Clip Curve → How to use the tool to get a specific Bevel?
No matter what I do, I can’t control the Lasso and Curves to bevel the edges that specific way. Is there any clear video instruction that would showcase how to use that tool properly, to control any angle, any bevel you want?
For example:
Where to start the first “click” and then click ALT for the Curve?
sorry, can’t get this done.
thx a bunch
Controlling bezier curves is hard when you really have no idea where the control points are. If you must use the Clip Curve brush then I find it easier to zoom in close and create lots of short, linear segments by double tapping ALT frequently. However even then you’re going to have a hard time getting the curve to be tangent on the side and top surface whilst drawing an arbitrary curve.
A better way I think is to create a body that has the desire curved face. So for your example I appended a cylinder subtool. Subdivided and scaled in X&Y to give a nice, smooth elliptical surface, and scaled Z to be larger than the cube. Then positioned the cylinder subtool so it was tangent to top and siude surfaced of the cube, scaling size if the bevel was too large. Once in place, add the cylinder to the History by Ctrl-click on its undo history. Then select the cube and with a large History Recall brush, project the cube vertices to the cylinder face to make a nice, smooth, bevel tangent on two faces. Could do the same with a sphere to make a beveled corner. It’s pretty easy to do and much quicker than typing out the instructions in this email. Much less frustrating than trying to use the Clip Curve brush.
Alternatively, set the stroke to circle, hide everything except the corner you want oto bevel up to and including the tangent points, and then draw out a circle/ellipse, size and position to get tangency (or near enough) and clip away. Still pretty fiddly, and not repeatable if you want the same bevel elsewhere.
This is great, thank you so much.
I tried your recommended second way, but unfortunately, I couldn’t follow your steps to reproduce the same result.
Would it be possible to create a short and quick video that shows the steps you mentioned?
That would be amazing,
thank you soooo much!
appreciate it the details. But somehow, I feel this is a bit complicated to get nuanced and controlled bevels.
For example, I built a low-poly gun with Blender.
Based also on a concept design I created.
I thought, perhaps it would be cool to build the gun also with more details inside Zbrush.
And add controlled bevels on certain edges, and using Dynamesh.
I feel like, it might be better to use Bevel Pro. But even that seems to be a bit painful.
Not sure how you can use Zbrush to work from a 2d concept design, trace shapes and forms and also control the Bevels. In Blender, I can control bevels on low-poly geometry, with certain degrees.
I was not able to find a tutorial and workflow that covers that specific topic.
Yes, you can find tutorials to use all the different brushes and tools to design from scratch, but I have never seen an easy and fast workflow when you already created a concept design, and then you want to use Zbrush and Dynamesh to make this work.
Any thoughts, video tutorials, workflows and ideas are highly appreciated.
I really want to give it a try, especially for hard surface mechanical stuff like weapons.
thx a bunch
You learn from pain 
To use Bevel Pro you need polygroups. Should be easy enough with a low poly base mesh. But, iirc, Bevel Pro works best with a decent amount of topology 100k-1000k. Anyway you could duplicate the polygrouped low poly model, Dynamesh to add more topology and maintain the polygroups, then run Bevel Pro. Best part of Bevel Pro is that it has a mode where the bevel is created by a separate subtool that is Booleaned from the base form. The beveling tool can be tweaked or changed as desired to modify the bevel that Bevel Pro makes by default. In many cases the beveling subtool is low poly so it can be manipulated with Zmodeler.
If you want more details, then search Michael Pavlovich or Paul Gaboury for Bevel Pro. They can provide the details on what I’m talking about.
And frankly, if it’s too hard for you in Zbrush then just do it in Blender and bring it back to Zbrush. Both of them are just tools. Use each of them where they shine for you.
Good Luck.
well, thx for the info, appreciate it.
I am currently trying Bevel Pro and all attempts fail 100%.
Check out the simple shape I created, Dynamesh increased to about 600k points.
I thought I am going to upload the file for you, but man.
You can’t upload .ztools and files are in general limited. This really sucks.
Could Maxon provide somehow some space for that?
anyways, look at the screenshot. Bevel Pro totally fails on creating any useable Beveled Edge on this tool or geo. Even so, I increased the Dynamesh to 600k.
