Tool Palette
From ZBrush Info
Contents |
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.
