Chapter 2

Understanding the ZBrush Interface

From the moment the ZBrush interface appears, its creative potential is obvious. Few other digital art packages boast such an elegant working environment. The ZBrush interface may seem a little intimidating, but once you grasp the philosophy behind the design, you’ll find that it is a comfortable place for digital sculpting and painting.

This chapter walks you through the ZBrush interface; it’s much like a tour of an artist’s studio.

In this particular tour, I will try to strike a balance between explaining where the ZBrush tools are and explaining what they do. The rest of the book will provide deeper explanations about the tools and interface features. To get the most out of this chapter, you should have ZBrush open on a nearby computer. Included in this tour are a few exercises to help you make sense of the interface.

We will cover the following topics:

• The ZBrush canvas
• The organization of shelves
• Palettes
• Using trays

The Zen of ZBrush

If you’ve never done any 3D modeling or animation, you might actually be able to approach ZBrush with a slight advantage over someone who has spent a lot of time in programs such as Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® 3ds Max®, or XSI. This is because the tools in ZBrush are very different from what you find in typical 3D modeling and animation programs. If you are an experienced 3D modeler, you may panic a little bit at the fact that ZBrush does not use a typical 3D space environment. Either way, the best thing to do when you first open ZBrush is to shed your preconceived ideas of how a 3D program is supposed to work. In fact, don’t think of ZBrush as a 3D modeling program, a paint program, or even a texturing program. Instead, step back for a moment and accept the essence of ZBrush. It is a digital sculpting and painting workshop.

Figure 2-1 shows the ZBrush interface in all its glory. Our tour of the interface will start at the center and move outward, from left to right in a clockwise fashion.

Figure 2-1: The ZBrush Interface

The ZBrush Canvas

Let’s start with the center of the interface; the canvas, and then work our way outward. Breaking the interface down like this will help to make it more accessible. The canvas is shown in Figure 2-2.

The canvas is the square that dominates the center of the program. It is where you create your art, whether it is a digital painting or a three-dimensional digital sculpture or any combination of paint strokes and sculpture. The canvas has some special properties that are part of what makes ZBrush so different. It’s quite obvious from the outset that the canvas has height and width, which we refer to as the y- and x-axes. The ZBrush canvas also has a depth axis, or a z-axis. Hence the name, ZBrush. When you use a tool to paint a brush stroke on the canvas, you can move it backward and forward in space, placing it in front of or behind other brush strokes. The default gradient you see on the canvas is meant to suggest the depth dimension in the canvas.

Figure 2-2: The ZBrush canvas is where you create your digital paintings and sculptures.

The canvas can be thought of as a place to create digital illustrations using digital brush strokes, or it can be thought of as a virtual sculpting stand where you can mold a lump of digital clay into anything you can imagine. And, in fact, the canvas can also be used to integrate your sculptures into your illustrations.

An illustration created on the canvas is referred to as a ZBrush document. Documents can be saved in the special ZBR format or exported in a number of other formats, such as the Adobe Photoshop format. A digital sculpture created on the canvas is referred to as a mesh or a 3D tool. You can save sculptures in the special ZTL format or export them in a number of 3D model formats, such as OBJ or Maya ASCII (.ma). You can save your document, tool, and many other elements all in a single file called a ZProject. ZProjects use the ZPR file format. ZProjects are a lot like scenes in other 3D animation packages. When you save a ZProject, ZBrush tracks the current state of your tools, lighting, materials, and other elements so that the next time you load the project, you can pick up exactly where you left off. As we continue the tour, I’ll point out how to save documents, 3D tools, and ZProjects.

Interface Layout and Color Presets

ZBrush ships with a number of interface layout and color presets. These allow you to change the look of the interface and rearrange the tools to fit your working style. You can change the colors and the layouts by clicking the buttons in the upper-right portion of the interface (shown below). To keep things simple, for this book I’m using the default interface layout, which is how ZBrush looks when you start the program. To make the images easier to see in the black-and-white figures of this book, one of the lighter interface color presets has been selected.

Light Box

Light Box is a special pop-up browser that appears at the top of the canvas when you start ZBrush (Figure 2-3). To show or hide Light Box, press the comma (“,”) key on your keyboard. The name Light Box is meant to suggest the light tables that photographers use when examining collections of their photographic negatives.

Figure 2-3: The Light Box interface appears as a strip of images at the top of the canvas when you start ZBrush.

Light Box is a visual display of the files within the Pixologic directory structure of your computer’s hard drive. The purpose of Light Box is to allow you to easily load the files you need to work on your ZBrush creations without having to navigate through your operating system’s browsers. Light Box keeps all the files you need at your fingertips, whether they are the sample files that ship with ZBrush or your own creations.

The menu at the top of Light Box is a link to the directories within the Pixologic folder on your computer’s hard drive (in Windows, this folder is inside the Program FilesPixologicBrush 4R3 directory; in Mac OS, this folder is in the Applications/ZBrush 4R3 folder). The headings within Light Box link to the ZBrushes, ZTools, ZAlphas, ZMaterials, ZTextures, and ZProjects folders.

