Thread by @GeorgeCrudo

it's time for a thread of random zbrush tips!! first tip is that the zbrush logo upside down is still a Z. okay im sorry real tips below!

frame mesh - quickly make curves following a shape. you can have it follow the border of a mesh, or around a polygroup. combine with curve shape brushes to get cool border ridges or highly specific shapes

the replay last button under the stroke palette will redo the last action you did which is super handy on it's own. however you can actually swap brushes inbetween. when you do this and hit replay last, it will perform the same stroke with a different brush

AccuCurve - if you don't know about it, it's a lifesafer for getting sharp points. This is an example of the Snakehook brush when AccuCurve is off vs when it is on. (I did this example with the prev tip by the way. you can change brush settings and also do replay last!)

Surface NoiseMaker is insanely powerful for good textured details. it can work with UVs so you can use UV Master to quickly unwrap and apply an alpha across the entire model.

ALSO this can be applied on your brush too! You can copy / paste NoiseMaker setups. using Local Projection Mode you can use your brush from the viewing angle and sculpt your surface noise more cleanly and consistently.

if you are working with very large meshes and need to use Sculptris Pro, first of all optimize your meshes!! but if you can't...okay I get it. thankfully Sculptris Pro works with visibility so you can hide the mesh and isolate only the part you want to use sculptris pro on!

if you need a refresher on optimizing in Zbrush

if you ever want to combine two meshes but don't want to do something like dynamesh that might ruin your details, in the Gizmo menu you can use Remesh by Union. Super easy! I'd recommend doing ZRemesh / Projection on this new mesh for cleaner topo

if you have multiple subdivision levels, the hotkey to move between them can be held down so you don't have to tap the button for every subdivision level

so if you are at Level 1, and want to go to Level 6, if the hotkey D brings you up to Level 2, you can just hold D to go to 6

if an external obj has the same topology as your Zbrush mesh, you can create a new layer and while recording, import the OBJ. when this works properly, the obj will become your new layer. its magic.

if you ever get a boolean error where Zbrush says the boolean operation can't be performed, it will spit out duplicates of the subtools involved

if you perform the boolean operation on the spit out duplicates, it will work perfectly everytime

i think this is a bug but it works

Shift-S will drop your mesh to your canvas. Super handy for screenshots or references.

On the topic of References if you aren't using it, use @PureRef please god if you are not using PureRef you are missing out. all the images for this thread were organized in there. its amazing

if I think of more I'll keep adding them to this thread. if you got your own feel free to drop them!

The Flat Color material basically works as a way to clear out any Material properties on your subtool. If you fill your Subtool with it, it will reset material settings so you can preview or apply new materials properly

you know this little shit? this pop up used to be the bane of my existence and now I forgot it existed so hard I forgot to add it to this thread.

this pop up is a brush setting. under Sculptris Pro, disable "Wants SculptrisPro" and just resave your brush and never see it again

if you ever try to move something with the gizmo and it looks weird like this, it's a feature not a bug. seriously. the Transpose "brush" will work normally again if you set the Focal Shift to -100.

sometimes you might want this sort of movement effect with the gizmo though!

if you are trying to do quick dirty UV maps like a Planar map and you wonder what it's sourcing to do that, it is sourcing the "Preview" window in the Subtool Palette.

in this window rotate your mesh how you want and then redo the type of UV mapping you want from the UV Map menu

If your subtools are in a folder and you press the New Folder command while one of the subtools are selected, everything below that subtool in the folder will be automatically added to the new folder.

You can also do this with a multi-select on the Gizmo