Intro to ZBrush 046 - Use MicroMesh and NanoMesh to create complex surface detail and patterns!!

go grab another plain 3d drag it on my canvas go into edit mode make polymesh 3d turn on poly frame and let's go in here to geometry and hit reconstruct a couple times then delete higher just a nice simple plane so we already know we can go in here to dynamic turn that on turn smooth down to zero choose a micro poly in here or use a custom micro poly and that'll go ahead and again be like a dynamic instance where essentially these poly planes are driving if i go through here and move these micro mesh instances one thing i didn't mention so if i turn off fit and weld and let's say scale this up just a little bit here essentially again these planes here are driving those rings here but i can also do stuff like switch this out to skin shader four let's go in here to dynamics and let's go in here to geometry modify topology and i can do an unweld all so if i turn on the floor i have gravity turned on i'll go ahead and turn that down a little bit we have collision turned on let's turn up self-collision to one if i do a run simulation now you're going to see let's go ahead and turn that gravity up a little bit you're going to see these are going to fall down and it's going to look like they're self-colliding a little bit in fact if i go through here and we choose like cube one by one and we do the exact same thing we can run the simulation and now it's going to look like those cubes are just going to kind of fall around on each other again if i turn micropoly off it's really just these planes simulating so if i undo that turn micropoly off all this really happening is this is the simulation however as soon as i add micro poly to that it kind of runs like a kind of a rigid body simulation now if i do that and i say instead of a micro poly we go in here to apply and then i run the simulation you're going to see this is real geometry now because the firmness is set up here quite a bit and there's not a whole lot of geometry here it does a pretty good job so like if i run the simulation they'll kind of fall on each other however if i go through here and i hit i'll turn on smooth modifier and divide these up a couple times and then i run the simulation you're going to see because i have new geometry in there that's going to behave a little bit more like cloth i go back in here and turn that firmness up to six and again it'll work pretty well and maybe turn on self-collision up quite a bit here there we go so again you can kind of do rigid body simulation but it's still going to be really running a claw simulation at the end of the day but anyway if we undo back all the way until we just had this regular plane here again we can go in here to micro poly and we can put on rings we can also if i turn micro poly off there's another option under geometry modified topology called micro mesh so in micro mesh i can go through here and i can actually select any geometry any geometry my scene i can choose but since i only have primitives in here now because i just started restarting zbrush i'm going to choose ring 3d it's going to say turn on draw micro mesh in the render palette so i'm going to hit ok go in here to render render properties and we're going to tell it draw micro mesh so again i can turn on micromesh i can grab a ring 3d and when i go in here to hit bpr this is a best preview render it's going to now render that micro mesh so again in order to see this geometry i need to render a micromesh now i'm going to say a line edge and then i'll go through and align these for me here so i'll go ahead through here in bpr render and i can go back as soon as i tumble out of bpr that'll go ahead and get rid of these here and i go through here and i can move these things around and again just like micro poly it'll move these as well so maybe thinking why would i ever use this as opposed to micromesh and i don't have a really great answer for that because micro mesh it's i'm sorry micro poly much more flexible i can just turn it on i can see everything update on the fly so in this instance i probably wouldn't use micro mesh in fact in order to make this real geometry instead of just hitting apply i have to go up here to convert bpr to geo and then this bpr render will be converted to actual geometry and now we have real meshes sitting here in fact the one thing that micro mesh can do that micro poly and nano mesh can't is going from root to tip on a fiber mesh and we'll get to that in a bit but anyway we'll take this slider back and let's talk about nanomesh really quickly so again we have a regular plane here we have dynamic dynamic turned off and now down here under nanomesh we have an entire menu full of stuff so if we go to b z m to our z modeler brush you're going to see we have a poly sphere sitting here in fact if i hover over a face and say insert nanomesh polygroup all it'll take that sphere a cube it'll take that cube and put that on every single face and those are instances so as i move this geometry around it's going to take those instances with it so very similar to micro mesh the difference is i can go through here and i can change the width of all these and i can also go down here you know these are aligned i can just say align to normal that'll make sure that when i change the width they're all changing width in the same way but i can also go through and add variance so i'm going to make these all slightly different so i can add width height and length variance and then add some variance so i can get a little bit more randomization i can also go in here to x offset y offset and z offset to offset this for my plane and if i don't want to see that plane i can just turn off show placement so a lot of really cool things you can do with nanomesh in fact like z rotation i'll just crank this up and then i'll put in z rotation variance so now i'm kind of scattering these along the plane and speaking of scattering i can literally go down here to random distribution and start scattering these on my plane and again it's just being driven by this plane here so if i go through here and scale it out they're just going to move right along