If you click the Project link, you’ll see an icon that represents each of the files within the ZProjects folder. If you save your own file to this folder, you’ll see it appear in this strip under the Project heading the next time you bring up Light Box. Likewise, saving a file to the ZTools folder will make it appear under the Tool heading in ZBrush. You can drag the icons on the strip left or right to see all of the files in the Project folder. To do this, click the space between two tool icons and drag to the left.

To load a file, double-click (or quickly double-tap your stylus on your digital tablet) an icon. Follow these steps to load the DemoSoldier.ZPR project from Light Box:

Figure 2-4: In the Projects section of Light Box double-click the DemoProjects folder (top). Then double-click the DemoSoldier.ZPR project icon to load it.

This is how you use Light Box to load a file. A project is a self-contained ZBrush scene, so each time you load a project it will close any files you currently have open (hence, the warning). When you load other types of files such as tools, materials, or brushes from Light Box, the new files will simply be added to your current ZBrush session. You’ll get plenty of practice using Light Box in this book, so don’t worry if this is not completely clear just yet.

If you’d like to search the contents of the folder displayed in Light Box, type a search term in the field at the top, next to the menu bar in the Light Box interface. Try typing in Default✳. Adding the asterisk will tell ZBrush to search for all files in the Project folder that start with Default (see Figure 2-5). Click the Go button or press the Enter/Return key to start the search.

Figure 2-5: You can search for files within Light Box by typing text in the search field.

You can change the height of the Light Box display by clicking one of the four stack icons at the far right of the Light Box menu. The icons within Light Box will automatically rearrange themselves to fit the new height. This is useful when you have a lot of files in the folder.

The New button at the far right lets you stack an additional Light Box strip on top of the current one. Using this feature, you can have a number of Light Box strips open, each one displaying the contents of a different folder. Try clicking the New button and then switch to the Tool folder. Add a third strip and open the Brush folder (see Figure 2-6).

To remove a strip, just click the Close button.

Figure 2-6: Additional Light Box strips can be added by clicking the New button. Each strip can display the contents of a different folder.

The ZBrush Shelves

On the top and either side of the canvas are shelves that hold the ZBrush buttons and controls (see Figure 2-7). We’ll explore these shelves by moving from left to right around the canvas.

Figure 2-7: Shelves with various buttons and settings surround the ZBrush canvas on the left, top, and right.

The Shelf on the Left

The left shelf has buttons that open fly-out libraries of items that you will access often in a typical ZBrush editing session. The fly-out libraries (from the top of the left shelf, moving down) consist of the sculpting brushes, the stroke types, the alphas, the textures, the material shaders, the color picker, and the color 1 and color 2 swatches.

The sculpting brushes are a used for editing 3D meshes. To use these brushes, the mesh must be in Edit mode; otherwise, the icon for the sculpting brushes is grayed out and the fly-out library of brushes is inaccessible. We’ll go into detail about how to activate Edit mode and what it means to be in Edit mode later in this chapter. For now, follow these steps so that you can see the contents of the sculpting brush library:

Figure 2-8: The fly-out library of sculpting brushes

As you can see, there are a lot of sculpting brushes. The fly-out library is filled with the presets that come with ZBrush. These are used to shape, pose, and detail your meshes. In Chapter 3, “Basic Digital Sculpting,” you’ll learn the basics of using the brush presets, and throughout the book you’ll gain insight into how you can make and save your own custom brush presets.

As you hold the mouse pointer over one of the icons, you’ll see an enlarged view of the icon below the fly-out sculpting brush library. The name of the brush will appear along with information about its base type. Each preset is a variation of a few base brush types.

You can reduce the list of brushes in the fly-out library by typing the first letter of a brush name while the fly-out is open. Try typing C. All of the icons in the Brush palette will be dimmed except the ones that start with the letter C. As you learn the names of your favorite brush types, you can take advantage of this method of searching the fly-out brush library to quickly switch brushes. You’ll notice that many brushes have two capital letters, such as ClayLine. If you type C and then B while the brush fly-out is open, the fly-out library will close and the brush icon on the left shelf will switch to the ClayBuildup brush. This is the only brush that has C and B capitalized in the name.

To continue with our tour of the left shelf, underneath the brush library you’ll find the stroke type fly-out library.

The icon displayed for stroke type will be different depending on the current active sculpting brush. This is because the stroke type modifies the behavior of the current brush. If the Standard brush is loaded as the current active brush, the dots icon will appear as the current stroke type. Hover the pointer above the button to see an enlarged view of the current stroke type, and click the button to open the fly-out library (see Figure 2-9). There are a few different stroke types available. The sliders at the bottom of the stroke type library change depending on the currently selected stroke type. The stroke type can be changed for the current brush by choosing one of the other stroke type icons. As you’ll see in Chapter 3, you can greatly affect the way in which a brush behaves by choosing a different stroke type.

