ZB_08 | Creating Startup file and Navigation basics

 

Hi Everyone, my name is Michele. As mentioned in the previous

tutorial, I’m going to divert from masking tutorials today. I will

be focusing on creating a startup file for a Femaledemohead

followed by how to rotate, move and zoom on the canvas using

shortcuts. From this tutorial onwards, I will not be showing any

of the navigation shortcuts which will greatly reduce the

amount of overlay work during editing. Alright, let’s begin!

Let’s Press “,” to open up the lightbox, Under Project,

Double click on Femaledemohead. Press “F” to center the head,

Turn off symmetry by pressing “X”, turn off perspective

by pressing “P” and last but not least turn on “Double”

at Display properties under Tools.

Now, wouldn’t it be nice if the moment we open up our

zbrush all that has been done for us?

Let’s do that. I am going to show you how to save a new startup

project file on your desktop which ends with zpr, which stands

for a project file. A Project file saves almost everything you see

on your canvas related to your model, even your subtool layers.

Let’s save a copy of this project before adding more subtools.

Go to File > Save as > Startup_FDH_3D_1 on desktop.

Then let’s say I click Polymesh3D a few times. There are now 4 numbers of the same FDH here under tools. Let’s save that

again as a startup file. Go to File > Save as>

Type in Startup_FDH_3D_4. This way we know it’s a startup file

with female demo head that’s a polymesh3D. 4 just stand

for 4 number of FDH. Now let’s close Zbrush.

When you open it up using this project file your multiple FDH

would still be there. This also means project files are much

bigger if you have a lot of subtools compared to just saving one

Tool out. So just be aware of this file size issue when saving

files with lots of subtools.

If you want to delete the additional subtools that you don’t need,

just click on it to activate it, then go under Subtools to click on

delete. Clearing them one at a time.

A quick save file, in case your Zbrush crashes is also

a ZPR file.

You can access your quick save files under lightbox.

By the way if you don’t want to launch lightbox at startup

adjust the settings under Preferences.

Let’s turn off the “Open at launch settings”.

There, it won’t launch itself on startup. You will find Quicksav

settings under Preferences too. Maximum number of files,

amount of time zbrush rests before quick save happens and

deletion of quick save files. Alright that’s all for the settings. The next time if you need to startup with a file like this,

just double click this project file on your desktop and you can

skip the few buttons we pressed in the beginning.

Now let’s move on to rotate, move and zooming.

There are two ways to rotate your model on canvas.

Clicking on the background and right clicking on the model. The easiest is rotating on the

background by tapping on the background and move your pen

around. The pivot point is the spot you’re clicking.

If you don’t want the part you’re editing to rotate away

from you, right click on the part you’re editing and move your

pen to rotate. The pivot point of your rotation is on the model

where you right clicked. That’s the center of your rotation.

If the speed is making you dizzy, you can change it by going

under Preferences > Interface>Navigation >Rotate speed,

slide the reading to the lowest number of 0.25. If you want Zbrush to remember all your settings next time you

startup Zbrush

go under Preferences> Config>Store Config. That will save all

your configuration. Let’s say if you want to do some videos to

share and restore it to the standard settings before editing,

Click on Preferences > Config > Restore Standard UI.

To go back to your own settings, Restore Custom UI.

Next, let’s look at how to zoom in closer and zoom out further

away from your model. Holding down CTRL, right click on your

wacom pen and hover left to zoom out,

hover right to zoom in. You can also adjust the speed at

Preferences > Interface> Navigation > Scaling.

Adjust the slider all the way down to 0.25.

Next let’s learn the shortcut for move. Holding down ALT, right

click on your wacom pen. Hover your pen to the left or to the

right. Alright, that’s all for navigation. Pretty easy huh!

Let’s go through them again so that it’s easier to remember.

Press F to center the model.

To Rotate on the background, Click and move the pen

To Rotate on your edit, Right click and move on your edit,

To Zoom in(+), CTRL, hover left

Zoom out (-), CTRL, hover right To Move it.

Press ALT, right click hover any direction.

Last but not least, Remember to subscribe,

Click on the word then Hover right to turn on the notifications.

Adios!

I’ll see you again in the next video!

ZB_07 | Transpose Smart Mask (Masking Part 4)

 Hi Everyone, my name is Michele. You’re watching part 4 of my

series on masking in Zbrush. In the last episode, we looked at

how to isolate, mask and polygroup the lip area including the

mouth cavity using curve stroke brush. Today we will look at

how to use Transform Smart Mask, another cool brush to mask

in any direction or in today’s tutorial, wrinkles that go any

direction we want! Let’s open up a new Femaledemohead

project by pressing “,”.

Click on project and double click on Femaledemohead. Press “F” to center the model head. Turn off perspective by

pressing “P” & turn off symmetry then turn on “Double” under

Display Properties. There are two ways you can use

Transform Smart Mask. The first, is without alpha. it will wrap

 the mask around any contour originating from the starting point,

 best used for overlapping surfaces. A good example would be

the tongue. Let’s isolate the teeth subtool and have a look.

Go to SUBTOOLS click on skin subtool layer & turn off the

EYE icon OR you can click on teeth subtool layer and click on

SOLO button to isolate it.

