ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

■ The Brush Menu 39

Auto Masking Auto Masking contains the brush masking options. Here you will

find options such as Mask By Polygroup, Directional, Cavity, and Color Mask. If you

set the Mask By Polygroup slider to 100, your brush will only affect the first polygroup

it touches. This is very useful in conjunction with group loops and the Move brush.

Directional Masking Directional Masking will force the alpha to follow the direction

of the stroke at all times. This works best with a dot’s stroke and roll enabled.

Cavity Masking Cavity Masking will isolate the high or low points of the mesh from

your brush strokes. I find this very useful in polypaint to paint a color only into the

wrinkles and then paint highlights just on the raised areas.

Color Masking Color Masking allows you to use the polypaint data as a mask while

you sculpt. This can be useful for adding details on or between scales, for example.

This technique also has many applications in hard-surface sculpting with ZBrush. You

can create complex masks by simply projecting images on the model with ZAppLink

and saving them as polypaint data.

Tablet Pressure Tablet Pressure offers settings that control how each brush behaves

with the graphics tablet. When Use Global Settings is on, all brushes will conform to

the settings in Preferences → Tablet.

Alpha And Texture Alpha And Texture provide you with control over how alpha

and textures are tiled and aligned to the brush. This option also allows you to access

the polypaint blending mode options via the Polypaint mode slider.

Smooth Brush Modifiers The Smooth Brush Modifiers submenu gives you fine

control over the Smooth brush. For example, Alt Brush Size allows you to set a dif-

ferent size for the Smooth brush that is automatically enabled when Shift is pressed.

Weighted Smooth mode offers several options for the Smooth brush.

The Brush Modifiers

Table 2.2 describes a variety of additional options for modifying brush behavior.

Table 2.2: Additional brush menu options

Brush menu option Description

Curve Contains the curve controls for the currently selected brush. The curve
will automatically become the Smooth curve when Shift is pressed.

Depth Contains brush depth and gravity controls.

Samples Controls how the brush samples the surface as it sculpts, altering the
effect of the strokes.

Elasticity Modifies the elasticity settings for brushes. Elasticity alters the way the
surface behaves as parts are pulled farther away.

Orientation Controls for the orientation of the alpha as the brush is stroked on the
surface. The alpha can be spun while stroking.

Surface Contains noise controls.

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