Figure 2-9: The fly-out library of stroke types

On the left shelf, the icon below stroke type is the icon for the alpha fly-out library. Hold the mouse pointer over the icon to see an enlarged view of the alpha. Click the icon to open the fly-out alpha library (see Figure 2-10). Alphas are grayscale images loaded into ZBrush. They can be used for many purposes, but most often they are used to add effects to sculpting brushes.

Think of the different nozzles added to cake decorating tools to change the shape of frosting as it’s applied to the top of a cake. This is the basic concept behind alphas. At the bottom of the alpha fly-out library you’ll see buttons that, among other things, enable you to import and export your own, custom alphas. To select a different alpha for the current brush, just click one of the icons in the library. I’ll be discussing the many uses of alphas as well as how they work in great detail through the book.

Figure 2-10: The fly-out library of alphas

Below the alphas fly-out button you’ll see the textures fly-out library. When the Standard brush is selected as the active brush, you’ll see no image and the label Texture Off, meaning no texture is applied to the current brush. Textures, like alphas, are simply two-dimensional image files, but unlike alphas, textures are color images. Hover the mouse over the texture icon to see an enlarged view, and click the textures button to see the inventory of texture presets that come with ZBrush. When the fly-out library is open, you can hover the pointer over a texture to see an enlarged view appear above the library (see Figure 2-11). Clicking the icon again changes the active texture.

Figure 2-11: The fly-out library of textures

Textures have many uses. For instance, you can apply a texture to a sculpting brush and use the colors of the texture to paint on your models. You can also convert the colors of a 3D model into a texture, which can then be exported for use in other 3D software packages. At the bottom of the library you’ll find buttons for importing and exporting textures as well as for other specific functions. Just as with alphas, we’ll be revisiting the many uses of textures throughout the book. I’ll go into detail about working with textures in Chapter 8, “Polypainting and Spotlight.”

At this point you’re probably getting a good idea of how the buttons on the left shelf work; they all give you easy access to commonly used libraries. The last fly-out library is the material presets. Hover the mouse pointer over the materials icon to see a preview of the material as it looks on the current 3D mesh. Click this to see the materials fly-out library (see Figure 2-12).

Figure 2-12: The fly-out library of materials

Materials determine the surface quality of the objects on the canvas. For example, a material might affect the shininess or the roughness of a surface or how the surface reacts to light effects on the canvas. Some materials add color to objects as well. As you hover the mouse over each of the icons in the materials fly-out library, you’ll see a preview of the current 3D object in each of the materials. Click one of the icons to switch materials. Materials can be applied to the entire object at once or painted on specific areas using the current sculpting brush. Materials are explained in detail in Chapter 9, “Rendering, Lighting, and Materials.”

On the left shelf, below the materials library button, you’ll find the color picker. This is not a fly-out library; instead, it’s a mini-interface that allows you to choose different colors for a variety of uses in ZBrush. As you hold the mouse over the color picker, you’ll see text that displays the RGB (red, green, and blue) values for the currently selected color (Figure 2-13).

Figure 2-13: The color picker

The color picker has one square within another. You select the value and saturation of the current color from the inner square, and you select the current hue with the outer square. Below the picker are two swatches for holding the main and secondary colors in memory. The color picker has many functions in ZBrush. We’ll use this interface throughout the book. We’ll look at advanced uses of the color picker in Chapter 8.

The Shelf at the Top

The top shelf appears above the canvas and contains a number of buttons. From left to right you can divide the buttons into four sections. The first section contains buttons for launching some special plug-ins. These buttons are labeled Projection Master, Light Box, and Quick Sketch (see Figure 2-14). The Quick Sketch and Projection Master plug-ins won’t make much sense until you’ve learned a few more things about ZBrush. Plug-ins such as these are covered in detail in the “Bonus Content 2: ZScripts and ZPlugins” chapter found on the DVD. The Light Box button toggles the visibility of Light Box.

Figure 2-14: The three buttons on the top shelf for launching plug-ins

The second section of the top shelf contains a series of five important buttons (see Figure 2-15). These buttons are labeled Edit, Draw, Move, Scale, and Rotate.

Figure 2-15: Five buttons on the top shelf are used to change the mode of the canvas and manipulate objects placed on the canvas.

The Edit mode button enables the sculpting brushes so that you can alter a mesh on the canvas. If Edit mode is off, then ZBrush is in Paint mode, and drawing on the canvas simply places copies of your meshes on it. This is useful when you want to use ZBrush to create illustrations but can be confusing when you are trying to sculpt a model.

Next to the Edit button on the top shelf you’ll see the Draw, Move, Scale, and Rotate buttons. When the Draw button is on, the current brush either draws a stroke on the canvas or, when editing a 3D model, lets you use the sculpting brushes to shape a model.

The way in which the Move, Scale, and Rotate buttons behave is different depending on whether you’re working on a 3D mesh in Edit mode or adding strokes to an illustration. We’ll be using these buttons a lot throughout the book, so you’ll get a clear understanding of the different way these functions can be used. For the moment, just think of them as ways to position objects drawn on the canvas. The hotkeys for these functions are W for Move, E for Scale, and R for Rotate.

