ZBrush: Panning in projection master

scourgewarper

In ZBrush when you place your model in projection mode it is temporarily dropped to canvas and effectively becomes 2.5d until you pick it up. Is it possible to pan the canvas or is this impossible once the model has been dropped?

As it stands the model is dropped but if you want to get to another part of the model off screen you have to pickup, pan the screen to the new part of the model, and then drop again.

I am basically trying to apply bolts to a metal beam and need consistency in terms of zdepth of the screen from when I apply them to the model and spacing between the bolts. Would be interesting to know whether you can pan in projection mode in principle (I can understand not rotating the model) and whether this will be possible in ZBrush 4.

JohnnyRaptor

No, i dont think you can move anything around in projection mode.

You could technically achieve the same thing by creating an alpha of your bolt and then set it up as your brush alpha and add the details without dropping your tool.

scourgewarper

Yer I did think about trying that, create a morph target of the beam, create the bolt alpha and whack up the alpha tile value in the brush pallette, position the bolts where I want and then use the morph brush to brush out all the unwanted bolts, however I have to zoom out to cover the entire beam and the bolts are applied with a cack resolution

JohnnyRaptor

Is your bolt alpha a single bolt? If so, you dont need to zoom out, just zoom in close and apply each bolt individually and pan

scourgewarper

The bolt is a single alpha, I wanted to apply them in a uniform way as doing it the way you suggested I always end up making the spacing between the bolts irregular, I guess i'll just have to do it by eye a few times to get it right cheers for the help

FAT_CAP

If you set your document size to be bigger than you need - i.e bigger than is always visible in your ZBRUSH document "screenspace" then you will be able to scroll about while still in Projection Master.

Using the Document> Double function normally gives me the extra screen area to pan around off screen if I need to.

JohnnyRaptor

hey that's pretty clever! Nice one

Mark Dygert

Nice TIP!

scourgewarper

Awesome that's a very good way round it cheers

Firebert

There's brushes for just this with some minor tweaking. Use one of the stitching brushes and replace the pre-defined alpha with your bolt alpha. Modify the brush settings and lazy mouse settings to achieve your desired result. You can set up other brushes to do similar tasks such as the layer brush which will pull directly up or down depending on the intensity instead of along the normal averages or inflating them. If you go this route, you don't have to drop anything in PM, which is outdated now IMO from polypainting and ZApplink. They made all these new brushes and tools in ZB3 so you could achieve more efficent results without having to go through the whole process of dropping and picking up your model fifty thousand times to get fine details.

What's your goal here? Why use Zbrush for this kind of task? Just curious. Seems you could easily make this in another app and achieve cleaner results with less fear of artifacting from pulled and pushed polys.

scourgewarper

@firebert: Your right, I could do this in 3ds max, especially concerning precision with placing the bolts on the girder, I wish Zbrush had some kind of co-ordinate/snap system like max but I guess it's difficult because it's a pixol/2.5D/high poly digital sculpting program - someone may be able to correct me on that.

I wanted to try and achieve this in zbrush for a few reasons, one i'd just like to do the majority of my high poly work in zbrush so I don't have to flit back and forth with max, I make my low poly in max, clone it and quad it up for zbrush import and sculpting. For this piece I am making the frame of a heavy duty gothic arched door, the frame being metal with rivets/bolts and I wanted to create a subtle rusting and flaking iron effect on the girders surface, which will intersect a few of the bolts. I want the mesh to be one continuous surface and as far as I know if I apply the bolts in max they'll be separate geometry and might look weird, I may have to try it that way.

To be honest i'm just experimenting at the minute sometimes the obvious thing to do isn't staring you in the face so cheers for the suggestions

Firebert

I gotcha on why you're using just ZB. Using this method will work, or using Insert Mesh brush? Never messed with that one too much, so I don't know if it would really work the way you want it to.

You could make the bolt pattern polys externally, combine them into a single mesh, and then import and append as a new subtool. Then you could merge the arch and the bolts into a single subtool and sculpt your details over everything at once after you divided the bolts to a sufficent level before merging.

From there just need to make it and bake it. You may get better results. I know you're trying to avoid switching apps, but you may be sacraficing quality and also adding a lot more unecessary work into your workflow. If I could do everything in one single app, I would, but man, IMO, you can get a lot more accomplished using multiple tools rather than tying yourself down to a single tool. HOWEVER, forcing yourself into this kind of workflow now will really aid you in learning more about the software.