Rotate the model so that we are viewing from the top,

then zoom in. It would be difficult to isolate the tongue by

painting on it or lasso around it since it’s in such close proximity

to the teeth. Fortunately for us, ZBrush has a brush called

Transpose Smart Mask under Brush,

Transpose, Smart Mask. Use keyboard shortcut B >T > S.

The korean boy band name, yeah? Easy to remember. Press on

CTRL/CMD and left click and drag down with alpha off. Drag

until the mask covers the tongue area you can see, if you drag

any further it will start masking the teeth too. Let go of your left

click. Rotate to view the bottom of your tongue and You can

continue masking the bottom of the tongue by pressing CTRL

SHIFT CLICK and drag down on the unmasked area until you

have covered the whole bottom of tongue then press

CTRL/CMD W. That’s it.

This trick is good for areas which are difficult to lasso,

challenging surfaces which overlaps.

The second way to use this mask isssssss….using alpha!

Thats right! One without alpha one with alpha. So simple!

Now, let’s apply the mask. B>T>S. Unhide all to reveal the skin.

Divide the active points to amout 2-3 million. Then Press “,” to

open up the lightbox and Click on Alpha. Click on

Leatheryskin88. We will use this to apply some wrinkles around

the eye area. Then Holding down CTRL,  Click and drag on

the model and hold,

watch the top left corner. There is an indication of the

size/ units and the angle. The cool part about this mask is you

can adjust the angle and size accurately on the model.

The anchor point is at the top/bottom middle of the mask,

depending on if you drag up or down.

Then you can turn it left or right to whatever angle you want to

fit into your model. Press spacebar to move the starting point.

Wrinkles around the eye usually begins just after the eyelids

and runs toward the hairline as shown in this image. Unlike the

regular rectangle masks using standard brush, I can scale it

and move it around , but I can't pivot it to any angle I want.

Using BTS I can turn it upwards or downwards!

One downside or maybe it can be considered a feature, is if you

scale it too big and you want to go smaller, you will end up

skewing your mask.

Like this wrinkle alpha, it becomes elongated and flat.

It can be a feature though, depending on how you want your

mask to turn out. I’m not sure how to remedy this but I think

undo and redo the mask is the way to go for now.

Alright, if you learnt something new, give me a thumbs up and

subscribe to my channel for more.

The next video I will show you more ways to mask!

Probably after a video on navigating and saving files.

See you in the next video. Bye!

 

ZB_06 | Curve stroke brush mask (Masking Part 3)

 

Hi Everyone, My name is Michele.

You're watching Part 3 of my series on masking in Zbrush.

In the last episode, we looked at how to combine 2 polygroups

into 1 polygroup using two methods. Today, we will look at

how to mask and polygroup the lip area and the mouth cavity

using Curve Stroke brush. Let's open up a new female demo

head project by pressing ",". Click on "Project" and double click

on "Female demo head".

Press "F" to center the model head. Turn off perspective by pressing "P"

so that the model is not distorted while we are editing. (Just woke up!)

As usual, let's divide it up to 800 000 so that we can be as

accurate as possible. Press "X" to turn off symmetry.

Green mask half of the head to isolate it so that we can see the

cross-section.

Turn it to the side. We can only see the front surfaces, and the back surfaces

are invisible.

Let's turn on the invisible surfaces. Go to tools. Scroll down to the bottom

of the palette. Look for "Display properties" and click on double

to turn it on. Let's analyse. Okay, we need to turn off the Subtool

for eyeballs and teeth so that we don't damage them and they

don't block our view.

From this view, we can see that we need to mask from the tip of

the nose to the bottom of the chin, to capture the whole mouth

cavity. Ctrl Shift Tab.

Ctrl Shift Lasso. Mask from the front then isolate just the front

part of the face.

Turn to the back view and hide all that is not required.

We only need to mask the lips and a mouth cavity.

At this stage, we can clearly see that it's easier to isolate the mouth cavity and polygroup it first.

Let's do that and CTRL "W" to polygroup it then unhide

everything.

Once again, isolate from the tip of the nose to the bottom of th

chin.

Hide the rest.

Holding down control. Change the stroke to FreeHand and paint in the approximate shape of the lips.

Holding down control, change the Stroke to Curve.

Press CTRL ALT and Slice away the mask area, which goes

beyond the lip area. Left to right, masks the top. Right to left,

masks the bottom

Hold down Spacebar to move the position of the starting point.

You can also use this to change the direction of the curved line.

You can bend this curved mask line by pressing ALT once.

Press ALT 2X for a sharp angle.

If you need to change the direction, just press Spacebar and

then move it to change the direction.

Once done, rotate to the back and check the extent of

masking. Add more mask where needed before pressing

CTRL or CMD W to polygroup it and that's it.

These are all the basics of masking you need to get started.

In the next episode, I'll be showing you how to use this

Transpose Smart Masking to isolate the tongue from the teeth

Subtool into a different polygroup.

That's it for this video. Remember to click like and subscribe if

you find my video useful and do visit my webpage at

michtintin.com for a more indexed tutorial.

See you in the next video .Bye.