Figure 2-16: The third section of controls on the top shelf includes a series of sliders and buttons that control the size and behavior of the current brush.

The third section of the top shelf is a series of buttons and sliders (see Figure 2-16). If these buttons are grayed out, make sure that the Draw button on the top shelf is on. The buttons are labeled Mrgb, Rgb, and M. The M stands for material and the Rgb stands for red green blue, which to a computer is the same thing as saying color. So these buttons choose between painting modes. You can paint material and color (Mrgb), just color (Rgb), or just material (M). The slider below these three buttons controls the intensity of the color contribution of the current brush. If none of these buttons are activated, the brush will affect the canvas only according to the settings applied by the next set of buttons.

Understanding Edit Mode

ZBrush actually started as more of an illustration software package rather than a digital sculpting tool. The unique thing about ZBrush, when it first appeared back in 2000, is that it was the only software that allowed you to paint in two and a half dimensions. This meant that you could paint a stroke on the canvas and then move the canvas up and down as well as back and forth—something that can’t be done in other digital paint programs. In addition to paint strokes, the original version of ZBrush included simple 3D shapes that could be incorporated into the illustrations painted on the canvas. The idea was that switching to Edit mode allowed you to make changes to the shape of the 3D primitives, and then you could switch out of Edit mode to place the altered primitives in your illustration.

Over time, ZBrush added much more sophisticated sculpting tools and was quickly adopted as the standard for digital sculpting. In fact, ZBrush revolutionized the way digital artists model 3D objects. But the 2.5D illustration capabilities are still at the heart of ZBrush. And therefore, you have to remember that the paradigm of using Edit mode to alter 3D objects is still a big part of sculpting in ZBrush. To see how this works, try this simple exercise:

1. Open Light Box by holding the cursor at the bottom of the screen. When it appears, click the Project link, and then click the DemoProjects folder.

2. Double-click the DemoDog.ZPR project. If a dialog box appears asking you to save the current project, choose No. The dog will appear on the canvas along with a grid representing the floor of the 3D scene. Notice that the Edit button is activated on the top shelf.

3. In the color picker on the left shelf, select a white color so that the model is easier to see.

4. Drag the pointer on a blank part of the canvas. (If you’re using a mouse, hold the left mouse button while dragging; if you’re using a digital tablet, simply drag the stylus on the tablet.) You’ll see the dog and the 3D grid rotate in 3D dimensions. This is the typical behavior of a 3D mesh in Edit mode.

5. Click the Edit mode button on the top shelf (or press the T hotkey) to turn off Edit mode. The grid disappears.

6. Drag on a blank part of the canvas again. Now you’ll see another dog appear; the first dog remains frozen. Drag several more dogs on the canvas.

This is the typical behavior of ZBrush when Edit mode is off. In this case, you’re essentially creating an illustration using the dog mesh. Beginners usually feel as though something has gone wrong with ZBrush when they experience this behavior, but it’s simply a result of Edit mode being disabled. ZBrush is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

7. On the left shelf, click the DragRect button to open the stroke type fly-out library. Set the stroke type to Freehand.

8. Drag on the canvas; now you’ll see a series of dogs appear.

Hopefully a light bulb is going off in your head. What’s going on is that you’ve altered the dog tool so that now you’re painting with dogs. Each brush stroke is made up of dog models. This is what Paint mode is all about in ZBrush.

9. Use the stroke type library on the left shelf to switch the stroke type back to DragRect. Drag on the canvas to add another dog to the illustration.

10. Turn Edit mode back on using the button on the top shelf (or press the T hotkey again). The grid reappears under the last dog drawn on the canvas.

11. To clear the other dogs off the canvas, press Ctrl+N. To center the dog mesh in the canvas view, press the F hotkey.

12. Drag on the surface of the dog to make some changes using the Standard brush. Make the changes fairly obvious, such as a gross swelling in the poor dog’s head.

13. Switch out of Edit mode and drag on the canvas again. Now you’ll see that the changes you made while in Edit mode are applied to every new dog added to the canvas.

As you switch in and out of Edit mode, you can continue to change the dog model, but the changes will appear only in subsequent dogs painted on the canvas when Edit mode is off. You are editing the dog tool, hence the term Edit mode.

It can be easy to switch out of Edit mode by accident when sculpting a 3D mesh. When this happens, don’t panic; just press Ctrl+N to clear the canvas of any unwanted copies of the model. Drag on the canvas to create a new copy of the model and turn on the Edit mode button on the top shelf (hotkey = T).

A similar triad of buttons follows. These buttons are labeled Zadd, Zsub, and Zcut, and they control whether or not a sculpting brush raises the surface of a 3D tool (Zadd) or pushes it down (Zsub); ZCut is only used for strokes or models that have been “dropped” onto the canvas (meaning that you have switched out of Edit mode and the model has been converted to a 2.5D illustration), not for sculpting. The Z intensity slider controls how much each stroke of the brush raises, lowers, or cuts into the surface of the 3D tool. If none of these buttons are activated, the brush may simply be set to paint color, material, or both without changing the 3D tool. These also affect how paint strokes behave when you’re creating an illustration on the canvas.