with it if i go through here and i move it's going to move these along with it and right now they're set to proportional so let's turn down random distribution so each one of these faces gets a nanomesh if i go through here and move this plane and make it larger this stays the same size it just kind of scoots along and stays in the middle of that plane however i go here to fit now when i move this out it's actually going to make these things larger so just keep that in mind if you want to use proportional or fit or even fill let me change the size to 1 it'll go ahead and make sure those fills and you can actually turn on clip and it'll clip it to just that poly face but generally speaking you know you just set it to proportional you can dial in the overall size and you can change this out with whatever you want so if i go to b z m for the z modeler brush all i have to do is hit m grab any object in my scene if i change put it on ring and now i drag it out of my polygroup here and now i can just drag a ring out another cool thing you can do that micro poly can't do is that micro poly is going to go on every face regardless on nano mesh i can do is i go through here and i can alt paint and then tap alt as i paint and it's going to give me a new poly group or i can hold down control shift grab some visibility hit ctrl w and make that a new polygroup so you remember when i came in here with my z modeler brush and i hovered over faces says insert nanomesh on polygroup all it's only going to insert a nanomesh on that polygroup so i can choose a different object here say helix i can put that over here i can choose a different object over here hit m say maybe gear and if i hold down shift i can actually go through here if i hit m and choose an arrow i can hold down shift as i drag and it'll actually give me two different instances on one poly face so if i go up here now you're going to see i have two three indexes i have one which is my rings the second index is my helixes my third one is my gears and my fourth one or index three starting from zero is my arrows so on just these arrows i can go through here and change those properties independently from all of the other nanomesh indices now if i want to make these real meshes just like micro mesh i can go up here and i could say geometry convert bpr to geo and that'll be a real geometry now or alternatively if i hit ctrl z i can go down here and say inventory and i can just keep hitting one to mesh and it'll just go through my indices and convert those all to geometry so as you can see nanomesh has a lot of very powerful ways to add geometry to your scene in fact let's hold down control shift and we're going to isolate just our poly plane again ctrl shift drag to invert that selection then geometry delete hidden and that's going to be under geometry modify topology delete hidden or if you want to start fresh just grab any poly polygon object go down here to initialize and then type in maybe 8 tab 8 tab 8 enter hit q grid and again we'll have a nice low poly grid to play with so let's try another option so i'm going to go in here to bi brush insert and we'll choose industrial parts here so go ahead and tap that option and under brush here you're going to see there's a create menu and in here you're going to see not only can you go through here and you can delete and copy insert mesh brushes you can also create a nanomesh brush from this insert mesh brush and you can do this with custom insert mesh brushes or downloaded or pre-existing insert mesh brushes so we have an insta mesh brush selected and if we go through here we can insert a mesh on our plane like normal however if we go over here to brush create nanomesh brush now we have a z modular brush and if i hover over face and hold down spacebar it's going to default to insert nanomesh single poly let's switch that to insert nanomesh polygroup all and if we hit b in our keyboard you're going to see that new brush it just made which is essentially converting this industrial parts imm brush to a new z modeler brush with all of these as nano meshes i can now go through here let's go ahead and choose a bolt head i'm going to hover over a face say insert hold down spacebar nanomesh polygroup all drag it out it'll put a bolt right in the middle of every face and i can now go down here and i can say okay let's crank up my z rotations and let's put in a little variance so all of these are rotated slightly different and i can even go down here to the pattern let's choose h tile of three and v tile of three and you're going to see it's going to tile these so now i have three horizontal and three vertical instances on every single face and i can go in here to pattern and choose border it'll put all of these around a border and i can still go through here and change the overall size if i want to change the length width or height change that z rotation and variance of those so they'll sit there and rotate around and i can go through here and say you know what let's say five and five so now i can put nanomesh instances around the border of every single mesh here we can go through here and we can say just the corners plus sign and again it's going to determine the h and v tile if we go again just adjust the corners it is just going to put these in the corners however if i drop my h and v tiles down to say two it's going to put a larger rivet or bolt head in the corners here so a lot of really cool stuff you can do so let's change this back to five and five and we'll say pattern of border and then again i can come right in on top of this let's switch back to our new z modeler brush that has all these options in here let's grab a spring let's start dragging it out and then hold down shift so now we have two indices we have our original which is our corner nanomeshes and we have this new one here which is a spring so i can go through here and i can change the rotation and the offsets add variance if i need to another cool thing is i can go in here to edit mesh so if i go in here to edit mesh it's going to automatically put me in split screen mode of one and i can go through here and make any changes i want so if the art director says ah