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Tutorial: Interesting things with SubTools. (ver2)

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#1

This Tutorial is to show you some of the interesting things you can do with SubTools.
I will demonstrate adding meshes using a brush, spliting them up into SubTools, and putting them back into a single mesh. I will Also demonstrate how you can have multiple SubTools, each with it’s own Material and/or it’s own Texture colors.

   The SubTools feature in Zbrush 3 is something I've wanted for a while.  Now that it's here, many have had questions about certain details about it, and I hope to answer some of those questions here.
   
              Enjoy
            
      [Download Tutorial Script](http://mediabakers.com/files/SubTools_Tutorial.zip)
     
     [img]http://mediabakers.com/files/SubTools_Tutorial.jpg[/img]
  
  PS. For those new to Zbrush, and don't know how to run a Zscript Tutorial, here's how.  
  Goto the Zscript palette, and press Load, and pick my zscript txt file.  
  At the bottom of the ZBrush3 UI, is a pair of arrows, letting you know you can drag it up.  
  Drag it up to expose the script GUI area, and press the Play Button.
#2

Thanks GameMaster 770, all the effort to make zscript is really appreciate!
Andreseloy

#3

sorta bumed out Zscript crashes z3 wanted to see the material on seperate z tools too. I’m suree I’ll figure it out but a shortcut is alsways good to;)

#4

The script is well annotated. I made sure of that. You can look for lines starting with “[Note,” for my directions in text form. :o

#5

This is great Game Master 770! I had to go through it twice and do some trial and error before I got the hang of the Mesh Insert part. I get it now.

I was hoping that by combining my SubTools and Tool into one polyMesh that I would be able to Transpose everything. No such luck.

I was also unable to Recreate Subdivisions. :confused:

#6

ya read through the txt script and got everything I needed.
I was able to transpose the entire object but ya no reconstruct Sub-lowres
I think that button is to open up the garage door or somthing.

#7

:warning: Indeed, you guys are right, so let me list some issues, with these techniques.

  • In order to do some of these operations, you can't have SubD. For starters, you can use the MeshInsert Brush on a SubDivided Tool.
  • You can't recombine Tools, using Tool:Geomerty:InsertMesh if any part is sub-divided. So proper planning when using these techniques is needed, with subdivided Tools.
  • If you use multiple Materials, those SubTools will behave diferently when you select a new Material. They will not follow the default. I'm not sure if you can reset to the default material.
  • The purpose of recombining the SubTools, is so they can be Transposed together, Exported together, Brush edited as a single tool, and so on...
  • When you look at the Tool pop-up, it only shows an image of the last selected sub-tool. If you had cloned some SubTools, this can be confusing. If you hold your mouse, over the Tools in that pop-up, you will get some mesh info. Tools with SubTools, will have additional information, such as the TotalPolys, and the TotalPolys will be larger than the Polys. This is an indication that this Tool has more SubTools.
#8

GM,
Thanks!

#9

multiple textures are made by texture / colorize / (Warning will destory uvs) disable uvs.

Your are better off without them anyway;)

Now paint the model using textures alphas or whatever. At like 4 million pollys think about it like this its like having 4000 dpi (estimate of course) texture on a model;) And thats painted directly on top of whatever material. I’m starting to see that exporting these things, time you map and disp map every sub tool will be a WHOLE lot of work. But wow the resolution will be amazing as long as u utilize your UV spacing.

Another thing I noticed was if you redo the uvs and transfer the textures you get a drastic size increase in the model causing all sorts of extra work.

#10

I updated the tutorial to version 2, as well as the text in the 2 main posts.
It now includes Texture colors, things to be aware of, and full transcript of the tutorial’s notes. :smiley:

#11

Thanks, Game Master!
This really helped to solve some of the new ZB3’s mysteries ^^

#12

cool short little zscript! i learned new stuff about the subtools
thanks!

#13

Thanks for the tut, Game Master. Would have taken me quite a while to figure all this out by myself, I suppose… :slight_smile: However, the restriction to only meshes without subD is quite annoying. I tried out your instructions with a little ZSphere-Model and once broken up via GrpSplit the parts can’t get glued together properly it seems. Any further dividing, whether by altering the mesh or only by changing DSmooth, creates gaps in the mesh, since the vertices didn’t get merged. Or is there some possibility to merge them? I don’t recall any…

#14

An update on this is that, actually, you can add in meshes, using insert mesh, which have subdivisions. They just need to have the same number of subdivs as the mesh they are being inserted into. Also, both the tool you are adding in and the tool you adding to should be at their highest subdiv level at mesh insert time.

I use this to add the eye sub tools to the mesh before transposing.

You can also retopologize the combined meshes into a single new mesh as well!

Good luck!

#15

:+1: Thanks for the clarification. I’m going to do some more tests and revisit the issue and make text changes, based on what you are saying.
I wish I could edit my older posts, but it seems that the ZBC has given a 15 day time-limit to editing posts. :roll_eyes:

#16

Thanks for the Zscript! I was wondering though, if it possible to get a material and a texture onto the same subtool. For example, I want to have an eyeball as a subtool, but I want to apply a texture with the “toy plastic” material.

Any suggestions would be greatly welcome.

thanks.

#17

Sorry, guys,
I’m just a beginner, so forgive :wink:

How do I run a Zscript? My Zbrush3 loads the default one (startup script) but does nothing when I load this one. What shall I do?

#18

Thanks alot Game master 770…for your generosity and insight

this helps a great deal…by eliminating a headache.

#19

Just wanted to say a big thank you…

#20

It doesn’t work for me when tryng to create Rings in the beginning :frowning: