Eye spheres in Zbrush?

Joseph Silverman

Okay, this is embarrassing question, but i have absolutely no idea how to place a subtool in zbrush, for an eye, and mirror it over to the other side of the face. How do you set up seperate eyes?

The program's transform toolset makes absolutely no sense to me, so i just always sculpt eyes right into the model. Someone help.

Jaco

Just export your model to max/maya whatever, place your eye spheres, export the spheres, import and append as subtool back in zbrush. Atleast that's what I do, hope it helps.

kary

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=057154 Helps a lot with sub tool management. The help sections linked there takes you right through the whole plugin as well.

For eyes: if I know the eye position I just make a low poly set in max and position them appropriately, and take them into Zbrush (both eyes as one object). If the eye position isn't set it in stone, just take one eye from max, position it in ZB (move tool*), then use the SubtoolMaster plug mirror it over. I imagine the model has to be centered at 0 for the mirror to work right -- haven't tried it off centre myself.

*That is the full move tool, not the brush. Worthwhile getting used to them (transpose in general is one of the really golden features), but just make sure you're dragging with the middle circle, of the move tool, and it'll move in a predictable way. It does it in screen space, so if you need to do a flat X/Y/Z move have the viewport locked to an axis (the hit shift and LMB on an empty space thing).

I love how concise my ZB explainations wind up... ugh.

TWilson

Yea it's not much fun trying to move objects in zbrush.

What you would do though is open your character.
Create a sphere object.
Convert to Polymesh3d
Go back to your character tool
Append the sphere as a subtool
Scale and move it into place
Clone the eye
Append the other eye
Mirror the eye under the deformations menu
Now you have two eye subtools
...you could combine these objects of course too.

I dont have zbrush open so I hope I didnt miss any important steps but that's the gist of it. This stuff is good to know how to do so I think you should try it. But at the end of the day ...just make it in your 3d package.

James Edwards

The transpose tool makes it easy to place eyeballs. Draw a sphere, convert it to a polymesh, then use the move transpose tool (w key) to position it. If you've never used transpose then make sure you grab the middle circle handle so that it translates the sphere without distorting it as the other handles have different effects that are also useful (just not for moving a whole mesh). Transforms all take place in view space so manipulate the view as you need to when using the tool.

I would highly suggest learning to use the transpose tool to its full extent. It is more than just a simple transform tool. It's a really powerful posing and adjustment system as well, that when combined with masks gives you pretty much unlimited potential to shape your meshes.

http://www.izbrush.com/2007/11/07/zbrush-transpose-tool/

For mirroring the sphere I would suggest installing the Subtool Master plugin. It's a mini toolset for dealing with subtools that includes a mirror function and a merge function among others.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=057154

Evavoo

I fount this short vid tutorial guide to be a really nice technique -

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA4QziHEk8E[/ame]