Advanced Options

Revolve

The Revolve Curve in action

The Revolve Curve in action

This setting allows you to create curling Fibers in just a few clicks with high control over their shape. This is accomplished through two settings:

  • Revolve Rate: Defines the amount of rotation applied to the Fiber.
  • Revolve Radius: Uses a curve to define where the rotation effect will be applied. A linear curve from the bottom left to the top right will create a Fiber where the revolve effect is applied most strongly at the tip and not at all at the root. See the section below for more information about curves.

 

Working with Curves Profiles

To provide more control over your settings and more variant possibilities, several FiberMesh parameters now have a curve editor. This editor operates in exactly the same manner as for all other curves in ZBrush.

When used with Fibers, all curve profiles correspond with the root at the left side and the tip at the right side. Strength goes from 0 at the bottom to 100% at the top.

Length Profile

This curve affects how the segments along the fibers will be propagated. The default curve will generate a constant length for each segment. Modifying the curve can do such things as concentrating the segments at the Fiber’s root or tip. This setting can affect the result of other settings. For example, if you wish to have a Revolve setting concentrated at the tip of your Fibers, you would want to have more segments there than at the root.

Width Profile

This curve affects the width along your curve, letting you creating custom profiles.

An example of how Width Curve affects Fibers

An example of how Width Curve affects Fibers

Revolve Radius

This curve defines the where the Revolve effect will take place along the Fiber length. Please refer to the Revolve section, above.

Gravity Profile

This curve controls how the gravity will impact the Fiber along its length.

Color Profile

This curve defines where the root and tip colors will be applied along the Fiber length.

 

Texture Selector

In addition to the textures which can be applied manually through the Tool > Texture Map sub-palette, you can now directly apply a texture in preview mode. This allows you to see how the Fibers will look with your texture even before you’ve converted them to a FiberMesh object.

Frenchy Pilou-like texture applied on the fibers

Frenchy Pilou-like texture applied on the fibers

There are several parameters associated with this feature:

  • Max Size: Defines the maximum width and height of your texture in pixels. If you select a texture with a higher value, ZBrush will warn you and ask if you wish to proceed. You may cancel by pressing No. If you say Yes, ZBrush will automatically resize the texture before applying it to the Fibers. For memory management and faster processing, it is recommended to use the smallest possible texture size that will still retain an acceptable level of detail.
  • Horizontal Tile: This slider sets how many times the texture will be repeated across the width of the Fibers.
  • Vertical Tile: This slider sets how many times the texture will be repeated along the length of the Fibers.
  • Transparent Mode: When enabled, pure black pixels within the texture will become transparent.

Note: Only pure black (0,0,0) is seen as transparent. Anything even slightly different from that (such as 0,1,0) will be rendered as color. For this reason, it is recommended to not use antialiasing in your image editor when creating textures that will have transparent regions. ZBrush can then antialias the edges for you at render time. See Antialiased Mode, below.

  • Antialiased Mode: This option helps remove “jaggies” from edges within the texture. It is especially useful in conjunction with Transparent mode (above), since it will result in clean edges on the visible surfaces.

 

Exporting FiberMesh as Guides

ZBrush can now export your sculpted FiberMesh object as guide curves to be used with the Hair and Fur system in the software of your choice.

ZBrush can export native modo, Maya and LightWave files, OBJ files with curves for applications which support them, as well as FMG (FiberMeshGuide; a dedicated file format for the developers who would like to create an importer).

Before exporting, it is important to set the PRE Visualization slider to the percentage of Fibers that you will need as guides. When you click the Export Curve button, ZBrush will display statistics about the number of exported guides.

The PRE Viz slider, which defines the number of exported curves and the Export Curves button

The PRE Viz slider, which defines the number of exported curves and the Export Curves button

For optimum results, it is advised to switch to Fast Preview mode and set the PRE Visualization slider value before exporting your guides.

Exporting FiberMesh as Vector Displacement

Instead of exporting your Fibers as guides, an alternative is to export your Fibers as a vector displacement map. This is especially useful when your Fibers have settings affecting their width and form, as those values cannot be exported with guides and so would need to be reconstructed in your other application.

Fibers07

When exporting your fibers as a vector displacement map, ZBrush will export an OBJ file and a vector displacement map corresponding to the extrusion of the Fibers.

The OBJ file is composed of one polygon per Fiber root. The texture file then has the information needed to give the Fibers their correct shape when rendered in a program that supports vector displacement maps. Please read the Vector Displacement Map chapter of this document to learn more about the Tangent and 32-bit modes.