Introduction to Zbrush Digital Tutors
Basic Sculpting
– Sculpting Brushes can be found in the top left of the Left Shelf, or by pressing B.
– Specific brushes can be selected by pressing the first letter of the brush name followed by a specific letter eg to select ClayTubes press B > C > T.
Sculpting brushes can be found in the brush palette or by pressing specific letter combinations.
– The red rings represent the Draw Size and Focal Shift of the brush, and can be modified using the Draw Size and Focal Shift Sliders. The Draw Size Slider can also be brought up at the cursor position using S, the Focal Shift Slider using O.
– A Focal Shift of 0 will produce a very sharp edged result.
The cursor shows the draw size and focal shift, and can be modified by using sliders or the hotkey S and O.
– the ZAdd and ZSub buttons change between raising or lowering the mesh when sculpting. Holding Alt + LMB will switch between modes.
– the Z Intensity Slider controls the strength of the brush.
ZAdd and ZSub control what happens when sculpting, while the Z Intensity slider controls the strength of the brush.
– By default Shift + LMB is the Smooth Brush which can be used to blend sculpting. Other brushes can also be set to the Shift modifier.
Hold shift to activate the sculpting-smoothing brush, which smooths geometry.
– The Move Brush works by clicking and dragging geometry in or out. It is good for quickly reshaping a mesh but can lead to undesirable geometry if not careful.
The move brush can quickly reshape a model.
– Symmetry can be turned on using Transform > Activate Symmetry. Specific Axes can be selected using the X Y Z buttons or the X, Y and Z keys. Symmetry can be axial or radial (use the RadialCount Slider to vary how many instances are sculpted).
Radial and axial symmetry can be switched on to sculpt multiple areas of the mesh at the same time.
– RMB brings up a Quick Menu with many common commands and sliders.
RMB brings up a quick menu with easy access to most of the common drawing and sculpting commands.
– Strokes and Alphas can be combined with sculpting brushes to get different results:
– Dots and Freehand produce similar continuous results.
– Spray and ColourSpray apply randomised instances of the brush and alpha.
– DragRect and DragDot allow for precise positioning of alphas on the mesh.
Strokes and alphas can be combined with sculpting brushes to get different effects.