Finishing off the third section of the top shelf are the sliders that control the focal shift and the size of the brush. The brush appears on the canvas as a circle within a circle (Figure 2-17). The Draw Size slider controls the diameter of both circles as a group, which in turn controls how much of the canvas or tool is affected by the brush. The Focal Shift slider controls the softness or falloff of the edge of the brush. Moving this slider back and forth will cause the inner circle to grow and shrink. If both circles are the same size, the brush will have a hard edge; if there is a large gap between the size of the outer circle and the inner circle, there will be a sizable falloff from the center to the edge of the area affected by the brush.

Figure 2-17: The Focal Shift slider controls the distance between the center circle and the outer circle in the brush display. This region is the intensity falloff of the brush.

The final section of the top shelf is a numerical display that informs you as to how many points make up the current 3D mesh (Figure 2-18). Points (or vertices) appear at the corner of each polygon in the mesh. If a 3D mesh has many separate pieces, you can choose which piece of the mesh you want to edit. This number of points in the part of the mesh you’re editing is displayed as ActivePoints. The total number of all the points of all the parts of the mesh is displayed as TotalPoints. For example, if you have the DemoSoldier in Edit mode on the canvas, the soldier’s body is made up of 32,546 points, and this number is displayed as ActivePoints. If you add all the points of his body to all of the points for each part of his clothing, the total is 93,064, which is displayed as TotalPoints.

Figure 2-18: The last section of the top shelf reveals statistics about the number of points in the 3D mesh on the canvas.

Use the Spacebar to Access Shelf Buttons

The spacebar is used as a shortcut for calling up the major shelf buttons around the canvas. If you get tired of hunting around for commonly used buttons on the shelves, try holding the spacebar to get quick access. The pop-up menu appears right next to the brush icon.

The Shelf on the Right

The right shelf contains controls that are meant to help you navigate the canvas. From top to bottom this shelf can be divided into four sections.

The first section at the top of the shelf contains six buttons that manipulate the display of the canvas (see Figure 2-19).

Figure 2-19: The buttons at the top of the right shelf control the display of the canvas in ZBrush.

The button at the very top activates Best Preview Render (BPR) mode, which is one of the five render options available in ZBrush. When you activate BPR, the objects on the screen appear at a higher quality than they do in the default Preview mode. Your image will include shadows, higher-quality anti-aliasing, and effects such as ambient occlusion, transparency, and subsurface scattering. Creating a BPR render takes more time than creating a render in the default Preview render mode. The other render modes are Flat, Fast, Preview, and Best. These are all discussed at length in Chapter 9.

The SPix slider below the BPR button controls the anti-aliasing quality of the render created in Best Preview Render mode.

The Scroll and Zoom controls move the canvas around. When you use the Zoom tool to move into the canvas, you’ll see the edges of the strokes on the canvas become jagged. It’s just like zooming into an image in a paint program such as Photoshop.

The Actual and AAHalf buttons snap the canvas to 100 percent and 50 percent in size, respectively. This helps improve the look of the model on the canvas and when rendering by making the anti-aliasing along the edges smooth.

The next section on the right shelf is made up of three buttons that control the display of objects on the canvas (see Figure 2-20). These are options that can be used as aids while you work on editing a 3D mesh. The Persp button turns on perspective distortion (hotkey = P). By default, 3D meshes are displayed in isometric view, meaning that the natural lines of perspective are ignored. This can be useful for aligning a 3D mesh with a 2D drawing. The perspective button augments the appearance of the mesh, which can make the appearance of the mesh more natural (see Figure 2-21).

Figure 2-20: The Persp, Floor, and Local buttons affect the behavior of the canvas while you’re editing a 3D tool.

Figure 2-21: The image at the top shows a 3D mesh with the Persp button off; the image on the bottom shows the same mesh with the Persp button on.

The Floor button activates a 3D grid that is aligned with the 3D tool (hotkey = Shift+P). If you’re used to working in other 3D programs, using this option may make you feel more comfortable because it gives you a better understanding of the 3D tool’s position in 3D space. At the top of the button are the letters X, Y, and Z. Turning on any one of these buttons turns on the display of the grid along the corresponding axis. By default, the y-axis is activated (see Figure 2-22).

Figure 2-22: The Floor button activates the display of a grid for each axis. In this image, the x- and y-axes are displayed.

The Local pivot button will make the last area of an edited 3D tool become the center of rotation during editing. This is a very useful function and helps keep you from getting lost on your 3D tool as you spin it around.

The third section of buttons on the right shelf includes the L.Sym and rotation axes controls (see Figure 2-23). To understand how these buttons work, imagine that when you are editing a 3D mesh, the canvas acts as a virtual sculpting stand. These buttons affect the relationship of the mesh to the stand as well as how to rotate the view of the mesh on the stand.

Figure 2-23: The L.Sym and rotation axes buttons make up the third section of buttons on the right shelf.

