ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

132 chapter 4 ■ ZBrush for Detailing

can be distracting when sculpting. You can

turn off Show to keep the stencil active, but

it will not be visible unless you have pressed

the spacebar to change its position. You can

use the R, G, and B buttons to change the

color of the masked area when using a sten-

cil in Show mode. The Elv button displays

the alpha in Elevation mode. This creates

an elevation map display of the stencil as

opposed to the masked view (Figure 4.27).

Figure 4.27 Mask view vs. Elv mode

Using alphas is not the only way to create stencils. When you Ctrl+Shift-drag a show

marquee in the document window, releasing Shift first will create a stencil from the

selection. Tr y this with Lasso mode on. You can also use ZAppLink to create stencils.

ZAppLink Stencils

Stencils for complex mechanical shapes are easy with ZMapper. By defining a custom selec-

tion in Photoshop, you can generate a stencil back in ZBrush. Use the following steps for

this process:

1. Create a Cube 3D primitive from the Tool menu. Click Make Polymesh 3D and draw
   the tool on the canvas. Enter Edit mode and subdivide as high as possible.


2. Center the cube in the document window and press Ctrl+Shift+S to call ZAppLink.
   Deselect all the check boxes in the ZAppLink window that appears and click Drop
   Now. ZAppLink will open Photoshop and load a copy of your ZBrush document
   (Figure 4.28).

Figure 4.28 The ZBrush document transferred to Photoshop with ZAppLink