Have you or anyone else, ever seen anybody using Zbrush for using it, following a concept art from a photo reference?
Honestly, first time ever… but it is disappointing to see that there is no real solution for that.
Yes, using Blender as a base model. But I was hoping to not use Blender and instead, just use Zbrush and nothing else. But how the heck can you actually use Zbrush for this? Working from a photo reference, and not using Zmodeler and low-poly meshes.
thx a bunch for any ideas.
You have to put any files (other than image files) in a .zip file to upload to the forum. 7-Zip is a free archiving app that does the job very well.
ClipCurve is a flattening tool. It doesn’t add or remove geometry. For the best results with this it should be used on a high resolution mesh. It will not produce a bevel on a low poly mesh.
Likewise Bevel Pro is designed to automate the process of creating separate meshes to cut away sections of the target mesh with the Live Boolean feature. It is again a tool mostly aimed at higher resolution meshes that don’t have low poly modeling actions available to them due to suboptimal topology.
Bevel Pro works as expected for me. Your results will be determined by the quality of your polygrouping. You could be experiencing a usage issue, or an issue relate to the specific geometry you are working with. Please contact Support and provide the file for examination.
Assuming you have clean low poly geometry with topology adequate to support it, Bevels can be added with Zmodeler or with the Tool> Crease> Bevel function.
very specific bevel, extrudes, etc… is only possible with Z modeler brush and low poly clean meshes. for something like that you can make a very low poly plane and then use move brush to shape the corners and then use dynamic subdiv to preview that.
Here’s what I got so I’m sure you can get the same result.
Default cube, dynamesh res about 400, cut with Knife CUrve Brush to give clean polygrouping, Bevel Pro defaults but unchecked the triangle options in Advanced Settings so the additive and subtractive tools are quads and can be smoothed nicely. AutoCrease preserves the hard edges.
Make sure to watch Bevel Pro videos by Michael Pavlovich. He goes through all the settings and best practice in detail.
Good Luck
thank you @zber2 and yes, of course, I .zipped the .ztool file, but as I mentioned before, the upload size is limited, which is a problem.
I would appreciate it if the upload file size in the forum could be dramatically increased.
thank you @Spyndel I have been using Dynamesh, and Dynamesh has already 530k active points. Should be dense enough.
I am not sure how Bevel Pro is using the Polygroups itself, I guess it would be very helpful to see your poly groups on the mesh you posted, or also if you can share your ztool, so I can see the difference.
Here is my .zip file for download, including my .ztool I am currently testing:
DOWNLOAD ZTOOL HERE
Curios what could be possibly wrong with it?
and yes, as mentioned, my approach and goal for this test is to use Dynamesh, and not any low-poly base mesh, either imported or created using the Zmodeler Brush.
thank you @tobor8man your mesh looks pretty solid. I wonder what’s different to mine?
Please feel free to download my Ztool Test File right here:
DOWNLOAD ZTOOL
And yes, it would be also great to see your Polygroups on your mesh, and best would be also if you can share your ztool, so at least I could see any difference.
thx a bunch, appreciate it!
hey, @vahidahmadizb2016 thank you for your thoughts as well.
So you are saying, you would go low-poly, trace with vertex points the shape, etc.
Or just build the whole thing as a low-poly mesh, and then subdivide it.
Well, for the low-poly version, I have a good solution using Blender or max. But my idea here was to not use the ZModeler Brush, no low-poly vertex point modeling.
In this case, I wanted to test and see what I can accomplish with Dynamesh.
I started with a cube, Dynameshed the cube and then I used the Knife Curve Brush to create the base shape. That was done pretty fast, I guess like within a minute.
But after that, I wanted to see how I could control the Bevels on the edges.
The Bevel Brushes can’t be used on the geometry, because of the shape, and the roundness.
I saw some artists using the Planar Brush, which works on straight edges, but also not for that specific round shape.
So in the end, I thought BevelPro should do it.
But till this point, BevelPro failed on the mesh.
And I can’t explain why.
However, perhaps the issue is caused by the PolyGroups?
There are only 6 polygroups, one for each face. The polygroups define the edges upon which bevel are made. So best to make them cleanly, for example with the knife curve brush, or group by normals and selectively hiding/showing groups to collect any strays into a single group.