The L.Sym button controls how symmetry is calculated while editing a 3D tool. L.Sym is short for Local Symmetry. When it’s off, symmetry is calculated in world space. In other words, symmetry is calculated based on the center of the virtual sculpting stand. When L.Sym is on, symmetry is calculated based on the center of the mesh, even if the mesh is not at the center of the stand.

The three buttons below L.Sym control the axis of rotation as you change the view of the mesh. Think of these buttons as a way to control the rotation of the virtual sculpting stand. When the XYZ button is on, rotation of the view is not restricted to any particular axis when you drag left or right. When the Z button is activated, rotation of the view is restricted to the z-axis when you drag left or right on the canvas. When Y is active, the rotation of the view is restricted to the y-axis when you drag left or right on the canvas.

The fourth section of buttons on the right shelf controls the display of 3D meshes on the canvas (see Figure 2-24). The Frame button centers the view of the 3D object in the canvas.

Figure 2-24: The fourth section of buttons on the right shelf controls the display of the 3D mesh on the canvas.

Navigating the ZBrush Canvas

The Move, Scale, and Rotate buttons on the right shelf can be a bit confusing at first because there are also Move, Scale, and Rotate buttons on the top shelf. They do not do the same thing. The buttons on the right shelf are for use on 3D tools in Edit mode. They help you manipulate the view of a 3D tool while working. Think of them as controls for manipulating the virtual sculpture stand. When you use these buttons, you don’t change the model, just what you’re able to see on the model while working.

Try this short exercise to understand how to navigate the ZBrush canvas using these buttons or the navigation hotkeys.

As mentioned earlier, the axis of rotation buttons on the right shelf change the way the Rotate feature works. Switching to Z or Y restricts the rotation to that axis when you drag left or right.

Mesh View Options

The PolyF button turns on a wireframe display on the current 3D mesh. When PolyF is on, you can clearly see the individual polygons that make up the mesh. If the mesh is made up of multiple objects, the wireframe is visible for the current active object. To get a better sense of what this means, try this while the DemoSoldier project is still loaded:

Figure 2-25: The PolyF button displays the wireframe of the active parts of the mesh. Alt+click the soldier’s backpack to make it the active part of the mesh.

The Transp button activates Transparency, allowing you to see the active subtool through the other subtools (as long as the mesh has been divided into subtools). Transparency has two modes: Ghost and Standard transparency. Ghost is on by default, and you can toggle between the two transparency modes by turning the Ghost button on or off:

Figure 2-26: Transparency allows you to see a subtool through the other parts of a 3D mesh. The left image shows the Ghost mode of transparency; the right image shows the Standard mode of transparency.

The Solo button instantly hides all subtools except the current active subtool. This comes in very handy when working on a complex mesh that has been divided into many subtools.

The Xpose button temporarily moves all of the subtools out of the way while still leaving them visible. This way you can focus on editing a single subtool without having the others obscure your view. It’s also a great way to get a sense of how a 3D mesh has been organized into subtools (see Figure 2-27).

Figure 2-27: The Xpose button moves all the other subtools out of the way while you’re working on the active subtool.

Trays and Palettes

We’ll continue working our way outward from the canvas to another level. This takes us to the trays. On the right side of the canvas you’ll see a section labeled Tool within a large area (see Figure 2-28). The large area is a tray. If you click the divider between the right shelf and the tray, the tray collapses, expanding the work area. Click the divider again and it reappears. The tray is analogous to a drawer in an artist’s toolbox. Trays exist on the right and the left sides of the canvas as well as below the canvas.

Figure 2-28: A tray on the right side of the ZBrush interface contains a set of buttons and controls under the heading Tool. Click the divider to collapse or expand the tray

The palettes are sets of controls that are organized under the headings at the top of the interface. For example, the Document palette contains a number of settings that control the appearance and behavior of the canvas as well as buttons for saving, importing, and exporting images to and from the canvas. To see the settings in the Document palette, click the Document button at the top of the interface (see Figure 2-29).

Figure 2-29: Clicking the Document button at the top of the interface reveals the contents of the Document palette.

The palettes are organized at the top of the interface alphabetically, starting with the Alpha menu at the upper left and ending with the ZScript menu on the upper right. You’ll find that some palettes are accessed constantly during a ZBrush session, and some you use only once in a while. This is where the trays come in. In the right tray, click the circular icon at the upper-right corner of the Tool palette (see Figure 2-30). The palette disappears from the tray.

Figure 2-30: Click the circular icon in the upper right of a palette to move it out of a tray.

Click the word Tool in the bar at the top of the interface. Now the palette appears beneath the Tool heading like a menu in more conventional software packages. Click the circular icon again, and it pops back over to the right tray. The palette will stay in the tray regardless of whether the tray is open or closed.

Make sure the Tool palette is in the tray and expand the Transform palette. Click its circular icon in the upper right. The Transform palette pops over to the right tray above the Tool palette. You can load the tray with all of your favorite palettes and remove them by clicking their circular icons. This action becomes very quick and natural after a little practice. Clicking the title bar of a palette while it’s in the tray will collapse the palette, freeing more room in the tray for other palettes while keeping the palette available in the tray (see Figure 2-31).

