Drawing straight lines in Mudbox/Z-Brush?

kwakkie

Sometimes I am having a hard time to draw straight lines with my wacom in Mudbox and I was wondering if there was an option to do this with a guideline(kind of like holding shift in photoshop). It would be even better if this line would follow the edgeloop you are drawing on imo, it could prevent a lot of messy areas in the normal map!

So my question is: does mudbox or zbrush have a feature like this? I googled for this but found nothing It would be an awesome feature and greatly improve my workflow.

MoP

Mudbox has guideline drawing, I think. That might just be the new version, Mudbox2009, though... I think I saw it in a demo video?

In Zbrush you could turn on Lazy Mouse, it "averages" your stroke, makes it much smoother, you can tweak the settings to really smooth it out.

fr0gg1e

Mudbox 1 have curves...
If they didnt change the menus in the beta of new Mud, here is how to do it.

1:Go to Curves > Create new curve. Draw your curve (a straight line in this case). IIRC It s gonna act as a stencil. IE you can have 1 curve and roate move zoom the model and the curve will stay as it is (not sure if you can link both, I never tried or know if it s working as I never use curves).
2: Once it s created. Curve > Close curve / end curve, depending on what you want.
3: shift+C to stroke on curve. Play with parameters to have a nice stroke on this (it s relying on the settings of your current brush, not sure if it s working with flatten etc).
4: Profit

I would Add a new layer before this, this way you can stroke and invert the layer (typing -100) in case you want to carve something.

sulz

if you put your pen to the tablet, start your stroke, and then hit shift in ZBrush 3.1, it will make a straight line as you continue your stroke. I don't think it works when you have lazy mouse on, but when you're straight up sculpting it works.

Josh_Singh

I would like to verify what Sulz said.
Start your stroke, hit shift, then draw without lifting your pen and you will snap to an axis.
If you hold shift befor the stroke you will smooth. Remember to put your pen to the tablet first.

Whargoul

Use a ruler on your tablet (works in any app).

tacit math

use a stencil. or in zb drop into projection master and draw your lines to be used as masks

kwakkie

Sorry for the bump, but thanks for all your comments! They've been helping me out a lot! The tip about curves proved to be the most usefull to me

SHEPEIRO

excellent been wandering how to do straight lines for ages ;-) no more wobbly art

ghib

Mudbox 2009 has a slightly superior version of lazymouse called steady stroke. You specify a length and then begin your stroke. The 'real' stroke doesn't actually start to draw anything until your mouse pointer has reached the length that you specified, then it starts to do the lazymouse thing.

It's based on something similar to this Alias Research Video Anything that I try to explain here is already explained better in that vid.

anyway have a look, is quite interesting.

Pudd'nhead

Zbrush 4R6 and later has a lazymouse option "backtrack" to create straight lines (look the bottom part of the image)
also pressing a pen/mouse and hold shift will create a straight line


https://www.dropbox.com/s/242mua4061g1jae/howto_create_notches.png?dl=0