ZB_09 | Using mask and Curve Bridge Brush To form a skirt (Masking Part 5)

  

Hi Everyone, My name is Michele.

Today I will show you 2 ways you can join separate surfaces to

form a skirt in Zbrush. One using mask and one using

Insert Multi Mesh(IMM.)

We will start with masking the top of the skirt then the bottom and Zbrush will form the third using

curve bridge brush.

Let's begin. Press "," to open up the light box. Go under project. Open up a female model that comes with Zbrush. We will use this female model to help us with forming the skirt

 then go under Subtool.

Click on Append. Click on Cylinder3d.  Click on Cylinder Subtool layer to edit it.

Press "W" to turn on gizmo and scale it down to fit the model,

just below the waistline. Now, increase the resolution of the

cylinder so that our mask can be as smooth as possible.

Turn on polyframe by pressing this button or Shift "F". Go under

Tool > Geometry > Dynamesh. Turn off blur and increase the resolution up to 800k,

so that the pixels look smaller. Press "F" to fit to screen. If you use a lower resolution; for example 512,

the squares will look bigger.

We only need to see the parts just below the waist

where the waist band begins and just

below the knees where the skirt ends. Go under Subtool.

Click on the Female model Subtool layer to activate it.

Ctrl Shift Click and Drag from the waist to the knees to isolate.

Rotate the canvas so that you're viewing from the top.

Press "F" to fit the waist to screen

Let's use method No.1. I'm going to use Method No.2

on the next video so stay tuned and remember to subscribe :)

Press Ctrl and select Freehand stroke. Reduce the Focal Shift to

-100 to get a sharp edged mask. Activate the cylinder subtool

layer. Method No.1 uses MaskPen to create the top of the skirt.

Zoom in close enough so that it's easier to paint on the mask.

Just beyond the skin.

Press Alt to erase the painted mask. Rotate it if you can't see the edge of the skin.

Ctrl "W" to Polygroup it.

Press "F" to fit to screen. Now, let's do the bottom of the skirt. Rotate the canvas so that you are viewing from the bottom. Let's hide all the other surfaces so that we will only mask the

bottom of the cylinder. Ctrl Shift Alt Click and Drag.

Remember to use SelectRect for the brush selection,

and Rect as the Stroke.

Rotate to view from the bottom of the cylinder.

There are 3 ways to do this.

Method No.1 is using Lasso tool. Let's do that.

Press Ctrl. Change the Stroke to Lasso. Now let's draw the

soft curves of the skirt. Turn off perspective.

We want to see it straight on.

Slowly, draw the curves with your

pen like what I'm drawing now.

Press Alt to erase using Lasso then Press Ctrl "W" to Polygroup it. The next method is using Radial symmetry.

Go under Transform, Click on Activate symmetry.

By default, only X symmetry and mirror button is On.

Click on "R" to use Radial symmetry.

Click on the number on Radial count and type in 16.

This number will create 16 numbers of whatever you draw on

the axis you have chosen above be it X, Y or Z. If you want to

know which one to use, Just test out each of them until you see

one that fits but if you want to dive deeper into understanding

which plane you're looking at and which axis you're going to

draw on this is how i do it. You can turn on Floor plane

with this button or Shift "P".

On Floor plane, you can click on X axis to find out where it is, and your radial symmetry will divide whatever you draw on this

surface or on this plane.

If you click on "Y" axis, that is the plane

our symmetry will be divided on,

and similar for Z axis. If you click on Z axis, both on

Active symmetry and on floor plane, Zbrush will

divide 16 numbers of whatever you draw on Z plane so,

in order to apply Radial symmetry. You need to identify which

plane you're looking straight on and then, you click on that axis.

For example, I'm looking at Z-axis and my Active symmetry,

I have Z-axis on, and I'll be able to draw

16 numbers on that plane.