The palettes load up the tray from top to bottom in the order in which you add them. By default, the palettes will automatically place themselves in the tray on the right of the screen when you click the circular button. If you decide you prefer a palette to be in the tray on the left side, you can grab the handle with your cursor and drag the entire palette to the tray. The cursor will turn into a crosshair when it’s over the handle, indicating that you can drag the palette by the handle.

You can also drag palettes to different locations on the tray to rearrange them. It’s easiest to do this by dragging from the top menu to a blank spot below the last palette in a tray. To remove a palette from a tray, drag its circular handle icon off the tray or click it. Notice that a palette temporarily disappears from a tray when you click its label in the top menu. This keeps you from being able to load multiple copies of the palette into a tray, which would be confusing for both you and ZBrush.

Figure 2-31: The Transform palette has been added to the tray on the right of the interface. The Tool palette at the bottom of the tray has been collapsed to save room.

Make sure the Tool palette is in the tray on the right side of the canvas and that it is expanded so that you can see the contents. Click the large tool icon in the upper left of the palette to expand the tool inventory. Choose a 3D tool such as the Gear tool. The Tool palette has a large number of subpalettes. Subpalettes are groups of controls within rounded boxes that appear depending on what has been chosen as the current tool; some are collapsed by default to keep the palette from getting too long. You can expand them—try clicking the word Preview in the Tool palette, and you’ll see the Preview settings expand in their own subpalette (see Figure 2-32).

Figure 2-32: The Tool palette contains a large number of subpalettes. These can be expanded by clicking their labels. In this image, the Preview subpalette has been expanded.

If you expand a number of subpalettes, you’ll see that the Tool palette gets so long that all of its contents can’t fit on the screen. No problem; you can click the side of the Tool palette and drag up and down. The palette scrolls up and down, giving you access to all the different settings.

Throughout this book I will describe the location of specific controls in relation to the subpalette of a particular palette. So for example, if I say “find the SDiv slider in the Geometry subpalette of the Tool palette,” then I mean that you should expand the Tool palette and then expand the Geometry subpalette within the Tool palette to find the SDiv slider. It’s important to understand this because there are some subpalettes that use the same name as a palette. For example there is a Texture palette and there is a Texture Map subpalette in the Tool palette.

Now that you have some idea of how palettes and trays work, let’s look at the settings available in each palette. These descriptions will be very brief. More detailed explanations will be found in the exercises of this book.

Figure 2-33: The Alpha palette contains controls and settings to adjust the alpha images you use in ZBrush.

Figure 2-34: The Brush palette contains settings for changing the way in which brushes behave. You can use the controls in this palette to create and save your own custom brush presets.

Figure 2-35: The Color palette provides a number of different ways to set the current color.

Figure 2-36: The Document palette has controls for setting the size and the background of the canvas.

Change the Background Color of the Canvas

Here’s a quick demonstration on how to change the background color of the canvas:

1. Open the Document palette, and click the circular icon in the upper left to move the palette into a tray. This will keep the palette from closing while you adjust the controls.

2. Click the button labeled Back, and drag all the way across the canvas to the color picker. As you drag, you may notice the color of the canvas change.

The label Back in the Document palette is short for background. While you drag, ZBrush is setting the background color to match whatever color is directly below the mouse pointer. By dragging over the color picker on the left shelf, you can choose any color visible in the picker.

3. Select a light gray by dragging over the left side of the inner square of the color picker. Let go when you have a nice gray color selected.

4. In the Document palette, click and drag on the slider below the Range heading. Drag to the left to set Range to 0. Setting Range to 0 removes the gradient.

If you’d like to store this gray background as the default setting whenever ZBrush starts, click the Save As Startup Doc button at the bottom of the palette.

Figure 2-37: The Draw palette has controls for changing the way strokes and 3D tools are drawn on the canvas.

Figure 2-38: The File palette has a number of buttons that allow you to save the various elements of a ZBrush session.

Figure 2-39: Use the controls in the Light palette to change the position of the lights. This will affect the appearance of 3D meshes and strokes placed on the canvas.

Figure 2-40: The Material palette and material inventory show the many materials that can be applied to ZBrush strokes. The settings in the Modifiers subpalette of the Material palette allow you to create and save your own custom materials.

Figure 2-41: The Movie palette has controls for recording movies from the canvas.

Figure 2-42: When you enable the visibility of the TimeLine in the Movie palette, it appears below the top shelf.

• Preview is the default quality setting. It shows basic color and texture information with simple real-time shadowing.
• The Fast setting removes material and shadow information from the scene to improve performance.
• Flat displays only the color of the strokes and 3D meshes on the screen.
• Best is the most computationally expensive. A number of settings in the Render palette affect how Best quality is calculated. Best quality renders the lighting, texturing, shadow, and materials of the strokes on the canvas and takes into account how they interact with each other in terms of reflection and light occlusion.

