ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

■ Building a ZSphere Biped 217

skinning helps create a mesh that much more closely resembles the volume and position
of the underlying ZSphere chain.
Here you’ll find several sliders (Figure 6.30). We’ll go into more detail on those you’ll
use often.

Preview The Preview button displays a preview of the adaptive skin. This is what we

have been displaying with the A hotkey.

Density The Density slider controls how many subdivisions the skin will

have. A setting of 3 will create a semi-smooth mesh of three divisions.

G Radial The G Radial slider helps control the density of the mesh down the limbs

by increasing the number of spans.

Max Twist Max Twist controls the twisting in the mesh, allowing you to adjust the

way the edges flow in a forearm or any other area you want a twist in the topology.

This slider functions by first selecting the sphere you want to adjust, then changing the

slider setting. You can change the direction of the twist by entering negative values.

Proximity Tolerance Proximity Tolerance controls the way geometry intersects when

many children ZSpheres come off a single parent.

Classic Skinning There is also a Use Classic Skinning button here that allows you

to revert to the original ZSphere skinning methodology. The Classic Skinning method

has many more sliders and options simply because the new standard ZSphere skinning

method attempts to create the ideal mesh automatically based on the ZSphere skeleton

you built. In some situations, this mesh may not be ideal for your purpose or prefer-

ences. In those cases, you can activate Classic Skinning and begin to adjust individual

settings.

Classic Skinning

The Use Classic Skinning button under Adaptive Skin will switch ZBrush to the older method
of skinning spheres (Figure 6.31). You may have techniques you prefer to use that rely on this
skinning method, or you may just prefer the shapes it generates from your ZSphere chain.
There are many reasons to keep this older workflow intact in the newer version of ZBrush, so
we will examine some of the options next.
The Ires slider is intended to adjust the way the mesh reacts when multiple child meshes
are growing from a single ZSphere. This is particularly important when working with hands.
Figure 6.32 shows a ZSphere hand under Classic Skinning. Notice how the fingers become
entangled and do not flow correctly into the palm. By changing the Ires slider to 3, you tell
ZBrush to increase resolution on any sphere with more than three children (Figure 6.33).
Minimal Skin To Child (Mc) allows the child sphere to determine the connection points
of the mesh but not to add new geometry. This accounts for the V-shaped transition seen in
the area that joins between the legs in Figure 6.34. Minimal Skin To Parent (Mp) allows the
parent sphere to determine the connecting points. Figure 6.35 illustrates how turning on Mp
can change topology as well as curvature in the wrist.
The Mbr slider controls membrane curvature, which is the curvature of the mesh
between ZSphere intersections. When set to 0, this slider has no effect. As you raise the
value, the transitions between spheres will change.

Figure 6.30 The

Adaptive Skin

menu contains

sliders that con-

trol the way the

polygon mesh

generates from

the ZSphere

skeleton.

Figure 6.31

Classic Skinning

options enabled

under the

Adaptive Skin

menu