Brush for flattening only in one direction?

[mawag01]

I again and again have the following problem and didn’t jet find a resolution:

I have an irregular surface and only want it to make it planar in one direction:

For example the following surface:
You see along the y-axis some hights, but also different hights along the x-axis. Now I want to realize, that the hights along the y-axis in the middle of the x-axis are no more only in the middle of the x-axis, but constant over the complete x-axis. So I get a new surface, which only changes it’s levels along the y-axis and every point in the middle along the y-axis has the same hight along the complete x-axis. It’s a kinnd of flatten only in one direction.

As it’s a bit difficult to describe. I can give an example:
if I have a part of a sphere, it is round along the x and the y-axis. To get a part of a zylinder out of the sphere-part, in one direction (x or y) the level must get plain.

I tried different brushes (flatten, polish, planar, trim) with different settings in the stroke-pallette and also changed the settings in “Transform - Modifiers” to only one or two directions, but never got the result I wanted.

Does anyone have an idea how to realize this??

The pic below:

down-Up: y-axis
left-right: x-axis
Elevations: z-axis

As an example, I would like to elevate all points along the x-axis as in the middle of the x-axis without destroying the form in the middle of the x-axis.

As it is difficult for me to describe, I hope you understand what I mean.

Attachments

[Doug_Jones]

http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/hard-surface/planar-trim-polish/
Front view looking into canvas is the z axis. There should be an easy way to do what you want. I see you have Dynamesh activated, do you still need it?
Axis plug>> http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?161588-quot-Axis-quot-Plugin-for-ZBrush-4r2
still works, get it, use it.

[mawag01]

Hello and thank you for your answer.

But: of course, I tried the planar, polish and trim-brushes but didn’t get a good result. The pic is only a demonstration of what is and what I want to get.
I also have the axis-plugin and worked with cavas in the z-axis.
I have done a workaround for my example, which works in this example (a irregular plane):

First I appended a cube as subtool, formed it very thin in x-axis and z-axis and put it in front of my irregular plane in the middle. Then I used MatchMaker-Brush on this new subtool to transfer the shape of the middle of my irregular plane to the new subtool.
Then I streched the new subtool along the x-axis to get it wider then my original subtool.
After that, i projected my original irregular plane subtool with the ZProject-Brush to my before produced “helper-subtool”.

That works indeed, but only for irregular planes and not for both-sided subtools because the ZProject-Brush flattens the front- and backside together. A brush-function wher I could realize this dirctly on my sutface without helper-subtools, would be good.
It would also be problematic to use this workaround for one part of a complex model.

So: CAn anyone explain me, what I have to change in the presets of the brushes “planar”, “Trim” or “Polish” to get the desired result with a brush?

Here is the picture of the result (no good quality and not in the z-axis to see the result better) On the left is the original, right is the new plane, made from a copy of the left one. In the back is my help-subtool.

mawag01

Attachments

[Doug_Jones]

I didn’t see the Axis plug in your interface. You’ve tried to mask the parts you don’t want to move? Disabled motion on undesired axis under Transform>Modifiers?

[mawag01]

Now after much tries, I’ve got it:

Front-View in Axis Plugin, a simple sphere:
Trim-Dynamic-Brush with default brush and stroke-settings
Zadd, NOT Zsub

Transform Modifiers deactivated in x-direction, y and z activated

Stroke direction along the y-axis in the middle

With Radial symmetry on in x-axis, the red polygroup-part of the sphere goes into the shape of a cylinder. So this seems to work now.
(The sphere goes plane in x-direction and remains round in y-direction)

Thank’s for your suggestions. I tried out a long time to realize on other models (e.g. to make shoe-soles with the extract-function from a sole of a foot. I always needed to preseve the curves along the foot from front to heel, but not the curves from foot-outside to foot-inside.

mawag01