Custom Curve Brush

hi this is Steve James and I'm going to show you how to create custom curve brushes using the topology brush first I'll go through the basics of the brush then I'll go step by step showing you how I create it then I'll go through a few settings to set your brush up properly to start out I'd like to explain a few basic principles I will select a 3d plane and make that a 3d poly mesh the topology brush works by drawing out curves on the surface of your model crossing two curves will generate a vertex in this case it's represented with a green circle connecting four lines will generate a polygon and connecting three lines will generate a triangle you can only make three sided and four-sided polygons with a topology brush if there are more than five sides ZBrush won't generate a polygon for it if you find the topology brush acting strangely there's probably something in there creating too many sides ZBrush only pays attention to the intersection of the lines watch what happens when I draw two curves and close off the ends it only pays attention to the endpoints but as we subdivide it it will follow the path of the curve we can make a smooth curve by adding more subdivisions at any time we can clean up the topology curves by holding down alt and dragging across the model you can continue the curve by drawing a line out from the green circle you can also make straight lines by drawing out on the model and then holding down shift from here you can hold down the spacebar and move it to the appropriate location to remove curves hold down alt and drag across the lines if something's not working out quite right don't be afraid to just delete it and redraw it remember the topology brush only creates quads and triangles just subdivide the area to create the polygons now that we have a basic understanding of the topology brush let's create our custom brush for this demonstration I'll be creating a simple chisel this method allows us to get low resolution geometry without going to an external 3d modeling package I'll be making a modified triangle with a pointed top and beveled bottom corners again we'll be using a 3d plane as a base to create the geometry for symmetrical objects I like to build half of it first and then create the whole object with the mirror and weld command select the topology brush and we'll start by drawing the centerline hold down shift and that keeps your line nice and straight I'll go ahead and finish drawing the triangle by drawing the sides and the bevel then hold alt drag across your model and then we'll clean it up this is our basic shape but we're not done yet we need to add more geometry around the corners so that when we subdivide the model it creates nice clean edges I find it best to drag all the way across the model to keep things in quads points that are closer together will create sharp corners and points that are further apart will be more rounded to create the mesh just tap on the model turn on your poly frame so that you can see the different polygroups control shift-click the original plane and use the delete hidden command to delete it now you can use the mirror and weld command to make the model symmetrical there are a few things that we need to do to get the model ready to be a brush to work properly the curved brush needs to have an open-ended object so we'll delete the ends and we'll make both sides symmetrical so though well together when the curve is drawn out first use the Move tool to make the model wider then set mirror and weld to the z-axis and use that command to make sure it's symmetrical on the z axis as well drag a selection down the side of your model so that it hides the ends then use the delete hidden command to remove the ends this is the final mesh for the custom brush I'll now go through how to set up your curved brush first orient your model so you're looking at it from the top down this will be how it's drawn out on the canvas you can hold down shift while rotating to make sure it snapped into the proper position push B to bring up your brush menu and select the create insert mesh button now go to your stroke pallet and turn curve mode on in the brush palette open the modifiers tab turn off try parts and turn on weld points and stretch now let's test out our new curved brush select a plane and turn that into a poly mesh draw a curve out and check out your new brush you can see that the ends are open you can cap them with the closed holes command if you want your brush to taper open the curves modifier panel select size and then adjust the curve fall-off graph you can save your brush by going to the brush menu and select save as you will still need to adjust your fall-off graph each time you load the brush have fun making your custom brushes and thanks for watching

Channel: Steve James

Views: 110,367

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Id: -_BFWjqNV-s

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2014