Mask by layers in ZBrush

jclardie

Getting back into ZBrush after many years a way, so Im pretty lost at some points, one question is if its possible to mask off something by selecting its layer.

Say I have a layer that contains a bunch of metal pieces and I want to mask that out w/o repainting my mask. I've tried to save it as a polygroup but whenever I click on that group (at a later time) the group is a jagged/low rez version of what I originally made. Saving my mask never seems to work for me either.

Any help would be appreciated.

demilich

I'm not sure that it is possible. Although I did however manage to do something similar a few times accidentally, but it did seem like a buggy way to do it. If I remember correctly I had layers in subdivision 5, then added one more subdivision and created a new layer. In that layer I sculpted geo, then I would turn off the previous layer from the lower subdivision and it would mask out everything that wasn't in that layer. It might of been that it turned on polypaint on and turned everything that wasn't in that layer black.

Thousand

this would be such a useful feature... one workaround is to use a boolean between the geometry with layer on/off and then use the intersection mask plugin... but that's far from ideal

Thousand

I have submitted a ticket to pixologic for this feature request

Thousand

with the 2020 release, one could add polypaint with the "A" toggle ON (brush settings, next to the RGB settings), to define the areas affected by a layer - and then creating a mask from the polypaint.