there's too many coils in that spring no problem i can just go through here hold down ctrl shift hold down ctrl shift and alt get rid of some of this back here say geometry modified topology delete hidden and now we've deleted half of those coils or they might and if i go out about a mesh you're going to see that just updates if i go back into edit mesh and like you know what i don't even like this one anymore i don't want a coil i want a crown nut so i'm going to hit w i'm going to swap out this crown nut i'm going to do a quick deformation unify and you're going to see it updates on the fly over here so any changes i make to this it's going to update over here so in fact if i want to go through here let's hold down ctrl shift switch over here select rectangle grab all these faces hit ctrl w ctrl shift tab to bring everything else back hover over face with your new z modeler brush say inset polygroup all legacy inset region so we can inset this here and then i can say qmesh polygroup all pull this back and again it's updating on the fly so if i go here out of edit mesh every single one of these has been updated so this is a really good way to make sure that if you place a lot of objects in your scene if you use insert mesh brush and somebody makes a decision where they no longer like a phillips head screw they want it with a flathead screw you have to manually go through and replace every single one of those so for instance and go back here to our character and we have phillips head screws here and if my art director says i want flathead screws i've got to go back in here go back to my subtool and i can say okay i got to delete this out of my scene and i'm going to go back in here to well here's an interesting thing if i go to bi brush insert and go back here to my industrial parts and take a flathead screw and then try to drag this out on my character it's not going to let me because now since we zero mesh and got our detail back we have subdivision history so you either have to delete lower drag this out say split mass points underneath your subtool splitment or your subtotal split menu here and then go back here and here and hit reconstruct or an alternative is you can alt tap any other subtool in your scene that doesn't have subdivision history this one just has dynamic this one no long doesn't have subdivision history so i can use this one to bi brush insert industrial parts as much as i want another option too is i can go to the very top here i'm going to say insert a poly mesh 3d take this polymesh3d put it to the top hit e or hit w to go into gizmo mode and then just scale this down and put it inside of our object you can just turn on transparent to see where it's going just in the middle of him so now that this is at the very top when i go to save this you're going to see not only does it inherit that save file name which is useful i can also turn off the visibility and because it doesn't have subdivision history there's no subdivisions on it i can have another object selected that does have subdivision history and i can still go through here bi brush insert industrial parts and now i can use this placeholder with this visible and use that and i can also turn on x symmetry if i want and i can insert this no problem now it's still stuck to this so i need to go through here and hold down control shift isolate this and say split hidden and now they're on their own sub tool over here but let me go ahead and delete that of our scene here so instead of doing all that work let's go and delete these let's grab our star that's sitting in the middle of our character as a placeholder i'm going to go to bi brush insert i am in primitives h and i'm going to choose the single poly i'm going to drag this out on my character here and i'm going to use this as a placement so i'm going to go over here to well first i'm going to go into solo mode and i'm going to say split unmask points that's going to put this new nanomesh right here and then i'm going to go to our new z modeler brush that has all these nanomeshes ready to go i'm going to choose a flathead i'm going to say insert nanomesh polygroup all with my z modeler brush my new one drag this out i'm going to go down here to my properties going to say z rotation of 0 and go down here to align to normal if i want them to be the exact same if i go to solo mode you're still going to see the planes there if i don't want to see them just turn off show placement and in fact you're just moving these planes around so if you want to change their placement and in fact if you go over here to fit now we can scale these up and as i scale these down and let's go ahead and turn on lsm i can scale them down i can hold down control and drag out copies and i can make these smaller if i want to because we have fit chosen i can go over here turn off show placement and at any point if somebody changes their mind all i got to do is here go in here to edit mesh and i can make modifications to this on my zmodeler brush i can say polygroup poly loop go in here and say inset polygroup all hover over a face qmesh polygroup all and again those changes will be updated on the fly or i can change these out completely i can hit w i'll hit say q let's hit b go into our new z model brush we have all these options here i'll hit w and i'll choose a phillips head instead now by default it's going to make it very small all you got to do is go back down here to deformation unify that'll make it the right size and now when we go out of edit mesh you're going to see these have all been updated to phillips head screws

Channel: Michael Pavlovich

Views: 3,490

Keywords: ZBrush, ZBrush Intro, ZBrush tutorial, zbrush for beginners, zbrush basics, zbrush micromesh, zbrush micropoly, zbrush nanomesh, zbrush rigid body simulation, zbrush micromesh render, zbrush bpr render, zbrush align edge, zbrush convert bpr to geo, zbrush fibermesh micromesh, zbrush custom nanomesh brush, zbrush nanomesh variance, zbrush nanomesh pattern, zbrush rivets, zbrush scatter geometry, zbrush mesh replacement, zbrush face replacement, zbrush instanced geometry

Id: QGNn1-ey6ME

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021