Figure 2-43: A 3D model rendered in the four different render qualities—Flat, Fast, Preview, and Best (clockwise from upper left)—using the Reflected Map material.

Figure 2-44: Controls for tuning effects such as subsurface scattering (Sss) in a BPR render are found in the Render palette.

Figure 2-45: A stencil is used to protect areas of a 3D mesh from changes made with a sculpting brush.

Figure 2-46: The Stroke palette settings control how brush strokes behave on the canvas. These settings affect both the tools and the sculpting brushes.

Figure 2-47: The Texture palette contains controls for changing the look of the 2D color images used within ZBrush.

• Flip a texture horizontally and vertically
• Invert the colors of a texture
• Adjust the colors using a gradient based on the main and secondary color buttons
• Resize and clone a texture
• Make an alpha based on a texture
• Fill the background using a texture
• Create a texture based on the current state of the canvas

Figure 2-48: The inventory of tools in the Tool palette

Making 2.5D Brush Strokes

The idea behind 2.5D brushes is that they combine the natural feel of digital painting with the ability to position strokes in three dimensions. Try this short exercise to get a sense of what this means:

1. Make sure ZBrush is open. Choose Preferencesb Init ZBrush. This will clear the canvas and reset all tools (always make sure you save your work before using this feature!).

2. When you click the Init ZBrush button, a dialog box opens. It asks if you want to initialize ZBrush. Choose Yes.

3. Make sure the Tool palette is in the tray on the right side of the screen.

4. In the Tool palette, click the large brush icon labeled SimpleBrush to open the tool inventory. From the 2.5D Brushes section at the bottom of the inventory, choose SphereBrush.

5. Drag across the canvas to make a mark with the SphereBrush. Make a few marks (see the following image).

6. On the top shelf, click the Move button or press the W hotkey.

The last stroke you created disappears. Don’t worry; it’s not gone. It has just moved behind the canvas.

7. Drag downward on a blank part of the canvas; this may take a few downward strokes. You’ll see the stroke appear, but now it has moved above the other strokes, so you can clearly see the spheres that make up the stroke (as shown in the following image).

8. Drag on the edge of the Transform Gyro to move the stroke to a new position. Drag up or down on a blank part of the canvas to move the stroke back and forth.

9. Click the Rotate button on the top shelf or press the R hotkey. Drag on the Transform Gyro to rotate the stroke.

10. Click the Draw button on the top of the shelf or press the Q hotkey. Draw some more strokes with the SphereBrush.

11. Switch back to Move mode to activate the Transform Gyro (hotkey = W). Drag on the Gyro to move the last stroke.

Unless you hold the Ctrl key while painting strokes, you can only move the last stroke placed on the canvas. If you do hold the Ctrl key while painting on the canvas, the Transform Gyro will let you move all the strokes you painted while holding the Ctrl key as a single stroke. The strokes that can no longer be moved have been “dropped” onto the canvas, so now they have been embedded. This is the nature of 2.5D painting in ZBrush. It’s not really like 3D modeling in a program such as Maya. Painting in 2.5D is more like painting in a digital paint program that lets you move strokes around on the canvas, up and down as well as back and forth.

Experiment with some of the other 2.5D brush tools and see how they add strokes to the canvas and how they affect strokes already placed on the canvas.

Try using the Smudge brush to smear the strokes created with the SphereBrush. You can smudge the canvas and then switch to Move mode to move the smudging effect around the canvas.

Use the SnakeHook brush to pull parts of the image toward you. Some of the brush strokes, such as those created by the SnakeHook brush, can’t be moved or rotated. It doesn’t take long before you are able to make a mess on the canvas.

The 2.5D brushes can be very powerful. They are most often used when creating 2.5D illustrations on the ZBrush canvas. When you are creating digital sculptures using 3D meshes, they are not used nearly as much. The one exception is when using the Projection Master plug-in. The Projection Master plug-in is described in detail in the chapter, “Zscripts and Plug-Ins,” that is found on the DVD.

Figure 2-49: The Tool palette gets very complex when a mesh is in the process of being edited.

Figure 2-50: The Transform palette contains the symmetry settings.

The Title Bar

The final stop on our interface tour is the title bar. Here you will find useful bits of information on the upper-left side of the screen. These include the title of the document, the name of the person or company to whom this copy of ZBrush has been registered, and information regarding memory usage and time spent in the current session.

On the right side of the title bar are some useful buttons. Moving from left to right, the first button, labeled Menus, is a toggle for hiding the menus. The second button is the DefaultZScript button, which can be used to load custom zscripts.

Summary

In this chapter, I took you on a quick tour of the ZBrush interface. The goal of this tour was to get you comfortable enough with locating tools and settings in ZBrush that you can easily work through the exercises in the rest of the book. Now that you have an idea of where everything is, you’ll start learning about how the interface is a big part of the power of ZBrush.

Complete descriptions of all the tools and palettes can be found in the ZBrush documentation. The palettes are described in detail in the Palette Reference.