing a very high-resolution model; the pores on the nose can easily be removed. ● 'Coarser' features, such as nose shape, are not affected. ● Increasing the intensity of the Smooth slider will will result in somewhat stronger smoothing, but only up to a point; ridges might be softened, but the overall shape will still not be affected.

Using Smooth in conjunction with ZBrush models sculpted at multiple levels of resolution (see Subdivision Modeling) allows you a tremendous amount of control of how your model is affected. You could, for example, choose to smooth down a mountain range, yet retain all of the fine detail that was sculpted in, such as creeks or rough terrain.

The image below shows this in action. The process is very simple:

1. Set Tool:Geometry:SDiv to a level that gives a good representation of the features you want to affect, but doesn't show the finer details you want to leave unchanged. 2. Smooth at that level of detail. 3. Set Tool:Geometry:SDiv back to its highest value to view the result.

Smooth Controls

Smooth: This brush smooths the underlying surface, and its slider controls the 'direction' of the smoothing effect. If set to a positive number the brush will smooth the recesses of the form more strongly. If set to a negative number it will smooth the high points of the form more strongly. If set to 0, performs a full smooth. For example, set this to 100 to fill a valley containing mountains with silt; the tips of the peaks will be retained. Z Intensity controls how fast the smooth effect is applied; at a high intensity, a single pass with the brush will smooth a surface by a large amount, while at lower values, multiple passes of the brush will be needed to achieve the same effect. Use the smooth brush at different subdivision levels to smooth coarse or fine details.

Inflat Brush

Inflat: In contrast to the Std brush, which pulls or pushes geometry along the normal of the surface under the center of the brush, Inflat expands geometry by pushing vertices along their own normals. This can be particularly important when you are doing sculpts that displace the surface a large amount with just one or two strokes. ● On the left of the image, creating spikes with the Std brush; on the right, the Inflat brush. ● In both cases, the all spikes were generated at the same time, with a single motion using the Spray stroke. ● Inflat spikes are perpendicular to underlying surface, Std spikes are all in the same direction.

Mesh Insertion

Mesh insertion is a convenient and easy way of adding a source mesh to a target mesh. To do this, you select a mesh to be inserted using the MeshInsert Preview button, and then used the specialized MeshInsert Std or MeshInsert Dot to add the selected mesh to the current mesh.

MeshInsert Preview: Press to select a mesh for use with the mesh insertion operations; only Polymesh3D meshes may be selected, not primitives. Once a mesh has been selected, its thumbnail will show up in the MeshInsert Preview button. Press the button again at any time to select a different mesh.

Once you've selected a mesh to insert, you'll still need to activate one of the two specialized mesh insertion brushes to perform insertions.

MeshInsert Fit: Inserts into the current model, an instance of the mesh selected by MeshInsert Preview, drawing the inserted mesh in the plane of the screen. The value of the slider determines if the new mesh will be drawn at, above, or below the level of the surface over which it is drawn. Positive values cause the mesh to be inserted above the surface, negative values below.

In this example, we've selected a halo using MeshInsert Preview, and drawn it farther back on the head, to emphasize the fact that the slope of the skull didn't affect the inserted halo. The slider was set to a high value, so the halo appears above the head instead of intersecting it. MeshInsert Dot: Inserts into the current model, an instance of the mesh selected by MeshInsert Preview, drawing the inserted mesh tangent to the surface underneath the mouse button. The value of the slider determines if the new mesh will be drawn at, above, or below the level of the surface over which it is drawn. Positive values cause the mesh to be inserted above the surface, negative values below.

This example places the halo at a rakish angle, giving our saint a rather jaunty look. A high slider value results in the halo being displaced away from the head.

Each inserted mesh is assigned its own polygroup, which means you can easily split it into a subtool to refine its placement with respect to the model.

To turn off mesh insertion, simply select any of the other brushes.

Mesh Insert Tutorials

Also check out the MeshInsert tutorial here.

Smoothing Controls

Smoothing is considered such an important operation that a special shortcut and controls apply to it. When using any brush, press and hold Shift to smooth what is under the brush. The controls in the 'smoothing' section of the brush menu apply specifically to smoothing in this way.

Smoothing Curve: In ZBrush 3, you can quickly activate the smooth brush by holding down the Shift key while you paint; the idea is that Smooth is so important that it should always be quickly available. The smoothing curve affects only the smooth brush when invoked with Shift, and thus effectively makes the smooth brush a fully custom brush that can be invoked at any time.

Alt Brush Size: This is a sibling of the Brush Size control, but affects the size of the smoothing brush that is in use when the Shift key is held down. Gravity

Gravity allows simulation of gravity, wind, magnetism, or other directional effects that 'pull' (or push) at the surface of your model. When gravity is on, your regular sculpting will be modified by a pull in the direction of the gravity. Imagine windblown cloth, or the heavy folds of elephant skin.

In this image, the stroke on top was created with the Standard brush. The stroke on the bottom was the same brush but with Gravity Strength set to 70 and the gravity direction pointing down.

Gravity Direction: Determines the direction your sculpting will be pulled in as you work. Click and drag in the arrow box to set the direction.

Gravity Strength: Determines the amount of gravity push or pull as you sculpt. Set to 0 for no gravity effect. Cavity Masking

Cavity Masking is a ZBrush 3 features that permits automatic masking of cavities (eg. wrinkles) or raised areas (such as scars). This makes it easy to exaggerate such features, paint different colors onto them (such as a mixed red for a scar), and in general quickly achieve other affects that couldn't otherwise be done in a reasonable amount of time. For full details, see the Cavity Masking page.

Cavity Masking Controls

CavityMask: If off, cavity masking is inactive; if on, cavity masking is on.

CavityInt: Determines the strength of the automatic masking effect. High values mean that even relatively flat recesses will be masked; lower values cause only more significant cavities to be masked. Negative values cause raised areas to be masked. Curve Controls

The curve controls affect brush profiles.

Edit Curve (Brush Shape) By default, ZBrush uses a shaped sculpting brush where the strength of the brush is strongest near the center, and drops off toward the outside of the brush. This is why the Std brush raises areas as a 'hill', not as a cylinder.

Changing the edit curve will change the effect of the brush. On the left you can see how an edit curve with multiple peaks can be used to sculpt in a specialized shape.

Using such a shape can allow you to produce very specific shapes with little work.

With the ability of ZBrush 3 to use alphas while sculpting, the need to adjust the edit curve for special effects has lessened. However, remain aware of the way the standard edit curve fades a sculpt toward the edges of a stroke.

EditCurve: The Edit Curve determines, and can modify, the brush's radial profile. The default edit curve is low at its left edge (corresponding to the outside of the brush), and high at its right edge (corresponding to the center of the brush), causing strokes to affect the model more strongly at the center of the brush, and less strongly at its edge. As with all curves, click the edit curve to expand it for modification, and click on Close to collapse it again.

EditCurve:Close: The Close button collapses the Edit Curve into its minimized state.

EditCurve:Copy: The Copy button copies this curve in preparation for pasting it here or elsewhere.

EditCurve:Load: The Load button loads this curve from a saved disk file.

EditCurve:Noise: The Noise slider adds random turbulence to this curve. A value of 0 adds no turbulence; the curve is smooth.

EditCurve:Paste: The Paste button over-writes this curve with the most-recently copied one. Curves can be copied from here or from other interface items, and pasted here.

EditCurve:Redo: Press the Redo button to repeat an undone curve-editing action. This button is only active if Undo has been pressed.

EditCurve:Reset: The Reset button resets the shape of the curve to its original state.

EditCurve:Save: The Save button saves this curve (its shape and Noise settings) to a disk file.

EditCurve:Undo: Press the Undo button to undo the last curve-editing action. Other Controls

These controls are independent of other controls in the brush palette.

Samples: This can change the sensitivity of certain brushes to properties of the surfaces to which they are applied.

The effects of some brushes (Flatten, for example) can be greatly affected by properties of the surface immediately underneath the cursor. (The default behavior for the flatten brush is to try to flatten to a plane tangent to the orientation of the plane under the cursor). If these properties change over short distances, such as might happen with finely detailed surfaces, the result can be brush strokes that are very difficult to control

Higher values of Samples indicate that a larger area around the cursor should actually be examined, and the properties of interest (such as surface orientation) averaged over that area. This gives more stable results as the brush moves over a surface. A value of 0 examines the smallest possible area under the cursor, and hence makes brushes very 'sensitive' to these sorts of changes.

You can also achieve very precise control of certain aspects of brushes using the Picker Palette.

EditDensity: Controls the percentage of the surface under the brush that is affected by a stroke. At its default number of 100, we get "normal" results. Lower values will give pores or bumps, and other similar effects. This can be a quick and easy way of achieving such effects in a uniform way across an area.

More precisely, you can think of a setting of 100 (the standard) indicating that 100% of vertices under a stroke should be affected by it, 10 meaning 10% should be affected, etc. 0 means the stroke won't have any affect at all. The effect is akin to a uniform grainy alpha that can be adjusted as to density, and that scales itself to apply to individual vertices regardless of the subdivision level of the model.

The best way to see this effect in action is to choose the Std brush, DragDot stroke, Z Intensity of 50 or so, and then drag strokes around on surfaces of various resolutions.

AlphaTile: Allows sculpting with tilings of the current alpha, as opposed to the normal single alpha. At a setting of 2, the alpha will effectively be repeated in a 2x2 grid, and that tiled alpha will be used to affect the brush stroke. Higher values give 3x3, 4x4, etc. tilings.

WrapMode: Values of WrapMode higher than 1 will be multiple copies of a stroke to be applied to a model at the same time. In some sense, it's a generalization of bilateral or other symmetrical modeling techniques.

Wrap mode is normally best used with models that are symmetrical and simple in their rough form. A primary use is with planes, to permit quick production of tileable alphas from a plane mode (since a single brush stroke can be set to produce multiple strokes that preserve edge tileability, the amount of work required is reduced.)

Experimentation with sculpting a plane at different values of WrapMode is one of the best ways to understand it.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Brush_Palette"

● This page was last modified 23:30, 17 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 32,999 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Color Palette

From ZBrushInfo

The color palette provides you with the ability to select colors for your drawing in ZBrush, plus some related operations.

Contents

● 1 Using and Choosing Colors

● 2 Choosing a Color

● 3 Color Palette Controls

● 4 Related Controls in Other Palettes

Using and Choosing Colors The main (most commonly used) part of this palette is the color selector area (which is also found in a slightly different format as a shortcut on the left side of the ZBrush screen):

The large square in the middle of the color selector area is the color chooser. It is divided into an outer border and an inner area. The border area selects primary (maximally intense) colors; bright red, yellow, orange, green, blue, etc. Once you have selected a primary color in the border area, the inner area lets you choose the precise intensity and tone of that color.

The gray bar at the bottom of this area is a gray selector; it permits you to select a gray of any intensity with a single click.

The small square at the top middle of the selector area (colored yellow in this image) is a swatch showing the current secondary color. Some color brushes make use of the secondary color, and some do not. The rectangle at the top right of this area is the main color swatch. All color brushes make use of the main color. (The Simple, Sphere, Alpha, Paint and Fiber brushes use both.)

Choosing a Color

You can choose a main or secondary color in various ways. Direct Selection:

1. Click on either the the main color box or secondary color box to choose which of these alternatives you will assign a new color to. 2. Click on the border area of the color chooser to select the appropriate primary color. 3. Finally, click on the inner area of the color chooser to select the correct shade of your primary color.

You can also click on the shaded gray bar to select grays of different intensities.

Pixol Sampling:

Another way of selecting colors permits you to easily match colors that already exist on the screen:

1. Click and hold the mouse button on either the main or secondary color swatch. 2. Drag the mouse anywhere on the screen, until it is over the color you want to choose. 3. Release the mouse button to choose that color.

When using this latter method, you can drag to anywhere on the screen, not just within the drawing area.

You can also enter a color directly, using the RGB sliders, the choosers under the Modifiers subpalette, or your computer's system palette. The controls relevant to this are discussed below.

Color Palette Controls

The other controls in the Color palette are described below.

SwitchColor: Switches the main and secondary colors.

R: Directly sets the red value of the currently selected main or secondary color.

G: Directly sets the green value of the currently selected main or secondary color.

B: Directly sets the blue value of the currently selected main or secondary color. Fill Object: The Fill Object button is active only when you have a 3D object in 3D Edit mode (i.e. Transform:Edit is on). It fills all polygons of the 3D object with the main color, by assigning colors to the vertices. This does not use textures, and assigning a texture to your object will override any colors you've assigned with Fill Object.

Fill Layer: The Fill Layer button fills the currently active canvas layer with the currently selected color and material. Due to the way material effects are computed, some materials show up only when applied to areas of differing depth, and so will not be apparent until you start painting with a depth-enabled brush.

SysPalette: This allows you to choose a color by going through your operating system's color chooser.

Clear: Clears the currently selected layer back to a neutral gray.

Modifiers: Additional color chooser systems are available in the Modifiers sub-palette. All four pickers may be open and active at the same time.

Related Controls in Other Palettes

● The Layer Palette is relevant to those of the Color Palette operations that apply to an entire area; FillArea and Clear. ● Within the Draw Palette, the M, Rgb, Mrgb, and Rgb Intensity controls affect if and how color is applied when painting. ● Within the Texture Palette, the Clear button clears the current texture and fills it with the current main color, and the Grad (Gradient Colorize) button uses the main and secondary colors to tint the current texture.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Color_Palette"

● This page was last modified 17:18, 3 July 2007. ● This page has been accessed 3,356 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Document Palette

From ZBrushInfo

The document palette contains buttons that allow you to load or save ZBrush documents, import background images, export output images, resize the canvas, and set the background color.

The Document palette does not save or load 3D models. Use the Tool Palette for those operations. Contents

● 1 Opening, Saving, Creating, Exporting

● 2 Default Colors

● 3 Resizing

● 4 Other Opening, Saving, Creating, Exporting

Open: Opens previously saved ZBrush documents. If a document is open with unsaved changes, a warning will appear. If you choose, the current document will be closed without saving changes and the new file can be selected. To save the current document and open a new one, click Cancel, then Save, then Open again.

Save: Saves the ZBrush document as a .zbr scene file with the currently assigned name. If you haven't chosen a name, the name 'ZBrush Document' is used.

Revert: Reloads the last saved version of the open document.

Save As : Saves the current ZBrush document as a .zbr scene file with a new file name.

Import : Imports .bmp (Windows Bitmap), .psd (Photoshop), .jpg (JPEG), or PICT (Mac) as a background image. ZBrush will resize the image to fit the current canvas size. The currently selected Material will be applied to the image and if there are objects or paint strokes with depth present, they will be shaded with the imported image.

Note: ZBrush relies on filename extensions. Any file that you wish to import using any of ZBrush’s palettes must end in an appropriate extension. For example, images must end in “.bmp”, “.jpg”, “.psd” or “.pct” to be recognized for import. Export: Exports .bmp (Windows Bitmap), .psd (Photoshop), or PICT (Mac) as a RGB bitmap output to be published or used in another application.

New Document: Opens a new document with default settings. If a document is open with unsaved changes, a warning will appear.

Default Colors

First, a bit about what these controls actually do.

The area inside all of the controls is split into two parts; the border is just an empty area around the canvas, which is where drawing takes place. You can drag in the border to rotate your model or (with the appropriate modifier key pressed) do some other things, but aside from that, the border is basically a 'dead area'; it doesn't do much. At one point in time, you normally wanted to set your canvas size to be relatively small to take into account the limitations of the memory and CPU power that was available. Now you can often set the canvas size to be large enough that the border isn't visible any more. There are still advantages to having the border; if your model completely fills the canvas, you can still click and drag on the border to rotate the model or perform some other shortcuts. And, of course, there are still resource limits.

That said, the following controls affect the border or the canvas background colors.

Border: Sets the color of the border surrounding the canvas. This is a color picker, which simply means click in it, hold the mouse down, and drag so the mouse cursor is over another color in the ZBrush window. The color of the border will be set to that picked color.

A more roundabout but perhaps precise route, is to use the Color Palette to choose the desired background color, and then click (without dragging) in the Border button. This sets the border to the color selected in the color palette.

None of the other controls in this section affect the border color.

Back: Sets the background color, i.e. the color on the canvas that appears where the model (or, if you're painting, your painting) isn't displayed. The background color is set in exactly the same way as the Border color, described above. However, the background color is affected by the following controls. Note: When painting, it is best to select the background color before painting or adding objects because the object color can blend with the background color at its edges.

In ZBrush 3, the background of the canvas is no longer restricted to a single, monotone color. You can make quick adjustments to reflect the environment your model is likely to be viewed in. The following controls affect the canvas background color.

Range: In ZBrush 3, the canvas background can be thought of as a vertical fade, from black, through an intermediate color, to white. However, not all of these intensities need be displayed. The Range setting determines the shade intensities over which the background will be displayed. A value of 1 means from black to white, while a value of 0 will give a monotone background. Other values will give a range from, for example, light blue to dark blue.

Center: The Range control above sets the range of shades that will be displayed in the canvas' background. Center determines the vertical position at which this range will be halfway between white and black. For example, a higher setting for this control might make the top 2/3 of the canvas background darker, while a lower setting would make the bottom 2/3 lighter. This can be used to achieve effects such as an evening sky.

Rate: This determines how quickly the background of the canvas moves from black to white. At a setting of 0, the color of the canvas background is uniform. At settings less then 0, the change of shading will invert, i.e. instead of the canvas shading from dark to light, it will shade from light to dark. At setting near 1 or -1, the change in lightness/ darkness will be very quick, emulating for example, a sky where the sun is setting or rising. Near 0, the change will be much more gradual, such as a noon sky.

Resizing

Half: Resizes the canvas size to exactly one half of its present dimensions, scaling the document contents down by the same factor.

Double: Resizes the canvas size to exactly double its present dimensions, scaling the document contents up by the same factor. This may result in 'blocky' edges.

Width: Shows the current width and can set a new width for the canvas when used with Crop or Resize.

Height: Shows the current height and can set a new height for the canvas and can set a new width for the canvas when used with Crop or Resize.

Pro: (Proportional.) When on, causes width and height to stay in proportion. When you change one, the other automatically adjusts proportionally.

Crop: Resizes the canvas to the new dimensions without stretching pixols. Use this to add space to your canvas if you run out of room, or to trim the edges if you have too much space. The Crop button adds or removes space from the bottom and right edges of the canvas.

Resize: Resizes the canvas to newly set values. If there are already pixols on the canvas, they will be stretched or compressed to fit the new dimensions.

Other

StoreDepthHistory: Normally, paint strokes on the ZBrush canvas are cumulative; for example, if two strokes made with the SimpleBrush cross one another, the depth information at the intersection of the two will be changed more than in the other parts of the strokes. Pressing StoreDepthHistory alters this so that future brush strokes will interact with the depths on the canvas at the time StoreDepthHistory was activated, but will not interact with depth information from strokes painted after StoreDepthHistory was pressed. DeleteDepthHistory: Reverses the action of StoreDepthHistory, returning ZBrush to its normal depth painting behavior.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Document_Palette"

● This page was last modified 17:51, 28 May 2007. ● This page has been accessed 3,852 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Draw Palette

From ZBrushInfo Contents

● 1 Using The Draw Palette

● 2 Controls

● 3 Channels

● 4 Resources

Using The Draw Palette

The Draw palette contains controls for modifying the current drawing tool. You can change a tool's size, shape, opacity, how new strokes interact with existing objects and strokes, and other functions.

The Draw palette defines your interaction with the canvas. You can paint depth, color, material either individually or simulateously.

Controls

Draw Size: Sets the overall size of the brush, scaling it in all three dimensions simultaneously. The current brush size is reflected by the white or red circle attached to the mouse/tablet cursor in the image area. Default = 64. Range = 1 to 128. (maximum can be changed using the Preferences: Draw:Max Brush Size slider).

Note: After you change the Draw Size setting, ZBrush automatically zooms the view in the preview window so that the brush fits in the window. This doesn't affect the brush size.

Focal Shift: Adjusts how fast the brush's effect "falls off" as it approaches the edge of the brush. This is really just a shortcut; for drawing tools it is the same as Focal Shift in Alpha:AlphaAdjust, and when modeling it is the same as Focal Shift in Transform:Edit Curve. Both of those curves can be adjusted manually for more control of brush shape. RGB Intensity : Sets the intensity of the color applied with the brush or in the current object. Default = 100%. Range = 0% to 100%.

In the illustration below, a 3D cube primitive was added with a high RGB Intensity at the top of the sphere, and a low RGB Intensity at the bottom.

Z Intensity: Sets the intensity of the depth information applied with the brush or in the current object. The lower the Z Intensity setting, the less the existing depth information is impacted by added strokes and objects. Thus, setting Z Intensity to 0% has the same effect as turning off the Z options (see ZAdd / ZSub / ZCut, below). Default = 100%. Range = 0% to 100%.

In the illustration below, a 3D cube primitive was added with a high Z Intensity at the top of the sphere, and a low Z Intensity at the bottom.

MRGB / RGB / M: Sets whether you're drawing with the material and color (MRGB), just the color (RGB), or just the material channel (M).

If you want to affect only the depth information, turn all three options off (click the active item) and use one of the Z options (see next item).

Note: Some materials have color built in, so will change the object color even if you're using the M option.

ZAdd / ZSub / ZCut

Sets whether you're adding to or subtracting from the existing drawing; how you're impacting existing depth information in the image. Only one option can be active at a time.

● ZAdd adds pixols to the drawing. This works like a standard Boolean union operation. * ZSub subtracts pixols from the drawing. With a 3D object, any front-facing polygons in front of the active 3D object do not display. ● ZCut subtracts pixols from the drawing. With a 3D object, front-facing polygons in front of the active 3D object do display.

Note: When painting, think of ZAdd and ZSub simply as add and subtract operations; you don't need to use the more compute-intensive ZCut at all. However, when working with 3D objects, you should generally use ZCut for subtraction operations. Read on for further explanation of the differences between ZSub and ZCut. Alternatively, with no Z option on (click the active button to turn it off), you can paint without impacting the depth information at all.

Sphere painted with ZAdd (left side), ZCut (right ), and Z options off (bottom)

The effects of the Z settings vary depending on whether you're using a standard brush, such as the Simple brush, or working with a 3D object. If using a standard brush, the Z setting affects brush strokes you make after you change the setting.

If working with an active 3D object, the Z setting affects how the object interacts with the rest of the image. This is primarily where ZSub and ZCut differ: With ZSub, any existing pixols in front of the rearmost pixols placed by the 3D object are removed. With ZCut, however, only pixols within the volume of the 3D object are removed. This is best illustrated graphically:

The following shows the interaction of an active 3D object (the red cylinder) with existing pixols (the yellow sphere) using the various Z modes:

ZAdd (left), Zsub (middle), ZCut (right) Current Tool Preview: The Current Tool Preview window shows the current drawing tool or object, and reflects the effect of changing the basic tool characteristics in real time. The exception is that, when using a 3D tool, such as Sphere 3D or Cube 3D, this window shows the current object. Thus, when you're using a brush, you can see it in the preview window, but when you're editing a 3D object, you can't.

When you first start ZBrush, the Preview window depicts the Simple brush in its default state. You can rotate the view around the window contents by dragging the mouse inside the window. For example, if you drag a short distance toward the upper right, the window changes to a view from an angle.

Current Tool Preview showing tool headon (left) and from an angle (right).

In the upper-left corner of the preview is a small curved-arrow icon. Clicking this icon toggles continuous rotation of the window view. While the continuous rotation option is active, you can change the direction and speed of the rotation by dragging inside the window. Also, you can temporarily halt the rotation by clicking in the window. At any time, click the curved-arrow icon to return to the default, head-on view of the tool.

In the upper-right corner is a small + icon. Clicking this icon toggles display of the plane used to show the position of the drawing tool relative to the surface; that is, the effect of the Draw:Imbed setting.

Width: Sets the width of the brush. By default, Width is set to 100%; reducing it produces a brush that's higher than it is wide. Range = 0% to 100%.

Sphere brush with Width set to 40% (left), and with Height set to 30% (right).

Height: Sets the height of the brush. By default, Height is set to 100%; reducing it produces a brush that's wider than it is high. Range = 0% to 100%.

Note: When adding a 3D object, you can control its width and height interactively. First drag in one direction to set the object's overall size, and then, without releasing the mouse button, drag in the opposite direction to decrease the width and height simultaneously.

Depth: Sets the size of the brush on the in-out axis. By default, Depth is set to 1.00. Reducing it gives a shallow brush, while increasing it produces a deep brush. Range = 0.00 to 10.00.

Sphere brush with Depth set to .61 (left) and with Depth set to 2.24 (right). Note: To best see the results of changing the Depth setting, first drag the mouse a short distance in the preview window so that you're viewing it from a slight angle.

Imbed: Sets the position of the brush or object relative to the surface being drawn on. Reducing the Imbed setting moves the brush farther above the drawing surface, while increasing it moves the brush lower in relation to the drawing surface. The position at which the brush intersects the plane in the preview window indicates where the brush will intersect the drawing surface. Range = -2.00 to 2.00.

Note: To best see the results of changing the Imbed setting, first drag the mouse a short distance in the preview window so that you're viewing it from a slight angle. Also, make sure the plane is visible in the preview window; if not, click the + icon in the window's upper-right corner. The plane represents the position of the drawing surface. For example, a Cylinder 3D object is set by default so that its center intersects the object it's drawn on, as shown in this image:

If you want to draw a cylinder sitting on the surface of another object, you need to set Imbed to -1.00, so that its end is above the plane.

The following illustration shows two cylinders with different Imbed settings drawn onto a cube. The cylinder on the cube's top was drawn with Imbed set to .00 (the default), and the cylinder on the cube's side was drawn with Imbed set to -1.00.

Note: By default, a 3D object's pivot point is at its center, and the Imbed setting adds an offset from the center. You can, however, change the location of a 3D object's pivot point using Tool:Deformation:Offset, thus altering the location from which Imbed defines its offset.

Perspective: If Perspective is on, then the model is drawn using perspective, otherwise it is drawn using standard orthographic projection. When perspective is active, the strength of the perspective effect is determined by Draw:FocalLength.

FocalLength: When the Draw:Perspective button is on, the strength of the perspective effect is controlled by this slider. As with camera lenses, a short focal length gives the strongest perspective, and a long focal length the least. However, no magnification takes place. Refract / Blur: It is possible to simulate refractivity of transparent objects through these settings. To use this feature, a 3D object must be drawn with RGB Intensity of less than 100. Refract lets you control how strong the refractive effect is. Higher values result in more refraction. Range = 0 to 100. Default = 0.

Blur lets you determine whether the refractive image is shown clearly through the object or with some blurriness. Range = 0 to 2. Default = 0.

In the image below, a flattened Sphere3D was used as a lens. RGB Intensity was set to 20 and Z Intensity to 80. The GelShaderA material was used. The lower left lens Refract Intensity was at 10. The upper right was at 50. The lower right was at 100 with a Refract Blur of 2.

Note: Only unshaded color is refracted by this feature. If you have color that is created by a material (such as the blue background in the image above) and you wish to have that material-generated color be refracted, you must bake the layer before drawing the refractive object. See Layer:Bake. Note: Unlike material transparency, Refraction cannot see anything on another layer. It will only refract what is on the currently selected layer. (Transparency is an option available for materials in the Material:Modifiers settings.)

Channels

Infront / Behind: The controls in the Channels sub-palette provide additional painting, masking, and 3D options, but it's seldom necessary to modify them while creating artwork, as Infront is automatically turned on when you use ZAdd mode and Behind is automatically turned on when you use ZSub mode. These are basically masking operations that determine which pixols of a new object are drawn based on the object's pixol's depths, as compared to the pixols already on the canvas.

There are four possible combinations of Infront and Behind: One on, both on, or neither on. These masking options can take effect when creating an object or in a Edit/Transform mode (Edit, Move, Scale, Rotate).

When Infront and Behind are both off, no masking takes place and new pixols always appear in front of others—new objects always appear on top of previous objects. When Infront is on and Behind is off, existing pixols can mask newly drawn pixols—new objects are "merged" into the canvas, so their pixols are drawn only if those pixols are closer to the viewer than the current canvas pixols.

When Behind is on and Infront is off, only new object pixols behind existing canvas pixols appear when strokes or objects are drawn to the canvas.

Note: This means that pixols drawn on blank portions of the canvas will not appear, since according to Behind only pixols behind the canvas—the clipping plane—would appear.

