Zbrush - Week 3:

In this blog we will be going over different tools that are useful to know in Zbrush and what they are used for in the sculpting process. I will be talking about different tools such as masking and DynaMesh as well as a few others that are important to use when sculpting.

Gizmo 3D: 

It changes the gizmo the Gizmo 3D is similar to the gizmo that is in Maya however if you turn it off you have a different gizmo that is and older version that zbrush used to use. You can move the different circles to change the model to scale it how you would like however it much simpler to use gizmo 3D. 

There are different icons that you can select in the Gizmo 3D which all do different things. The gear icon allows you to access different deformers, the pin icon will retain your gizmo in space so it won't move around, the locator will go to the middle of the mesh if it is unmasked which you can move it to centre the pivot point. The home button is similar to the locator but it will take it to the middle of original mesh, the reset will move the pivot back to its original point, the lock will allow you to move the pivot wherever you would like and then you can relock it when you are happy with it. The last one is the line tool which allows you to transpose all your subtools. 


Masking:

There are different ways to mask a model (Ctrl) such as dragging, circle, rectangle, freehand and lasso which changes how it will react when you mask your model. The button to change it is at the side on the left where in the image you can see it says dots. This will allow you to change how it will select the mask. The mask is pressure sensitive meaning that if you would like to use a tablet to create a mask it will mean that depending on how hard you press will be how the mask is placed. 



DynaMesh:

It will remesh your model so if you have any jagged edges it will help to solve that however you can't use it whilst you have a mask on. It is located on the right hand side under Geometry > DynaMesh and you click the big button in the drop down that comes up called DynaMesh.










Without DynaMesh:


With DynaMesh:

Mesh Visibility:

You can hide parts of your mesh that you are working on so that it is easier to focus on that area. You can hide parts of the mesh by holding Ctrl and Shift to hide anything outside your selection, to hide what you have selected you hold Ctrl, Shift and Alt. When hiding parts of your model it either comes up with a green box if you are hiding parts of the model that is outside of your selection however if you are hiding the parts that you have selected then it will be a red box. 

If it is acting as if you have symmetry on however on the side it is showing as if you don't have symmetry on then press (X) and it will go back to normal. 



Adding new geometry: 

To add new geometry you will need to switch to a different brush called IMM Primitives and select either the H or T version of the brush which will give you different shapes that allow you to add more geometry onto your mesh. It will mask the original mesh when you create the new primitive so that when you are sculpting the new primitive you don't edit the original mesh. To be able to place it in the scene you will have to start dragging it over your previous model and you can move it after however if you start trying to place it away from your mesh that you have already it won't place the new primitive.