ZBrushCentral

No clip tool?

Having a rough time trying to sculpt hard surfaces without a clip tool in ZbrushCore. Any suggestions? I’ve tried the polish, trim dynamic, and planar cut tools but it’s still far too difficult to do any reasonable hard surface sculpting. Will ZbrushCore be updated in the future with more tools like maybe clipping? If not, is there a substitute tool? A setting maybe? Help is much appreciated.

EDIT 2/19/17: Thank you everyone for the tips and such! :stuck_out_tongue:

You can use the select brush to hide and ‘Delete hidden’ option and then Dynamesh your model.

This seems to work on a sphere but not on a square. I was able to cut the square in half (into two triangles) and have each separated but now I am unable to use dynamesh to fill in the hole(s) created. Using the dynamesh tool does nothing.

Make sure you don’t have any sub-division levels.

You can change the selection tool to curve or lazo to create interesting shapes. Initially, I made an hexagon for the helmet of this robot. but I undo it and leave it as a 'pentagon.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?205208-Astral-One-Stickers&p=1200432&infinite=1#post1200432

That looks really cool but how did you get such straight lines on the mask? And how did you sculpt such linear edges on the metal ‘plate’ that is on the front of the head (where the mouth would be)? Also, referring to another post: does that mean I can’t subdivide (increase quads/polygons) until after I cut? If that’s the case, how am I supposed to avoid getting jagged edges? For example, cutting a square into two triangles before increasing the quads results incredibly jagged edges that look like spikes.

First I’ll address the subdivide question. You can indeed subdivide, but if you’re going to cut, by using ‘Delete Hidden’ after you hid a selection, then you’d have ‘Delete Lower’ on your Subdivide menu. Of course after this you can’t go back on your subdivision levels. But in your case it doesn’t really matter.

Now, to have those sharp edges you must have a high poly count to simplify the process. Above 200k polygons should do the trick. You can check your poly count on the superior right corner. Like this you won’t find the spiky problem you mention.

For the mask, I’m using the insert brush, for the ‘breathing system of the robot’ (little circles and rectangles). And for the edges I guess I used just the DamStandardBrush. You can use lazy mouse or shift while dragging.

To be honest there’s at least 4 more ways to go around hard surface sculpting. But I guess that I’ll leave that to your imagination.
I’m still learning too, but I don’t want to give you more advantages LOL!

Check this series:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzopwqcFevbD6QZnhzROSyiaFUCZxPz3

You should also look at any Zbrush tutorial to get more ideas, there’s plenty on YT.

Cheers.

The basic ideas would be:

  1. Use dynamesh boolean subtraction, by clicking the the half circle on the subtool you want to subtract from the original mesh and pressing the ‘Merge Down’ button.

  2. By masking areas, invert mask, move or scale the unmasked part you want to push in or outside.
    a)pencil brush, rectangle, circle
    b)curve stroke (dra+ alt or 2 times alt)
    c)alpha
    d)masking+(ctrl+w)+(shift+ctrl) to select polygroup and then delete hidden (You should want to duplicate your subtool before you use this option).

  3. Insert tool, adding(drag brush), or subtracting (alt+drag brush), after subtracting apply dynamesh.

  4. Using the select brush and rotating the object you’re modeling and use ‘Delete hidden’
    5)Mask and extract.
    6)I forgot while writing.
    Combining these techniques with the Trim, Polish and Plannarcut (Lightbox->brushes) brush with the adequate intensity should help you as you needed.