When both are on, a new pixol is drawn if it is in front of an existing pixol (including blank canvas pixols) or behind an existing pixol (but a blank canvas pixol will mask it, due to the reason given above.)

The next three items cover all four combinations of Infront and Behind.

Note: In the following illustrations, the cone was drawn first, and the cube was drawn second. Thus, the different options determine how the cone's pixols mask the cube's.

Behind off: Infront off (left) and on (right).

Behind on: Infront off (left) and on (right) R / G / B: These buttons let you affect which of the red, green, and blue channels are affected by the Infront/Behind settings.

Z Tolerance: Sets the range of depth that a tool can affect, based on the depth at the point you click to begin drawing. When Z Tolerance is set to 0, pixols are masked regardless of depth. For any other value, pixols whose Z-axis distance from the pixol at the starting point is less than or equal to the Z Tolerance setting are affected, while those outside that range are not. The effect also depends on the type of tool being used. Default = 1.00. Range = 0.00 to 10.00.

Mat(erial) Overwrite: Specifies the degree to which the current brush's alpha image (used to control the brush's shape) determines how much of the current material is applied along with the depth information. At lower settings, the material is applied to all of the depth information. At higher settings, however, the material is applied only to the brightest pixols in the alpha image. Default = 2. Range = 0 to 100

For example, in the following image, the Simple Brush with Alpha Brush 30 was applied to the sphere with three different Mat Overwrite settings: 2 (top), 50 (lower left), and 100 (lower right). As the Material Overwrite setting increases, the material is applied to successively fewer of the "lower" pixols produced by the brush. Creative use of this feature can produce endless combinations of bump mapping with materials.

Resources

● 2.5D_Basics

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Draw_Palette"

● This page was last modified 18:20, 1 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 9,492 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Edit Palette

From ZBrushInfo

The Edit palette controls undo and redo operations. It can actually undo or redo two types of operations seperately; edits on the canvas, or edits on tools.

Controls

UNDO: Undoes drawing operations, i.e. operations that affect pixols on the canvas. If you are modeling, this control is not available.

REDO: If you have just performed one or more Edit:UNDO operations, REDO will let you cancel them.

Tool:Undo: Allows you to undo operations on tools. This includes not only sculpting operations, but also changes made using settings such as those in Tool:Deformation.

Tool:Redo: Allows you to cancel Edit:Tool:Undo operations.

Note: The Undo and Redo operations may be hidden if neither can be applied.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Edit_Palette"

● This page was last modified 23:03, 3 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,078 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Layer Palette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 About Layers

❍ 1.1 Working with Layers

❍ 1.2 Object Orientation with Multiple Layers

❍ 1.3 Quick Layer Selection

● 2 Controls

About Layers ZBrush lets you work in a number of different layers in a single document. Each layer is the same size as the canvas, and contains pixols independent from those on other layers.

In most drawing programs that offer layers, a pixol is visible only if it's in the uppermost layer, or if it's in a lower layer and all pixols above it (that is, in higher layers) are transparent. In ZBrush, the visibility of any given pixol depends only on its depth, or Z-axis position, compared to the depth of pixols at the some position in the other layers. For example, you could have one layer with vegetation; trees in the background (far away), and shrubs in the foreground (near). If you have characters in another layer that are at an intermediate distance, the characters would appear to be in front of the trees but behind the shrubs.

By default, ZBrush starts with a single layer. You can add and delete layers, work in any existing layer, change the depth of pixols on a layer, and combine and hide layers. As documented in the Material palette description, you must use layers for transparency to be visible in the document.

Working with Layers

The Layer palette shows a thumbnail for each layer. You can have up to sixteen layers.

Below is an image of a canvas containing three shapes on three different layers, and the corresponding display in the Layer palette thumbnails section. As you can see, the parts of objects that are visible depend solely on whether there is something in front of them or not.

The layers thumbnail area shows which layer each object is on.

Three objects on three different layers are visible according to how close their pixols are to the viewer.

The active layer is marked with a yellow outline; simply click on an inactive layer to make it active. In addition, visible layers are marked with a yellow triangle in the upper left corner of their thumbnail. To toggle layer visibility on or off, make it the active layer, and then click again on it to change its visibility. However, the active layer is always visible, regardless of its visibility setting.

Note: To toggle the visibility of all layers, Shift-click the active layer.

In the figure above showing layer thumbnails, you’ll notice that the thumbnails for inactive layers are cropped to show only the non-blank section of that layer; this makes it easier to see what is on that layer. The thumbnail of the active layer is not cropped, so that you can see its contents relative to the overall canvas.

Object Orientation with Multiple Layers

Normally in ZBrush, when you draw a 3D object on top of a non-blank portion of the canvas, the orientation and depth of the object is set in relation to the orientation of the canvas underneath the object. This remains true as you move the object around, to make it easy to, for example, position cylinders representing bolts orthogonally to the surface of a sphere representing a steam chamber. In a multilayered document, this orientation is always done with respect to visible pixols, regardless of which layer they are on.

Note: The Picker palette contains many options for setting or controlling orientation, depth, and other properties of an object as it is drawn on and move around the canvas.

Quick Layer Selection

You can quickly make another layer active without using the layer thumbnails. Press and hold the tilde key (~), and in the document click a pixol that belongs to the layer you want to activate. This feature can be turned off using the Layer:Auto Select switch. Default = on.

Note: After activating a layer with Auto Select, release the tilde key before you start to draw. If you drag the mouse in the active layer with the tilde key held down, you scroll the layer instead of drawing.

Controls

Clear: Deletes all pixols from the current layer.

Fill: Fills the current layer with the current color. Or, if a texture is active, Fill uses that texture instead, resizing it as necessary to fill the canvas.

Bake: Converts all pixols in the active layer into base colors. The pixols retain their position and orientation information. All colors generated by material, shading and render effects are also retained, and the pixols become converted to the Flat Color material.

You can see how this works by starting ZBrush, and then following this procedure:

1. Add a sphere. 2. In the Render palette, click the rightmost icon (Flat Renderer). The sphere's shading is no longer visible. 3. Return to the Preview Renderer to make the shading visible again. 4. Open the Light palette and move a light source (the gray square over the large sphere) while observing how the shading changes. 5. Bake the layer. 6. Move the light source again. The shading no longer changes, because the default FastShader pixols have been converted into base colors in the Flat Color material, which doesn't respond to lighting changes. 7. Activate the Flat Renderer again. The shading remains, because it has been "baked" into the document's base colors.

B Blend: (Bake Blend Amount.) Sets the amount of blending between shaded and unshaded pixols when Bake is performed. This numeric setting determines the percentage of each shaded pixol to be used, and the setting subtracted from 100 determines the percentage of each unshaded pixol to be used. Take, for example, one pixol of a shaded white sphere. The pixol has a shaded pixol grayscale value of 90, and an unshaded pixol value of 255. If you bake the image at 80% B Blend, the software multiplies 0.8 times 90, and adds it to 0.2 times 255, ending up with a pixol grayscale value of 123.

In the following illustration, a sphere is shown with shading (left) and without (center). After baking the layer at 80%, the resulting unshaded image (right) is darker than before, but not quite as dark as the original shaded image.

Shaded Unshaded Baked

Note: Baking a layer at any percentage less than 100 leaves the original shaded pixols (materials, etc.) as they were, and this is combined with the baked image, so the rendered image is usually darker than before. This way, you can set a certain lighting setup, material, etc., bake a percentage of that into the base colors, and then continue modifying lighting, materials, and so on, combining new effects with the original setup. Flip H: Flips the layer contents horizontally.

Flip V: Reverses the layer contents vertically.

Displace H: Lets you move the layer contents horizontally using the mouse slider, or numerically from the keyboard. If you use the mouse slider, you must release the mouse button to complete the displacement. You can also move the layer contents horizontally and vertically by holding the Tilde (~) key and dragging in the document window.

Displace V: Lets you move the layer contents vertically using the mouse slider, or numerically from the keyboard. If you use the mouse slider, you must release the mouse button to complete the displacement. You can also move the layer contents horizontally and vertically by holding the Tilde (~) key and dragging in the document window.

W: (Wrap Mode.) When on, Wrap Mode causes the pixols in a layer to be moved horizontally or vertically to "wrap around" to the other side. For instance, if a layer contains a sphere and you move the layer so the sphere moves past the right side of the document, it reappears on the left side. When off, pixols moved past the edge of document are lost. Default is on.

Displace Z: Lets you move the layer contents in and out (in the 3rd dimension) using the mouse slider, or numerically from the keyboard. You can also move the layer contents on the Z-axis by holding the Tilde (~) and Alt keys and dragging vertically in the document window. Dragging upward moves the layer away from you, and downward moves it toward you.

Delete: Deletes the active layer from the document. This operation cannot be undone. If the document contains only one layer, Delete has no effect.

Create: Adds a new layer to the document in the slot immediately to the right of the current layer. The new layer is automatically activated.

Dup: Adds a duplicate of the active layer to the document. The new layer appears in the slot immediately to the right of the active layer. This is available only if there is at least one empty slot in the Layer palette.

<<: Moves the active layer up one slot, switching positions with the layer in the adjacent slot. Use this function to position layers next to one another in preparation for merging them.

>>: Moves the active layer down one slot, switching positions with the layer in the adjacent slot. Use this function to position layers next to one another in preparation for merging them.

Mrg: Merges the active layer with the one below it. Below shows the top row of thumbnails before and after a merge operation.

Layers before using merge on the third Layers after the merge. layer.

Note: When merging layers, be sure to have Draw:Mrgb and Draw:ZAdd active. Other settings can lead to unusual and normally undesirable results. Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Layer_Palette"

● This page was last modified 18:13, 28 May 2007. ● This page has been accessed 3,525 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Light Palette

From ZBrushInfo Contents

● 1 About Lighting

❍ 1.1 Adding and Adjusting Lights

❍ 1.2 Global Light Mapping

❍ 1.3 Using Global Light Mapping with existing lights

● 2 Controls

❍ 2.1 Light:Type Subpalette

❍ 2.2 Light:Placement Subpalette

❍ 2.3 Light:Shadows Subpalette

About Lighting

Because a ZBrush scene has depth and material properties, virtual lights are required to illuminate the canvas. ZBrush calculates shading based on the number, type, strength, and position of the lights in the scene.

Adding and Adjusting Lights

You can place up to eight lights in a scene and change their properties at any time. All lighting properties are saved with the ZBrush scene file. By default, ZBrush has two lights placed in the scene.

Lights are selected and positioned using the thumbnail part of the light palette, as shown below.

Click on a light to select it, and click again to turn it on or off. Click on the color patch to the left of the Intensity slider to cause the light color to be set to the primary color, or click and drag from the color patch to any other part of the screen to set the light’s color to the color under the mouse cursor when you release the mouse button.

The placement sphere in the upper left of the palette shows where the currently selected light is placed, and also shows the combined effect of all lights currently turned on. Drag the small yellow rectangle to change the placement of the current light; click it to toggle it from a front light to a backlight, or vice versa.

Lighting setups may be saved as ‘.zli’ files and restored in later ZBrush sessions. To save lighting setups, or recall them from saved files, use the Load and Save buttons at the top of this palette.

Global Light Mapping

Global light mapping is an efficient way to reduce the amount of system resources needed to light and render a scene. One global light map can replace many lights or free them for other tasks. You can use global light mapping alone or in addition to normal lighting.

The interface for global light mapping consists of diffuse and specular map previews and their associated intensity sliders:

Load a bitmap in either by clicking the preview window and choosing an image from the expanded texture palette that appears.

To make maps that can be used as described above to replace existing lights, create diffuse and specular bit map images:

1. Light your scene with as many lights as needed. 2. Make a new layer. See Layer Palette. 3. Hide the first layer and draw a white sphere with Material:BasicMaterial applied. See Material Palette. (You may want to do this with a copy of the BasicMaterial. See Material:CopyMat.) 4. Reduce the Material:Modifiers:Ambient value to zero. 5. Reduce the Material:Modifier:Global Ambient value to zero. 6. Reduce Material:Modifiers:Specular value to zero. 7. The white sphere, lit by your lighting setup, provides all the information needed for diffuse light mapping. Capture the scene with the MRGBZ grabber. (See Tool:MRGBZ Grabber.) The bit map will be added to your Texture palette. 8. Load the diffuse map by clicking on the diffuse map preview in the Light palette and choosing the map you just created. 9. Reduce the Material:Modifiers:Diffuse to zero and return Material:Modifiers:Specular to its previous value. 10. The white sphere, lit by your unique lighting setup, provides all the information needed for specular light mapping. Capture the scene with the MRGBZ grabber. The bit map will be added to your Texture palette. 11. Load the specular map by clicking on the specular map preview in the Light palette and choosing the map you just created. 12. Hide the current layer and activate the original layer. 13. Turn off all lights. Increase Light:Gdi and Light:Gsi until you duplicate the effect of normal lighting.

Using Global Light Mapping with existing lights

You can create interesting effects by adding to your existing lighting. For example:

Adding a diffuse light map at 50% intensity

Controls

All of the properties that follow (except Global Ambient, Global Diffuse and Global Specular) are set for each selected light.

Light Color (color patch): Set by selecting a color with any of the color pickers and clicking on the color patch. You can also click and drag from the patch to the canvas to pick a color. Light color is visible on the preview sphere, but you must be in Best Render mode to see its effect in the scene.

Intensity: Sets the strength of the selected light. Range = 0 to 2.0.

Intensity Curve: The intensity curve controls the intensity fall-off from the center of the light to the edge of its effect.

Global Ambient: Sets the amount of non-directional ambient light. Range = 0 to 100. Default = 15.

Note: The amount of ambient light is also set locally for each material in the scene. See the Material Palette.

Light:Type Subpalette

Sun: Infinitely far away, the Sun light illuminates the entire scene with parallel rays. The intensity of the light does not diminish with distance, so all objects in the scene receive an equal amount of light.

Point: The point light has a position in the scene and its intensity falls off with distance, so objects further away from the light are illuminated less. Omnidirectional, it casts rays in all directions

Spot: Illuminates in the same manner as the point light, except that it has direction. Place the light as described previously to control direction.

Glow: Illuminates all objects within the radius of the light equally, regardless of the direction they are facing.

Sun Point Spot Glow Radial: Usual light behavior is to light the areas facing the light brighter than areas facing away from the light. The Radial light illuminates the areas facing away from the light. This makes it a perfect “fill” light when placed at the same position as the main light.

Main light only (left), Main and Radial lights (right).

Main and Radial Main light only. lights.

Light:Placement Subpalette

P: Click and drag from the position patch to the canvas and release to place a light. You can also enter the position of the light numerically with the Pos sliders.

X Pos / Y Pos / Z Pos: Use to set the x, y, and z positions of the selected light.

All three sliders above use a coordinate system where 0,0,0 is the center of the canvas. The X and Y values of +1 or -1 represent the outermost edges of the canvas. Z has a range of +4 to –4 because the total depth of the canvas is four times its greatest X or Y dimension. Thus, the default position is at the exact top center of the canvas and 1/4 of the total scene depth away from the camera.

Placement modifiers are disabled for sun lights, since they have no position.

Radius: Use the slider or click and type in the radius of the illumination. Range = 0.01 to 4.

Light:Shadows Subpalette Shadow: Enable shadow casting for the light selected here. Global shadow casting must also be turned on to render shadows. See Render:Render Shadows.

Intensity: Controls the opacity of the shadow. Range = 0 to 100. Default = 75.

Shadow:Shadow Curve: Shadow Curve takes effect when rendering using Render:Best. The shadow curve determines how shadows fade. For example, to achieve very black, hard-edged shadows, set the shadow curve to be a straight line from the lower left to the top left, and then a straight line from the top left to the top right.

Length: Since ZBrush scenes are not fully 3D, there is no information about the back sides of objects. The shadow renderer treats all objects as if they had infinite depth and the length of the shadow is set here. Range = 10 to 500. Default = 50.

ZMode: A shadow-casting mode that does take object depth into account and produces superior results in some cases. If an object is only partially visible, it may not produce complete shadows.

Uni: The Unified Shadows slider reduces noise artifacts from standard ZMode shadows, producing more unifed shadows and faster rendering.

If the Rays slider is set to a small value, this can produce more painterly shadows.

This slider is active only when the ZMode button is pressed.

Blur: Determines how crisp or soft the edges of the shadow are. Higher values result in softer edges. Range = 0 to 7. Default = 4. ----

Rays: Activates the Global Shadows feature by specifying the number of shadow-casting rays that are used to evaluate each pixol of a shadow. Higher values result in more accurate shadows, but with an increased rendering time. For best results, ZMode should be active if the number of rays is set to higher than 1. Range = 1 to 500. Default = 1.

Aperture: Affects the sharpness of shadow edges by simulating a narrow or a broad stream of light for each ray. Higher values result in wider light rays and softer shadow edges. Range = 0 to 180. Default = 90.

Note: The following points apply:

● The higher the number of rays, the lower you will usually want your Aperture to be set to. For example, 500 rays at the default Aperture will cause the shadows to all but disappear. ● It is recommended to set a scene’s lighting up with only 1 ray in order to allow quick adjustments. ZMode with only one ray will often result in unusual light artifacts such as holes in the shadows. Don’t worry about this. When you are satisfied with the lighting, increase the number of rays and decrease the shadow Aperture before doing your final render. ● Material such as with the Diffuse Curve shown can result in extraordinary renders when used in conjunction with Global Shadows. Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Light_Palette"

● This page was last modified 22:56, 3 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 3,980 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Macro Palette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 Macros

● 2 Recording and Saving Macros

● 3 Loading Macros Automatically

● 4 Controls

● 5 Predefined Macros

● 6 Tips

Macros

A macro is a recording of a short set of ZBrush commands, such as the menu choices you might make when setting up a favorite combination of stroke, brush, and alpha. The macro menu lets you easily define and reuse macros, and can automatically load your macros when you start ZBrush in the future. This means you can:

● Create and reuse custom brushes by recording the alpha, sculpt setting, texture, etc. ● Automate commonly used repetitive sequences of actions, for example to set various constant values before exporting or importing a model. ● Apply exactly the same brush stroke or strokes to different parts of a model. Recording and Saving Macros

To record a macro, press the Record New Macro button. Once you've pressed this button, all actions you take until you stop the macro recording, will become part of the macro, and will 'play back' when the macro is used in the future.

To finish a macro press the End Macro Recording button. A Save File dialog will come up, and you can save the macro (as a text file) for later use. The macro will also appear in the Macro menu, under the same name as the filename you specified.

Loading Macros Automatically

ZBrush has a special macro directory, ...\ZBRUSH\ZStartup\Macros, where ZBRUSH is the main ZBrush folder on your computer. When macros are saved in this folder, they will be loaded automatically every time ZBrush starts.

In addition, the Macros folder can hold subfolders that can also contain macros. This subfolders will appear as submenus in the Macro menu, allowing you to organize even quite large collections of macros.

Controls

New Macro: Starts recording a macro. Once recording has been started, all actions will be recorded until End Macro Recording is pressed, at which time you'll be prompted to save the macro to a file.

End Macro Recording: Stops recording a macro, and prompts you to save the recorded commands to a file. The saved macro will immediately be available in the Macro menu. If you save the macro in the special ...\ZBRUSH\Macros directory (where ZBRUSH is the ZBrush main directory), then that macro will be reloaded automatically whenever ZBrush starts, and will appear in the macro menu.

Reload All Macros: Reloads all macros from their text files. This can be used to force reloading of macros that have been edited in an external text editor. In addition, the Macro menu may contain subdirectories containing macros; these will appear as submenus when they are loaded in the Macro menu.

Predefined Macros

ZBrush 3 comes with several predefined brush macros (which appear in the Macro:Brush submenu). These give examples of one use of macros, and by looking in the Macros directory, you'll also see how the subdirectory structure defines the macro submenu structure.

Tips

● A macro will only record settings and commands that you make after you start recording it. Make sure to set all desired values when recording a macro (even if they are already at the desired value) so that they will be set when the macro is played back. ● Macros are intended to be a quick way to automate simple and repetitious tasks. If you want to do more than macros permit, you might want to look at ZScripting.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Macro_Palette"

● This page was last modified 18:39, 1 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,302 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Marker Palette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 Introducing Markers

❍ 1.1 Marking Objects

❍ 1.2 Using Markers

❍ 1.3 Deleting Markers

❍ 1.4 Additional Information

● 2 Controls

● 3 Further Links

Introducing Markers

Markers are used to remember the position, orientation, and other properties of a 3D object on the ZBrush canvas. They can be placed using the Mark Object Position button in the Transform menu whenever a 3D object is on the canvas, and once placed, show up as a small square that appears in the canvas area whenever the cursor is close to the marker and Marker:Show is on. You may have multiple markers on the canvas.

Two markers close together on the canvas. The cursor is not visible in this screenshot, but is over the bottom right marker, which is highlighted to indicate it will be activated if the mouse is clicked.

When the marker square is clicked, a 3D tool is placed on the canvas at that marker position, and those properties of the original tool that are active in the Marker palette are transferred to the new 3D object. Note that (with Marker:Tool off) the new object does not have to be the same tool as the marker was originally placed for. For example, you can draw a cube, set a marker for it, clear the canvas, select the cone tool, and then click on the marker. You will end up with a cone in the same position and with the same orientation as the original cube.

A common use for markers is to assemble several 3D objects into a single mesh—the ZBrush equivalent of a Boolean union operation. See Multimarkers.

Marking Objects

To mark the active 3D object's position, click the Mark Object Position button. You'll see a marker move from the palette to the object, indicating that the marker has been set. Then, when you position the cursor near the marker, a square appears, indicating a marker position.

Using Markers

When you position the cursor over a marker position, the marker is highlighted, indicating that the marker will be used as the center of a 3D object if you click the marker. In addition, information about the marker's index number, tool, position, size and color appear in the note bar above the canvas.

Information displayed in the note bar when the cursor is near a marker.

When a marker is placed, it remembers as much information about the original object as possible. When a marker is clicked, it places the new object using only the information for which switches in the Marker palette are on. For example, if Marker:Material is on, then the new object will be given the material of the original object, and if that switch is off, the new object will have its own material assigned.

In the illustration below, the sphere was drawn first, then a marker was added, and then the marker position was used to draw the torus and cylinder concentrically with the sphere.

Deleting Markers

Use the Unmark Object Position button to remove a marker from the document. If the document contains only one marker, clicking the Unmark Object Position button will remove that marker. If the document contains more than one marker, follow this procedure:

1. Determine which marker you want to remove. 2. Use that marker to draw any 3D object. This tells ZBrush that this is the marker to remove. 3. Click Unmark Object Position to delete the marker. 4. If you like, use Undo (Ctrl+Z) to remove the object you drew in step 2.

Additional Information ● If you use a marker to draw with the Dot stroke type (use a single click), the tool also remembers any scaling you've applied to the object you used to place the marker. If you've created a drawing using scaled and rotated 3D objects, placing markers for each object, you can then re-create the drawing using different colored objects by undoing all the objects and using the Dot stroke type with the markers, changing colors as you go. ● You can set up to 256 markers in a document. ● Markers are saved with the document. ● Objects are not saved with the document, but you can take advantage of markers and ZBrush's Layers feature to replace custom objects after you've saved a document. For example, say you create a person's head and a hat, save each as a separate .ztl file, and then place the two objects on separate layers, applying markers to each. Later, you might decide you want to modify the hat. You can go back and clear the layer containing the hat, reload the object into that layer, place it at the original position using the marker, and then apply any transforms and/or editing you like. ● The Edit:Clear function (Ctrl+N) does not remove markers from the document. ● See the Preferences:Marker subpalette for options to set when using markers.

Controls

The Marker Palette contains controls for turning markers on and off and for enabling recall of various properties. ----

On/Off : Turns all markers on or off without deleting them.

Reorder: Reverses creation order of markers. When two markers occupy the same position, the most recently created will be selected when you click on the position. This permits you to selected the oldest marker.

Delete All: Deletes all markers in the file.

Show: When Show is off, there is no indication that you are near a marker, but when directly over it, it is highlighted. Each Marker remembers all of the properties below, but only the items selected will be recalled.

Tool: Enables recall of the tool used to create the marked object. Click once on the marker to shift to the marked tool, then a second time to re-create the marked object.

Draw: Enables recall of the drawing mode used to create the marked object; for example ZAdd, ZCut.

Position: Enables recall of the position of the marked object.

Normal: Enables recall of the orientation of the marked object.

Color: Enables recall of the color of the marked object.

Material: Enables recall of the material of the marked object.

Texture: Enables recall of the texture of the marked object.

Further Links Marker Master: A ZScript to make markers more powerful and easier to use.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Marker_Palette"

● This page was last modified 16:50, 3 July 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,308 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Material Palette

From ZBrushInfo Note: The image of the Material Palette to the right was chosen with a selected material that has a fairly small number of modifiers. Some materials will have fewer, and other materials may have more. Contents

● 1 General Controls

● 2 Shaders

● 3 Material Properties

❍ 3.1 Basic Properties

❍ 3.2 Specularity

❍ 3.3 Transparency and Reflection

❍ 3.4 Noise

❍ 3.5 Other Properties

❍ 3.6 Cavity Properties (A/B Settings)

● 4 MatCap Modifiers

General Controls

General controls are those that appear in the palette no matter which material is selected.

Show Used: Remove all thumbnails from the main palette except for those currently used on surfaces in the document. (All materials will still be accesible through the popup inventory list.) This is a convenient way to determine whether you've used a particular material.

Load: Load a new material from a disk file into the active material slot. A number of material files are included with ZBrush (located in the ZMaterials folder), and you can create and save your own with the Save function.

Note: Loading a material from disk completely replaces the active material, not only in the palette but on any pixols or models that use that material. If you haven't saved the material, you can get it back by quitting and restarting ZBrush. Save: Store the active material to disk in the ZMaterial (.zmt) format. This material can be reloaded using the Load button.

R: Reduces the number of small thumbnails shown in the palette; use it if your palette is getting unwieldy due to the number of thumbnails. This does not affect the popup (full) inventory of materials.

CopyMat/PasteMat: Allows you to copy one material and paste it in to replace another. You can do this if you want to change the replaced material wherever that material is used in the scene. It's also useful for getting a copy of a starting material, so you can modify the copy but not affect the original.

The following controls appear at the end of the the Material palette. Depending on the selected material, not all of them may be present.

Dif/Spec/Ambi/Cavi: These color pickers choose the colors that affect rendering when the various ambient, specular, diffuse, and cavity colorization modifiers are nonzero.

Material Texture/Surface Bump: These two thumbnails, to the left of the Render and Cursor buttons, allow you to choose a texture that will be used in certain modifiers (an environment map for those effects that use an environment, such as reflectivity is the most common use) and an alpha that will be used with the Canvas Bump modifier.

Render/Cursor: Both of these perform a Best Render on the scene, allowing you to see those effects which do not show up at other render levels. Render will render the entire scene. With Cursor, you click on the Cursor button, and drag to a point in the scene; a 128x128 pixol area around that point will be rendered. This can be much faster than a full render.

CopySH/PasteSH: These allow you to make a copy of a single shader channel (S1, S2, S3, or S4), and paste that into another shader channel—either in the same or a different material. You cannot paste into a nonactive channel, but by copying and pasting a material with all four channels active, and then pasting into the copy, you can create any combination of shader channels you like.

Shaders

S1/S2/S3/S4: Up to four shader channels that go into defining the look of a material. The settings of the shader channels are combined sequentially to produce the final effect of the material. Each channel may have a different group of settings.

For example, in the Dots0metal1 material, the first shader, S1, lets you specify a dot pattern, which the {{Ctl|Color Bump|| control in S2 can then act upon.

S1 shader. Dots from S1. Dots after S2

A number of materials in ZBrush use one or more special shaders in addition to the basic shaders. In general, these are found in the lower-numbered shader slots (S1, and possibly S2 and S3). In most cases, their functionality is self-evident.

For example, the GradientSky shader, shown in the following illustrations, lets the material simulate a reflected sky gradient and ground plane. The HorizonSharpness setting appears only in the rendered image.

Gradient Sky settings.

Gradient Sky applied to a sphere and rendered. Material Properties

Each shader channel in a material has a collection of material properties, which are typically sliders, colors, or textures. The properties in a shader define the effect that shader has on the overall material.

Basic Properties

Setting Ambient to 25 gives the sphere a 25% gray color

Ambient: Ambient controls the intensity of ambient lighting, which will brighten or darken the model as a whole.