Let us switch back to Method No.2 on How to mask the bottom

of the skirt. Now we're going to use Radial symmetry to mask

the bottom of the skirt. With Radial symmetry on Y-axis on and

16 Radial count, Press Ctrl to activate MaskPen and under

Stroke, Select FreeHand stroke.

Let's start masking using our Freehand

stroke. Press Ctrl again to activate masking. Then change the stroke to circle. Draw the circle to

cover the unmasked skirt area.

Press Ctrl "W" again to Polygroup it. Now there's a third way to

do this using a pre-made mask I'm selling soon on

michtintin.com. Still working on the quality of the mask. Let's

undo the steps we have done. Press Ctrl. Go to Alpha.

Import a Custom Alpha.

Change the Stroke to Rect;

with Square and Center On. Go to the Center of the circle.

Click and Drag to apply the custom mask.

The parts that intersect with the skin can be adjusted later on, or you can scale the polygons bigger later on before you bridge

the two surfaces. Then Ctrl "W".

Let's unhide everything. Ctrl Shift Tap.

Let's isolate the top and bottom of the skirt.

Ctrl Shift Tap on the unwanted parts then Tap again

to reverse the visibility. You can watch my first few videos on

masking if you want to understand more about using masks.

Unhide all of the female model. Then go back to cylinder layer.

Ctrl Shift Tap on the unwanted parts then tap again to

reverse the visibility.

Ok! Now let's delete hidden geometry.

Modify topology > Delete hidden. Done.

Those are the 3 ways you can mask the bottom of the skirt.

Now we will smooth out the edges of the

top and bottom polygons.

Go under Tool > Geometry > Edged loop > Groupsloops.

Increase the polish to 100. Keep the Loops at four and

triangles on. Hit Groupsloops.

Hit one more time to smooth the edges further.

Zoom in and check. I have no idea why I didn't turn off the

female model instead of hiding them, so let's turn it off now,

by clicking on the eye icon on the Subtool layer. Let's turn on

Double so that we can see the bottom of the top surface...

On second thought, let's flip both surfaces instead when you

look up from the bottom of the skirt, it should be see-through.

Similar to when you look down from the top of the skirt it should

be transparent so I will keep both surfaces empty when you 

look from the top and the bottom, so that we can see through

them. Under Tool, and under Display properties, turn on Double

so that we can view both surfaces. Now turn double off

and we can see the opaque surfaces of the top of the skirt

facing outwards and the opaque surface of the bottom of the

skirt facing outwards and under Display properties,

we click flip once. We can flip both surfaces so that the

transparent side faces outwards and opaque sides

face inwards,

and if you rotate to view from the top you can only see the

bottom surface and then if you rotate to view from the bottom

you can only see the top surface. This is what we want.

Now to join them together Press B>C>5, shortcut for

Brush>Curve>Bridge.

Then click on any one of the surfaces.

Click on the Center then Drag towards the edge.

When you reach the edge, press Shift.

It will form a curved line around the edges.

Then let go of the pen. Do the same for the next surface. Click at the center, Drag towards the edge,

Press Shift, Red highlight visible,

Let go. Next all you have to do is wait for Zbrush to do

the magic. It will form the 3rd surface of the skirt automatically

using Curved Bridge Brush. Rotate around to view it from the

top and bottom.

There could be another problem you might encounter if your

computer is too slow. You can reduce the polygon count before

you bridge the two surfaces together. Just go under Geometry >

Zremesher, turn off Adapt, reduce adaptive size to zero. Let's undo. We are now going to reduce the number of squares

we see here.

Click Zremesh with the settings mentioned and watch the

polygon counts drop in half.

If you can't join them you can try Groupslooping them before you

Bridge them using BC5.

Now with lesser polygon counts, it should be faster in bridging.

Let's try smoothing them. Turn off Polyframe. Shift "F".

Go under Tools > Deformation > Polish, slide it to 50%. You may

have to do it a couple of times until you're happy with it

If you enjoyed this video, please click on like and subscribe. and thanks in advance I'll see you in the next video Adios!

