ZBrush 4 DragRect Problem

FAT_CAP

I have recently started using ZBrush 4 and am finding some differences between the way the brushes work between 3.5 and the new release. One that has me stumped is how the DragRect option works now comapred to earlier versions.

In Z4, when I use the DragRect option using the Standard brush the alpha it is using gets stretched and doesn't retain the original shape of the alpha applied - as you can see on the left of the picture.

However, when I do the same thing but apply it as an alpha mask (Cntrl-click and drag) the alpha is applied to the object fine - as you can see on the right of the picture.



Here are the same strokes - applied in the same way to a mesh in 3.5



Anybody know what settings I have to change to get it to behave as it did in ZBrush 3.5 (i.e intuitively!)

cw

Which brush are you basing this off?

The dragrect-ness is working, thats why you have one alpha, but maybe one of the other settings is not how it used to be, theres a few settings to do with surface sampling which might be to blame, have a tinker around in that area and see what happens. Seems like you want just the normal under the first click to be used as the direction for the alpha, right?

cw

just tried this, seems to work fine until you get the very edge of the model, then funky stuff happens if you drag out the rect in a direction of the normal of the surface. Dragging the rect 90degrees off this angle yields proper results. Weird!

FAT_CAP

OK - very strange. I closed down ZBrush, re-opened it at the brush now behaves as expected. No idea what had happened with my brush setting but as it was my first time using DragRect + alphas in ZBrush 4 I thought they must have changed the functionality. Now to find out what setting must have changed so that I remember not to turn it back on by mistake!

Cheers for the help CW! It looks like the age-old IT support solution of "turn it off then back on again" really does work

GIS3000

A little off topic, but how's ZB4 compared to ZB3.5? Is it worth the move?

Thanks!

FAT_CAP

Personally I haven't dived into any of the new features of ZB4 yet so couldn't really tell you how the two compare. I spent the first few days customizing the UI and brushes/ hotkeys/ plugins to be setup exactly how they were in my ZBrush 3.5 custom UI... I'm scared of change!

I am keen to check out Spotlight when I get to texturing my current model though - not sure how much I would use any of the other features/ brushes - I model almost entirely with the standard brush and various alphas.

cryrid

Well the move is free and you can keep both versions, so no matter what it would be worth it :P

I like 4 a lot though. I still don't use all the new features, but things like Spotlight make my life easier.

GIS3000

Thanks!