Diffuse is set to 100, 75, and 50, from left to right. The light is from the upper right, and the Ambient and Specular components are set to 0.

Diffuse: Diffuse sets the intensity of diffuse lighting. Diffuse lighting comes from one or more light sources, and illuminates surfaces to a lesser or greater amount, depending on how much the surface is facing away from, or facing towards, the light source. Diffuse effectively makes all light sources dimmer or brighter, when calculating diffuse lighting.

This blue sphere has Colorize Diffuse set to green.

Colorize Diffuse: Normally, the diffuse reflection of light on a surface is based on the surface color. The Colorize Diffuse property lets you specify an arbitrary color for diffuse reflection. To use it, set the numeric value of Colorize Diffuse and the diffuse color in the Dif color patch.

Specularity

Specular: Specular controls the intensity of specular lighting as a whole. Specular lighting is responsible for glints and hotspots on glossy or partly glossy surfaces, and depends on the angle of the surface with respect to both the light source and the camera. Specular highlights normally show the color of the light source but not the color of the surface; this is the way most specular reflections work. Increasing the value of the Metalicity slider will increase the amount of surface color that shows through. (Metals, such as copper and gold, typically add their own colors to specular highlights.

SpecularCurve: Similar in effect to DiffuseCurve, this can be changed to obtain banding, inversion, or other unusual effects in areas of specular reflection. Basically, it modifies the normal smooth change (from bright to dim) from the center of a specular highlight to its edge.

Metalicity: Specular highlights on non-metallic surfaces are typically white, while those on metallic surfaces (such as copper or gold) are typically the color of the surface. As Metalicity is increased, specular highlights will take on more and more of the color of the underlying surface.

The yellow sphere has Colorize Specular set to orange.

Colorize Specular: Normally, the specular reflection of light on a surface is based on the light source color (and, if using the Metalicity modifier, the surface color). The Colorize Specular property lets you specify an arbitrary color for specular reflection. To use it, set the numeric value of the slider, and the specular color in the Spec slot.

Transparency and Reflection

Transparency: Controls how much light passes through a material. However, obtaining transparency in ZBrush depends on more than just the adjustment of this slider. Please look into the ZBrush main documentation for details.

TransCurve: Determines the amount of light that passes through a surface as the angle of the surface changes. However, obtaining transparency in ZBrush depends on more than just the adjustment of this slider. Please look into the ZBrush main documentation for details.

Reflectivity: Turns on reflection for a material, which allows the material to reflect a texture (reflection map), or to show reflection in a ray-traced scene. Please see the ZBrush main documentation for more details.

ReflectCurve: Changes the reflectivity of points on a surface depending on the grayscale intensity of those points; the left side of the curve determines the reflectivity of dark points, while the right side determines the reflectivity of light points. This can be used to implement surfaces of varying reflectivity, such as a metal surface that is rough in some places and smooth in others. The comments for the Reflectivity control also apply. Add Reflection/Sub Reflection: These are special modifiers found in the S1 channel of the ReflectedMap material. The Add Reflection and Sub(tract) Reflection controls let you reflect brighter and darker colors by different amounts. Add Reflection controls the reflection of pixels brighter than underlying pixols, while Subtract Reflection controls the reflection of pixels darker than underlying pixols. For instance, if Add Reflection is higher than 0, and Subtract Reflection is 0, it means that the S1 reflection can only make the surface brighter, never darker. An example of this would be a shiny metallic surface, like a car. Further, the two controls work on a differentiated RGB basis; that is, the software compares the brightness values individually for the red, green, and blue components of each pixel/pixol pair.The curve works normally, with the right side affecting the pixols facing the viewer, and the left side affecting the pixols facing sideways.

Spherical: This setting determines the extent to which ZBrush uses surface curvature to warp a reflection. In the real world, a reflection in a curved surface is distorted, and by default ZBrush reproduces this distortion accurately. To reduce the amount of distortion, lower the Spherical setting.

Env.Reflection: The source images for environmental reflections are created in the Render:Environment subpalette. The amount that the image created there is reflected on current material is set here.

Noise

Recursive noise (left), standard noise (right).

. Noise: Adds noise to the shader, which will result in the shader's effect being uneven; for example, this might give the result of a rough surface, or cause a regular pattern to become irregular.

● The farther the Noise value is from 0, the greater the amount of noise. ● Positive values of the Noise setting give standard noise, created using fractal math. ● Negative values give recursive noise, often resulting in more complex patterns.

NoiseCurve: The noise curve lets you specify which parts of the noise pattern use the surface color and which parts use black. The default curve, going from the lower-left corner to the upper-right corner of the graph, gives the greatest variation in the noise pattern. You can reverse the shading of the pattern by making the graph go from upper- left to lower-right. Countless other variations are available by editing the curve.

Noise Radius: The noise radius setting, determines the resolution of the noise effect. Lower settings provide finer-grained noise, such as a sanded surface, while larger values result in larger noise patterns, such as a jagged surface.

Other Properties

Color Bump: This setting uses variations in the surface coloration to create a bump-map effect. With negative values of Color Bump, the lighter parts of the surface are higher than the darker parts. With positive values, the effect is reversed. The Bump effect takes into account any surface coloration, whether produced by painting the surface, applying a texture, applying Noise, or any combination thereof.

Gel Shading: The Gel Shading value can be 0, 1, or 2. The effects are:

● 0: Normal. ● 1: Jelly Bean, emulates a transparent effect. ● 2: Gel, emulates a different transparent effect.

ZBrush comes with several Gel-based materials that provide a useful starting point for experimenting with this effect. Add an object, go to Edit Object mode, and apply one of the materials: GelShaderA, GelShaderB, or ReflectionGelShader. Then change the Gel Shading setting to see the differences.

Flat Color (left), Basic Material with High Dynamic Range of 5 (center) and 10 (right)

High Dynamic Range: Most art programs use a range of 256 shades between black (0,0,0) and white (255,255,255). Nature isn't constrained by those rules, and the high dynamic range setting simulates this. Black remains black, but all other colors are intensified. The closer to white they are, the greater the effect. This setting is very useful for any image with a bright visible light source, such as the sun. In most cases, it is best to turn off the material's Ambient setting and set Metalicity to 100.

Cavity Properties (A/B Settings)

These settings allow you to specify that recessed areas of a surface render differently than raised areas. This can be used to intensify shadows, achieve the effect of raised areas of a surface being more weather-beaten or more polished, and so on.

Cavity Detection: Cavity Detection tells a material how strongly to distinguish between raised (normal) areas of a surface and recessed areas (cavities). With cavity detection on (greater than 0), the various A and B settings will then apply to normal and cavity areas respectively.

Cavity Transition: When Cavity Detection is greater than 0, this controls how sharp is the transition between cavity and non-cavity areas; this will in turn will result in softer or sharper cavity effects.

Intensity A: Determines the brightness of the normal (raised) areas of a surface in cavity- enabled materials.

Intensity B: Determines the brightness of the cavities in cavity-enabled materials.

Monochromatic A: As the value of this slider is raised the colors applied to raised (A) areas of a cavity-enabled material will be dampened. At its maximum setting, the colors will reflect grayscale intensity only.

Monochromatic B: As the value of this slider is raised the colors applied to cavity (B) areas of a cavity-enabled material will be dampened. At its maximum setting, the colors will reflect grayscale intensity only.

A: A color or texture that will apply to normal (raised) areas of a cavity-enabled material, in proportion to how raised the surface is. (Transitional surfaces will receive a mix of A and B properties.)

B: A color or texture that will apply to cavity areas of a cavity-enabled material, in proportion to how recessed the surface is. (Transitional surfaces will receive a mix of A and B properties.)

MatCap Modifiers

The MatCap material properties only have an effect when you are creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool. They are used to refine your MatCap sampling, to apply global effects that can't be easily achieved by sampling single points, and to modify your material if you want it to look different in some ways from the image from which you've sampled. Modifiers:MatCap: Occasionally, materials may not immediately show the effect of changing a MatCap modifier. In this case, press the MatCap button to force the materials to update. If none of the changes you make are affecting the screen, you should check that the Tool:MatCap tool is active, and that a sample of the material you're modifying has been painted somewhere on the canvas.

Modifiers:Gloss: The Gloss setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool; it makes the material more or less glossy. Depending on the samples used to define the material, the useful range of the Gloss slider may be only a part of its full range, so experiment to find the best range for your use.

Modifiers:Intensity: The Intensity setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool; it increases or decreases the intensity of the material, which generally achieves the effect of viewing the material under a brighter or dimmer light. Depending on the samples used to define the material, the useful range of the Intensity slider may be only a part of its full range, so experiment to find the best range for your use.

Modifiers:Saturation: The Saturation setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool; it increases or decreases the color saturation of the material to make a material more or less ‘vivid’ in the way that saturation normally does. Depending on the samples used to define the material, the useful range of the Saturation slider may be only a part of its full range, so experiment to find the best range for your use. Modifiers:Contrast: The Contrast setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool; it increases or decreases the contrast (dynamic range) of the material to make a material harsher or more subtle. Depending on the samples used to define the material, the useful range of the Contrast slider may be only a part of its full range, so experiment to find the best range for your use.

Modifiers:Backlight: The Backlight setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool; it creates a backlight (key light) effect that can be used to enhance the silhouette of an object. Depending on the samples used to define the material, the useful range of the Backlight slider may be only a part of its full range, so experiment to find the best range for your use.

Modifiers:Specular: The Specular setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool; it increases or decreases the specularity of the surface. Try this if you find you are not able to get the results you want by adjusting the specularities of the individual MatCap sample normals. Depending on the samples used to define the material, the useful range of the Specular slider may be only a part of its full range, so experiment to find the best range for your use.

Modifiers:Sample: The Sample setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool. It defines a value used internally in MatCap computations; experimentation is the best way to see if it will be useful to you. The useful range of the Sample slider may be only a part of its full range, so when first experimenting with it, make sure to change its value in small increments.

Modifiers:Refine: The Refine setting works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool. It defines a value used internally in MatCap computations; experimentation is the best way to see if it will be useful to you. The useful range of the Refine slider may be only a part of its full range, so when first experimenting with it, make sure to change its value in small increments.

Modifiers:MatCap Falloff: The Falloff curve works only when creating or modifying a MatCap material using the Tool:MatCap tool. It's best to experiment with this curve to see if it will be useful to you. Changes in the falloff curve may cause large changes in the appearance of the material, so when first experimenting, change the curve just a bit at a time.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Material_Palette"

● This page was last modified 17:01, 3 July 2007. ● This page has been accessed 8,847 times. ● Privacy policy ● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Movie Palette

From ZBrushInfo Contents

● 1 Introduction

● 2 Controls

❍ 2.1 Modifiers Subpalette

❍ 2.2 Overlay Image Subpalette

❍ 2.3 Title Image Subpalette

Introduction

The Movie palette allows you to create (or view) ZBrush tutorial movies. You can also export . MOV files by harnessing QuickTime®, create turntables of your models and timelapse videos of your sculpting process.

Controls

Load Movie: Loads a .zmv ZBrush movie file.

Save As: Saves the current movie as a .zmv movie with a new file name.

Export: If you have Apple's Quicktime package installed, this will bring up a dialog allowing you to choose options and export a .mov video file. You can download Quicktime freely: for OS X or for Microsoft Windows.

Play Movie: If you've recorded a movie in the current session of ZBrush (and not deleted it), this button will play back the movie.

Record: Begins or resumes recording a movie.

Turntable: Causes your model to begin rotating; you can then record a movie (or resume recording of a paused movie) that will show the model's rotation. Clicking on this button multiple times will change the rotation speed. How long the rotation goes on depends on the setting of Spin Cycles. The rotation will also end on other user actions, including pressing the Pause button.

Pause: Pauses recording of the current movie. You can resume recording with the Record button, export or save the movie, or delete the movie at this time, in preparation for recording another movie.

Snapshot: Inserts a snapshot of the display into the current movie. Snapshot Time determines how long the snapshot shows in the movie.

TimeLapse: When on, frames will be recorded only when the mouse button is released. This will result in a much smaller file.

Doc: If chosen, only the document (canvas area) will be recorded.

Window: If chosen, the entire window will be recorded.

Large: A shortcut for setting Movie:Modifiers:Frame Size to 1x.

Medium: A shortcut for setting Movie:Modifiers:Frame Size to 0.5x.

Small: A shortcut for setting Movie:Modifiers:Frame Size to 0.25x.

Delete: Deletes the currently recorded movie. Use this if you want to start making another movie.

Modifiers Subpalette

Modifiers:Frame Size: Factor by which the actual recorded images will be scaled to produce the final movie. To minimize the amount of space your movie takes, set this just high enough to show the amount of detail you need to show.

Modifiers:Auto Zoom: When any value other than 0, only a portion of the window or document will be shown, and the camera will pan to follow the mouse. The size of the area around the mouse that is shown is determined by the value of this slider. There's a certain amount of tolerance built in; small mouse movements won't cause the camera to pan, which reduces unnecessary panning.

Modifiers:Recording FPS: Number of frames per second used when recording the movie. Small values reduce the movie file size, but result in a jerkier animation.

Modifiers:Playback FPS: Determines how quickly the movie will play back. If this is equal to the Recording FPS, the movie will play at the speed it was recorded at; if this is double the Recording FPS, the movie will play at double speed; and so on.

Modifiers:Snapshot Time: When inserting a snapshot into the movie using Snapshot, determines how long the snapshot will be visible when the movie is played. Modifiers:Skip Menus: When on, menus will not appear in the animation.

Modifiers:Antialized Capture: Antialiases output, at possible cost of increased processing time, blurring of pixel-level details, and perhaps a small effect on file size. Normally this should be left on.

Modifiers:OnMouse: When OnMouse is active, then the movie will record only those actions that occur when the mouse is active. Basically, this means that clicks on controls, and sculpting and moving the model will be shown, but not movements of the mouse around the screen or over controls.

Modifiers:Cursor Size: Can be used to increase the size of the cursor used in the movie, which can make the cursor more noticeable is situations where it would otherwise be difficult to see.

Modifiers:ZCodec: ZBrush may offer a choice of different compression mechanisms, with different encoders appropriate for different uses. For most purposes, leave this at its default setting.

Modifiers:Quality: To obtain maximum quality in the smallest possible file, ZBrush uses an internal compression algorithm specialized for recording movies in ZBrush. This determines the quality of the movie. Higher settings will result in a more detailed and accurate image when the movie is played back, but will result in a larger file size.

The following controls are used with the Turntable feature.

● Modifiers:SpinFrames: The number of frames that will be used for a full rotation of the model. This setting, together with Recorded FPS, determine how quickly the model will appear to rotate.

● Modifiers:Spin Cycles: Determines how many times the model will rotate before the rotation stops. You can interrupt the rotation by performing another action.

● Modifiers:X: Controls axis of rotation to the X axis. You can activate more than one rotational axis at a time to tumble the model, but using only one at a time to rotate the model is probably more common. Modifiers:Y: Controls axis of rotation to the Y axis. You can activate more than one rotational axis at a time to tumble the model, but using only one at a time to rotate the model is probably more common.

● Modifiers:Z: Controls axis of rotation to the Z axis. You can activate more than one rotational axis at a time to tumble the model, but using only one at a time to rotate the model is probably more common.

● Modifiers:Scrn: When on, the axes of turntable rotation are screen axes, not model axes.

Overlay Image Subpalette

This subpalette can be used to overlay an image of your choosing onto a movie, typically to identify the source of the movie, or ensure that credit for it cannot be claimed by others.

Overlay Image:Custom Overlay Texture: This leftmost thumbnail defines an image that will be overlaid on the recorded movie.

Overlay Image:Custom Overlay Mask: This rightmost thumbnail defines a mask that will be used to define the areas of the movie frame the image defined by Custom Overlay Texture will be overlaid on.

Overlay Image:LR Pos: Controls the left-to-right positioning of the overlay on the movie screen. Takes a value from 0 to 1, and controls the distance from the left edge of the screen (0 is left, 1 is right). The overlay will always be fully displayed within the screen area; these values control the position of the overlay when the overlay is smaller than the screen.

Overlay Image:TD Pos: Controls the top-to-bottom positioning of the overlay on the movie screen. Takes a value from 0 to 1, and controls the distance from the top edge of the screen (0 is top, 1 is bottom). The overlay will always be fully displayed within the screen area; these values control the position of the overlay when the overlay is smaller than the screen.

For example, with a small overlay icon and values of 0 and 0, you'd end end up with the icon (your logo, perhaps) displayed in the top left corner of your movie. Overlay Image:Opacity: Controls the opacity of the overlay image.

Title Image Subpalette

This subpalette allows you to put a title image (defined by the thumbnail image—click to select an image) into your movie.

Title Image:Custom Title Image: Defines the image to use as the title image. Click to select.

Title Image:FadeIn Time: How long (in seconds) the movie underneath the title image will take to fade out at the beginning of the movie. The fade out at the beginning of the movie begins with the title image opaque on the screen, and fading out over time by becoming transparent and revealing the movie underneath. A value of 0 will result in no beginning image.

Title Image:FadeOut Time: How long (in seconds) the movie underneath the title image will take to fade in at the end of the movie. The fade in at the beginning of the movie begins with the title image transparent on the screen, and fading in over time. A value of 0 means there will be no end title image.

The fades occur while the movie is playing. So, if you have for example a three second fade-in, make sure that nothing important in the first three seconds of your movie is obscured by the title image, as the movie fades in under it. This behavior allows you to make your movies more interesting by having them showing actions in the background while the fades take place. Title Image:Text1: When a Text button is pressed, you will be prompted to type a line of text that will display on your beginning and end title screens. You can define up to three lines of text; Text1 will display as the topmost line on the title screen, Text2 will be the middle line, and Text3 will be the bottom line of text on the title screen.

Title Image:Text2: When a Text button is pressed, you will be prompted to type a line of text that will display on your beginning and end title screens. You can define up to three lines of text; Text1 will display as the topmost line on the title screen, Text2 will be the middle line, and Text3 will be the bottom line of text on the title screen.

Title Image:Text3: When a Text button is pressed, you will be prompted to type a line of text that will display on your beginning and end title screens. You can define up to three lines of text; Text1 will display as the topmost line on the title screen, Text2 will be the middle line, and Text3 will be the bottom line of text on the title screen.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Movie_Palette" ● This page was last modified 17:56, 29 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 12,697 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Picker Palette

From ZBrushInfo

The Picker palette controls how a new brush stroke will interact with the existing orientation, depth, color, and material values of the pixols on the canvas. Like the Stroke types, choosing different picker combinations will change the behavior of each tool, effectively giving you hundreds of tools to use. Contents

● 1 Brush Stroke Properties

● 2 Controls

❍ 2.1 Layer Controls

❍ 2.2 Orientation Controls

❍ 2.3 Depth Controls

❍ 2.4 Color Controls

❍ 2.5 Material Controls

Brush Stroke Properties

The Picker palette allows you to control aspects of four different properties of your brush stroke; the color, material, depth, and orientation. For more details on colors and materials, see the Color Palette and the Material Palette. Below, we explain further about the depth and orientation properties.

ZBrush brush strokes affect not only the color of the pixols they pass over, but also the depth— distance from the viewer—of the pixols. This leads to the question of how the depth is calcuated for each pixol. Is it absolute? Is it relative to the pixol underneath? The Picker palette allows you to choose between these in various ways.

Brush strokes can also orient themselves with respect to the angle of the surface underneath. This is most obvious when drawing with 3D tools. For example, use the SimpleBrush to draw some depth on the canvas, and then pick the Cylinder tool and the DragDot Stroke type (see the Tool Palette and Stroke Palette for further information on these), and drag an instance of a cylinder over the painted surface to place it. If the Picker settings are at their default, you'll see the cylinder's orientation change in response to the orientation of the underlying surface. The Picker palette gives you other ways of setting a stroke's orientation.

As shown above, the Picker palette contains four groups of controls that affect four different properties. These are discussed by group, below. Controls

Layer Controls

ZBrush offers multiple layers of pixols. (See the Layer Palette for more details.) When drawing a stroke that takes properties from underlying pixols, we might want to choose which layers are evaluated when looking for those properties. In addition, there is a nonobvious but important question of how the dynamic action of painting should affect picked properties. The layer controls address these issues.

Active: When active, only the active layer is evaluated when assigning values to a stroke. To put it another way, this causes property picking to behave as if all layers but the active layer are invisible, and properties are picked only from what is visible (the active layer). ----

Other: When active, all other layers (but not the active layer) are evaluated when assigning values to a stroke. For example, if you are picking colors with this setting on, the active layer is blue, and there is one other layer that is green, then your brush strokes will be green—even in areas where the active layer hides the inactive layer. This allows you to bring up properties from "underneath" the active layer.

All: This is the most intuitive setting. When active, all layers are evaluated when assigning values to a stroke, so properties are obtained from the pixol underneath the brush, whatever its source.

Example of Active/Other/All

The following illustration shows the effect of the Active/Other/All settings. In all three images, the three spheres are on different layers, and a single stroke is drawn from left to right across the three spheres, with the depth setting set to follow the depth underneath the brush. (See the Z Cont setting below).

In the first case, Active is set, and the depth of the stroke only follows the green sphere in the active layer. So, it goes behind the other two spheres. In the second case, Other is set, and the stroke only follows the spheres in the other layers, so it is behind the green sphere in the active layer. In the third case, All is set, and the stroke follows the depths across all layers and so appears on top of all spheres.

Dynamic: When making a stroke, ZBrush can evaluate one of two images to assign values to the stroke. ZBrush retains an image before the stroke and an image as the stroke is being made. When Dynamic is on, information is taken from the image as it is being made, meaning that changes occuring as the stroke is being made affect the picking of properties for that stroke. If this setting as off, then all picking takes place from the copy of the original (pre-stroke) canvas.

This is particularly noticeable with depth. If Dynamic is on, then a continous stroke can "heap depth" upon itself, meaning that simply by drawing the brush across an area multiple times, you can build up the depth at that area. With dynamic off, the depth does not do this. This can be visible even in simple strokes, as below.

A single stroke with the SimpleBrush, with Dynamic off (left) and on (right).

Orientation Controls

The orientation section of the picker determines how new brush strokes and objects align themselves to the existing pixols on the canvas. Default = Continuous.

Once Ori: Orients the new stroke perpendicular to the surface at mouse down and keeps that orientation throughout the stroke.

Cont Ori: Evaluates the pixols under the cursor and orients the stroke perpendicular to them continuously.

Constant Orientation Selector: Orientation is determined by this "virtual pencil" tool and stays constant throughout the stroke. All objects and strokes will be created at this orientation. Click and drag on the pencil tool to turn on Constant orientation and set the angle.

Note:By default, the constant orientation selector is perpendicular to the canvas, which means you see only the eraser of the pencil; so initially, this thumbnail appears to contain just a pink circle.

Example of Orientation Controls

The same stroke with three different orientation settings. In all cases, the stroke goes from top left to bottom right. In the first case (Ori Once), the stroke is perpendicular to the surface of the sphere only at its start, and maintains the same orientation thereafter. In the second case (Ori Cont), the stroke is continuously perpendicular to the surface of the sphere. In the third case (Constant Orientation Selector), the orientation of the stroke is constant and independent of the surface of the sphere.

Depth Controls

The Depth section of the picker determines how new brush strokes and objects position themselves relative to the depths of existing pixols. Default = Continuous.

Once Z: Aligns to the surface depth at mouse down and keeps that depth throughout the stroke.

Cont Z: Continuously evaluates the pixols under the cursor and adjusts to their depth.

Z(constant depth setting): This is a switch, slider, and picker, all in one. If it is on, then depth of the stroke is determined by the value of this slider. You can enter a value numerically, by sliding, or click and drag to the canvas and “pick” depth values from it. Example of Depth Controls

In the illustrations below, the 'S' stroke was drawn across the sphere in a continuous motion, from top left to bottom right. In the left, Once Z was chosen, so the stroke was at a continous Z-depth determined by its start; it is visible only when it comes out of the sphere at the same depth. In the middle case, it was drawn with Z Cont on, so the depth of the stroke follows the surface of the sphere. In the last case, the stroke is at a constant depth set by the Z slider, and the slider is closer to the camera than is the sphere's surface under the start of the stroke.

Color Controls

The Color section of the picker determines how new brush strokes and objects are colored relative to the existing pixols color. Drag from the color thumbnail onto the canvas to select a color from the canvas. • • • ----

Once Col: Evaluates the surface color at mouse down and keeps that color throughout the stroke.

Cont Col: Continuously evaluates the pixols under the cursor and takes on their color.

Color Picker: This is both a switch and a picker. When on, color is determined by the main color set in the Color palette, regardless of what is underneath the mouse. You may click and drag from this patch to any other point in the ZBrush window to select the color at that point. Example of Color Controls

In the illustration below, the 'S' is drawn from top right to bottom left. In the first figure, Once Col is on, and the stroke maintains the color under its starting position throughout the stroke. In the second figure, Cont Col is on, and the stroke takes the color of whatever pixol is under the mouse cursor as the cursor moves. In the third figure, the Color Picker has been used to set a color that is independent of the underlying color.

Material Controls

The Material section of the picker determines how new brush strokes and objects are assigned material properties relative to the existing pixols material.

Once Mat: Evaluates the surface material at mouse down and keeps that material throughout the stroke.

Cont Mat: Continuously evaluates the material under the mouse and uses that material in the stroke at that point.. Material Picker: This is both a switch and a picker. When on, the stroke uses the material selected in the Material palette, regardless of what is under the mouse. You can click and drag from this patch to any point on the canvas to select the material at that point. This is not a popup selector; you will not get a material inventory popup by clicking on it.

Example of Material Controls

In the examples below, a single stroke was drawn across all three spheres, from left to right. In the leftmost case, Once Mat was set, so the stroke used the material of its starting point throughout. In the middle case, Cont Mat was set, so the stroke changed its material to match whatever was underneath the mouse. In the final case, the Material Picker was used to pick the same material as used in the first sphere, and that material was therefore used for the entire stroke.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Picker_Palette"

● This page was last modified 03:52, 20 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,654 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Preferences Palette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 About

● 2 Controls

❍ 2.1 Config Subpalette

❍ 2.2 Interface Subpalette

❍ 2.3 Custom UI

❍ 2.4 Icolors Palette

❍ 2.5 Picker Subpalette

❍ 2.6 Mem Subpalette

❍ 2.7 Marker Subpalette

❍ 2.8 ZSphere Subpalette ❍ 2.9 Zscript Subpalette

❍ 2.10 Importexport Subpalette

❍ 2.11 Draw Subpalette

❍ 2.12 Tablet Subpalette

❍ 2.13 Performance Subpalette

❍ 2.14 File Subpalette

❍ 2.15 Transform Subpalette

❍ 2.16 Transpose Subpalette

❍ 2.17 Misc Subpalette

❍ 2.18 Utilities Subpalette

About

The ZBrush Preferences palette contains controls that set overall application behavior. They are typically set to match your preferences or needs, and then left alone after that.

Preference settings are not saved automatically; for information on how to make your preferences the default for ZBrush, or on how to save and load individual preferences settings files, see the section on the Preferences:Config menu below.

Controls

Init ZBrush: Restores all palettes and document data to their default conditions. It does not affect colors or palette positions; only what is contained within those palettes. Since this clears all document data, as well as any customized tools and features, you should save your work beforehand. ZBrush will ask for confirmation before executing this command.

Config Subpalette

Config:Restore Custom UI: If you have defined AND SAVED a custom user interface, but then switched back to the standard interface with the Restore Standard UI button (or otherwise switched back to the standard UI; sometimes tutorial scripts will do this), the Restore Custom UI button restores your saved custom configuration.

Config:Restore Standard UI: If you have customized your user interface, this button allows you to easily switch back to the standard user interface. AS LONG AS YOU HAVE SAVED YOUR CUSTOMIZATIONS using the Store Config button, you can later go back to the custom UI with the Restore Custom UI button.

Load Ui: Allows you to load interface preferences from a saved file. This includes palette locations, window sizes, and Float Menu layouts. Holding down the Shift key when clicking this button allows you to load interface colors from a saved configuration file.

Save Ui: Saves your configuration preferences to a named file. This lets you create custom layouts for different kinds of work that you might do. For example, you could create one layout for modeling and another for texturing

Store Config: Saves all your configuration preferences as defaults in ZBrush's main Config file. These default will be automatically be loaded every time you start ZBrush.

