Brush

The Brush palette contains most of the controls related to sculpting 3D models. There are many brushes you can sculpt with in ZBrush 4R5. Each brush has a unique property that allows it to do something the other brushes can not. Also, brushes in ZBrush can be modified using several important controls such as Gravity, Wrap Mode or Density.

The Alpha palette controls the shape of your brush. An alpha is a grayscale intensity map.

The Stroke palette controls the way your brush moves over the surface of your model. There are several strokes that can be used in 3D: Dots, Freehand, Spray Stroke and Drag Rectangle.

Brushes can also be saved and loaded by using the Brush:Load and Brush:Save As buttons. Saving a brush saves all of the settings in the Brush Palette as well as certain preferences, stroke settings and alpha settings.

4R5-Brush-default

The top of the Brush palette showing default items and first three sub-palettes

Load Brush

The Load Brush button will load a custom brush into the Brush palette

Save As

Press Save As to save your currently selected brush. Each brush saves all of the settings in the brush palette as well the Stroke Palette, Alpha Palette and several settings in the Preference Palette.

Clone

Press Clone to duplicate the currently selected brush. It is a good idea to Clone a brush before saving it so you don’t overwrite a default brush.

SelectIcon

Press Select Icon to choose a new icon for the currently selected brush. You will be able to load a file from disk. (The ZStartup/BrushPresets folder contains a sample icon PSD file for you to use as a starting point for your own icon.)

To capture the canvas and automatically use as the icon, hold Alt while pressing this button.

Create InsertBrush

When the Create InsertBrush button is pressed a new InsertBrush will be created from the selected SubTool. The orientation of the mesh to the camera will set the orientation of the mesh when drawn out.

Create InsertMultiBrush

When the Create InsertMultiBrush button is pressed a new InsertMultiBrush will be create from all SubTools. The orientation of the meshes to the camera will set the orientation of the meshes when drawn out.

Lightbox>Brushes

Press the Lightbox>Brushes button to get instant access to the Brush section of Lightbox.

Brush selection slider

Use the Brush selection slider to select any item in this palette by number.

R

Press the R (Restore Configuration) button when a large number of selected items cause this palette to grow too large.
All but a few items will be hidden; they can be retrieved by pressing the large thumbnail and selecting them from the popup palette. The Quick Pick recent items section of the pop-up palette will also be reset.

Brush palette - bottom buttons

The Edit Brush Credit and Reset All Brushes buttons at the bottom of the Brush palette

Edit Brush Credit

The Edit Brush Credit button enables you to add a name and web address to a brush. This is so that if you share any custom brushes, users will know who made them. The credit will appear in the pop-up info that appears when the cursor is over the brush thumbnail.

Reset All Brushes

When Reset All Brushes is pressed all Brushes will be reset to their default settings.

Brush palette sub-palettes

 


Reference Guide > Brush