Remember to subscribe!!

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.

ZB_04 | 1 Ctrl button with 5 ways of masking (Masking Part 1)

 

Hi, Everyone my name is Michele. In today's Zbrush tutorial, I'm

going to show you 5 shortcuts to apply your mask. First, let's

open up a New document, if you need to. Under Document and

then New document

with the W Size turned on to fill up your whole screen with the

canvas space. If you have just launched your Zbrush, you can

go ahead and press ","  to turn off your Lightbox .

Then, let's go to tool and Sphere3d. Click and drag in the middle

of the canvas.

Press "T" to switch it from 2.5D default canvas into 3D canvas.

Then click on make Polymesh3D to activate the polygons.

Before showing the first method, I am going to show you

how to activate your mask pen. Just press CTRL key and it will

switch the default standard brush into mask pen. The stroke

I'm using freehand stroke which is equivalent to painting.

You can select others but for Method no. 1, I will use this.

Alpha. Currently I have none on but I'm going to use one of my

own custom alpha, I have just made.

If you want to know how to make a good 2D Alpha, head on

to my previous video linked above.

Okay, now let's begin with Method no. 1. This is the

simplest method which is to paint over your model like a paint

brush. Holding down control. Cover whichever area you want to

protect. like a band-aid. Leaving behind the

other parts of the model to edit.

If you're using alpha, it will be used as a brush pattern.

If you don't want any pattern, go back to Alpha

and click Alpha off .

You can go ahead and paint it with the regular round brush.

The brush size is adjustable with this slider 

or with the "S" key and a slider will pop up for you to adjust.

Next method is pressing CTRL,

and instead of brushing on a model, I'm

going to switch to my own Alpha 2.

Click outside and drag. You will see the pattern greyed out

on the model. However, as you can see, the mask is very

pixelated because it has only 8 000 active points.

In order to make a seamless

smooth edge, we need to divide it up to 2 million points.

Go to Geometry.

Divide it up to 2 million by clicking this button or pressing

CTRL D, a few times.

I'm going to press CTRL,

Click on the outside of the model.

Drag downwards and press Spacebar to adjust the position.

Let go of all the buttons.

Let's turn on Polyframe by pressing Shift F

or pressing this button. Then press Command/ CTRL W

to isolate it into its own Polygroup.

Now you can extrude it using the two methods I showed in the 

previous video linked above.

The 3rd Method is pressing Ctrl,

Click outside the model, 

similar to the second method, you need to begin

outside the model.

Then, instead of letting go of all the buttons,

let go of just the CTRL button.

When you let go of the CTRL button that means you want to

ignore the brush alpha. You just want a sharp edged,

rectangular alpha.

This means you have masked this area in the middle and

you can edit the model outside this mask area.

The 4th method is very similar to the 3rd.

Press CTRL, starting outside the model, on the background.

Let go of control and re-press ctrl button again.

Let's try it out.

Press CTRL, Click background and drag.

Spacebar to reposition.

Release CTRL and repress CTRL again.

Your mask will turn green which means it has been inverted.

Let go of your left click on your pen. Holding down CTRL key and

this is what you will get. Isolated and editable pattern from your alpha.

Now I can inflate it and move it as i like without affecting the

parts which have been hidden.

Now let me undo this and move on to Method no.5 . 

Ctrl,

begin outside the model.

Click and drag.

Spacebar to position.

Release control,

Repress control and Release control again.

This will give you a green mask which means an inverted mask.

It will ignore your alpha brush, giving you a sharp edged mask

just like Method no. 3 and those are the 5 methods of masking just

by pressing CTRL.

In the next video, I'm going to show you how to apply these

5 Methods of masking on a Demo head.

Remember to click like and subscribe if you enjoyed my video

and don't forget to visit me at www.michtintin.com

for a more indexed tutorial and I'll see you in the next video.

Bye.