[[Image:|right|180px]]

Interface Subpalette

In ZBrush 3, this subpalette has been rearranged for a better grouping of controls.

Buttons Size: Allows you to make ZBrush buttons (and other similar controls) larger or smaller, to make them easier to press or to display more at one time. You'll need to restart ZBrush for this to take effect. Don't forget to press Preferences:Config:Store Config before restarting, so that any new interface changes are saved.

Interface:Popup Info: If this is on, then when you float your cursor over any ZBrush interface item, a popup appears displaying the name of the item and its shortcut key combination (if applicable). Holding the Ctrl key provides additional popup help information.

Interface:Large Popup: Displays the popup help text in a larger font size. Default is Off

Interface:Iconized: When on, palettes will be shown with icons across the top of the workspace. When off, the palettes will be represented by text, which takes up less vertical space. Interface:Show Values: Causes all sliders to display their numeric values at all times. Slider names are moved to the right and truncated, if needed, for space. Default is On

Interface:Auto Collapse: If Auto Collapse is active, ZBrush attempts to keep all palettes within the visible vertical space of the left and right panels. If space is needed to accommodate a newly expanded palette, ZBrush automatically collapses other palettes. Default is Off. If this button is off, then all palettes remain in their current states until you change them. To access palettes that have been pushed off the top or bottom of the screen, click and drag in any blank space within the panel. This will allow you to slide the panel up or down.

Interface:Left Tray/Right Tray: Allows only one palette at a time to be open in the corresponding panel. If another palette is opened, the currently open one will automatically collapse. Default is Off

Interface:Accelerated: Affects the speed at which the left and right panels will scroll up or down. When active, the scrolling moves faster as the scrolling distance increases. Default is On

Interface:Float Menu: When on, the ZBrush custom floating menu is shown; This is the customizable area around the ZBrush canvas.

Note: The float menu is normally turned off or on with the Tab key. Interface:Colorize: Changes the tab color of a block of docked Float Menu items. To change the color of a block of items, click its tab and then click this button. The tab color will change to the active Main color.

Interface:Quick Menu: Momentarily displays the Quick Menu--a specialized menu that contains the most commonly needed interface items in one compact space. As soon as an item is selected or the cursor moves off of the Quick Menu, this menu disappears.

Note: You can also activate the Quick Menu from anywhere on the screen by pressing the spacebar. The menu will appear at the mouse location, making it unnecessary to even go to a palette for the most commonly used interface items. Note: When the Stencil is active, spacebar will bring up the Coin Controller instead of the Quick Menu. Interface:IconsUpdateDelay: Various icons in ZBrush update to show changes to the objects they represent; for example, 3D Polymesh tool thumbnails update to show sculpting done on the tool. Continually performing such updates would slow the program, so this option sets the number of seconds from the time an object is changed to the time the change appears in its icon.

Interface:Auto Pulldown: When on, ZBrush menus (palettes) will display automatically whenever the mouse passes over the menu title or icon. When off, the menu title must be clicked for the menu to display.

Interface:Show Alt Doc View: If enabled, you can split the ZBrush canvas into two alternate views; the alternate view can be opened by the gray bar that appears above the canvas area.

Interface:PulldownMenuOpacity: The pulldown menus (palettes) have an adjustable opacity, set with this slider.

Interface:DisabledItemsOpacity: Disabled items have a different opacity. The default settings make them almost invisible; increase this value if wish to more clearly see the text/icon of a disabled item.

Interface:Pulldown Border: Once activated, but pulldown palettes stay visible until the mouse moves a certain distance outside them. Increase this value if you find that the palettes are often disappearing when you don't want, as you move the mouse around, and decrease it if you find they are annoying difficult to close.

Interface:Notes Fade In-Out Time: Sets the amount of time (in seconds) it takes for popup and other types of notes to fade in or out. A value of 0 means notes appear and disappear instantly.

Interface:Document Fade: Sets the amount of time (in seconds) it takes for a newly chosen model to fade in and replace the previous model. A value of 0 means the change is instantaneous.

Custom UI Custom UI:Enable Customize: Turn Enable Customize on to allow you customize your user interface by Ctrl-dragging controls. When UI customization is enabled, you can also create new menus and drag controls into them.

Custom UI:Create New Menu: Use this to create a new menu with the following steps: 1) Press Create New Menu. 2) Enter the name for the new menu into the dialog box that appears. 3) After entering the name, the new, empty menu will show up in the menu bar. In that menu, press the small circle in its top left corner to expand it into the tray area beside the canvas. 4) You can now Ctrl-drag other interface elements into the new menu in the tray. In addition, you can create submenus in your custom menus by Ctrl-dragging the Preferences:Custom UI:Custom Submenu control into your new menu, and can name custom submenus by Ctrl-clicking on their names.

Custom UI:UI Filler 11: ZBrush lays out custom menus by filling them left to right then top to bottom, similarly to the way we write on a page. You can Ctrl-drag this 'filler' control into a custom menu to lay out your controls more precisely. The filler will not be visible (it will appear as a plain menu background to the user), but ZBrush won't put any other controls in the area it occupies.

Custom UI:UI Filler 21: ZBrush lays out custom menus by filling them left to right then top to bottom, similarly to the way we write on a page. You can Ctrl-drag this 'filler' control into a custom menu to lay out your controls more precisely. The filler will not be visible (it will appear as a plain menu background to the user), but ZBrush won't put any other controls in the area it occupies.

Custom UI:UI Filler 31: ZBrush lays out custom menus by filling them left to right then top to bottom, similarly to the way we write on a page. You can Ctrl-drag this 'filler' control into a custom menu to lay out your controls more precisely. The filler will not be visible (it will appear as a plain menu background to the user), but ZBrush won't put any other controls in the area it occupies.

Custom UI:UI Filler 41: ZBrush lays out custom menus by filling them left to right then top to bottom, similarly to the way we write on a page. You can Ctrl-drag this 'filler' control into a custom menu to lay out your controls more precisely. The filler will not be visible (it will appear as a plain menu background to the user), but ZBrush won't put any other controls in the area it occupies.

Custom UI:UI Filler 22: ZBrush lays out custom menus by filling them left to right then top to bottom, similarly to the way we write on a page. You can Ctrl-drag this 'filler' control into a custom menu to lay out your controls more precisely. The filler will not be visible (it will appear as a plain menu background to the user), but ZBrush won't put any other controls in the area it occupies.

Icolors Palette This section of the Preferences palette allows you to completely customize the ZBrush color scheme. Every interface element can be modified in this way, allowing you to suit the interface to your personal tastes.

To change any item color, simply select that color in the Color palette and then click the item’s color box in the IColors list. The interface will immediately update with that color so that you can see your changes. These boxes also serve as pickers: click and drag to any point on the canvas or interface to pick that color.

The purposes of most of these controls is apparent, or can be easily determined by floating the mouse over the control and holding the the Ctrl key to access popup help; make sure Preferences:Interface:Popup Info is on for the popup help to display. Below, we explain the less obvious aspects of the controls in this subpalette.

Highlight: Edges of interface buttons are defined by a highlight raised edge effect. Use this slider to control how strongly that effect is displayed. Range is 0 to 100. Default is 50.

Gradient: Interface buttons are drawn with a slight light-to-dark gradient from top to bottom; this slider determines the strength of the gradient. Range is -100 to 100 (negative values draw from dark to light). Default is 25.

Color-Related Sliders: These permit global color adjustments that affect all interface items.

Apply Adjustment: This finalizes slider adjustment by resetting the sliders to 0 without changing the colors of the interface, and so allows you choose a new base set of colors for the interface.

Icolors:Load UI Colors: Allows you to load a file (previously stored using Save UI Colors) to set the colors of the various UI elements.

Icolors:Save UI Colors: Allows you to save the UI color settings as a file. This file may then be loaded by you or other users using the Load UI Colors button.

Picker Subpalette

This sets a few properties that have to do with Picking. See the Picker Palette.

Sample Size: Defines the area sampled for all attributes set using the Picker palette.

Auto Front: New objects are drawn on the canvas at a depth of 0, making it easier to manipulate them without sliding out of sight behind the clipping plane. If this button is un-pressed, objects will be drawn on the clipping plane, instead. Default is On. Note: The back clipping plane depth is calculated based on the canvas height and width.

Mem Subpalette

The Mem palette has to do with memory handling, which in turn affects performance. In particular, if your computer has a large amount of memory, you may want to increase some or all of these settings.

Compact Mem: This value represents the memory limit (in Megabytes) at which ZBrush will execute a Compacting Memory routine and begin writing to a special file on the hard disk instead of using RAM. After 5 seconds of inactivity or when switching to another application, ZBrush will automatically compact memory. Range is 32 to 1024. Default is 256 For optimal performance, this value should be set at or near the amount of RAM that is available to ZBrush. Setting it to a lower value will cause ZBrush to compact memory more often, slowing down your workflow. Setting it to a higher value will force ZBrush to only use the available RAM and never write data to the hard disk.

Doc Undo: Sets the minimum number of undos saved for document changes. If more undos are possible with the current amount of System memory, ZBrush will save them. If the minimum number is set high enough to use more than the available System memory, ZBrush will compact the memory and save the undos.

Tool Undo: Sets the minimum number of undos saved for tool changes. If more undos are possible with the current amount of System memory, ZBrush will save them. If the minimum number is set high enough to use more than the available System memory, ZBrush will compact the memory and save the undos.

MaxPolyPerMesh: Sets the larges number of polygons (in millions) ZBrush will allow before it issues a warning that the mesh is becoming to large. If you get such a warning but want to increase the number of polygons in your mesh, simply increase this value. Of course, more polygons demand a more powerful system. Compact Now: Compacts memory immediately.

Marker Subpalette

Marker Radius: The maximum distance that your cursor can be from a marker before its indicator square disappears. See the Marker Palette.

Show Info: When on, a popup info box will appear shown info about a marker when your mouse is close to that marker.

ZSphere Subpalette

Zscript Subpalette

Also see the the ZScript Palette

Auto Record: When on (the default), automatically initiates a ZScript recording session when ZBrush is launched. The recorded script can be saved with the ZScript:End Rec button.

Importexport Subpalette The ...Flip... and ...Switch... switches affect how 3D models are exported and imported, and are fully explained in their popup help. Use these if you find that the models you import or export come in upside down, flipped from side-to-side, etc.

Import Polygroups: When Import Polygroups is active, any .obj file being imported will have its polygroups converted to ZBrush polygroups. If this is off, polygroup information will be discarded.

Import Mat As Groups: Some 3D programs (Maya® is an example) allow .obj files to be saved with "material groups" information. (The name may vary depending on the application.) When Import Mat As Groups is active and an imported file contains material groups, those groups will be converted to polygroups after the file is imported.

The NormalMapFlip... switches affect normal map generation; use them if you find that normal maps you create do not have the proper orientation, or the normal coordinate system used by ZBrush does not correspond to that used in your external program. Fuller explanations are given in the popup help for these controls. These options affect normal map generation; they will not change normal maps that already exist.

Draw Subpalette

Max Brush Size: Sets the Maximum brush radius. SeeDraw Sizein the Draw Palette. Increase the size to cover very large areas. Range is 128 to 512. Default is 128.

Adots: Switches to 'dots mode' automatically when drawing or transforming large objects if the width or height of the active 3D object exceeds the amount set; this improves performance. Dots mode actually displays 3D objects as an unfilled polymesh; the name comes from an earlier version of ZBrush. Range is 1 to 10,000 pixols.

The following properties apply when Transform:Pf (polyframe draw mode) is on.

Note: Some of these options may not show up on 3D objects already on the canvas until the object is rotated or otherwise acted upon.

Grpc: When pressed and Dots mode is active, the 3D wireframe is shown with colors assigned to each group.

Pframe: Determines the opacity of the polyframe outlines when drawn. A value of 0 means that they are not visible, while 100 means that they appear as completely solid lines. Range is 0 to 100. Default is 50.

Pf Color: Click this box to set the color of the polyframe lines to the currently selected Main color. Like other pickers, you can drag from this box to any point in ZBrush.

Variable PFO: (variable polyframe opacity): Used to visualize the multiple subdivision levels you can work with in ZBrush. If on, polyframe borders at higher subdivision levels will be less emphasized than those at lower levels. Pf Antialiased: Determines whether polyframe lines are drawn with antialiasing, which makes them appear smoother.

PFill: The opacity of polygon surfaces when in polyframe mode.

PFGray: If on, polygroups are drawn as shades of gray, not in color.

PFillSat: Sets the saturation of colors used when polygroups are drawn. The following three controls apply when viewing multi-subtool meshes using transparency.

Draw:MaxDepth: The MaxDepth preference is used in conjunction with the Transform:Activate switch (also called Transform:Transp.), which causes subtools to be partially or fully transparent in meshes composed of multiple subtools. MaxDepth acts as a sort of 'fog' or culling control; it determines a distance beyond which subtools will not show through closer surfaces. Increasing MaxDepth shows more of your scene, but may make it more confusing if there are many subtools behind one another.

Draw:ActiveOpc: The ActiveOpc preference is used in conjunction with the Transform:Activate switch (also called Transform:Transp.), which causes subtools to be partially or fully transparent in meshes composed of multiple subtools. ActiveOpc determines the opacity of the selected (active) subtool. Setting it to a higher value will emphasize the selected subtool.

Draw:InactiveOpc: The InactiveOpc preference is used in conjunction with the Transform:Activate switch (also called Transform:Transp.), which causes subtools to be partially or fully transparent in meshes composed of multiple subtools. InactiveOpc determines the opacity of the unselected (inactive) subtools. Setting it to a lower value will make it easier to identify the active subtool.

Tablet Subpalette

This section will be grayed out if a graphics tablet is not found on the computer. Tablet:Lazy Pressure: This is the tablet intensity analog of LazyMouse. When it is at a value above 0, then the effective pressure used for drawing will be smoothed out by averaging it with intensity values over the most recent part of the stroke. The result is strokes that aren't as subject to blob effects from the pen jittering or slipping in the artist's hand.

In the right eyebrow, you can see a fairly abrupt transition from a thin to a thick eyebrow, where I couldn't change the pressure smoothly enough over the course of the stroke. With Lazy Pressure set to about 0.25 for the left eyebrow, this problem was eliminated. (Both eyebrows were drawn using the LazyMouse feature.)

You can also use this feature for some interesting other effects. For example, if you set LazyPressure at its maximum, and then draw a stroke at full pressure, the stroke painted onto the canvas will be light where it starts, and thicken very smoothly until it is at its maximum intensity.

Experiment with this setting to find what is best for you. Normally, you'll want it just high enough to eliminate undesirable variation in your strokes. Higher values will give you more smoothing, but conversely allow less fine control. At very high values, you'll want to practice for a bit to be able to 'plan out' your strokes and make use of the averaging over the previous part of the stroke. Tablet Size: Sets the percent change of the brush size as the tablet pen moves from minimum to maximum pressure. Negative values mean the brush size will become smaller as pen pressure increases. Range is -1 to 1. Default is 0.75.

Imbed: Sets the percent change of imbedding from maximum to minimum pressure. Full pressure is imbed value set in Draw palette. Range is 0 to 100. Default is 0.75. Imbedding controls the z-depth at which tools draw; seeDraw:Imbedfor details.

Intensity: Sets the percent change of intensity from maximum to minimum pressure. Full pressure is intensity set in Draw palette. Range is 0 to 100. Default is 0.75.

Color: Various of the drawing tools make use of this. If it is nonzero, then as the pen pressure changes, the color being drawn with will change smoothly from between the primary and secondary colors. Full pressure is Main color. Minimum pressure is Secondary color. Range is 0 to 100. Default is 0.

Performance Subpalette

These options affect the performance of ZBrush.

MultiDraw, MultiRender: These switches should be set to off unless ZBrush is running on a multiprocessor system. In a multiprocessor system, MultiDraw on tells ZBrush to make use of more than one processor during normal drawing and editing, while MultiRender tells is to use more than one processor when doing Best renders. Leaving these off on a multiprocessor system may speed up the performance of programs other than ZBrush.

QuickAndDirtyEdit: Suppresses various rendering effects while 3D edit mode is on (i. e. when Transform:Edit is on), to speed up interaction with the model.

QTransThreshold1/QTransThreshold2/QEditThreshold: These three sliders set polygon counts, in millions, at which subdivision models will temporarily be displayed at lower subdivision levels while certain actions are taking place. This can speed interaction with high-poly-count meshes.

If the number of polygons being displayed in the mesh exceeds the threshold set in QTransThreshold1, then whenever the object is being moved, scaled, rotated, or sculpted, it will display only those polygons at the subdivision level one below the subdivision level at which it is being worked with (the setting in Tool:Geometry:Sdiv).

QThreshold2 is similar to QThreshold1 but reduces the display level two levels from the value in Tool:Geometry:SDiv.

QEditThreshold is similar to QThreshold1 but reduces the display level whenever you are in 3D edit mode, not just when manipulating an object while in 3D edit mode.

Performance:Test Multithreading: Runs a test to see if ZBrush performance will benefit from enabling its multithreading code. This information can be useful to Technical Support if you are having difficulties with ZBrush.

Performance:H Priority: Sets ZBrush to run as a high-priority process. It's usually better to let ZBrush make this decision.

Performance:N Priority: Sets ZBrush to run as a normal-priority process. It's usually better to let ZBrush make this decision.

File Subpalette

Transform Subpalette

AutoPerspectiveScale: Controls how much perspective distortion is applied to a model. Transpose Subpalette

These settings affect the appearance and behavior of the Transpose control elements visible when in transpose mode.

Transpose:Circles Radius: Sets the size of the yellow circles that show the midpoints and endpoints of the transpose control lines.

Transpose:3D: If on, the size of the circles indicating the endpoints and midpoint will be affected by their distance from the camera; they will be smaller they farther they are from the camera (viewer).

Transpose:Snap Max distance: When drawing the transpose control lines, the endpoints of the line snap to a surface under or near the mouse position. When the mouse is over the canvas background, this setting determines how far it can be from the model's surface, and still have a transpose endpoint snap to that surface.

Transpose:Rotation Steps: This setting defines the degrees that ZBrush will snap to while pressing shift and moving the end of Transpose's Action Line. If set to 10 the transpose line will snap to every 36 degrees of rotation.

Note: The following two settings apply any time a mask is applied to a model, not just in Transpose mode. Transpose:Mask Blur Strength: When mask edges are blurred (by Ctrl-clicking on a masked area of the model), this determines how much blurring is actually done.

Transpose:Mask Sharpen Strength: When mask edges are sharpened (by Ctrl- clicking on a masked area of the model), this determines how much sharpening is actually done.

Misc Subpalette

Use ZFolders: If on, open/save dialogs will automatically start at the the default ZBrush folder for the tool/document/config file/etc. you are opening or saving. If off, the dialogs will come up pointing to the most recently used folder. Generally, you'll leave this on if you want to organize most of your work within the document folders contained in the ZBrush application directory, and turn it off if you prefer project-based or another type of organization.

Misc:ActivePoints: Informational display only; the number of points in the active subtool of the current mesh.

Misc:Sub Tools: Informational display only; the number of subtools in the current mesh.

Misc:TotalPoints: Informational display only; the total number of points in the current mesh (including all subtools).

Utilities Subpalette

This presents various bits of information, and also a place to store a few ZScripted values.

Timing Info: When on, a window appears at the bottom of the screen that shows timing and other internal information. This information is useful to Technical Support when evaluating your installation.

The first five sliders are read-only; in order, they are:

View Tablet Pressure: Shows current tablet pressure.

View Keyboard Status: Shows numeric code for each keyboard key.

View Mouse H Position: Shows current horizontal position of mouse. View Mouse V Position: Shows current vertical position of mouse.

View Window ID: Shows numeric ID code of the interface window under the cursor.

The last four sliders can be used by ZScripts to temporarily store values. Be cautious with this— other scripts may also be using these sliders. Memory blocks are usually a better place to hold ZScript data.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Preferences_Palette"

● This page was last modified 22:04, 2 July 2007. ● This page has been accessed 9,239 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Render Palette

From ZBrushInfo The Render palette controls which methods will be used to calculate the shading of scenes. Lighting, color, and material properties are evaluated, and render-level special effects such as fog and depth cueing are included.

Contents

● 1 Controls

❍ 1.1 Antialiasing Subpalette

❍ 1.2 Depth Cue Subpalette

❍ 1.3 Fog Subpalette

❍ 1.4 Fast Render Subpalette

❍ 1.5 Preview Shadows Subpalette

❍ 1.6 Environment Subpalette

❍ 1.7 Adjustments Subpalette

Controls Cursor: When you drag the Cursor button to the canvas, a sample area centered around the mouse release position is rendered using the Best Renderer. To re-render the same location after making changes, press Ctrl-R.

Render: Causes ZBrush to render the entire document with the current settings.

Best: Used for the final render, the Best Renderer uses the best (and slowest) methods to produce the highest quality image. Shadows must be rendered using this renderer.

If you try to work in the Best Renderer mode, ZBrush will automatically switch to the Preview Renderer. There's one exception to this; if you have a floating object in the scene, you can make changes to its material properties and the Best Renderer will re-render only the object and its bounding box.

Preview: The default renderer, used when composing a scene. It will show most properties of the scene (exluding shadows, complex fog, light colors, depth cue and some other effects). It does show transparency, but the Best renderer is significantly better in most situations.

Fast: The fast renderer does not render materials, only basic shading. This makes it ideal for modeling, since it is very fast and shows surface details due to geometry, not materials.

Flat: Allows you to see the scene with no shading, just basic color. 3D Shading: Controls the amount of shading in the Preview render. 0%= flat shading, 100%= fully shaded. Default = 100%

Fog: Click to enable the fog effect. The properties of the fog are adjusted in the Fog sub-palette. Used only by the Preview (which displays only basic fog) and Best Render mode.

Depth Cue: Click to enable the Depth Cue effect. Depth Cue simulates the blurring that results from an object being too close or too far away from a camera. The properties of the depth cue are adjusted in the Depth Cue sub-palette. Used only by the Best Render mode.

Flatten: When active, all document layers are rendered as one layer. This button must be turned off before material transparency effects can be rendered. Default = on.

Shadows: Click to enable shadow rendering. At least one light in the scene must have shadow casting enabled also. Used only by the Best Render mode.

SoftZ: Evaluates which material is assigned to each pixol. Activating Depth Adjustments can clean up intersections between multiple objects in your final render. Enable only when needed. Used only by the Best Render mode.

SoftRGB: Blurs edges in the image to reduce edge artifacts (blockiness). See Antialiasing, below. Used only by the Best Render mode. Antialiasing Subpalette

Blur: Sets the intensity of the blur. Range = 0 to 100%. Default = 100%.

Edge: Controls at which edge sharpness eges are antialiased. Range 0 to 100%. Default = 25%. A setting of 0% will antialias only very sharp, edges, 100% will blur the entire image.

Size: The number of pixols evaluated when producing the blur. Larger sample sizes produce more blur. Range = 1 to 8. Default = 1.

Super Sample: Causes ZBrush to render the same image several times and then average the results for better final quality. Range = 1 to 4. Default = 1. A setting of 2 causes four renders, 3 causes eight renders, and 4 causes 16 renders.

Note: The best possible antialiasing is produced by working on a canvas that is twice the final size. After rendering, press the Zoom:AA Half button to display the image at half size using optimal antialiasing. When displayed in this mode, the image will be exported at half size with antialiasing intact.

Depth Cue Subpalette

Rendering with depth cues is only available in Best Render mode. Depth cues cause the image to be rendered with different levels of bluriness at different depths. This can be used to, for example, simulate the effect of a lens that focuses sharply at only one depth, or atmospheric haze that causes distant objects to appear blurrier.

Depth Cue Alpha: You can modify the depth cue effect by using Depth Cue Alpha. Click the Depth Cue Alpha patch to access the texture sub-palette and choose a texture. It will be converted to grayscale alpha and stretched over the entire canvas area. Each pixol of the alpha will determine the intensity of the depth cue at that location. White areas give the strongest depth cue effect, black areas give no effect. Useful for restricting the depth cue effect to a selected area of the canvas.

Intensity: Sets the intensity of the blur at its far point. Range = 0 to 100%. Default = 100%.

Softness: The number of pixols averaged to produce the blur. Higher numbers produce more blur. Range = 1 to 8. Default = 4

Depth1: Depth1 is the near point of the depth cue effect. There is no blurring at this distance. The blurring begins as depth increases. Type in the Z depth directly or click and drag from the slider to the canvas to set the value; pick an object at the depth where you want the depth cue to begin and release the mouse button. Depth2: Depth 2 is the far point of the depth cue effect. There is full blurring at this distance. Type in the Z depth directly or click and drag from the slider to the canvas to pick a depth.

On the left, a fish rendered without depth cuing. On the right, the same fish rendered with Depth 1 set on its nose and Depth 2 set on its tail.

Depth Cue Curve: Clicking on the collapsed Depth Cue Curve area of the sub-palette expands the Depth Cue Curve to its full size. You can adjust the intensity of the depth cue between the near point (Depth1) and far point (Depth2) by adjusting the curve.

Note: By setting a high depth cue intensity at each end of the curve, and a low intensity at an intermediate point, you can achieve a "lens effect", where depths both in front of and behind the focal plane of lens of the virtual camera are blurred.

Fog Subpalette

The controls of this palette can be used to obtain a fog effect; different depths or areas of the canvas may be partly or fully obscured by a foggy or smoky haze.

Intensity: Sets the intensity of the fog at its far point. Range = 0 to 100%. Default = 100%.

Depth1: Depth1 is the near point of the fog effect. There is no fog effect at this distance. The fog effect becomes stronger as depth increases. Type in the Z depth directly or click and drag from the slider to the canvas to set the value; pick a object a pixol at the depth you want the fog to begin.

Depth2: Depth2 is the far point of the fog effect. There is full fog at this distance. Set the value as for Depth1.

Fog Color 1: Fog Color 1 is the color of the fog at the near point of the fog effect. Set by selecting a color with any of the color pickers and clicking on the Fog Color 1 patch. You can also click and drag from the Fog Color 1 to any part of the canvas or interface to pick a color.

Fog Texture: You can also colorize the fog by using a bitmap texture. You can produce other environmental effects, such as smog, by using a fog texture. Click and hold on the Fog Texture patch to access the texture sub-palette and choose a texture. It will be stretched over the entire canvas area. Each pixel of the texture will determine the color of the fog at that location.

Note: A Fog Texture will override Fog Color 1 and Fog Color 2 settings.

Fog Alpha: You can further modify the fog effect by using Fog Alpha. Click and hold on the Fog Alpha patch to access the texture sub-palette and choose a texture. It will be treated as a grayscale alpha and stretched over the entire canvas area. Each pixel of the alpha will determine the intensity of the fog at that location. When the alpha is white, there is maximum fog. When the alpha is black, there is no fog effect.

Fog Color 2: Fog Color 2 is the color of the fog at the far point of the fog effect. Set as for Fog Color 1

Left: A fish with with no fog effects. Right: Same fish with fog effects, Depth 1 set on its nose, Depth 2 set on its tail and a light blue Fog color 1 and Fog Color 2.

Fog Curve: Clicking on the collapsed Fog Curve area of the sub-palette expands the Fog Curve to its full size. You can adjust the intensity of the fog between the near point (Depth 1) and far point (Depth 2) by adjusting the curve.

For example, setting the left end of this curve to the max value and the right end to the min value would render a scene with the closest objects being the foggiest, and the most distant being the clearest.

Fast Render Subpalette

Since the Fast Renderer does not take materials into account, an ambient and diffuse setting for the entire scene is set here.

Ambient: Determines how much ambient (unshaded) light is rendered for all objects on the canvas. Used only by the Fast Renderer. Range = 0 to 1. Default = 0.3.

Diffuse: Determines how much diffuse shading is applied to all objects on the canvas. Used only by the Fast Renderer. Range = 0 to 1. Default = 0.8.

Preview Shadows Subpalette

Preview Shadows:ObjShadow: Controls the intensity of the model's real-time shadows.

Preview Shadows:BackShadow: Acts as a drop shadow cast by the current model and projected onto the canvas. The slider value controls the intensity of the shadow.

Preview Shadows:Length: Increases the scan range that ZBrush uses to create the shadow. A larger Length will lengthen and soften the shadow but will also increase computation time.

Preview Shadows:Slope: Sets the azimuth of the light used to project the shadow. All shadows fall at a 45 degree angle across the canvas. This cannot be altered. Slope controls the angle in Y at which the light casts the shadows. Zero means that the light is directly overhead of the model. A larger number means that the light is more in front of the model.

