Zbrush | Using Curve brush depth

At the end of the tutorial, what I’m trying to achieve is this result;

where the belt is sitting on top of the skin and totally not embedded.

I think this is suitable not only for belt models,

but for 3D printed items that you can wear like armour or mask.

Let’s start. Over here, I have Julie’s torso as a Polymesh3D.

Ctrl + Right click, move right to Zoom in.

Hide 3 strips of left/right polyloop with the bottom strip as a frame for a curve line.

Ctrl Shift Tap on an Edge for each Polyloop.

Then Ctrl Shift tap on a Polygon to invert the visibility.

This way we can look from the top or bottom

to check on the thickness and depth of the belt later on.

In order to view the inner surface, let’s turn on Double from Display properties.

Now using Curve Strap Snap. B > C > Curve strap snap,

Click from the center of the visible strips, drag towards the bottom edge.

When the cursor is at the edge of the strip, press and hold Shift,

When a curve line appears. you can let go of your stylus and shift.

A strap will appear in place of the curve line.

Please check out my previous tutorial on how to use and edit Curve strap snap.

When I let go of the stylus, the torso will also be masked;

this way I would not be able to edit the torso accidentally.

From this view we can see that the belt is quite thick

and it is embedded into the skin as well as extrude out of the surface of the skin.

I want the back edge of the belt to butt against the skin surface as close as possible.

In order to achieve that, go under Brush then Depth tab.

There is an image with a black dot and a white circle with a line running across the center.

The top of the circle is the highest point of the strap,

the bottom of the circle, the lowest.

The black dot, the center position. The black line the surface of the skin.

To demonstrate the effects of this black dot and white circle,

Let me increase the thickness of the belt which means the Z intensity to 50.

Lightly tap on the belt, lightly so that I don’t accidentally move it.

Now the thickness is equally distributed, inside and outside the skin surface.

Let’s use the Depth tab to pull the belt out of the skin! Sounds dramatic!

Increase the imbed by clicking and dragging upwards on the white circle or black dot.

Once again, lightly tap on the red curve line to update the strap.

See how it is raised above the skin surface? Just like the image on the Depth tab?

If you rotate the model around,you can see the belt is

floating on top of the skin because the imbed is at the maximum, 100 points.

Let’s lower the depth so that it is closer to the skin surface.

About 70 points?

Basically, you can keep adjusting the depth

by raising or lowering the imbed value to the desired depth.

Let me just speed up this whole adjustment process,

where I eventually ended up with Imbed value of 90 points.

Another thing to note is that, the curve line remains editable

until you use another brush/action to modify your model.

Then go back to click on the Curve line,

Curve strap snap will generate another new strap on top of the existing strap.

The previous belt is merged as part of the torso Subtool with a different Polygroup colour.

So overall, there is only 1 Subtool but 3 different Polygroup colours.

Let me Ctrl Z to undo all these.

Another way to keep them separate is to split them out

as separate Subtools so that I can turn them on or off,

when I am not sure which look I’m going for.

Go under Subtool > Split and Split unmasked or Split masked.

The only difference I found with these two are, whichever option you click on,

for example, I clicked on unmasked points,

that polygroup subtool will be below the original Subtool.

If you have Transparency turned on,

whichever Subtool is not active will be see through.

This way we can analyse the effects of different versions of belt better.

Even though I am using Brush Depth on Curve line in this tutorial,

Brush depth also applies for other brushes

without curve lines such as Insert Multi Mesh.

B > I > and you can select from the different brushes available.

The only difference is that, there is no red line to tap for updates,

but needs to be redrawn in order to reflect the changes.

Let me draw an Eyelet as an example. The brush depth is at 0.

I need to remove subdivision levels to be able to use IMM brush.

Click and drag down to apply it on a surface.

Let’s view from the side.

Let’s lower the depth, by changing the imbed value to -38.

Then press Ctrl Z to undo.

and redraw the Eyelet again with the new Imbed value.

If you want, you can still change it into a Curve line by going under Stroke then Curve

to turn on Curve mode.

This way we can update it by taping on the curve line

like what we have done previously.

This is still a curve line with an imbed value of -38. Let’s change it to -18.

Then lightly tap on the curve line again to update.

There are still many more brushes which will respond to this brush depth option,

Just go to B > I > Select any IMM brushes to explore. There are at least 20 of them here!

It definitely did take me sometime to explore,

but just remember that if it is not a Curve line, it needs to be redrawn to reflect the updates.

and with that, let me just end my tutorial here and enjoy exploring!

In the next tutorial, I am going to use the belt I made

to extrude out a plane so that I can have some fun with Dynamics.

If all is well, I’ll see you in the next tutorial. Stay away from Omicron!