ZBrushCentral

Most efficient way to smooth faces while preserving hard edges?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello, I have these boots that I am working on and as I subdivide it (with smooth turned off) I want to be able to make everything smooth while preserving the hard edges that are there to give the impression of multiple overlapping bits of material.

I’ve been slowly going over it with the smooth directional brush but it’s not a perfect method and it’s quite time consuming.

What’s the most efficient way of smoothing out an object like this without sloppying up the hard edge details?

Also, a side question, but Maya 2014 has a brush feature where it only applies the effects of the brush on one axis (example given: If you have roughness but you don’t want anything to move in the x axis then you can select z axis and then the smooth brush will only average the vertices along the z axis and ignore the input of the other two axes).

Does ZBrush also have an ability like this tucked away somewhere? I hope so because I have to say that it’s very useful.

Attachments

boot_demo.jpg

#2

You have many options in Zbrush. For example create crease edges will preserve them when apply polish by features. Also playing with polygroups and polish by groups will make the job.
Something a bit more advanced you can find usefull would be to modiffy your smooth brush to respect your edges.
Go to Brush->Smooth Brush Modifiers->Weighted Smooth Mode- Set to 8

Hope this helps

#3

Ah, great, thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction. Seems like creasing is the way to go especially because Maya 2014 has a new very quick and convenient crease set editor tool.

Do you know anything about the ability to move vertices only along one axis ala the maya artisan brush tool?

#4

Use “Transform > Modifiers” X or Y or Z. Turn off “Xyz” button first.

#5

One more question, so I creased some edges and then I tried using the weighted smooth mode set to 7 which, if I understand correctly after reading the manual, is supposed to preserve creased edges. But it doesn’t appear to have any effect. What am I likely doing wrong?

@Zber, HELL YES! Thank you. Although it doesn’t look like it affects the smooth brush.

#6

After creasing you can use the new Masking by Features. Tool->Masking->MaskByFeatures (Enable only Crease)

Hope this helps!