#AskZBrush: “How can I delete polygons using Masking?”

you you this is Joseph trust and welcome back to another episode of ask ZBrush so we'd a question sent in asking how can I delete polygons using masking so start off by just to have ZBrush loaded up and I just have a poly sphere project here loaded in and the question is asking about using masking on a mesh and then with that masking be applied deleting the areas that are masked or removing those polygons from my model so how can I go by doing this so as an example with this poly sphere here first let's just apply some masking so do this I'm just going to hold down the control key which is going to give me my mask pen and now I can click and drag on my canvas which is gonna be this nice mask rectangle I hold down spacebar to move this around and then after I have this placed on my mesh if I release and I have symmetry on currently it's going to mask each side where the symmetrical axis is found so it's masked this area and then since I had symmetry on it's also masked the other side so now I have my sphere with masking applied like this so now with these parts of the model masked out and I want to delete these areas so I've gone through maybe generate some really complex masking on my mesh and now I want to remove that masked area so what do I need to do so here are two ways you can take masking that you've applied to the model and then remove the polygons that are currently masked so the first way is to use visibility so I go to the tool palette up here and then I can scroll down to the visibility area and open this up and in here there is a button called hide point now if you hover over this you'll see that it's going to give you a little pop-up text here that says hide unmasked so what this button is going to do it's going to look at any of the unmasked areas of your model and it's going to hide those unmasked areas so with my example here if I click this button you'll see that the unmasked portions have now been hidden and if I come down to the supply properties here and turn on double you can see that it has hidden that middle area there so you can use this visibility option of hide points to hide the unmasked portions of your mesh now I didn't want the center to I want to be outer areas to be hidden so I'm gonna undo this and get back to my original mesh and what I wanted was the opposite of what the result was so I just need to come through and now invert the mask so that the middle part is masked and then the outer parts are unmasked now I've already gone through and maybe painted this really complex mask so I don't want to repaint that to do the opposite so I just want to invert the masking so to invert the masking and come to a blank spot on my canvas I can hold down the control key and then I can simply click and that will invert the masking that is applied to my current subtool so you see it's taken the masked parts that I have on the ends and it's now inverted it to mask the middle section so now with that middle section masked out I can go back to my tool palettes I go down in the visibility area and now I can click hide point and it's going to hide those outer edges since those were the parts of the model that we're currently on mask now after I have those outer parts hidden I can now delete those and go to the tool palettes I can go to the geometry area here and go to modify topology and then I can click the delete hidden button this is going to look at the visibility of the subtool and since those parts are hidden if I click delete hidden it's now going to remove those from my model and now I'm just left with something like this I can go back down to the display properties and turn on double anding sis is what currently my mesh looks like after I've deleted those parts so that is one method you can use involving visibility and then the modified topology delete hidden functions now the process that I usually end up using involves using polygroups so let's get back to the original version of my model here with those sides masked out and the process I normally do is I'll take this masked area and then I'll use the hot key of ctrl + W now when you click on ctrl + W it's going to take the masked parts your model and it's going to convert them to a new poly so with my model setup with masking if I hit ctrl + W you'll see that those masked areas are currently going to be unmasked and then it's going to sign a new polygroup to that masked area so you can see I have this nice green polygroup now on both those sides now after you have this you Paul you're beside your model you can now use the ctrl shift functionality to hide or show those different polygroups so I'm gonna hold down ctrl + shift that's gonna give me my select rectangle brush and now I'm gonna come across the green polygroup here and click which is going to isolate that poly group first and then if I click it again it's going to hide that poly group and you can see now I'm just left with that middle part and now with that middle part left I go back to the tool palette go to the geometry tab and now do a delete hidden and I've now removed that unmasked portion from my mesh so the process again for this stage is just go to a model apply some masking wherever you want it on your mesh here after you're happy with that masking you can just hit ctrl + W on your keyboard I'm just gonna give it a new polygroup you can then isolate that poly group click it again to hide it then go to the tool geometry palette and then do a delete hidden and now remove the portions of your mesh now there's one more thing they can use with masking that will give you a nice clean break up between your models so I'm gonna apply that same mask again to the mesh here and this time instead of just hitting ctrl W I'm gonna go to the geometry palette and I'm gonna go to the edge loop area here and I'm gonna click this edge loop masked border but now when you click this button it's going to look at the masking we've applied your model and it's going to apply an edge border around that masking giving you a new polygroup with a clean transition so if I click this button and have this masking apply to my mesh you're gonna see I'm now going to get this smooth poly group around the surface there so it's taken that masking Ahad and instead of looking directly at the topology of the surface it's gone through and added a nice edge loop around the entire thing and then establish the polygroup so now I have this nice kind of clean shape on my mesh generated from that masking I can now hold ctrl and shift to show it and then click again to hide it and now I'm go to the geometry tab and then I can go down to the modify topology and click delete hidden again to remove that part of my model so I hope that helps and if you have any other questions related to ZBrush pipelines or processes please use the hashtag ask ZBrush on Twitter happy zbrushing

Channel: Maxon ZBrush

Views: 111,444

Keywords: pixologic, zbrush, 3D, askzbrush, sculpting, modeling, digital, art, design, creation, create, artwork, how to, tutorial, making of, delete, polygons, remove, mesh, parts, mask, masking, areas, hidden, shown, poly, group, polygroups, invert, edgeloop, border, CTRL, SHIFT

Id: uCXd63bxI5Q

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018