EDIT: Sorry, can’t open your file as I’m only on v2022.0.8 and won’t be upgrading.
Yes! That space is provided at Maxon Support which you should contact for all technical issues with your ZBrush installation, or if you have a file you’d like us to look at. We can’t do this over the public forums for a variety of reasons.
I’m not sure what I’m looking at here. It appears you have a separate inactive subtool that is overlapping the active subtool at the edges. Switch on Solo mode so that you can be certain you’re only seeing the active subtool. The situation in the screenshot could be depicting a mesh with properly beveled edges that you simply can’t see because the other subtool is obscuring them.
This could also be the result of your Bevel Pro settings. If Auto Apply is active, Bevel pro will perform the cuts automatically and change the original mesh that was sent to it. If that button is not active, it will create the bevels non-destructively as a separate mesh subtool. In that case you will need to manually use Live Boolean to subtract them from the original mesh. It may be this subtool that is interfering with your display.
Your polyrouping will control where the bevels are placed. BP will generate them along polygroup borders, much the same way ZRemesher works with the “Keep groups” option.
@Spyndel what you mean you are not sure what you are looking at? I provided the subtool, and you can see it’s just one tool, I applied the BevelPro to it as intended, it creates the two separated subtools.
I just kept the subtool in the file, so you can see the result Bevel Pro created.
Does this make sense?
So that’s how it looks after using BevelPro.
And yes, Auto-Apply was not active for the file I uploaded, clearly to see.
I am assuming you didn’t get a chance to download the file and to open the ztool in zbrush.
And also yes, BP should generate the bevels along the polygroup borders, but I uploaded the file for you so you can see it’s failing.
Please check the file I provided, then I guess it’s obvious.
By the way:
Where is the Support Forum, do you have a link to it?
appreciate it!
Thx a bunch,
cheers
@tobor8man thank you man, appreciate it!
Yeah, that you can’t open newer .ztools when using an older version, that is not cool at all.
MAXON:
please change that, because it’s really not cool.
But you know, make them clean. I don’t exactly know what that means?
The Polygroups are pretty nice, made with a Normal Angle Threshold.
How else should I create the Polygroups?
Edges should be polished before creating polysgroups when using Dynamesh?
Or what’s the key here for success?
What am I missing here?
How should the Polygroup edges look like that Bevel Pro can perform the operation?
You are also pointing out, I have only 6 Polygroups.
Yes, for each face I guess. Why would I need more?
thx a bunch for your help, appreciate it!
cheers
That’s correct, I did not download the file. For me to examine the file you would need to submit a ticket at Maxon Support. Technical support for ZBrush is provided there for registered users of ZBrush. Security, privacy (yours), and license verification issues prevent us from conducting it any place else.
So failing that I can only try to help you create a successful beveled mesh with Bevel Pro that you can compare to the other to see how it differs, either in geometry or in your process.
Restart ZBrush. Draw a Cube3d primitive from the Tool menu on the canvas and enter Edit mode. Press “Make Polymesh 3D”.
Use Tool> Polygroup > Group by Normals at the default settings. This will turn each face of the cube into its own polygroup.
Subdivide the mesh 4 times with the SMT button disabled so it does not smooth, and then delete the lower subdivision.
Send this to Bevel Pro, and Press the “Reset” button at the top of the plugin UI.
Set the Bevel Amount to about .5. You should see the reddish line around the borders of the polygroups increase in size. For some meshes you may need to adjust the Mesh Offset amount to control how deeply the objects cut into the mesh, but it should not be necessary in this case. Check the “Advanced” section and make sure that Generate Inner Part" Smooth Connection, and Triangulate Bevel Junctions are all active.
Make sure Auto Apply is active, then click “Ok”. In ZBrush make sure that there is no other subtool in the tool that may be active with Live Boolean display turned on. Live Boolean may alter what the mesh really looks like.
This should produce a clearly and cleanly beveled cube in ZBrush. There are many easier ways to bevel a simple cube–this is merely for demonstration.
If it does not behave as I have explained, please contact Support. If it does, then what is different between this and the other mesh? Is something in your process different? Does the mesh report any problems with Geometry> mesh integrity> Check mesh? Are any other subtools present and visible?
