■ The Brush Menu 37Brush Description
Blob brush This brush is particularly good at producing certain organic effects very quickly. In contrast to other
brushes, the uniformity of its stroke is affected by irregularities in the surface under the stroke, which means
that it typically produces shor t, irregular blobs (hence the name). This won’t be so apparent if it is used on
smooth sur faces. The Blob slider determines whether the brush pulls the sur face out or pushes it in.
Pinch brush Pulls faces together. The BrushMod slider affects whether the faces are pulled in to a peak (100) or
down in a valley (–100) or together in a flat (0).
Flatten brush Pulls or pushes faces to a single plane depending on the BrushMod slider setting.
Clay brush This is a general-purpose brush for sculpting with alphas. The Clay slider scales the alpha as a whole;
this affects not only the intensity of the sculpt, but also the size (width and height) of the brush
stroke. The standard ZIntensity control affects the magnitude of the alpha up/down displacement
effect, but does not affect the size of the alpha.
Morph brush Blends between the current mesh and a stored morph target.
Layer brush Adds a single layer of depth. ZIntensity determines the amount the Layer brush displaces a surface
outward (if ZAdd is selected) or inward (if ZSub is selected).
Nudge brush Slides edges along the surface.
SnakeHook brush Pulls faces out into a tapered horn-like shape.
ZProject brush Projects depth or color onto the current mesh.
Smooth brush Smoothes the underlying geometry. BrushMod 100 smoothes recesses; BrushMod –100 smooths
high points.
Mesh Insert brush Inserts other meshes into the current tool.
Clip brushes Pushes all geometry to the line, circle, or rectangle that is being drawn out.
Masking Brushes Will allow masking with a circle, curve, rectangle, lasso, or freeform.
Trim brushes Will trim away the surface creating a hard surface along the stroke direction.
Planar brushes Will create a plane to the surface based on the tilt and elevation of the stroke.
Polish brushes Will smooth, flatten, and shine the surface to represent metal.
Select lasso brushes Will select any mesh under the drawn out selection based on selection marquee.
Move Part This will move a single geometry shell.
Move Topological Will move the mesh geometry based on the topology.
Move Elastic Will apply an elastic stretch to the geometry that will maintain topology.
For more information on the brushes, visit the ZBrush wiki: http://www.zbrush.info/docs/
index.php/Brush_Types.Other brushes such as Mallet, Gouge, and Stitch are available. These are specialty
brushes, which are created by combining existing brushes, strokes, and alphas. These spe-
cialty brushes are based on macros from ZBrush 3.0. Experiment with these brushes on a
sphere or plane to see the effect they have.
Table 2.1: Some basic ZBrush sculpting brushes (continued)