From ZBrush Info
Brush Types
Basic Brushes
Standard: The
Standard 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 Standard 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.
Displacement: Displacement works similarly to the Standard brush, but works to keep the details intact in such a way as to suggest that the form underneath has swelled or been displaced.
Move Brush
Move 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.
- Move 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.
- Move 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, Move 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.
Move: The Move 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.
Move 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 Move 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 Move 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:
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:
- 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.
- Smooth at that level of detail.
- 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.
If RGB is selected in the shelf, smoothing will also effect PolyPainting.
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.
Automatic Masking
Automasking allows ZBrush to apply masks automatically and dynamically, depending on certain characteristics of your model.
Automasks are not visible in the same way as manually applied masks.
Cavity Masking Controls
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.
CavityMask: If off, cavity masking is inactive; if on, cavity masking is on.
CavityMaskInt: 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.
CavityMaskCurve: When Brush:CavityMask is on, this curve can be used to affect how strongly automasking is applied to areas that are more or less recessed. You can even use it to reverse the effect of the auto cavity masking, so that cavities are not masked and non-cavity areas are masked.
Note that this is an AUTOMATIC effect; the mask will not be shown, and it will change dynamically as the shape of the model changes.
Backface Masking
BackfaceMask: When
BackfaceMask is on, then areas of the model facing away from the user will not be affected by sculpting. This can be very useful when, for example, trying to sculpt one surface of a thin model such as a piece of leather. Without
BackfaceMask on, any brush radius greater than the thickness of the leather would also affect the opposite side of the leather model.
Backface masking can be used for more than just this one use, however, see the popup help for Brush:BackfaceCurve for more information.
Note that this is an AUTOMATIC effect; the mask will not be shown, and it will change dynamically as the shape of the model changes.
BackMaskInt: When BackfaceMask is on, this slider determines the maximum amount of masking that will be applied to auto-masked areas of the model.
BackMaskCurve: Backface masking operates by automasking vertices depending on the angle they make away from the user. The default BackMaskCurve works well for the standard case where the goal is to ensure that sculpting does not 'leak through' to the other side of a thin model. However, by changing the curve, you can affect how strongly masking is applied to vertices, as a function of how much the vertices' normals point away from the user. For example, flattening sections of this curve allows you to produce stairsteps in your sculpting, as ranges of angles will then be masked by the same amount.
Color Masking
ColorMask: When on, masking will be automatically applied to the model depending on the grayscale intensity of the colors of the model's polygons. This is somewhat similar to creating an alpha from the painting on the object, and then using that alpha to apply a mask to the model.
Note that this is an AUTOMATIC effect; the mask will not be shown, and it will change dynamically as the color of the model changes.
ColorMaskInt: Determines the maximum value of masking applied when ColorMask is on.
ColorMaskCurve: When ColorMask is on, this curve can be used to set exactly how much automasking is applied to various color gray intensities.
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.
AccuCurve: To reduce the demands on your system when doing complex sculpting, ZBrush may use internally a slightly modified version of the Edit Curve defined in the user interface. This will not normally be noticeable. If you believe that sculpting is not showing all of the details you've defined in the Edit Curve, turn AccuCurve on. Alternatively, if you find sculpting slower than you'd like, try turning AccuCurve off.
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.
Auto Smooth: When Auto Smooth is on, ZBrush will automatically apply partial smoothing on a selected basis while sculpting is being done using other brushes. For example, ZBrush might smooth areas at the edge of a brush stroke where polygons have been severely distorted during sculpting. The intent is to reduce artefacting while preserving the desired effects of sculpting.