Preview Shadows:Depth: Deepens and enlarges the shadows. The effect of Depth depends on the setting for Slope; at small settings of Slope, changing Depth will have little effect.

Environment Subpalette

The ZBrush Environment palette allows you to globally reflect a single image or color on all the objects in the scene with reflective surfaces. The amount of environmental reflection is set in the Material palette for each material.

Off: Turns off Color, Texture, or Scene reflections. Default = pressed (environmental reflections off).

Color: When on, lets you use a single color for global reflections. Pressing the Color button enables the Environment Color patch. Txtr: Allows a texture to be used for global reflections. Pressing the Texture button enables the Environment Texture patch.

Scene: When on, uses the current scene as a source image for global reflections.

Environment Color (in the figure above, the blue square): When the Color switch is on, use this patch to selecte the environment color. Select a color with any of the color pickers and click on Environment Color, or click and drag from Environment Color to any part of the canvas or interface to pick a color.

Environment Texture (in the figure above, the small square showing a scene): When Txtr is on, click and hold on the Environment Texture patch to access the texture sub-palette and choose a texture.

Trace Distance: The trace distance is how far ZBrush will look to find a local object to reflect. Range = 0 to 100% of the current image size. Default = 50%.

Repeat: Controls how many times a reflective surface can reflect another reflective surface. The effect can be visualized by facing two mirrors at each other. Range = 1 to 5. Default = 1.

Field of View: Sets the field of view for environmental mapping and lights. A setting of zero degrees causes the point of view to be infinitely far away. A setting of 180 degrees places the point of view right above the canvas. Range = 0 to 180 degrees. Default = 0.

Field of View = 0

Field of View = 120

Field of View = 180

Adjustments Subpalette

Adjustments allow you to make color corrections to the final render without permanently altering it. The four curves at the bottom of this subpalette are, respectively, the RGB Level, Red Level, Green Level, and Blue Level adjustment curves

Adjust: Enables the adjustment variables. After the values are changed, the adjustments can be turned on and off with the Adjust button. All adjustment values are saved with the ZBrush scene file. Clr: Clears all adjustments to their default values.

Contrast: Varies the contrast of the entire image. Range = -100 to 100. Default = 0.

Brightness: Varies the brightness of the entire image. Range = -100 to 100. Default = 0.

RGB Level, Red Level, Green Level, and Blue Level curves: Clicking on a collapsed curve area of the sub-palette expands the clicked adjustment curve to its full size. You can adjust the intensity of the colors between their minimum and maximum values by adjusting the shape of their curves.

For more information on how real-time shadows work, seel Real-Time Shadows.

ObjShadow: Controls the intensity of the model's real-time shadows. BackShadow: Acts as a drop shadow cast by the current model and projected onto the canvas. The slider value controls the intensity of the shadow.

Length: Increases the scan range that ZBrush uses to create the shadow. A larger Length will lengthen and soften the shadow but will also increase computation time.

Slope: Equals the azimuth of the light used to project the shadow. All shadows fall at a 45 degree angle across the canvas. This can not be altered. Slope controls the angle in Y at which the light casts the shadows. Zero means that the light is directly overhead of the model. A larger number means that the light is more in front of the model.

Depth: Deepens and enlarges the shadows. The effect of Depth depends on the setting for Slope; at small settings of Slope, changing Depth will have little effect.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Render_Palette"

● This page was last modified 19:49, 3 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 3,322 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Stencil Palette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 Basics: Using the Stencil

● 2 Positioning the Stencil

❍ 2.1 Positioning, and the Stencil Coordinate System

■ 2.1.1 Rotating a Stencil

■ 2.1.2 Scaling a Stencil

■ 2.1.3 Moving a Stencil

● 3 Stencil Palette Controls

Basics: Using the Stencil

The ZBrush Stencil behaves like the drawing tool we are all familiar with. Position the stencil and paint or model around and through it. Use the default “French Curve” stencil or use a custom shape.

Here’s how:

1. Open the Stencil palette and activate the stencil by turning on Stencil On. The default “French Curve” stencil will appear. 2. Re-size and position using the StencilCoinController. This is discussed in detail a bit later on. 3. Paint or sculpt with the stencil active. Areas masked by the stencil will not be affected. Areas partially masked (if using a stencil with grayscale) will be partially affected. Like alphas, stencils are sensitive to gray values, i.e. a region with 50% gray values permits painting and sculpting at 50% intensity. Stencils are really quite similar to masking using Alphas, but may be more convenient for some tasks. For example, alphas can't be rotated; you need to rotated the model to achieve a specific orientation for a model. Stencils can be rotated. There are other differences as well.

You can create a stencil from the currently selected alpha by pressing the Alpha:Make ST button on the Alpha Palette.

Positioning the Stencil

To position the stencil, hold down the Space bar. The Coin Controller will appear.

By clicking and dragging on various parts of the Coin Controller you can position it in various ways, as detailed below. As might be expected, you can move, scale, or rotate the stencil, but there are some variations and options that require a bit of explanation.

● Clicking and dragging the light gray areas of the controller will move, scale, or rotate the stencil. The top light gray area, which combines moving and rotating, will be explained in a bit. ● Within some of the light gray areas are smaller dark gray areas. Clicking and dragging on these performs the operation of the light gray area in which they are contained, but with some extra constraints.

Positioning, and the Stencil Coordinate System

Any stencil exists on a plane, but is (partially) a 3D object; it can be rotated in three dimensions (but not moved in the global Z dimension; a stencil is always "on top" of whatever it is masking). Because a stencial can be rotated in three dimensions, we need to be cognizant of both global and local stencil coordinates

Rotating a Stencil

Rotating a stencil can be done in one of three ways. The stencil can be rotated freely, about the canvas normal, or about the stencil normal. These last two are equivalent only when the plane of the stencil is in the same plane as the canvas.

To rotate the stencil freely, click and drag on the light gray area of the Rot portion of the coin controller. To rotate it about its own normal, click and drag on the z area in the Rot area, and to rotate about the normal of the plane of the canvas, click and drag on the s area in the Rot area.

Scaling a Stencil

A stencil is always scaled in its own (local) plane. Clicking and draggin in the light gray area of the Scl part of the coin controller scales the stencil in both horizontal and vertical directions. H and V constrain the scaling to horizontal or vertical scaling, in the stencil's local coordinate system.

Moving a Stencil

There are two ways to move a stencil. Clicking and dragging on the Mov area of the coin controller moves the stencil in the plane of the canvas.

Clicking and draggin in the Mov Rot area moves the stencil in the same way, but in addition rotates the stencil so the plane of the stencil at its center point is the same as the plane of whatever on the canvas is under the stencil's center point. Effectively, this sort of 'wraps' the area of the stencil close to its center around the 3D shape under the stencil's center. It's difficult to explain verbally, but if you try it, you'll immediately see what is happening.

Note: By clicking and dragging Mov Rot to move the stencil onto an empty area of the canvas, you can restore the stencil's plane to be the same as the plane of the canvas.

Stencil Palette Controls

Stencil On: Activates the stencil feature.

Invr: Inverts the properties of the stencil. Open areas become closed. Closed areas become open.

Alpha Repeat: When set to a value n above 1, the original stencil is put into an n by n grid. You can use this to stencil any sort of repeated pattern. If the stencil was made from a seamless alpha (one that wraps left to right and top to bottom without visible seams), the resulting gridded stencil will produce a seamless effect.

Interactive: Enables the StencilCoinController. See “The StencilCoinController” on page 203.

Stretch: Scales the stencil to fit the canvas area

Actual: Returns the stencil to actual size.

Horiz: Proportionally scaled to fit the horizontal size of the canvas.

Vert: Proportionally scaled to fit the vertical size of the canvas.

Wrap Mode: Fits the stencil to the underlying object topography.

Res: Higher values produce a more accurate wrap with a slower interaction speed. Range = 8 to 256. Default = 64.

Smooth: Higher values produce a smoother wrap. Range = 0 to 32. Default = 4.

Show: Shows/hides the stencil without deactivating it.

R: Stencil color control. When used alone, stencil will be red. Can be used in combination with G and B. The RGB modifiers affect the color of the stencil display, only. They do not affect colors applied through the stencil.

G: Stencil color control. When used alone, stencil will be green. Can be used in combination with R and B.

B: Stencil color control. When used alone, stencil will be blue. Can be used in combination with R and G.

E: Elevation mode. Turns off the usual stencil display and shows it as a tonal variation on the surface of the object.

Alpha Repeat: Defines the number of times the current stencil will repeat in the x and y directions. An alpha repeat of 4 gives a grid containing 16 copies of the stencil, etc.

Use Alpha:Make St to convert any alpha to a stencil for use with tiling.

Tiled stencils will be placed edge to edge, allowing you to convert seamlessly tileable alphas to stencils which can be applied over large areas without seams.

Using a tiled star alpha (converted to a stencil) to sculpt a grid of stars into a model's surface

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Stencil_Palette" ● This page was last modified 19:05, 1 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,141 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Stroke Palette

From ZBrushInfo Contents

● 1 Introduction

● 2 Types of Strokes

● 3 Modifiers for Strokes

● 4 Recording Strokes

● 5 Controls

❍ 5.1 Stroke Type Descriptions

❍ 5.2 Modifiers

❍ 5.3 Inventory

❍ 5.4 Lazy Mouse

● 6 Tips and Tricks

❍ 6.1 Sculpting With a Smooth Stroke

Introduction

The Stroke settings determine how ZBrush will interpret mouse down, mouse movement, and mouse up actions with the selected tool. Numerous stroke types and options let you achieve a very complex visual effect with just a single mouse drag. The image at the left was produced with a single drag, using the Radial stroke type, a torus as the drawing tool, and a rainbow texture

The action of the stroke type depends on which tool is selected, so experimentation is the key to learning all the combinations. Each brush has different capabilities and will react in a unique way. All of the 3D object tools react to stroke type in the same way.

Types of Strokes A stroke type determines how elements are drawn; for example, the DragDot stroke type lets you place a single instance of the drawing tool, while the Grid type lets you draw multiple instances at once, arranged in a grid.

Most, but not all, stroke types are shown by default in the palette. To see all of them, click the large thumbnail.

You can select a stroke either by clicking its thumbnail directly in the Stroke palette, or by clicking the larger thumbnail and selecting from the popup inventory.

To see the name of a stroke, hold the mouse cursor over its thumbnail for a moment until the label appears.

Modifiers for Strokes

Modifiers further refine the effect of a particular type of stroke. For example, two sliders determine how many rows and columns of elements are drawn when the Grid stroke is used.

Recording Strokes

You can record, combine, and even save strokes for later use. You can use recorded strokes to play back the motion of a previous stroke, but with different drawing tools or settings, so that you can (for example) compose a single shape out of many different "passes" of the same stroke.

Controls

Stroke Type Descriptions Note: A red Sphere3D tool is used as the drawing tool for all of the following examples; for strokes that orient themselves to the surface underneath, a pink sphere is used as that surface.

Dots: Mouse down determines the starting point of the stroke, mouse movement draws spheres (or whatever the selected paint tool is) with a diameter determined by the Draw:Draw Size setting. If using a tablet, pen pressure also affects the size of the spheres. Spacing is determined by the speed of mouse movement. Mouse up will end the stroke.

DragRect: Mouse down will determine placement of the tool, mouse movement will determine its size, and mouse up will draw the tool. Tools will be rotated about their Z-axis depending on the direction of the stroke. This is the default stroke type for 3D objects.

Freehand: Draws instances of the current tool spaced equivalently apart, as the mouse moves. A Mouse down determines starting point of the tools, mouse move draws them with size determined by the Draw Size setting. Spacing is determined automatically by ZBrush to give a fluid brush stroke.

Line: Mouse down sets starting point of the objects, , drag draws the tool, mouse up ends. Size is determined by the Draw:Draw Size setting, and density is determined by Stroke:Spacing; a larger value will give more densely packed elements.

LineII: Mouse down sets starting point of the objects, , drag draws the tool, mouse up ends. Size is determined by the Draw:Draw Size setting, and spacing is determined by Stroke: Spacing; a larger value will give fewer elements.

DragDot: Mouse down will create one instance of the sphere with size determined by the Draw Size setting. Mouse move will position the sphere and mouse up will place the sphere at that position. Conic: Mouse down will determine starting point and direction of the objects, mouse move draws spheres with size determined by the Draw Size setting and spacing determined by the spacing slider. The initial direction of the stroke is aligned to the surface that the stroke begins on. If the stroke returns to the starting point, its direction will be aligned again. Mouse up will end the stroke.

Two conic strokes.

Planar Dots: Mouse down will determine starting point and direction of the objects, mouse move draws spheres with size determined by the Draw Size setting and spacing determined by the spacing slider. The direction of the stroke is aligned tangentially to the surface that the stroke begins on. Mouse up will end the stroke. Line90: Mouse down will determine the starting point and direction of the line object, mouse move draws a line with diameter determined by the Draw Size setting. The direction of the stroke is aligned perpendicular to the surface that the stroke begins on. Mouse up will end the stroke

Ray90: Very similar to Line 90, Ray 90 allows build-up of material by moving the mouse back and forth before release.

Spray: Applies a random pattern of dots in different sizes and color intensities along the path of the cursor drag. The current primary color is used as the color base. Colorized Spray: Similar to Spray, but applies variations of color rather than color intensity. The current primary and secondary colors are used as the color bases.

Note: The Spray and Colorized Spray stroke types are extremely useful for texturing. Nature is chaotic, and these strokes can help easily duplicate that chaos in the creation of grunge, bumps, or variations of pattern.

Radial: Draws multiple copies of the tool around the mouse click point. Length of the drag determines radius of drawing, direction of drag sets rotation around local Z-axis.

Grid: Draws multiple copies of the tool in a grid. Length of the drag determines grid size, direction of drag sets orientation around the local Z-axis, M.Repeat and S.Repeat modifiers control number of elements in the grid, Scale modifier determines relative scale of drawing elements to stroke length. Modifiers

Directional: Specifies that continuous brush strokes are only applied while traveling away from the point of first click. Default = Off

Spacing: The spacing slider controls the spacing between the instances in the stroke. A spacing of 0.5 will place the instances one-half of their diameter apart. A spacing of 2 will place the instances two times their diameter apart. Range = 0 to 2. Default = 0.75

Placement: Used by the two spray stroke types, this determines how far each dot can stray from the center line of the stroke. Range = 0 to 1. Default = .5

Scale: Used by the two spray stroke types, this determines the maximum variation in dot size. If set to 0, all dots are the same size. Used by the Grid and Radial strokes, it determines the size of each element relative to the size of the grid or radius drawn. Range = 0 to 1. Default = 1

Color: Used by the two spray stroke types, this determines the maximum allowable color or color intensity variation. If set to 0, all dots will be drawn the same color. Range = 0 to 1. Default = .5

Flow: Used by the two spray stroke types, this determines the density of the dots drawn. Smaller values result in fewer dots. Range = 0 to 1. Default =.25 M.Repeat: For stroke types that repeat elements, this sets the number of times the element is repeated in its “main” direction. For example, setting this to 7 would cause a Radial stroke to draw seven identical instances of an element in a circle.

H.Repeat: For repeating stroke types that use two values to determine the number of elements, this is the second value. For example, with M.Repeat=3 and S.Repeat=4, you’ll get a Grid stroke with 4 columns and 3 rows of elements.

Mouse Avg: Smoothes strokes by averaging recent mouse locations. A value of 1 does not smooth strokes at all; higher values result in more smoothing.

Roll: Without Roll on, the standard behavior of a stroke is analogous to dragging a paint brush across a surface. When Roll is on, it is similar to painting a wall with a roller brush. This is important when drawing with alphas, as the Roll option allows you to paint a stroke that gives the alpha effect uniformly through the length of the stroke. With this option off, the alpha will behave like a woodcut stamp dragged across the model, and will be smeared out across the length of the stroke.

Inventory

Record: Press to begin recording strokes. Press again to end recording strokes. Only the stroke is recorded; not the tool, texture, material, or any other properties of the action. This allows the stroke to be replayed using any other tool or properties.

Add: When pressed, strokes that are recorded will be added to the current recording. If not enabled, recording will overwrite the previously recorded stroke. Strokes Count: Indicates the number of strokes in the current recording.

Replay Last: Replays the last stroke. You can play back the stroke using different tools, colors, and sizes.

Replay All: Replays all recorded strokes. You can play back the strokes using different tools, colors, and sizes.

Export Last: Exports the last stroke as a text file that can be read by a ZScript.

Export All: Exports all recorded strokes as a text file that can be read by a ZScript.

Lazy Mouse

LazyMouse: When LazyMouse is on, drawing will take place not under the mouse cursor, but under a brush point that is being 'dragged behind' the mouse cursor by a virtual string (shown onscreen as a red line.) This allows for very precise control of the brush point, and is ideal for drawing smooth, predictable curves, or any sort of detail work.

LazyRadius: When the LazyMouse feature is on, LazyRadius sets the length of the 'string' connecting the mouse cursor to the drawing point. The longer the string, the more precise the stroke, but the further you'll have to move your hand to make it.

LazyStep: Allows lazy mousing to be applied in discrete steps. As you pull the brush around, the brush effect will be applied at intervals determined by LazyStep. LazySmooth: Makes the lazy mouse effect stronger or weaker.

Tips and Tricks

Sculpting With a Smooth Stroke

When sculpting with a very low draw size your brush stroke may become dotted or patchy. To resolve this you can increase Mouse Avg in the Stroke palette. You also try zooming in on the area that you wish to sculpt a fine line in and the increasing your brush size.

For heavy models this may still occur no matter how high the Mouse Avg is set to. To resolve this just go into Projection Master to create the fine line.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Stroke_Palette"

● This page was last modified 18:55, 8 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 6,634 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Texture Palette

From ZBrushInfo

The Texture palette mananges textures. It can import or export them, manipulate them in various ways, and convert their intensities into Alpha maps.

There is another subpalette that is often used with textures, the Tool:Texture Subpalette, and if you wish to make use of textures, you should read the reference for that also. Also, ZBrush materials (see Material Palette) also affect the surface appearance of ZBrush objects, but materials cannot be used across programs. However, it is common to use materials to generate textures. For example, one could create a ZBrush plane, fill the canvas with it, apply a 'wood' material, and then do a Texture:GrabDoc to end up with a wood texture. That texture can then be applied and exported.

Painting and Modeling with Textures

When the selected texture is not the TXTR OFF texture, ZBrush paint tools will paint with the currently selected texture, and ignore the Color palette setting. Each paint tool remembers which texture was last used with it, so changing the tool may also change the current texture.

When you create a 3D object, the currently selected texture will be applied to it. If you go into 3D Edit mode (Transform:Edit) with that object, then selecting a different texture will apply that to the object, replacing the previous texture. 3D tools remember the last texture they were used with, so changing 3D tools may also change the currently selected texture.

Creating Seamless Textures

When repeating textures over a 3D object it is important that the right edge matches the left edge and that the top edge matches the bottom edge. If they do not, a seam will be visible where they meet when tiled over the object. A texture repeated 4 times vertically and 4 times horizontally with visible seams.

Here is a simple method for creating seamless textures in ZBrush:

1. Use any brushes or objects to create the texture. Do not draw to the edge of the canvas. You will probably want to resize the canvas to a size appropriate for a single "block" of your repeating texture.

2. Hold down the Tilde (~) key and click and drag on the canvas to offset the image.

3. Fill in the blank areas, being careful not to go to the edges again.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the image is completely filled in.

5. Grab the completed texture with the Texture:GrabDoc. 6. Choose the “grabbed” texture in the Texture Palette and tile it onto a 3D object by setting Tool:Modifiers:Texture:HRepeat and ...:VRepeat to values greater than 1 and then creating the object.

Controls

Import: Imports .bmp, .psd, .jpg and PICT (on Mac) images into the Texture Palette. ----

Export: Exports the selected texture as a .bmp, .psd or (on the Mac) a PICT file.----

The following four controls are represented graphically in the Texture palette:

Flph: Flips the texture left-to-right.

Flpv: Flips the texture top-to-bottom. Rot: Rotates the texture 90 degrees per click.

Invr: Causes inverse coloring. (White becomes black, black becomes white.)

Grad: Pressing Grad causes the current texture to be colorized with a gradient effect. The gradient goes between the primary and secondary colors selected in the Color menu, and is applied depending on the grayscale intensity of the texture, i.e. a grayscale image that fades from white on one side to black on the other will be colorized to fade side-to- side from the primary color to the secondary color.

Clear: Clears the texture to the currently selected main color.

Grad: (Gradient Colorize): Changes the colors of the current texture by mapping the primary color to light areas of the image and the secondary color to dark areas of the image, with intermediate intensities interpolated between the primary and secondary colors.

Transparent: When active, portions of the texture that are pure black (rgb 0,0,0) are rendered as transparent.

Width: Displayed when the cursor is over the slider. Move the slider to the new value or click to turn red and then type in the new value. The current value is also shown when holding the cursor over the small thumbnail previews.

Height: Displayed when the cursor is over the slider. Move the slider to the new value or click to turn red and then type in the new value. The current value is also shown when holding the cursor over the small thumbnail previews.

Clone: To create a copy of the current texture at a different size, set the new width and height and click Clone.

New: You can create a new texture at any time by selecting a base color with the color picker, inputting the desired height and width and clicking New.

MakeAlpha: Adds a grayscale version of the current texture to the Alpha palette and selects it as the active alpha.

Remove: Removes the currently selected texture from the visible palette (but not from the hard drive.)

Cd: The Clear Depth button affects the way the CropAndFill button behaves. If pressed, all depth information is cleared from the canvas when it is filled with the current texture. If this button is unpressed, the texture is drawn on the pixols and depth information is retained; this has the side effect that blank areas of the canvas will not be filled with the texture, since there is nothing between the clipping plane and the viewer in those areas.

The Cd button also affects the Fill button in the Layer palette and the Fill Layer button in the Color palette. CropAndFill: Crops the canvas to the size of the current texture, and then fills the canvas with that texture. This has the effect of erasing whatever else in on the canvas.

GrabDoc: Creates a new texture from the canvas contents and adds it to the Texture palette. The new texture has the same size as the canvas.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Texture_Palette"

● This page was last modified 19:42, 1 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,245 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool Palette

From ZBrushInfo Contents

● 1 Intro

● 2 Types of Tools

● 3 Concepts

❍ 3.1 The Tool Inventory

❍ 3.2 Pixol Tools Overview

❍ 3.3 3D Tools Overview

❍ 3.4 Modifiers

❍ 3.5 Inventory Management

■ 3.5.1 Creating or Loading Tools

■ 3.5.2 Saving or Exporting Tools

■ 3.5.3 Tool Names

❍ 3.6 Related Palettes

● 4 Tool Palette

❍ 4.1 Tool Subpalettes

Intro

The ZBrush Tool palette is probably the most complex aspect of ZBrush for a number of reasons. First and foremost, tool usage is affected by many other parts of the program, so you should always be aware of other palettes' settings in order to understand what a particular brush is doing. Also, most tools have one or more modifiers that affect how they work, especially the 3D object tools.

Note: Because the Tool palette is quite large once all of its subpalettes have been included, those subpalettes have been documented on separate pages, accessible via links below.

Note: Note all subpalettes will appear at any one time; visible subpalettes depend on the current tool.

Types of Tools

● Drawing Tools

● 3D Primitive Tools

● 3D Models

● ZSpheres: ZSpheres can be used to quickly 'sketch out' a complex 3D object. The sketch can then be turned into a polymesh, in various ways, for further work. ● Multimarkers: These allow you to combine multiple 3D objects into a single polymesh.

Concepts

The Tool palette contains the following types of elements and controls:

● 2.5D (Pixol) tools, which affect the image pixols. These are the counterparts of the 2D brushes found in any image editing program. ● 3D (Model) tools, which allow you to place models on screen. ● Inventory controls, with which you load, save, and duplicate custom tools. ● Modifiers, which allow you to customize aspects of tools. These are most commonly used with models; for example, you can set the number of vertices for a sphere. Many of the pixol tools do not have modifiers at all. ● Other controls that directly affect or are related to tools. These are mostly 3D controls, for things such as controlling the subdivision level of a model, generating a texture for a model, etc...

The Tool Inventory

Tools are accessed through the tool inventory, a popup grid of thumbnails graphically denoting each tool. This can be accessed via the tool palette by clicking on the large thumbnail; it can be reached more quickly by clicking on the (equivalent) large thumbnail found near the top left corner of the default ZBrush screen layout.

The tool inventory, accessed by clicking on the large thumbnail under the top left corner of the inventory

The first three rows of the inventory are ZBrush's built-in tools; these will never change. Subsequent rows are custom tools, either loaded from an external file, or created by modifying another tool.

As tools are used, they will be added into slots in the Tool palette; this keeps the most recently used tools convenient for further application. If this begins to make the size of the Tool palette too large for your monitor, you can press the Tool:R button to reset these slots. (All tools will still be accessible through the full tool inventory.)

Pixol Tools Overview

Most paint programs work with images composed of a rectangular grid of colored dots, pixels. Normally, each pixel can have 256 levels of blue, 256 levels of green, and 256 levels of red, which in combination can produce about 16 million different colors of different hues and intensities. Some programs also allow you define an alpha (level of transparency) for each pixel. The .psd (Photoshop) format that ZBrush uses supports alpha channels.

Instead of pixels, ZBrush uses pixols, which are pixels augmented with further properties. The most important of these is depth. A pixol has not just an x and y (horizontal and vertical) position, but also a position along the z-axis; a distance between the pixol and the viewer. In addition, pixols can have a material, which defines many aspects of how a pixol (or surface using that material for its pixols) will appear; for example, pixols may be shiny or dull, or metallic or nonmetallic, depending on the material.

These properties allow you to define many true 3D effects. Pixols closer to the viewer will hide pixols (on other layers) farther away from the viewer. Surfaces may go into and come out of the screen, and their shading will be affected by the positions of lights. It is perfectly possible--easy, in fact--to draw a curved surface with the standard paintbrush, and then set a few properties so that it appears as a wildly shaped mirror.

Pixol tools allow you to manipulate all, or any combination, of the color, depth, and material properties of the canvas. We won't go into details here, but the relevant controls are in the Draw palette; M, Rgb, Mrgb, and Rgb Intensity control the application of materials and/or colors; and ZAdd, ZSub, ZCut, and Z Intensity control the application of depth.

Pixol tools (and pixols) act in ways that are conceptually very similar to paint tools (and pixels) in other programs, but the extra elements of depth and material allow them to achieve much more striking effects.

3D Tools Overview

ZBrush puts 3D models into the tools palette, which may be a somewhat different way of doing things than you are accustomed to from other 3D software. Doing this allows easy access to many different models at one time. It also fits the idea of tools as drawing instruments; in ZBrush, you can use a flower model as a tool to paint a field of flowers.

ZBrush offers several types of 3D tools:

● 3D Primitives allow the creation of cubes, spheres, spirals, terrain, etc. These tools typically offer numerous initialization options; for example, you can control the shape of the terrain tool, you can make the sweep tool sweep out a vase or a goblet, and so forth. A 3D primitive may be converted to a general polymesh for further custom work. ● Polymeshes are general 3D objects. They allow multiple levels of subdivision, sculpting at different resolutions, edge loop modeling, and many other general mesh manipulations. All imported meshes (those brought in from other modeling programs) are imported as polymeshes, and all sculpting, texturing, and mapping you do on complex, irregularly shaped objects will almost certainly be on polymeshes. ● ZSpheres provide a fast, easy way sketch the general structure or shape of a complex model. For example, you can use ZSpheres to define a humanoid or quadruped shape down to arms and legs, fingers and toes, head or torso including general features such as cheeks, forehead, and chest, and so forth. Once a model has been defined with ZSpheres, it can be 'skinned' to create a polymesh, using one of two skinning methods to give either a dense polymesh model for sculpting, or a light polymesh model for export or edge-loop type modeling. ● Multimarkers allow the composition of other 3D tools into a single mesh. For example, you could create bolts, rods, gears, and so forth, and then fuse them to create a complex piece of machinery as a single model.

When you draw a 3D object and then change the current color and/or material, the changes aren't applied to the object unless you are in transform or edit mode.

When creating a 3D object by clicking and dragging, you can optionally, before releasing the mouse button, drag in the opposite direction to reduce the object's width and height, while retaining the original depth. Using this method, you can, for example, easily create an ovoid with the Sphere 3D tool.

