ZBrushCentral

How Do I Make a Sharp Mask?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all,

Yet another basic question here. Say I want to mask the poles of a sphere, or the top and bottom of a cylinder.

When I hold down the Ctl key and paint on the pole, it leaves a very blurry circular mask. I’ve experimented with using different brushes, alphas and strokes, all to no avail.

How do I make the edges of that mask sharp ?

thanks,
Andrew

#2

Almost any way you slice it, you’ll be running into the issue that you’ll
need enough polygons on your model to support crisp edges. See here:

http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Polypainting
(you can learn a great deal more by checking out the rest of
that site as well)

to get an idea of what’s going on (this ties in directly with masking, since
that can only effect the polygons beneath it similar to polypainting).

Additionally, when I’ve got a very specific shape or need for control for
a mask I’ll use Zapplink and make the mask in Photoshop with black,
then ‘Mask by Intensity’ under masking palette…sometimes I’ll
go back and forth multiple times to get the mask over the entire model.

Hope it helps.

WailingMonkey

#3

Thanks WailingMonkey,

I’ll look into this and I may have more questions…

regards,
Andrew

#4

Is there a way of doing this without having to resort to a third-party program, i.e. via zAppLink ?

#5

if you have enough polys you can try using topological masking, also

  1. hitting the sharpen mask button in the masking palette
  2. holding ctrl+alt over your mask and clicking on it with your mouse
#6

spaceboy412,
i found that “sharpen mask” didn’t do anything significant …
also, what does ctrl-alt do ? … doesn’t that turn off the mask ?

#7

" i found that “sharpen mask” didn’t do anything significant …"
did you hit it more than once?
" also, what does ctrl-alt do ? … doesn’t that turn off the mask ?"
did you try what i said? yes it turns off the mask if you do it outside your model, or while in draw mode, if you are in transpose mode, and click on your mask it will sharpen it, more clicks=sharper mask

it might help those of us trying to help you to present us with a image of what you are trying to accomplish or working on.

#8

Don’t worry about it. I think I’ve found a workaround by reducing the size of the brush, and then once I’ve painted the mask, I hide the masked points.

#9

Other things to help paint a really sharp mask:


  • Use a sharp-edged alpha.
  • Adjust the Focal Shift.