Zbrush sculpting

scourgewarper

I have a square plane and want to know how I can sculpt on its surface so that I only ever go a certain depth into the plane no matter how many strokes I apply. Basically I want to create a relief on the surface which maintains a constant height whilst the recesses maintain a constant depth.

I've been experimenting with the layer brush which achieves just the effect I want however subsequent strokes over previous ones i've laid down 'builds up' the height, what i'm looking for is when I apply my next stroke previous areas that have been sculpted are unaffected and areas untouched are brought up to this height. Hope i've explained that right.

binopittan

use projection master

scourgewarper

Tried projection master however theres a few problems. I put my plane perpendicular to the viewport and then went into projection mode. Using the single layer brush and using a small size diameter I made the outline for my relief however i'm using a wacom tablet and different pressures make the height of the brush strokes different, do I have to revert to using a mouse for this to keep the stroke height even?

Also I sketched out the outline of my main relief and then switched to a larger diameter to 'fill out' the inside of the relief I sketched to the same height but making the brush diameter wider also gave the strokes more intensity, do I just have to use the same diameter brush stroke to sculpt the entire relief the same uniforum height?

Snowfly

I would either:
1. paint a high-res alpha in photoshop, and stamp it on to the plane in zbrush
2. just convert an image into a normal map using crazybump or the nvidia filter
3. polypaint the relief pattern in zbrush, mask off those areas, and zsub the remaining areas with the layer brush
4. after sketching in the relief pattern, lift the entire plane as evenly as possible with a single stroke of the layer brush, save that as a morph target, switch back to the original state, and sculpt in the detail with the morph brush

btw you can easily switch off pressure sensitivity from the Preferences menu.

scourgewarper

snowfly: Never thought of the alpha option, I guess i'd be doing exactly the same thing i'm doing in projection master in terms of outlining my relief pattern but just applied to a whole alpha in photoshop as white on a transparent background (or black I forget).

Haven't used polypaint so far so may have to try that, I was thinking of something similar to your last suggestion, just meticulously masking off the whole area where I want the relief pattern and then with a huge diameter brush apply a layer stroke to recess it into the plane, thanks for the suggestions.

Snowfly

Well I just tried my last suggestion and found that the morph brush doesn't behave as expected when you zsub. Personally I would just stamp on an alpha created in PS or projection master and refine from there, it's just easier to keep the values under control working in pure 2D. And you can adjust the height of the engraving after stamping with layers anyway.

[Deleted User]

The layer brush has a special feature that lets you use morph targets to limit how high it'll go when adding depth. Store a morph target for the plane before you start sculpting, then use the layer brush. You can make as many strokes as you want, and the maximum height is based on the Z intensity setting.

Snowfly

Cool, haven't seen that documented anywhere, and the fact that it just works when you have an MT...thanks fly_soup, learned something new today.

edit - oh wait, it is documented...on the ctrl help tooltip. Doh. Nice feature...I ZB

scourgewarper

Cheers that is just what I wanted didn't notice it either, should use ctrl more often really my bad

[Deleted User]

No prob. Yeah, it's a weird one.