Modifiers A modifier is a property of a tool that affects how that tool is applied on the canvas. These are most common and most obvious with the 3D primitive tools, where modifiers can be used to define how many polygons are in an object when it is drawn on the screen, how many times a spiral spirals, how much a cylinder tapers, and so forth. These properties are discussed in the sections describing the individual tools. Some pixol tools, such as the filter brushes, also have modifiers.

For pixol tools which have modifiers, these modifiers generally appear in a Modifiers subpalette that appears when the tool is selected. For 3D tools, the modifiers can appear in different subpalettes, such as Deformation or Initialize.

Whenever a modifier on a built-in tool is changed, that tool is actually copied to the custom tools section of the tool inventory, then modified, and then selected. As a result, the settings for the built-in tools never change, and you can always choose one of them to go back to its known settings.

Inventory Management

'Inventory Management' has to do with creation, loading, saving, and duplicating of tools. Most of the inventory management you'll do will involve 3D tools (models). However, you can save and load pixol tools as well. All new tools are saved in the tool inventory, the popup grid that presents tools as small thumbnails. This can be access through the Tool Palette, or from the shortcut present near the top left of the default ZBrush screen.

It's important to remember that tools (including models) are not saved automatically when you save a ZBrush document. Tools are separate entities from documents (which are effectively whatever you've 'painted' in ZBrush). So, tools need to be saved separately from documents. To save a tool (usually a model), use the Tool:Save As control.

Creating or Loading Tools

There are a number of ways of getting new or custom tools in ZBrush. The most common ones are described below, and others are described in their own special sections. Many of these apply only to 3D tools, but the following are valid for all tool types: ● The most obvious way to get a new tool is to use Tool:Load Tool. This will load a previous saved ZBrush tool, which will appear as a file with a suffix of '.ZTL'. ● You can use Tool:Clone to create an exact copy of the currently selected tool. This copy can then be modified without changing the original tool. ● As detailed above in the 'Modifiers' section, changing modifier settings for a built-in tool will create a new, modified copy of that tool.

Note: Modifying a custom tool (one that is not built-in) will not create a new copy of that tool. If you want to end up with both the original tool and a modified copy, first use the Clone button described above, then modify the clone.

For 3D tools, the following are the simplest ways to create or load a 3D tool:

● Tool:Import can be used to import 3D tools from various standard 3D formats. These are imported as polymesh objects, which is the 'general' format for ZBrush 3D tools. ● Tool:Make PolyMesh3D will create a new polymesh tool from an existing 3D tool. The standard use for this is to create a model from a primitive tool (probably using various modifiers to get a custom effect), and then to convert that tool to a general mesh for further sculpting.

In addition, 3D tools can be created by skinning ZSpheres, or using Multimarkers, both of which are tools in the Tool Palette. These are discussed in their own sections.

Finally, there are other ways to obtain 3D tools (for example, Alpha:Make 3D will actually make a 3D tool from an intensity map), but the ones above are what you can do from the Tool palette.

Note: Remember that all of the above simply place a new tool into the Tool palette--they don't draw anything onscreen. In contrast, drawing onscreen with a tool affects the canvas (and if you draw a 3D tool and then press 't' then allows you to model), but doesn't create a new tool.

Saving or Exporting Tools

You can write a tool to disk in one of two ways:

● Use Tool: Save As to save a 2.5D or 3D tool as a .ZTL file. This can later be loaded and used again. Remember, you must save a tool in this way to be able to load it again and use it in a future session; saving a document will not suffice. ● Use Tool:Export to export a 3D tool into a standard 3D format.

Note: Always save as a .ZTL unless you actually need to export the tool to another program. ZBrush tool files contain quite a bit more information than exported files. A standard workflow is to both save and export a model, look at the exported model in an external program, and then go back to the saved tool to do further work.

Tool Names

All tools in a ZBrush session have a name. When a tool is saved, the name of the save file becomes the name of that tool, and similarly, if the tool is loaded then the tool name is the name of the load file.

For newly created tools, the name will generally reflect how the tool was created. For example, if you select the Spiral tool and then create a polymesh using the Create PolyMesh3D button, the name of the new tool will be 'PM3D_Spiral3D'.

To see the name of any tool, hold the mouse cursor over its icon for a second-—a text label appears showing the tool name. At this point, if you press and hold the Ctrl key, further information on the use of the brush appears on the label.

Related Palettes

Several of the other ZBrush palettes are of particular importance when using tools. These are briefly described below; see the documentation on each palette for further information.

● In its role as one of the most underused strengths of ZBrush, the Alpha palette can be used to affect brush shape and masking. These are major components of drawing and modeling. ● The Transform Palette is probably the single most important palette for working with 3D objects. The Texture Palette is also very important when modeling.

● The Stroke Palette, Draw Palette, Material Palette, and (of course) Color Palette all affect drawing and/or modeling in various ways. You may want to take a look especially at the Stroke and Draw palettes, as they offer powerful abilities not generally found in other painting or modeling programs. ● Projection Master is not a palette, but a major plugin that ships as part of ZBrush. It allows you to use pixol (drawing) tools to model and texture 3D objects; this is particularly useful when working with the extremely high-polygon count objects ZBrush can support. ● More specialized controls include the Picker (advanced brush controls) and Stencil (masking using stencils) palettes, and the various subpalettes in the Preferences palette.

Tool Palette Provides the tools (paintbrushes, models, filters, etc.) that can be used to draw in ZBrush, and many operations relating to those tools. This is one of the most important palettes in ZBrush.

Tool Subpalettes

Tool:SubTool Subpalette Allows a mesh to be considered as made up of many different parts. For example, a monster could have a weapon, clothing, etc. This also allows easy construction of full scenes.

Tool:Layers Subpalette Allows multiple different sculpts of one model, and combining those sculpt in different ways.

Tool:Geometry Subpalette A very important submenu, concerned with creating and working with multiple levels of subdivision.

Tool:HD Geometry Subpalette Analogous to the Geometry submenu, but functions with the new very-high res (hundreds of millions of polygons) features of ZBrush.

Tool:Preview Subpalette Allows one to redefine the model's default orientation and center point.

Tool:Deformation Subpalette Can apply a wide range of deformations to a model; noise, skews, etc. Primarily used when first creating models.

Tool:Masking Subpalette Controls Masking, the ability to choose or paint parts of your model to define if and how much they will be affected by subsequent operations.

Tool:Polygroups Subpalette Operations relating to standard mesh groups, as are understood by most 3D programs. Create, hide, and show particular groups in your mesh.

Tool:Texture Subpalette Operations relating specifically to 3D texture application; see the Texture Palette for more general operations on images.

Tool:Morph Target Subpalette Operations related to setting, removing, and restoring a sculpt to a previously defined form. Tool:Displacement Subpalette Operations related to generating or using displacement maps. ZMapper is a plugin that can provide much more sophisticated functionality.

Tool:NormalMap Subpalette Operations related to generating or using normal maps. ZMapper is a plugin that can provide much more sophisticated functionality.

Tool:Unified Skin Subpalette Operations to generate a polymesh skin over top of a ZSphere model.

Tool:Display Properties Subpalette A simple submenu affecting certain display properties, such as if and when normals should be flipped.

Tool:Import Subpalette Used to bring in 3D models from other file formats; .OBJ and so forth.

Tool:Export Subpalette Used to save 3D models in other file formats; .OBJ and so forth.

The next two sub-palettes are specific to ZSpheres.

Tool:Rigging Subpalette Controls rigging, which can be used both for modifying models, and as part of model retopoligization.

Tool:Topology Subpalette Operations to do with mesh topology manipulation, primarily used when building a new topology atop an existing one.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool_Palette"

● This page was last modified 22:14, 8 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 12,741 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:SubTool Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Subtool Controls

Eye Icons: Each subtool has an associated eye icon that can be clicked to toggle that subtool's visibility. If the eye icon of the currently selected subtool is clicked, it also affects the visibility settings of all of the other subtools. The selected subtool is always visible, regardless of the setting of its eye icon.

Arrows: From left to right respectively, these select the subtool above the currently selected subtool, select the subtool below the currently selected subtool, move the selected subtool up one place in the subtool list, and move the selected subtool down one place in the subtool list.

Select Up: The 'up arrow' selects the layer in the layer menu immediately above the currently selected layer.

Select Down: The 'down arrow' selects the layer in the layer menu immediately below the currently selected layer.

Move Up: The 'up and over arrow' moves the currently selected layer one layer up in the layer menu.

Move Down: The 'down and over arrow' moves the currently selected layer one layer down in the layer menu.

Append: Add another mesh as a subtool of this mesh. A dialog will appear showing currently loaded Polymesh3D objects, from which you can choose the mesh to be added.

Delete: Deletes the currently selected subtool. The rest of the subtools and the overall model are not affected.

Split: When a tool or subtool is partially visible, the split button will split it into two subtools, one composed of the visible part of the original subtool, and the other consisting of the hidden part.

GrpSplit: When a tool or subtool contains more than one polymesh groups, the group split button will split it into multiple subtools, one for each group.

Rename: Allows you to rename the currently selected subtool.

Extract: Extracts a new mesh from the masked area of the currently selected model or subtool, and puts it into the model's subtool list.

E Smt: Determines how smooth the edge of an extracted mesh will be. High smooth values will remove detail from the edges of the extracted mesh, which may or may not be what you want. S Smt: Determines how smooth the surface of the extracted mesh will be (similar to extracting the mesh without smoothing and then using the Smooth brush on it.)

Thick: Sets the thickness of the extracted mesh. 0.01 is about right for cloth, 0.03 for leather, etc.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:SubTool_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 02:32, 15 May 2007. ● This page has been accessed 7,843 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers 3D Layers

From ZBrushInfo

Introduction

Layers allow for a non-linear workflow. Artists are able to work with a model at many different stages of development simultaneously. Artists can add details such as a reptile's skin scales then turn those details off and refine the major forms underlying them.

The Layers submenu, part of the Tool menu.

The Tool:Layers submenu manages layers.

● Each layer in the Tool:Layers list of layers functions as a single variant of the base mesh geometry. ● Layers allow creation of new subtools based on the difference between the base mesh and the mesh contained in a layer. ● Layers can be used to test out ideas for models, without committing to a single sculpt.

Base mesh (left), and with 'bullet hole' layer turned on (right).

Layer Controls

Layers are stored on a per mesh basis.To apply layers to a model, the first thing to do is to get that model up on the screen and ensure you are in 3D Edit mode.

All models start with no layers defined. The base mesh is not a layer. To create new layers, use the Tool:Layer:New button.

All layers are in one of three states:

● The Live layer, if it exists, is the currently selected layer. The effects of this layer on the base mesh are shown onscreen. In addition, any sculpting done when there is a live layer affects only that layer; neither the base mesh nor any other layer is affected. The live layer is highlighted in green. ● A layer that is On does affect the appearance of the model onscreen, but sculpting does not affect an On layer. Layers that are ON have an eye icon in their title ● A layer that is Off does not affect the appearance of the model onscreen, and is not affected by any sculpting. Layers that are OFF do not have an eye icon in their title.

If you wish to bake the layer into your sculpt, simply press Tool::Layers:Delete.

If you want to remove the layer and the sculpting from your mesh, turn off the visibility of the layer by pressing the eye icon and then pressing Tool:Layers:Delete.

Erasing Layer Information

You can erase information in a Layer by using a morph target and the morph brush.

To do this take the following steps:

1. Turn off visibility for the layer you want to remove information from 2. Store a morph target by pressing Tool: Morph Target: Store MT 3. Select the morph brush 4. Turn the visibility back on for that layer 5. Paint out the area you want to remove

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/3D_Layers"

● This page was last modified 18:45, 15 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 18,972 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Geometry Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

The Tool:Geometry subpalette contains controls that modify the mesh geometry of a 3D model. This subpalette also appears with primitive and ZSphere models, but is substantially different in form and function, so we treat it separately

Contents

● 1 Concepts

❍ 1.1 Subdivision Modeling

❍ 1.2 Edge Loop Modeling

● 2 Subdivision Modeling Controls

● 3 Edge Loop Modeling Controls

● 4 Other Controls

Concepts Subdivision Modeling

Subdivision is probably familiar to most users of modeling programs; it increases the polygon count of a model by replacing each polygon with multiple polygons. The most commonly used subdivision scheme is the Catmull-Clark method, which also moves vertices as it subdivides, so that a low-resolution cage can give a high-resolution smooth surface.

ZBrush offers an additional powerful feature when using subdivision with polymeshes; a polymesh retains a "subdivision history." To put it another way, each time a polymesh is subdivided, the geometry from the previous polymesh is remembered, all the way back to the original polymesh. So a subdivided mesh can have multiple levels of subdivision, equal to the number of times it was subdivided plus one for the original level.

You can move back and forth between these subdivision levels as you model; if you need to make 'large-scale' changes to an object, such as raising a significant portion of the surface, you can do it at a lower subdivision level where the model's polygons are relatively large (more of a 'cage') while fine details can be sculpted at a high subdivision level. In either case, changes will be propagated across all levels, so sculpting geometry at one level does not lose the work you've done at another level.

To understand the power of this ability, consider the following example. At a low subdivision level, you sculpt a polymesh plane so it appears as rolling hills. Then, at a high subdivision level, you add a "bumpiness" that gives the appearance of rocks, dirt, etc. But it then turns out that instead of rolling hills, you need a flat plain. What to do? Well, you go back to the low subdivision level and use the sculpting tools of ZBrush to smooth out the hills. Finally, when you return to the high subdivision level, you'll find that all of the fine "bumpiness" detail is still there. That work wasn't wasted!

Subdivision levels are also used to generate bump, displacement, and normal maps. Detail is added to an object at a very high subdivision level (possibly with many millions of polygons). That detail can then be compared against a lower subdivision version of the same model to generate a displacement or similar map. Once generated, that map can be taken to an external program and applied to the lower-poly-count model to give a detail effect almost indistinguishable from the high-level sculpting in ZBrush.

An example workflow is as follows:

1. Import a low-resolution base mesh. 2. Subdivide it several times, possibly taking the polygon count into the millions. 3. Sculpt in fine details at the highest level of subdivision. 4. You may then decide that some of the base geometry is unsatisfactory; for example, your hero's muscles should be larger than they are. 5. So, switch to the lowest level of subdivision, and sculpt in those bulging biceps. 6. Now, when you go back to higher levels of subdivision, the throbbing veins and almost invisible muscle striations will still be visible! 7. Now, go back to your lowest subdivision level, generate a normal, displacement, or bump map, based on your highest-resolution version of the model. 8. Export the modified lowest-resolution model to preserve the sculpts you've made on it. 9. Use the modified model and the new maps in your external program.

Edge Loop Modeling

The edge loop modeling controls are found in the Tool:Geometry subpalette, and are the basic way in ZBrush by which low-resolution polymeshes may be manipulated to add polygons at particular points. For example, if you were starting with a low-resolution mesh of an animal of some sort, you might use edge loop modeling to create further polygons in facial area you felt would demand high levels of detail. Once these polygons were in place, then subdividing the model would result in a much higher subdivided polygon density in those areas.

Subdivision Modeling Controls

Divide: Subdivides an object, i.e. causes each quad to be replaced with four quads to give a higher-resolution geometry. (Tris are handled in a similar way). This gives a higher-resolution object with which to model.

Lower Res: In a multi-resolution polymesh, reduces the displayed resolution level by 1. (Hotkey D). Higher Res: In a multi-resolution polymesh, reduces the displayed resolution level by 1. (Hotkey d).

SDiv: Slider that allows you to move to any display resolution of a multi-resolution polymesh.

Cage: When turned off (the default), edits made at high subdivision levels will also displace vertices at lower subdivision levels. This is usually the best way of doing things, as it gives the smoothest and most predictable results. When turned on, ZBrush will attempt to keep lower-level vertices from moving as higher-level edits are made.

SSmt: See online help.

Del Lower: When working with a polymesh model that is being displayed at level n, this will cause all levels lower than n to be deleted, and the model shown at level n will then become the new level 1 model. You can use this if you decide the lower levels of subdivision are no longer necessary.

Del Higher: When working with a polymesh model that is being displayed at level n, this will cause all levels higher than n to be deleted, and the model shown at level n will then become the new highest level model. This will discard all of the fine details that require higher levels to display. You can use this if you decide that the work you've done at higher levels needs to be completely redone.

Reconstruct Subdiv: Given a model being displayed at its lowest subdivision level, this attempts to construct a lower-level model such that subdivision of that model would give the model currently being displayed. If this is successful, the displayed level 1 model becomes the level 2 model, and the newly created model becomes the level 1 model. Reconstruction of a lower-level model cannot always be done.

Divide: (Hotkey Ctrl-d.) The fundamental operation for working with multiresolution models. When pressed, adds one more level of subdivision to the current polymesh. Note: Subdivision can be used in conjunction with masking; this will cause only unmasked portions of a model to be subdivided. (In some cases, masked portions will also undergo some subdivision, but it will result in a much smaller increase in the number of polygons in the model.) This is a valuable feature when working with a very high-resolution model in which you need to add additional local detail, as it allows you to increase polygon density in a localized region, rather than subdividing the entire model and thus multiplying the polygon count by four.

Smt: Normally, when subdivision occurs, the object becomes smoother, i.e. sharp edges become smoother. When Smt is off, this will not occur; all edges will retain their original sharpness. Sym, Mrg, IExtr, ReFit, Suv, I-Grpm O-Grp: See online documentation.

Edge Loop Modeling Controls

Edge Loop: In a polygon mesh some of which is hidden, creates new geometry on the borders between the visible and invisible portions of the mesh. This is a generalization of the edge loop functions found in many other 3D packages, and is discussed in more detail in documentation dedicated to this topic.

Crisp: When active, pressing the Edge Loop button will cause extruded polygons to be very thin in their extruded dimension. As the model if further subdivided, this will give a crisp (sharp) edge, as opposed to the smoothing typical of subdivisions.

Disp: Controls how far edges are displaced with Edge Loop is pressed.

DelHidden: Deletes all hidden polygons in a model, leaving only the visible portion.

Crease: Applies a tag (visible as a dotted line) to edges bordering hidden polygons. Such marked edges are less affected by subsequent subdivision smoothing, and so come out looking sharper. Note: There is no industry standard for this kind of tagging (other programs have their own similar but proprietary methods), so if you mark a creased edge this way, that creasing will not be exported when exporting a model with such creases-- use the Crisp feature above if you need to export creases. However, Crease can still be very useful when generating displacement etc. maps.

CreaseLvl: Controls how many more times a creased edge will be subdivided before it starts being smoothed, which basically means that the higher this setting, the sharper the edge.

UnCrease: Removes crease tags from edges that are on the border of hidden polygons.

Other Controls

Reproject Higher Subdiv: When sculpting (particularly with some of the newer brushes in ZBrush 3), certain areas of your model may end up with a highly unequal distribution of polygons. Reproject Higher Subdiv can be used to relax such areas.

To use it:

1) Sculpt your model at the highest subdivision level. 2) Go to a lower subdivision level where the polygons have a more even distribution. You may want to sculpt a bit at this level to get an ideal distribution.

3) Activate Reproject Higher Subdiv. ZBrush will compute a new distribution of polygons at the highest subdivision level that is more relaxed (even) while still preserving the geometry of the model. Depending on the complexity of your model, this may take some time.

4) After the computation is done, your model will be displayed at the highest subdivision level.

Delete Hidden: In a partially visible mesh, deletes those polygons that are not visible.

Crease: Cause an edge to be marked as a crease; this will be indicated as a dotted line drawn along the edge. This marks all edges of the visible area of a partially visible model as creased. Creased edges will appear sharper than other edges, as the model is subdivided.

CreaseLvl: Controls the sharpness of creased edges. Higher levels result in sharper edges.

InsertMesh: Allows you to choose another mesh which will then be added to, and become part of, the current mesh. As of ZBrush 3, this feature is mostly obsolete; use the features of the Tool:Subtool menu instead.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Geometry_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 22:31, 2 July 2007. ● This page has been accessed 7,931 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers HD Sculpting

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 HD Introduction

● 2 HD Levels vs SDiv Levels

● 3 HD Geometry Controls

● 4 Using HD Geometry

● 5 Rendering HD Geometry

HD Introduction

HD Geometry is the next evolution in Sculpting. HD Geometry allows you to divide your model to 1 billion polygons while only taxing your system with the polygons you are using onscreen. HD Levels vs SDiv Levels

HD sculpting is an extension of subdivision sculpting. Using HD sculpting, you first do regular subdivisions of the model you are working with, up to a level your system can comfortably handle. If you need further subdivision levels beyond that, you can perform HD subdivisions (as discussed below). These add polygons to your model exactly as for normal subdivision, but keep the portion of the model that is being worked with at any time to a size that leaves your system reponsive.

HD Geometry Controls

Make sure to read the description for the Sculpt HD button. Pressing it will result in a preview of your sculpted model; you must activate it with its hotkey to perform HD sculpting. DivideHD: Adds an additions level of HD subdivision to your model. This can only be done when Tool:Geometry:SDiv is set to its maximum value. Once you add HD subdivision levels to a model, you cannot add or delete 'standard' subdivision levels from that model.

SculptHD Subdiv: Controls the HD subdivision level being shown (if you have done more than one level of HD subdivision). Higher values let you sculpt at higher levels of detail, but at a smaller portion of your model at one time. Conversely, lower values give you access to more of the model, but don't allow you to sculpt the finest possible details.

Sculpt HD: This button is normally activated using the a hotkey. When activated with the hotkey, it selects an area of your model around the current mouse position for high- definition sculpting. This area is determined by the maximum number of polygons that can fit into your computer's memory at any time (set in Preferences, and by the actual number of polygons that need to be displayed as set by SculptHD Subdiv above. If you press this button with the mouse, your model will be rendered with all HD sculpted details shown, but the HD sculpt mode will not actually be turned on.

RadialRgn: If on, then a circular region will be shown around the mouse when a is pressed; if off, a square region will be shown. They will both contain the same number of polygons, so will have different widths and heights. Use whichever is most suitable for your needs.

Using HD Geometry

In this section, we'll look at sculpting an elephant's skin in extremely high detail. Much higher than has been previously possible without a complex workflow. In fact, with HD Geometry you can keep your mesh one solid piece and sculpt up to 1 billion polygons. In this example, our elephant is subdivided to about 700,000 polygons.

We press, Tool:Geometry HD:DivideHD three times until it's divided to 44 million polygons.

Then, hover our mouse over the area we want to sculpt and press the a key. A circular area around our model has been selected. The selected area of the model comprises about 10,000,000 polygons — the number is determined by MaxPolyPerMesh.

Sculpt this section of the mesh as normal.

Here is some quick sculpting on the 10 million polygon side of the elephant. This level of detail would be extremely hard to obtain using bump maps and normal geometry.

When we are done, press the a key again to exit Sculpt HD mode. The entire model is again displayed with the approximately 700,000 polygons we originally subdivided it to. However, the high-definition sculpt we just did is retained and will appear again when we re-enter Sculpt HD mode.

Rendering HD Geometry

To render your HD Geometry press the Sculpt HD button or press the a key while the cursor is positioned away from the model. If your render shows 'holes' in the model turn on the Tool: Display Properties:Double button and render again.

Rendering a model with subtools is best done using this [HD Render All zscript]. The zscript preserves perspective settings.

HD Render All is a ZScript. It must be placed in the ZScript folder of your ZBrush directory. If it is placed in ZStartup/ ZPlugs then ZBrush will not launch. Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/HD_Sculpting" ● This page was last modified 17:50, 2 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 17,550 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Preview Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

This subpalette works similarly to the preview window in the Draw Palette. The main difference is that it contains a red cross, which you can drag around in the window to set the object's center of rotation. Also, dragging the cross pans the window when you drop the cross, setting the new center at the cross location. Dragging elsewhere in the preview window rotates the contents.

Note: Any changes that you make to the Tool:Modifier settings that alter the tool's appearance are reflected immediately in the preview. They are also reflected in the active object in the document if the Transform:Move/Scale/Rotate/Edit Object mode is turned on. Otherwise, the changes appear the next time you add a copy of the tool to the document. Store: After rotating the object in the preview window, click this button to set the current orientation as the default orientation for the object. This is convenient if you're always rotating objects after you add them; just set the default orientation here first.

Restore: Restores the default orientation for the preview window, if you've changed the default orientation.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Preview_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 06:12, 29 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,560 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Deformation Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Allows the deformation of primitive or polymesh 3D models in various ways.

Concepts Whenever a 3D tool is selected, the Tool:Deformation subpalette becomes available. This can be used to apply deformations of many types (bending, skewing, flattening, etc.) to the selected tool.

Note: Deformations are applied to tools, not to things on the canvas; if you draw onscreen with a 3D tool but do not go 3D Edit mode, that drawn tool is considered a 'paint stroke', and deformations will not apply to it.

Deformations can be applied on any combination of the x, y, and z axes, as indicated by small letters in the top right corner of each deformation slider; these are the global coordinate axes, not those local to the object. (This point will become clearer when you read the procedure below.) When a letter is orange, that axis will be deformed by the amount set. Click an axis letter to toggle it on or off.

It's usually better to apply deformations to a tool before adding it to the screen, rather than after. This eliminates the need to go back and forth from 3D Edit mode, makes inventory control easier, and in general gives more predictable results. Here is the recommended procedure:

1. Select the tool. 2. Open the Tool:Preview subpalette and set the object up in the preview, relative to the global xyz axes, according to how you want the deformation to affect it. For example, if you want to stretch a cube into something that looks roughly like an elongated diamond, rotate it so that one point is that the top of the preview, the opposite point at the bottom, select only the y axis on the Size deformation, and go to the next step. 3. Apply the deformation. 4. Add the modified tool to the document.

Most deformation sliders reset to their middle position after the deformation is applied. Thus, they can be applied repeatedly, with cumulative effects. Also, most sliders can be dragged left or right, with opposite results depending on which direction you drag. Because of the way the deformations are applied, dragging in one direction and then an equal distance in the opposite direction doesn't always return the object to its previous shape. In such cases, you can use Undo (Ctrl+Z) to abandon changes.

Note: If you press Ctrl+Z without the model being drawn in an editable mode on the canvas, the result will be an Edit:Document Undo instead of an Edit:Tool Undo. Also, you can apply all deformations on selected parts of an object by using masking, for an unlimited range of effects. See the section on masking.

Below are detailed descriptions of the controls in the Deformation submenu.

Controls

Unify: While editing an object, it is possible for the overall dimensions of the object to change, causing it to become too big or small to display properly within the preview window. By applying Unify, ZBrush uniformly scales the object to maintain an optimal size.

Mirror: Flips the object horizontally. Use this to make a horizontally symmetrical image with a 3D object; use Snapshot to “paste” one side, and then use Mirror to create the opposite image.

Offset: Moves the object along the x, y, or z-axis with respect to the center of rotation. This is the opposite of moving the center of rotation in the preview window, but has the same net result. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%. Rotate: Rotates the object about the X, Y, or Z axis, using the center of rotation. Default is 0. Range is -180 to 180.

Size: Scales the object up or down. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Bend: Bends the object around the in-out axis, creating a sharp corner. Uses the pivot point as the center of the bend. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

SBend: Bends the object around the in-out axis, creating a smooth curve. Uses the pivot point as the center of the bend. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%. Skew: Adds a slant to the object about the in-out axis, creating a sharp corner. Uses the pivot point as the center of the skew. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

SSkew: Adds a slant to the object about the in-out axis, creating a smooth curve. Uses the pivot point as the center of the skew. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Flatten: Flattens the object from the left or right edge to the center as viewed in the Image Preview window. The direction of flattening depends on which way you drag the slider. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

RFlatten: Radial flatten creates cylindrical faces on the object around the selected axis or axes. It does this by adjusting all polygons that lie beyond the specified radius so that they lie against this cylindrical face. It doesn’t change the number of polygons that compose the object. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%. SFlatten: Spherical flatten creates spherical faces on the object around the selected axis or axes. It does this by adjusting all polygons that lie beyond the specified radius so that they lie against this spherical face. It doesn’t change the number of polygons that compose the object. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Twist: Applies a twist along the in-out axis as viewed in the Image Preview window. The direction of the twist depends on which way you drag the slider. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Taper: Tapers the object by scaling it successively smaller or larger from the top to the bottom, as viewed in the Image Preview window. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Squeeze: Squeezes or expands the object about the pivot point, depending on the direction you drag the slider. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%. Noise: Applies a noise effect to an object, giving it an uneven surface. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Smooth: Smooths an object, making the surface more even. Default is 0%. Range is - 100% to 100%.

