210 chapter 6 ■ ZSpheres
Figure 6.11 When the connection between spheres becomes transparent, it is a visual warning
ZBrush offers that the resulting mesh will interpenetrate.Notice that these transform operations (move, scale, and rotate) can be applied to a
single sphere, but if you click the joint between them, the effect will be applied to the entire
chain beneath that child. This works for moving, scaling, and rotating, but be careful when
rotating ZSpheres as you can cause twisting in the mesh, as you’ll see in the next section.Moving, Scaling, and Rotating ZSpheres and Chains
You’ve already seen that the transform operations can be applied to individual ZSpheres as
well as entire chains. In Figure 6.12, I have rotated the whole arm by selecting Rotate and
clicking in the joint between the shoulder and elbow. This action rotates the entire chain
beneath the shoulder. Moving and scaling have the same effect. Remember that if you click
the sphere it will affect just that sphere, but if you click the joint it will affect the entire chain
beneath the bone. If you want to scale all the spheres in a chain to make the chain itself
thinner, not shorter, Alt-click between two spheres and drag. The entire chain can then be
thinned or thickened.
In Figure 6.13 I have rotated just the shoulder sphere and not the joint. It appears fine
until you activate Preview Mesh and you can see the faces are twisted. To correct this prob-
lem, Alt-drag the sphere, and the individual spheres in the chain will rotate together, thus
reorienting and correcting the twist. You may have to experiment with different directions
and previews to get it right.Figure 6.9 Adding new edge loops
is as simple as inserting a ZSphere
between two others.
Figure 6.10 Scaling ZSpheres