Inflat: Makes an object larger or smaller on all axes by pushing polygons out or in along their surface normals. This tends to produce smoother edges than simply scaling an object. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Spherize: Moves an object's polygons into a spherical shape when dragged to the right. When dragged to the left, can have a deflating effect. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%. Gravity: Adds a gravity (or anti-gravity) effect by moving polygons successively downward or upward, depending on their distance from the pivot point. Default is 0%. Range is -100% to 100%.

Perspective: Adds a perspective effect by scaling farther polygons larger and closer polygons smaller. Dragging to the left has the opposite effect. Default is 0%. Range is - 100% to 100%.

]] Morph: Enabled only when a morph target has been stored, you can use this slider to blend between an object's current geometry and its morph target. By setting this slider to a negative value you can exaggerate changes in the deformation by adjusting deformation away from its morph target.

Note: The polygon count must remain the same while deforming. Therefore you should not use Divide or Optimize sliders while a morph target is active. Optimize: Intelligently reduces the number of polygons in an object while attempting to retain its shape. The more you optimize an object, the more detail it loses.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Deformation_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 21:35, 14 May 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,261 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Masking Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

ZBrush lets you mask parts of a 3D object so that when you modify the object with a brush, the operation affects only part of the object. Masking can be applied with variable intensity—up to 256 levels—so that the strength of applied effects varies according to the intensity of the mask. Masking can be applied while editing an object by holding down the Ctrl key as you drag over the object. The Tool:Masking subpalette provides many other functions related to masking, described below.

ViewMask: Causes masking to be visible; the mask appears as a dark gray shading. The darker the mask, the less effect operations applied to it will have. This is automatically turned on when you apply masking when editing an object.

In the illustration below, a mask was applied to the upper part of a cylinder, and then the SBend deformation was applied to the cylinder. The darker shade shows the mask, which prevented SBend from affecting that part of the object.

Note: If you 'paint' a 3D object onto the canvas using any standard method such as Snapshot, all visible masking is included in the image transferred to the canvas.

Inverse: Inverts the masking. Masked areas become unmasked, and unmasked areas become masked.

Clear: Removes any masking.

MaskAll: Masks the entire object. Use MaskAll or any other method to apply a mask before using Row, Col, or Grd, which act only on masked areas.

BlurMask: Blurs the edges of the current mask. Additional presses result in more blurring. This is particularly useful when masking an area that will be sculpted to blend very smoothly into the surrounding area, as you can quickly draw a mask, and then blur it to the desired degree.

SharpenMask: Sharpens the edge of the current mask. This is the inverse of the BlurMask operation (though blurring and then sharpening a mask won't normally give you exactly the original mask; use undo for that.)

Mask By Cavity: Automatically creates a mask based on the cavity geometry of the model. This allows you to, for example, easily paint only the surface of a dragon's scales, not the grooves between them. Cavity masking can be used in many ways in ZBrush 3. Make sure to check out the material in www.ZBrush.info.

The next three settings—Int, Hue, and Sat—let you derive a mask from a texture applied to an object. For more information on texture usage, see the section describing the Texture palette. To use Int, Hue, and Sat, first apply a texture, then click the appropriate button to apply the masking. Then, to best see the result, turn off texturing by selecting the TXTR OFF thumbnail in the Texture inventory.

Mask By Intensity: Derives a mask from the color-intensity values in an applied texture. Darker areas receive higher masking values than do lighter areas. If no texture is active ZBrush 3 will use your model's PolyPainting instead.

Mask By Hue: Derives a mask from the colors in an applied texture. Masking values of different colors are arbitrarily assigned based on the order of colors in the Color Selector, with the masking value at 100% at the left edge, decreasing to 0% at the right edge.

Mask By Saturation: Derives a mask from the color-saturation values in an applied texture. Highly saturated areas receive higher masking values than do less-saturated areas.

Mask By Alpha: Uses the currently selected alpha to apply masking.

Note: The alpha is applied on a per-polygon basis, so be sure the object has a high enough mesh resolution to support the alpha bitmap resolution; otherwise, the result will be blocky. This also applies to Intensity, Hue and Saturation masks.

Intens: The strength by which masking is removed by the Row/Col/Grd commands. Use different Sel/Skp settings with different Int amounts to vary masking strength on different parts of the object. Default is 100%. Range is 0% to 100%.

Blend: The degree to which a new masking operation mixes with an existing mask. This lets you, for instance, combine a Row/Col/Grd mask with an Alpha mask. To use, create a mask, then set the Blend amount, and then apply a second mask, and so on.

Create Alpha: Create an alpha from the current mask. This effectively saves the mask for later use.

HidePt: Hides any completely or partially non-masked parts of an object. This effectively lets you “cut away” part of an object, leaving only the masked areas. HidePt leaves only parts of an object on which the masking is 50% or greater.

ShowPt: Restores visibility of any parts of an object hidden with HidePt, as long as their masking values haven't changed. Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Masking_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 21:49, 2 July 2007. ● This page has been accessed 5,797 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Polygroups Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

This subpalette allows different groups of polygons to be displayed in different colors, to make working with regions of a model easier. It consists of controls that assign polygons to groups depending on certain criteria.

In addition to visually delimiting separate areas of a model, polygroups also allow visibility operations to easily show or hide groups.

Auto Groups: Puts polygons into groups so that group borders correspond to abrupt changes in mesh topography (shape).

Uv Groups: Assigns groups based on externally defined UV coordinates. Polygons will be assigned groups corresponding to the textures to which they map.

Group Visible: Assigns all visible polygons to a single group. This is used to assign a custom group to the visible polygons of a partially hidden mesh, to facilitate further manipulation.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Polygroups_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 03:22, 10 May 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,068 times. ● Privacy policy ● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Texture Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 UV Mapping Methods

❍ 1.1 Adaptive UV Tiles

❍ 1.2 Group UV Tiles

❍ 1.3 Other Types of UV Mapping

❍ 1.4 Which to Use?

❍ 1.5 Other Points

● 2 Controls

UV Mapping Methods

Very briefly, let’s discuss what UV Mapping is by using an example of an orange. If you were to make a 3D model of an orange, the geometry would be a simple sphere. Wrapped around this sphere is its peel—a 2D image that contains its color and even bump information. However, if you have ever peeled an orange and tried to lay it out flat, you know that it just doesn’t work. The peel stretches and breaks. The larger you try to make the pieces, the worse the stretching becomes.

This is exactly the same problem encountered by mapmakers when they try to unwrap the surface of the earth to put it onto a flat plane suitable for putting into a book. As a result, we end up with Mercator and many other kinds of projections, projections where slices are made through oceans (because that's where the least detail is), and other such techniques.

In 3D graphics, UV Mapping takes points on the surface of a 3D object and assigns (maps) them to corresponding points on a 2D plane (the texture). In order to overcome the problems inherent in unwrapping a 3D surface onto a 2D plane, various methods of mapping have been created. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each is ideal for a particular model or use.

ZBrush utilizes the following methods, which can be assigned before you begin texturing by using the Tool:Texture subpalette.

Adaptive UV Tiles

A texturing method unique to ZBrush, this mapping technique produces the lowest possible amount of texture distortion. Every polygon in the model is assigned a separate square within the texture, in effect breaking the surface down into the smallest possible pieces.

When using this method, it's essential that the texture's width and height be 256 pixels or higher, and be a power of 2. For example: 1024x1024, 512x2048, etc.

If the AUV Ratio slider is set to 1 (which it is by default), each polygon receives an equal-sized portion of the texture. If the AUV Ratio slider is set higher than 1, larger polygons receive larger portions of the texture space. This technique helps to prevent distortions caused by variations in polygon size, and particularly for models where some polygons are much larger than others, you will likely want to set the AUV Ration higher than one.

On the other hand, when the AUV Ratio slider is set to 1, the same texture can be used on multiple deformations of the same model (because changes in the size of the polygons will not affect the areas of the texture map they correspond to).

Adaptive UV Tiles (with AUV Ratio set to 1) is the default mapping method applied to any skinned object, including those created with ZSpheres.

The textures created by Adaptive UV Tiles are indecipherable to the human eye. If you plan to use the texture in another application, most programs can use it without difficulty, but it’s a good idea to test first. In the other application, run a test with Mip-Mapping and Texture Antialiasing turned off. If the texture renders correctly, that application can make use of the Adaptive UV Tiles mapping method. If your model appears to have a grid of faint lines on it, then the application does not support this method.

AUVTiles may encounter difficulty mapping very high-resolution textures (1024 pixels or higher) to very low-polygon models (32 polys or lower). If this happens, do one of the following: Clone the texture with smaller Width and Height settings (256x256 or 512x512); press the Tool: Geometry:Divide button to increase the number of polygons; or choose a different mapping method.

Group UV Tiles

The difference between AUV tiling and GUV tiling.

Group UV Tiles attempts to keep your UVs close to each other based on surface proximity and continuity.

To the right is a picture of the difference between GUV and AUV.

Other Types of UV Mapping

Other software can assign UV coordinates in a variety of other ways; even combining mapping methods on a single object. ZBrush respects these imported texture maps, and enables you to use any of its texturing methods (including the use of Projection Master) to generate, modify and refine textures.

These textures can be used to further incorporate the object in ZBrush artwork, and when exported, the same mapping method is applied.

Which to Use?

Use your best judgment to decide which method will work best for any given object. For ZBrush- generated objects, Adaptive UV Tiles is usually best. For use with imported objects, it may be best to stay with the texture-mapping method assigned outside of ZBrush. Only the simplest of objects work well with the other methods (such as Spherical for an eyeball).

Other Points

● 3D object textures must be loaded separately from the object. After the object has been imported, press Texture:Import load the desired texture. ● Depending on the file format, some texture maps may import upside down. Simply press Flip V in the Texture palette to invert them. ● Remember, when creating your own textures or modifying existing ones, texturing is far superior to vertex shading.

Controls Colorize: Fills every polygon with the selected color.

Grd (Gradient): Blends colors between adjacent polygons.

Txr>Col: Uses the existing texture to colorize the mesh directly. No texture map is needed with a mesh of this type. Each polygon is assigned a color.

Col>Txr: Creates a texture map based on the current coloring of the object.

Uv Check: Generates a new texture map for the current model. Within that map, overlapping UVs are shown in red. In addition, If you generate a texture map this way with Transform:Frame on (and if your UVs make a recognizable image when they are mapped to a plane), the resulting texture map will have the frame lines, allowing you to use them as guidelines when coloring the texture map by hand.

AUVTiles: Changes current UV mapping to Adaptive UVTiles. This form of UV Mapping unwraps every polygon separately onto the texture map. The result is a texture that is unintelligible to the naked eye, but is ideal for use with a 3D texturing program such as ZBrush's TextureMaster. Textures created with this method have less distortion than any other UV mapping technique.

GUVTiles: Changes the current UV mapping to one that organizes the UV coordinates by groups, i.e. the texture map will have areas of the model that are grouped presented as contiguous areas on the texture map. This gives a map which can be inspected or operated on manually. The AUVRatio slider also affects maps generated using GUV tiling, causing larger areas on the mesh to be mapped to larger areas on the texture map.

AUVRatio: If the AUV Ratio slider is set to 1 (which it is by default), each polygon receives an equal-sized portion of the texture. If the AUV Ratio slider is set higher than 1, larger polygons receive larger portions of the texture space. This technique helps to prevent distortions caused by variations in polygon size. See the section describing the Texture Palette for more information on Adaptive UV Tiling. Available only for polymesh objects.

UVTile: Changes current UV mapping to Tiles. Maps multiple copies of the currently selected texture to the object by assigning the same image to every polygon.

Uvc: Changes current UV mapping to cylindrical.

Uvp: Changes current UV mapping to planar.

Uvs: Changes current UV mapping to spherical.

HRepeat/VRepeat: Sets the number of times that the texture will be repeated on the object in the horizontal or vertical direction. Range = 1 to 32. Default = 1.

AdjU/AdjV/ApplyAdj: Adjusts the UV coordinates of the model by a small amount horizontally or vertically. Use this to fine tune texture’s fit when used in another application. Changes to the sliders will not take effect until ApplyAdj is pressed or the model is exported with a texture applied to it.

FSBorder: Sets the width adjustment for the next Fix Seam operation.

Fix Seam: Redraws the edges of disconnected polygons so background artifacts/seams are removed. This is performed automatically when a model is exported with a texture applied to it.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Texture_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 21:43, 1 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 6,379 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Morph Target Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

The Morph Target sub-palette settings allow management of the currently stored morph target geometry. Once a morph target has been assigned to an object, the Morph deformation becomes available so that you can blend between the model’s actual geometry and that of its morph target.

StoreMT: Saves the selected 3D object’s current geometry as a morph target. After deforming the object (either via the Deformation sub-palette or by sculpting in Edit mode), you can use the Morph slider (see below) to blend between the object’s deformed shape and its morph target.

LoadMT: Imports the geometry of a saved object as the morph target. The saved object’s polygon count must match that of the current object in order for morphing to be possible.

Switch: Stores the current object’s geometry as its morph target and reverts its shape to that of the previous morph target.

Restore: Undoes all deformations on the current object and reverts its shape back to the stored morph target.

DelMT: Removes the morph target so that a new one can be stored. Morph: Adjusts amounts of morphing; may be negative to cause morphing in the opposite directions.

Morph Distance: Used when morphing ZSphere models, to ensure that distances between linked ZSpheres are not overly affected by the morphing.

Project Morph: This option allows you to relax your mesh and remove polygon stretching created by using the Pinch, Tweak, or other brushes. For a full description, please see the documentation for this control at ZBrush's online documentation site.

To use Project Morph do the following:

1. Set your geometry level to the highest level. For this example, let's say level 5. 2. Store a morph target by pressing Tool: Morph Target: StoreMT. 3. Go down 2 levels of resolution to level 3 and delete all higher levels of resolution by pressing Tool: Geometry: Delete Higher. Don't worry, your hi-rez geometry is still there because we stored a morph target. 4. Smooth out the area you want to 'relax' with the Smooth Brush. 5. Divide two more times to return your model to resolution level 5. 6. Set the Tool: Morph Target: Project Morph slider to 100. This will project the morph target with the stetched polygons into your current smooth mesh. The result is a 'relaxed' mesh.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Morph_Target_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 20:01, 1 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,535 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Displacement Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 Introduction

● 2 Displacement Maps

❍ 2.1 The Alpha Displacement Exporter

● 3 Controls For Generating a Displacement Map

● 4 Controls for Viewing a Bump Map on Your Model

Introduction

The Tool:Displacement subpalette allows the generation of displacement maps from polymeshes that have multiple levels of subdivision. In addition, ZBrush now has additional plugins available to facilitate the creation of displacement maps. All of these are discussed below.

In order to use displacement maps, you'll also need to know about polymeshes, and Tool: Geometry Subpalette and multi-resolution polymeshes (handled by Tool:Geometry). Ideally, you should also know about the Tool:Morph Target Subpalette.

Displacement Maps

A displacement map is an intensity (alpha) map that can be used to generate a higher-resolution model from a lower-resolution model, by displacing points on the lower-resolution model by the amount indicated in the displacement map. This is typically used at rendering time; it allows a lower-resolution to be manipulated or animated, and then converts it into a higher-resolution model as each image or frame is being rendered.

In order to generate a displacement map in ZBrush, you will need a Polymesh3D tool of some sort, which has at least two different levels of subdivision. If you then set the subdivision level of the tool (Tool:Geometry:SDiv) to the lowest subdivision level, the Tool:Displacement:Create DispMap can be pressed to create a displacement map. ZBrush calculates this map by comparing the positions of the high-res model with the corresponding points on the low-res model.

Note: You can calculate a displacement map from any level of a multi-resolution model that is lower than the highest-res level for that model. However, displacement maps are usually calculated for a mesh imported from another program that becomes the lowest-level mesh, so you will generally set Tool:Geometry:SDiv to 1 when generating a displacement map.

Note: You can also generate a displacement map when SDiv is set to its highest level, but since the points of the high-res model will be compared against themselves, you will simply get a 'blank' displacement map. Displacement maps generated by ZBrush normally use a 50% gray to indicate no displacement. Darker grays indicate displacements into the object, and lighter grays indicate displacements out from the object. This can be adjusted, see the description of controls below.

A typical workflow for creating displacement maps is given below.

1. Create a Polymesh3D object in ZBrush, either from a primitive, or by importing an external mesh. 2. Select that polymesh, draw a copy onscreen, and enter 3D Edit mode (hotkey t) to allow sculpting. Polymesh created from Terrain primitive.

3. Click Tool:Morph Target:StoreMT to create a record of the initial vertex positions of the polymesh. 4. Create higher subdivision levels of the object (Tool:Geometry:Divide, hotkey Ctrl-d), and sculpt in those higher subdivision levels as desired. Model after subdivision and sculpting.

5. Return to the lowest subdivision level. The vertex positions at this level will have been altered by the sculpting at higher levels. Sculpted model at lowest subdivision level; vertex positions have been altered.

6. Press Tool:Morph Target:Switch to restore the original vertex positions at the lowest subdivision level. The sculpting at higher levels will not be affected. After restoring the morph target, the low-res model is the same as the original.

7. Press Tool:Displacement:Create DispMap to create the displacement map. The generated map will appear in the Alpha palette. Thumbnail of generated displacement map.

8. You can now export this map and use it in your external renderer.

Some notes about this process:

● It is not necessary to store and restore a morph target, but if you do not, then the generated displacement map will be created for application to the low-res model that will have had its vertex positions changed by higher-level sculpting. Normally, if you do not store a morph target, you would then want to export this altered low-res model for use with the displacement map. ● An alternative to storing a morph target is to finish your sculpting, and then re-import the original base mesh while the sculpted model is at its lowest subdivision level. This will alter the vertex positions back to their original, without otherwise changing things. ● To use the displacement map, you will also need to use the Alpha:Alpha Depth Factor value as a scaling value in your rendered. See the documentation for the Alpha palette. ● Make sure to read the section in this page for information about the Alpha Displacement Exporter. It may simplify this task.

The Alpha Displacement Exporter

Pixologic has also made available, for free download, a plugin called the Alpha Displacement Exporter, which can simplify the creation of displacement maps. It is freely available at http:// www.ZBrushCentral.com. All of the ideas described above still apply, but in addition, the Alpha Displacement Exporter provides the following capabilities:

● Displacement maps can be exported in different TIFF file formats, depending upon the needs of your external programs. ● 32-bit, 16-bit, and 8-bit displacement maps can be exported. ● When exporting in 32-bit format, the displacement map files can be created in a manner that eliminates the need for recording and using the alpha depth factor. ● Support is provided for generating multiple maps for an object that is composed of multiple polymeshes. All maps will have consistent scaling relative to the object as a whole.

Controls For Generating a Displacement Map

DPSubPix: As the displacement map is generated, additional levels of subdivision are performed on the highest-res mesh to improve the final result. Beware, though, that each additional level of subdivision may increase generation time by up to a factor of four. Normally, you do not need to set this above two. A better way of achieving a similar result is the use of the Adaptive.

DPRes: Sets the resolution of the generated map, i.e. a setting of 1024 will result in a map of 1024x1024 pixels. This can be any value, but many external programs work best with maps that are powers of two. Also, the number of pixels in this map should normally exceed the number of polygons in your highest-level mesh, as otherwise not all of the details in the displacements will be recorded in the map. (Often, you will want the number of pixels in the map to significantly exceed the number of polygons in the mesh, so that areas of high polygon detail are adequately captured.)

Adaptive: When on, it automatically determines the additional number of subdivisions that are performed for various regions of the mesh during map generation, depending on the resolution of the mesh in that area. This option disables the DPSubPix setting, and is the preferred way of generating displacement maps; use DPSubPix only if you feel Adaptive does not give satisfactory results.

Smooth UV: Affects the "smoothness" of the final effect when the displacement map is applied. When sculpting organic models, you will normally want this on. If your model has sharp edges and you find that they are not maintained adequately in your renders, you may want to try making displacement maps with this turned off.

Create DispMap: Creates a new displacement map, based on the other settings. The new map will appear in Alpha inventory.

Controls for Viewing a Bump Map on Your Model

The controls below do not effect your displacement map. They are used to both preview a bump map and to bake a bump map into your model.

Intensity: Controls the intensity of the bump map.

Mid: Sets the "midpoint" gray intensity, i.e. the level of gray that indicates no bump. By default, this is 50%. You can alter this for use with programs that use other base intensities.

Mode: Controls whether you are viewing a bump map or previewing the bump map baked into your geometry. With Mode On your verticies will be displaced according to the grey scale value of the bump map combined with the Intensity setting. Note, to capture the detail of a bump map you should work with Mode On at the higher subdivision levels.

Apply DispMap: This is used to bake a bump map into your ZBrush mesh. For example, you could sculpt a model, create a displacement map, remove the higher-level subdivisions for the model, redivide the model, apply the generated map, and end up with the sculpted model again. Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Displacement_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 19:27, 20 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 2,671 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:NormalMap Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Note: ZBrush now has available a vastly more powerful plugin, ZMapper, for creating normal maps. You will almost certainly want to use it for all but the simplest normal map creation. In addition, ZMapper comes with extensive documentation that explains normal map concepts, as well as the use of ZMapper.

Concepts

A Normal Map is similar to a texture map, except that it controls the apparent angle of a surface point, when lighting calculations are done. In other words, a flat surface could be made to appear grainy or wrinkled, depending on the normal map applied.

Normal maps are generated for polymesh models having multiple subdivision levels. The surface at the highest subdivision level will be compared to the surface at the current subdivision level, to find differences in surface orientation at different points and thus generate normal maps.

Again, you are strongly referred to ZMapper for both a more powerful normal mapping tool, and extensive documentation on the concepts and practicialities of normal maps.

Controls Tangent: If on, the normal map will be created in tangent space (local to the object). If off, the normal map will be created in global space.

NMRes: Determines the size (width and height) of the generated normal map.

Adaptive: If on, the normal map will be generated with greater detail in areas of high geometric detail, at the cost of longer processing.

SmoothUV: If on, causes UV coordinates to be smoothing during normal map generation. This can be used to obtain desired results at sharp edges of the model.

Create NormalMap: Generate a normal map using the above settings.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:NormalMap_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 19:32, 20 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 3,017 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Unified Skin Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Any 3D object can be re-skinned using the Unified skinning method. This creates a new mesh with smooth joins between parts and uniform polygon distribution.

Resolution: Determines the polygon resolution of the next skin created using the Make Unified Skin button. Low values result in a lower polygon count, but also a “marshmallow-like” puffiness with less detail. Higher values remain truer to the original model, but with a greater polygon count. Range = 8 to 256. Default = 128

Sdns: Skin Density determines the density of the next skin created using the Make Unified Skin button.

Smt: Determines the smoothness of the next skin to be created. Range = 0 to 100. Default = 10.

Note: Setting a value of 0 results in Cubical Skinning–the resulting object will be made up of tiny cubes.

Auto Size: If this button is active when Make Unified Skin is pressed, the resulting skin will be created at a size that will fit inside the Tool preview window. Default = Off.

Make Unified Skin: Creates a new mesh by stretching a “skin” around the currently selected object. The resulting object will appear as a new tool in the Tool palette inventory. It will be given an even distribution of polygons, and be assigned UVTiles mapping. Your current model remains in Edit or Transform mode if active on the canvas.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Unified_Skin_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 19:33, 20 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,611 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Display Properties Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

This subpalette affects the way objects are drawn on the ZBrush canvas. In general, these settings do not affect the models themselves, simply the way they they are drawn in the ZBrush window.

The contents of this subpalette vary depending on the type of model currently selected.

Contents

● 1 Controls Common to More than One Model Type

● 2 Controls for 3D Primitives

● 3 Controls for Polymeshes

● 4 Controls for ZSpheres

Controls Common to More than One Model Type

DRes: Controls how via subdivision how many polygons will be rendered for each smoothed polygon. Default is 0. When negative, the object will be drawn onscreen with fewer than its actual number of polygons, which may be good for fast previews.

DSmooth: Controls the amount of additional polygon sub-division when rendering sharp edges of the object. Range is 0 to 1, which determines what constitues a "sharp" edge. Default is 0. Es (Edge Smoothness): Active when the DSmooth slider is greater than 0, further controls the smoothing effect.

Double: If some polygons appear to be missing, some may be facing in and some out. Choosing Double will force all polygons to be double sided, so that all can be seen. Use only when needed, since the memory requirements for the mesh will double.

Flip: If the object imports with the polygons facing inward, Flip can be used to render them all outward.

Controls for 3D Primitives

Sh/Bh/Sv/Bv: These settings control how edges are beveled only when the model is drawn; they do not change model geometry. Sh and Sv control horizontal/vertical beveling on or off, while Bh/Bv control the amount of beveling.

How Sh and Bh affect edges of a model when rendering.

Controls for Polymeshes

Controls for ZSpheres

Density: ZSphere models are drawn with the "anchor" ZSpheres (usually drawn in two- tone red) linked with "link" spheres, which are normall drawn in gray. This controls the density with which the link spheres are drawn between anchor spheres; higher values will result in a sequence of link spheres more closely resembling a cylinder.

Color Int: As this value is increased, the color of link spheres approaches the color of anchor ZSpheres.

Size: Can be used to decrease the size at which ZSpheres are drawn, which permits better access to drawn models. The geometry of models generated from the ZSphere model is not changed; this is purely a control to make working with ZSpheres easier, where circumstances demand.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Display_Properties_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 22:05, 29 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,611 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Import Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

If you select a polymesh tool before importing a mesh, a new subpalette will appear, the Tool: Import subpalette. This provides further options for controlling the importing of meshes.

Note: There are three different workflows for importing polymeshes:

1. Press Tool:Import while a non-polymesh tool is selected. A new tool will be created for the imported mesh, but you will not have access to the Tool:Import settings. 2. Press Tool:Import while the Polymesh3D (six-pointed star) is selected. You will have access to Tool:Import before the import takes place, and a new tool will be created when the polymesh is imported. 3. Press Tool:Import while a custom polymesh is selected. This gives access to Tool:Import, but it replaces the current custom polymesh with the new one. This is most often used to re- import the original base mesh, after sculpting it in ZBrush, which will have changed the position, but not the topology, of the original vertices. Re-importing the mesh will restore the vertex positions.

ZBrush will import objects composed of quads and/or triangles. If the imported object has polygons with more than four sides, ZBrush will display an alert message and then convert the polygons to three and four sided.

In addition, various of the options below may affect mesh topology when a mesh is imported. If you need to export a mesh with identical topology after sculpting, make sure the import settings are such that they do not affect mesh topology.

Controls

Mrg: Merges points that occupy the same space.

Add: Allows multiple meshes to be imported and combined. Import the first mesh, then press Add and import the next. ---- Tri2quad: Converts adjacent triangles to quads when importing. Maximum angle between adjacent triangles to be converted to quads is set by the slider. Range = 0 to 90 degrees. Default = 45

Note: Tri2quad must be set to zero if the imported geometry is to be used as a morph target.

Weld: If two points are closer than the distance set here, they are combined into a single point. Range = 0 to .01. Default = 0 Note: Weld must be set to zero if the imported geometry is to be used as a morph target.

Import: Perform the import using the given settings.

Selecting the PolyMesh3D tool before importing a mesh indicates that you want access to (and therefore want to use) the above options. If you import a mesh without selecting PolyMesh3D, the above options will have no effect, regardless of what you might previously have set them to.

Troubleshooting If you experience problems importing a mesh that has been saved from an external application into a ZTool with subdivision levels please try the following:

1. Import your low resolution mesh as a new ZTool 2. Re-export it from within ZBrush. 3. Import the mesh into your original target ZTool.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Import_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 18:25, 2 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 787 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Export Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Whenever a 3D tool is selected, the Tool:Export subpalette becomes visible. It provides options to control how meshes are exported.

Obj: Exports the object in the .obj format and automatically chooses quad polygons.

Dxf: Exports the object in the .dxf format and automatically chooses triangular polygons.

Qud: Sets the object polygons to quads, regardless of the export format.

Tri: Sets the object polygons to triangles, regardless of the export format.

Txr: Includes UV coordinates in exported .obj output.

Flp: Flips the exported texture top to bottom for target applications that require it.

Mrg: Merges points that occupy the same space. Grp: Includes grouping information in the exported output.

Scale: Scales the exported object size. Range = 0.1 to 100. Default = 1

These options apply to all exports. If you've changed them on a previous export, make sure they are still what you want when you do further exports.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Export_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 19:39, 20 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,564 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Tool:Rigging Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Select: Prompts you to select a polymesh that can then be rigged with ZSpheres. If you want to retopologize a model, use this control to select the model, and then activate Tool: Topology:Edit Topology to turn on the retopologization feature.

Projection: When the Projection switch is on, then a new mesh created from a topology will have detail from an underlying mesh projected onto it. This is intended to allow transfer of sculpting from an original mesh to a retopologized version of that mesh. This is affected by other controls in the Rigging and Topology submenus, so reading the descriptions for the controls in those submenus is a good idea before using projection.

Projection Strength: The primary purpose of Projection Strength is to adjust flipped normals. If you find your vertices are being projected extremely inaccurately when a new mesh is created with projection on, you may have a flipped normals problem, in which case setting Projection Strength to -1 before projecting will fix it. In addition, you can use this setting to create projected details that are more or less amplified, as compared to the original details.

ProjectRange: When mesh details are projected, only details within a certain distance of the new mesh's surface are projected onto it. You can adjust this range upwards to project detail onto parts of your new mesh that have ended up farther away from the surface of the original model. If set too high, you may get details from other areas of the original model projected onto the new mesh.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Rigging_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 04:27, 5 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 856 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo ● Disclaimers Tool:Topology Subpalette

From ZBrushInfo

Edit Topology: Once a polymesh has been prepped for retopologization (see the help for Tool:Rigging:Select), pressing the Edit Topology button takes you into retopologization mode. In this mode, the following apply: - Add a point: Click on desired spot. - Delete a point: Alt-click on point. - Set a new starting point: Ctrl-click on point. - Select a point: LMB-click on the point. - Deselect a point: LMB-click outside your model. - Move points: Go from Draw mode to Move mode. - Move more points at once: Increase the brush size. - Scale points: Go to Scale mode. (works best with larger draw size) - Delete a connection-line without deleting the connected points: Insert a new point in the middle of the line and delete that point.

Select: Prompts you to select a model for which you want to edit topology directly. This is NOT the same as retopologizatioin--for help on that, see the popup note for Tool: Rigging:Select. Instead, Tool:Topology:Select allows you to edit an existing model's topology directly, to do things like add or remove points, connect vertices with new edges, and so on.

Skin Thickness: You can create a solid (double-sided) model from single-sided topology using Tool:Adaptive Skin:Make Adaptive Skin. For example, you could create topology for a shoe using a foot as the underlying topology guide. When creating a model in this way, Skin Thickness sets the thickness of the generated double-sided model.

Max Strip Length: As you add lines and vertices when retopologizing a model, ZBrush looks for opportunities to automatically add connecting lines where you are likely to want them. Max Strip Length controls how aggressively ZBrush will attempt to autoinsert connecting lines. To turn off this feature entirely, set the value of this control to its minimum. Note that, depending on your workflow, you may find that ZBrush doesn't autoinsert lines, or inserts them at places you don't want them. This is a reflection of the fact that each user will do things in a particular way, and ZBrush's insertion algorithm functions better with some workflows than with others. For tips on retopologizing most efficiently, visit the ZBrush forums, or look through tutorials on this site that use retopoligization.

Subdiv: When set to values above 1, Subdiv causes a mesh generated from new topology to be subdived 1 or more times. This is intended for use when the Tool: Rigging:Project switch is on; the subdivision is performed before details are projected onto the new mesh, and as a result, a higher value for Subdiv will allow more details to be captured by the new mesh.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Tool:Topology_Subpalette"

● This page was last modified 22:26, 26 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,146 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Transform Palette

From ZBrushInfo Contents

● 1 Introducing the Transform Palette

● 2 Basic Transforms

● 3 The Info Sub-menu

● 4 Changing Object Color and Material

● 5 Editing 3D Objects

❍ 5.1 Brush Controls

❍ 5.2 Editing Submodes

■ 5.2.1 Moving and Scaling Model Vertices in Edit Mode

■ 5.2.2 Drawing in Edit Mode

❍ 5.3 Brush Shape

❍ 5.4 Symmetry Controls

❍ 5.5 Modifiers

● 6 Other Transform Controls

❍ 6.1 Snapshot

❍ 6.2 Markers

❍ 6.3 Display Options

❍ 6.4 Other Controls

❍ 6.5 3D Copy

Introducing the Transform Palette

The ZBrush Transform menu provides tools for moving, rotating, and scaling 3D objects, as well as powerful facilities for editing object shapes. It also gives you access to ZBrush's special Marker and 3D Copy functions, as well as features for symmetrical modeling.

Note: Many of the controls discussed below also appear in the ZBrush default configuration, in the "shelf" above the drawing area.

When you first open the Transform menu, the only active control in the upper two rows of buttons is the Draw Pointer button in the upper-left corner:

This means that dragging in the document window produces new paint strokes or objects using the current tool, stroke, and other program settings.

After you draw something, other transform menu controls may or may not become available, depending on the current combination of settings. In the most typical case, immediately after you add a 3D object such as a sphere or cube, most of the controls become available.

Less typically, when you use certain combinations of tools and stroke types, ZBrush makes available all or some of the Transform tools. For example, if you use the Eraser tool in conjunction with the Drag Rectangle stroke type, you then have access to two Transform functions: Move and Scale. With these, you can change the position and size of the erasure.

Whichever brush and stroke type you use, the way you apply the Transform functions is the same.

Basic Transforms

For information on moving, scaling, or rotating a paint stroke (i.e. while in paint mode, not in 3D Edit mode–see ZBrush Modes), see the page on The Gyro

The Info Sub-menu

Image:Transform Palette Transform-Info-submenu.jpg

The Info sub-menu is a useful utility in ZBrush that shows current transform information, and lets you input numeric settings for precise transforms. To access it, click the Info heading in the Transform menu.

The Info sub-menu shows data for the x, y, and z axes, from top to bottom, relevant to the current transform mode:

When Draw Pointer is active, the Info sub-menu displays the current cursor position in pixols. The Zaxis value becomes higher the farther away the cursor is. That is, negative values indicate closer distances, while positive ones indicate farther distances.

When you're just moving the cursor around the workspace, the z-axis display shows the default cursor position when over the background. But when the cursor is over a drawn surface, the z-axis display shows that surface's position. When drawing with most tools, the default z-axis position is at the rear clipping plane, which puts strokes drawn on the background at a suitable distance away from the "front" of the workspace. When drawing 3D objects, the defaultz-axis position is 0, which places the objects drawn over the background in the center of the workspace depth.

In this mode, you cannot change the Info settings.

● In Move mode, the Info sub-menu displays the position of active object's pivot point. To set a precise position for the object, click a slider and drag horizontally to set it, or click it and enter new data from the keyboard. When using the keyboard, press Enter to input the new data, and press Tab and Shift+Tab to move forward and backward between the fields. ● In Scale mode, Info shows the active object's scaling factors as multipliers (percentage of actual size). For example, if you draw a medium-size sphere, its scaling factors might be 90, 90, and 90. To make it egg-shaped, change the second factor to 140 by clicking a field and dragging horizontally to move the slider, or entering new data from the keyboard. When using the keyboard, press Enter to input the new data, and press Tab and Shift+Tab to move forward and backward between the fields. ● In Rotate mode, Info shows the active object's orientation in degrees. To set a precise orientation for the object, click a field and drag horizontally to move the slider, or enter new data from the keyboard. When using the keyboard, press Enter to input the new data, and press Tab and Shift+Tab to move forward and backward between the fields. Range = - 180 to 180.

Changing Object Color and Material An important aspect of ZBrush is that, whenever any transform mode is active, any change you make to the active color and/or material is applied immediately to the current object. You use the Color menu to change the active color, and the Material menu to change the material. Note that it's possible to assign a fill color or material to an object so it's "protected" from these changes. These menus are covered in greater depth in their own sections of this manual, but we'll provide a brief example here.

In the following illustration, a white sphere (#1) was added, converted to pixols with Snapshot (covered later in this section), and moved, and then the color was changed to orange (#2). It was then converted to pixols and moved again, and the material was changed to Metal Spherical Blend (#3):

Editing 3D Objects

The first icon in the second row of the Transform menu is the Edit Objectß tool. As the stylized button background of vertices and edges indicates, this is really a "3D Edit" button; After activating Edit Object, you can use a special customizable brush to sculpt objects and/or paint them, adding physical detail as well as color wherever you like. You can also move and scale parts of the object using editing functions.

Note: The Edit Object button can only be activated if a true 3D object (such as a sphere, cone, polymesh, etc.) is active on the screen.

Here's a 3D object that's been sculpted and had some color added to it:

To begin editing an object using the default settings, simply click the Edit Object button or press the t key, and then drag the mouse/tablet cursor over the object surface. As you drag, you'll see the raised-surface effects immediately.

While you're editing, the object remains three dimensional, and you can rotate it to draw on other sides. In fact, you don't even need to switch modes-—simply drag on the background to rotate the object freely. To rotate on the in-out (Z) axis only, press and hold the Shift key, click and hold outside the object, release the Shift key, and then drag the mouse.

Note: Using the Draw pointer, you can pull and push convex and concave areas on your object at the same time as you add color. However, in order to do both simultaneously, you must first turn on the Tool:Texture:Colorize switch. Note: When you turn on Colorize, the base object turns the default gray color-— thereafter, editing applies the current color.

You can also move and scale the object as a whole while in 3D edit mode:

● To move the object, hold down the Alt key and drag on the canvas. ● To scale the object, hold down the Alt key, click and hold the mouse, release the Alt key while still holding the mouse button, and drag.

Brush Controls

During editing, a number of controls in the Draw menu affect various aspects of drawing and sculpting:

The most useful are:

Draw Size: Sets the size of the brush used for drawing as well as for transforms. This setting is reflected in the size of the circular cursor ZBrush shows when editing.

ZAdd/ZSub: Determines whether the brush pushes or pulls geometry. ZSub causes concave editing; ZAdd causes convex editing. In the illustration above, the red lines used a ZAdd setting, while the green lines used a ZSub setting. Holding down the Alt key while you sculpt the object will temporarily switch between ZAdd and ZSub. For example, if you have ZSub selected in the Draw menu, holding down Alt will temporarily switch you to ZAdd.

RGB Intensity: {{{2}}}

Z Intensity: {{{2}}}

Editing Submodes

Editing of 3D objects is accomplished with one of 3 different "submodes"; while the Edit button is on, you can also select the Move, Scale, or Draw buttons to change how drawing will affect your model. We'll present the Move and Scale submodes first, but the real power lies in the Draw submode.

Moving and Scaling Model Vertices in Edit Mode

● Edit-Move Submode (ZBrush 2): If you turn on the Move button while Edit mode is active: then the brush will move vertices under it, so dragging on an object moves the parts of the object underneath the brush; the precise effect is determined by the various settings in the Draw menu. The top and bottom areas of a sphere moved in opposite directions in Edit-Move mode:

● Edit-Move Submode (ZBrush 3): In ZBrush 3, this activates the Transpose tool, and dragging over your mesh will draw an action line. Click here for more information about how to use the transpose too.

To achieve the functionality of ZBrush 2's move mode in ZBrush 3, use the Tweak Brush.

● Edit-Scale Submode (ZBrush 2): If you turn on the Scale button while Edit mode is active:

√then dragging on an object scales a part of it whose size is determined by the Draw Size setting, with the center of the scaling determined by where you click before dragging. In the picture of the edited cube, below, two corners were scaled up during editing, and a third corner was scaled down.√A cube’s corners scaled larger and smaller in Edit-Scale mode:

● Edit-Scale Submode (ZBrush 3): In ZBrush 3, this activates the Transpose tool, and dragging over your mesh will draw an action line. Click here for more information about how to use the transpose too.

● You can turn on Rotate while in Edit mode, but it will have no effect.

● Edit-Rotate Submode (ZBrush 3): In ZBrush 3, this activates the Transpose tool, and dragging over your mesh will draw an action line. Click here for more information about how to use the transpose too.

Drawing in Edit Mode

If you turn on the Draw button while Edit mode is active:

then the following controls in the Transform menu take effect:

The various buttons produce different types of sculpting effects, while the Edit Curve can be used to precisely control the shape of the brush (see "Brush Shape", below.) To see how these brushes work, hold down the Control key while hovering the mouse over them, and also experiment on your own.

Note: These buttons can be pressed even when Draw mode is not active, but they have no effect.

Brush Shape

By default, ZBrush uses a pointed brush to draw on objects in Edit Object mode. You can see a representation of this brush by looking at the graph in the Modifiers sub-menu. The graph shows a cross-section of the top-left corner of the brush. In other words, the left side of the graph shows the outer edge of the brush, and the right side shows the center. Thus, by default, the reshaping caused by painting in Edit Object mode is strongest at the center of the brush.

Default brush profile:

You can reshape the brush in an infinity of ways. For example:

Using such a shape can allow you to produce very specific shapes with little work. The above brush, when applied to the surface of a sphere using a single click in Transform:StdDot mode, results in:

Symmetry Controls

Using symmetry, you can modify two or more areas of an object the same way; the software makes additional copies of any edits you apply. Moreover, you can mirror symmetrical edits, so that they go in opposite directions, or not, so they go in the same direction. Radial symmetry is a powerful way to make multiple edits simultaneously, all the way around an object's perimeter.

Note: When you turn on symmetry and then position the cursor over the active object, red dots appear on its surface where the additional edits will be applied. Large dots indicate edit locations on surfaces facing you, while small dots indicate edit locations on surfaces facing away from you.

>M<: (Mirror): When on, the symmetry is mirrored, so that if you make an edit on the side of an object, an edit is made on the opposite side, in the opposite direction. When off, a symmetrical edit on the side of an object causes a push-out effect on one side and a push-in effect on the other side.

Z-axis radial symmetry with Mirror on (Middle) and Mirror off (right):

Mirror is available only when X, Y, and/or Z symmetry is on. Default = on.

>X<: />Y< />Z<: Sets the axis or axes of symmetry. You can use just one of these, or combine them in any way you like.

(R): {{{2}}}

Radial Count: {{{2}}}

6 points radial-symmetry was used while transforming a 3D sphere into a flower:

LSym: LSym is used when working with subtools. Within a mesh composed of subtools, the 'global' coordinate system is centered on the main (topmost in the subtool list) subtool. If another subtool has been moved off of center, and an attempt is made to edit it with (say) X symmetry turned on, ZBrush will attempt to mirror strokes across the main subtool's axes, not across the selected subtool's axes. This may not be what is desired. Turning on LSym causes symmetry to be mirrored across the selected subtool's axes, ignoring the 'global' coordinate axis, and allowing symmetrical sculpting as if the subtool were a completely separate model.

Modifiers

The Transform menu's Modifiers sub-menu offers switches for editing using specific axes and combinations of axes, as well as controls for modifying the shape of the brush used in Edit Object mode.

The first row of buttons in the Modifiers sub-menu lets you specify any combination of the three axes for deformation using the Edit Object brush. In the previous illustration, a cube was edited using the three different single-axis modes as well as all three combined. Using the X axis, the deformation occurred from left to right. Using the Y axis, the deformation occurred along the vertical axis. Using the Z axis, the deformation took place on the cube's in-out axis. And using the XYZ setting, the cube was indented perpendicular to its surface.

Note: You can combine any two of the single axes for deformation along both.

Other Transform Controls

This section covers additional controls in the Transform menu that aren't directly related to editing 3D objects.

Snapshot

While using the Transform tools, it's useful to be able to convert the visible part of a 3D object into pixols, thus placing it into the drawing, and then go on and manipulate the original 3D object some more. To convert a geometric object into pixols, first apply any transforms and/or editing, position it where you want it, and then use the Snapshot tool. The easiest way to do this is by positioning the object in the desired location, and typing Ctrl+S.

For example, by combining Move, Scale, and Snapshot with a simple cylinder, you can make a geometric composition like the illustration below. Snapshot was used to copy the cylinder onto the canvas after each transform:

Note that, when an object is copied, the copy is no longer an independent 3D object; it simply becomes part of the drawing. Only one 3D object at a time can exist as a transformable entity in ZBrush. Note: You may have encountered the term "stamp" in older ZBrush tutorials and documentation. This function is now called Snapshot.

Markers

Markers are used to remember the position and other properties of objects, and to restore those objects at a later time. See Markers for further details.

Mark Object Position: Places a marker for the currently active object.

Unmark Object Position: Removes a marker from the currently active object.

Display Options

Display options control various aspects of how objects are displayed onscreen.

{{Control|Quick 3D Edit|

When a 3D object is in Edit mode, it is shown in preview mode for faster interaction. When this is active, the model will not be subdivision-smoothed each time the mouse is released after an edit action.

{{Control|Pf| (Polyframe)

When Quick 3D Edit is active, the Polyframe mode becomes available. This viewing mode is a shaded display of the model with the wireframe drawn onto the surface.

Note: When leaving a Transform mode, the polyframe view reverts to the standard view with subdivision smoothing and no wireframe. If you would like to keep the polyframe visible after the object has been converted to pixols, press the Transform: Snapshot button. The polyframe view will be snapshot to the canvas. You can then switch to Draw mode, which snapshots the subdivided view into the same position. Perform a document undo (Ctrl+Z) to remove this extra copy, leaving only the polyframe model.

Dots Display: Displays wireframe of 3D object when moved.

Other Controls

Local Transform: Determines how resize and rotate functions are performed while editing 3D tools. By default, this button is un-pressed and resize or rotate actions using the Alt/Option key while in edit mode are centered upon the object’s true center. Pressing this button causes these actions to be centered upon the most recent editing point. This is useful when editing a small portion of a very large object.

Xres, Yres, Zres: The Xres, Yres and Zres sliders are only available when a ZSphere model is being edited. These sliders determine the mesh resolution for the next ZSpheres to be added to the model. The settings remain in effect until these sliders are changed. These sliders are normally locked together, and changing one will change all three. You can change a single slider by Shift-clicking within it. The X, Y and Z axes for ZSpheres are oriented so that the Z-axis is considered to be a line between the ZSphere and its parent.

Marquee: (Also called Lasso). This switch controls mask selection mode. When it is off, masks are selected by dragging out a rectangular selection. When it is on, masks are selected by dragging the mouse around (lassoing) an area of the model.

Activate: (Also called Transp.) This is used when editing meshes composed of multiple subtools. When on, subtools can be seen through other subtools. The transparency of subtools can be adjusted in settings under Preferences:Draw.

Rot XYZ: When set, rotation of the object is unconstrained, and it can be quicly spun on any axis.

Rot X: When set, moving the mouse horizontally will cause rotation only around the model's X axis. Moving the mouse vertically will cause the object to be rotated around the screen's horizontal axis. This makes it easy to rotate around the model's X axis, while still giving flexibility in positioning the model. Rot Y: When set, moving the mouse horizontally will cause rotation only around the model's Y axis. Moving the mouse vertically will cause the object to be rotated around the screen's horizontal axis. This makes it easy to rotate around the model's Y axis, while still giving flexibility in positioning the model.

Rot Z: When set, moving the mouse horizontally will cause rotation only around the model's Z axis. Moving the mouse vertically will cause the object to be rotated around the screen's horizontal axis. This makes it easy to rotate around the model's Z axis, while still giving flexibility in positioning the model.

3D Copy

Note: 3D Copy has been largely replaced by Projection Master in ZBrush 2.

In ZBrush, you can paint directly on 3D objects, but the resolution of the texture is dependent on the mesh of the object. To show fine details, you must use a very high resolution mesh or a texture map. Using a texture map is preferable, since a high resolution mesh uses many more resources. The best solution is to use a high resolution texture map with a low resolution mesh. To produce the very highest quality details, use the 3D copy tool.

The fundamental action of the tool is to copy the texture on the canvas to an object in front of it. The 3D copy does all the distortion of the texture needed, based on the UV coordinates of the texture and the object. The sphere is moved over the star, and 3D copy is pressed.

The texture is generated and is automatically distorted to map correctly to the sphere. It will show up in the Texture menu.

3D Copy Controls:

S: (Shaded) By default, this is off, and when you grab a texture, ZBrush uses only the base colors of the area you grab. (To see the base colors, turn on Render:Flat Renderer.) When you turn on shaded, ZBrush grabs the colors as they are shaded by the lighting in the scene.

A.I.: (Auto Intensity): If pressed, then on surfaces that face you directly, colors are transferred at full intensity; on surfaces that angle away from you, colors are transferred at decreasing intensities. This results in softer edges on curved objects and helps blend multiple uses of 3D Copy on the same object from different angles.

If not pressed, colors are transferred to all surfaces equally, regardless of orientation.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Transform_Palette"

● This page was last modified 04:37, 14 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 4,602 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers Zoom Palette

From ZBrushInfo

The Zoom palette, docked in the left tray and with the mouse cursor over the Rgb button that appears in the area above the canvas. The two thumbnail views both show the area around the mouse cursor, in this case at differing levels of magnification.

Note: The Zoom palette is often docked into one of the trays, so the magnified thumbnail views are visible as the mouse is moved across the ZBrush interface and canvas. To do this, open Zoom palette from the menu bar, and click the small circular icon in the upper right corner of the palette.

Controls

Note: Many of the controls below have convenient keyboard shortcuts. Hover the mouse over the control and hold down the Ctrl key for a description of the control, including keyboard shortcuts.

Small and Large thumbnails: The small thumbnail (in the top left corner of the Zoom palette main area) and the large thumbnail (at the bottom of the Zoom palette) display a magnified view of the area around the mouse cursor. They can each display at magnifications of 2x, 4x, or 8x. Click on them to cycle through the magnification levels. Scroll: Click and drag on this button to scroll the canvas within the drawing area. You can use this to get to areas of the canvas that are not visible in the drawing area.

Zoom: Click and drag up or down on this button to zoom the canvas in or out interactively.

Actual: Returns the canvas to its actual size.

AA Half: This sets the zoom factor for the canvas to exactly 0.5—50%. ZBrush treats this scale factor in a special manner; when the zoom factor is exactly 50%, the canvas contents are antialiased, which reduces the "jagged" effect that can appear along edges in a computer- generated image.

A common method of working with ZBrush is to create and draw your document at double its intended size, and then to use this button to display the antialiased version at the "final" size. The Document:Export button can then be used to export the smaller, antialiased version of your work.

On the left, a cube was drawn and saved at a normal (1x) zoom level. On the right, the same cube was drawn twice as large, the Zoom:AA Half button was pressed, and the resulting image was then saved. You can see the much smoother edges using the AA Half mode.

In: Click to zoom in on the canvas; this makes the canvas appear larger within the drawing area. Each click zooms in one level.

Out: Click to zoom out from the canvas; this makes the canvas appear smaller in the drawing area. Each click zooms out one level.

Zoom: Click and drag to increase or decrease zoom factor, or click once and enter a number with the keyboard. A value of 1 corresponds to a zoom factor of 100%, i.e. no zoom. Range = 0.1 to 32. Default = 1.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Zoom_Palette"

● This page was last modified 19:45, 20 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,476 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers ZPlugin Palette

From ZBrushInfo

A plugin is a script or program seperate from ZBrush, that can be loaded into ZBrush to provide additional functionality. The Zplugin palette is the default area in which controls provided by ZBrush plugins are shown. For example, here is a snapshot of the Zplugin palette with a particular set of plugin controls shown:

Many of the controls shown above do not come standard with ZBrush, but are provided by plugins that were loaded into that particular session of ZBrush. Check the ZBrush site for such plugins.

Note that all plugin controls are not necessarily shown in this palette; plugins may also locate controls in other areas of the ZBrush interface, if the author of the plugin decides such controls are more appropriately located in another palette.

For information on how to use a particular plugin, please see the documentation that comes with that plugin, or related discussions in the ZBrush forums.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/ZPlugin_Palette"

● This page was last modified 19:46, 20 April 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,470 times. ● Privacy policy ● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers ZScript Palette

From ZBrushInfo

Contents

● 1 About ZScripts

❍ 1.1 Plugins and Other Scripts

● 2 Controls

❍ 2.1 ZCasting About ZScripts

A zscript is a (usually) small program written in ZBrush's special-purpose ZScript language. ZScript allows ZBrush users to add controls and additional functonality to ZBrush. For example, you might use a zscripts that would enable you to quickly toggle back and forth between different display modes when modeling. Writing zscripts is an advanced topic, and will not be discussed here; if you want more information on writing zscripts, see ZScript Programming.

Even though most users won't write zscripts, there are still a number of elements in the Zscript palette that may be of interest to them. We'll cover those controls later, and also mention at the end how to find out more about writing your own zscripts.

Plugins and Other Scripts

A zscript can be used as a plugin, meaning it is loaded each time ZBrush starts. In fact, this is probably the most common type of zscript out there. This is normally done by putting the zscript and any files accompanying it into the ZStartup\ZPlugs directory of the main ZBrush application folder. Zscripts intended for use as plugins will normally say so, and will provide instructions for installing them.

You can find a wide range of plugins at http://206.145.80.239/zbc/forumdisplay.php?f=70

The other common type of zscript is one produced by recording a series of user actions. This is especially useful for producing tutorials, and how to do this (and view such recorded tutorials) is discussed below.

Controls

Below, we present only those controls likely to be of interest to users who are not writing their own zscripts. If you want to learn how to program ZScript, see the section at the end. Load: Presents a dialog allowing a user to load and execute a zscript. This is used most often for playing back tutorials written by others. Commonly used zscripts are normally installed as plugins, as was described previously.

Reload: Can be used to replay a tutorial (or whatever other zscript was most recently loaded), but probably used more often by ZScript programmers.

Show Actions: This should normally be left on; it tells ZBrush to display the manipulation of user controls as a tutorial ZBrush is being played back.

&Notes: If turned on, causes ZBrush to also display builtin help popups for controls as a tutorial zscript is being played. This can be useful for those who are new to whatever aspect of ZBrush the tutorial addresses.

'Skip Notes: Many tutorials have notes that appear on the screen to explain a part of the tutorial, and that then disappear in a few seconds or (more commonly) when the user clicks the mouse. Turning this on will suppress the display of those notes, speeding the execution of the zscript. You can use this to more quickly go through a zscript you've already seen.

Skip Audio: Like Skip Notes, but applies to any audio track or sounds that might accompany a zscript. Since most tutorial scripts don't use audio, you'll probably never need to use this control. Record: Causes ZBrush to begin recording user actions. These can then be saved by pressing the End Rec button. This is the most common way of creating tutorials; you can simply record a ZBrush session as you perform operations, and then save and distribute the recording. Note that ZBrush automatically records a session right from the time you start ZBrush. To record your own scripts, you'll first want to press End Red to terminate the default recording session, and then press Record and start the tutorial.

End Rec: When pressed, gives you the option of either saving the zscript currently being recorded, or of cancelling the save (which means the current recording session is discarded). Note that, by default, ZBrush starts recording a default session as soon as it is started.

Repeat Show Actions, Replay Delay, Minimal Stroke, Minimal Update: All of these switches affect how quickly a tutorial zscript plays back. The Repeat Show Actions controls how fast highlighting of button presses and so forth are done as the script executes; Replay Delay affects the overall playback speed of the script; Minimal Stroke causes strokes on the canvas to happen more quickly; and Minimal Update hides strokes entirely, showing only the end result of a stroke. For most purposes, leaving these in their default state is fine.

ZCasting

ZCasting is a ZBrush 3 feature that allows Pixologic to broadcast tutorial sessions for classes, online lessons, and the like. These controls are useful only if you are participating in a lesson given by Pixologic or a Pixologic-authorized source.

ZCast:Start Listen: Causes ZBrush to monitor the central server, looking for the start of a ZCast. If you are scheduled to participate in a ZCast, your ZCast provider will give you the necessary authentication information.

ZCast:End Listen: Causes ZBrush to stop listening to the current ZCast. ZCast:Start Broadcast: Causes ZBrush to start a ZCast. You cannot broadcast without authentication information from Pixologic or a Pixologic-authorized source.

ZCast:End Broadcast: If you are broadcasting a ZCast session, this ends the session.

ZCast:Send Screengrab: If you are broadcasting a ZCast, this allows you to send a screen grab to the broadcast listeners.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/ZScript_Palette"

● This page was last modified 19:52, 3 June 2007. ● This page has been accessed 1,842 times. ● Privacy policy

● About ZBrushInfo

● Disclaimers