Using Sculptris Pro

Using Sculptris Pro

The Sculptris Pro mode is as easy to use as it is versatile. Harnessing its full poten­tial only requires you to keep a few items in mind.
Sculptris Pro works with raw polygons and is not compatible with subdivision sur­faces. Your model must be a PolyMesh 3D and must not have subdivision levels. If the current state of your model doesn’t allow Sculptris Pro to function, the brushes will have their normal behavior.

Enabling Sculptris Pro Mode

This first step to use the Sculptris Pro mode is to enable it by pressing the Sculptris Pro button. In the default ZBrush user interface (UI), this is the Sculptris Plus logo above the canvas. If you are using a custom UI, you will find the Sculptris Pro button together with its global settings in the Stroke >> Sculptris Pro sub-palette.

Brush Cursors

Once Sculptris Pro has been enabled — and if the current Tool or SubTool is compat­ible — the brush cursor will change from red to purple. If the brush cursor remains red, check to make sure that your model has no subdivision levels, is not a 3D primitive, is not a ZSphere, and does not contain partially hidden geometry.
When using a smooth brush during Sculptris Pro, the cursor color will switch to an orange color. This indicates that your brush stroke will produce both smoothing and Tes­simation.

Notice

Note:
Cursor colors can be changed in the Preferences >> Edit sub-palette.

Brush Size

At default settings, the Draw Size will affect the tessimation density for your current brush. A large brush size will create large polygons while a small brush size will create dense or very dense topology, making these small details accurate even if the original topology had few points.
This system differs from how DynaMesh produces uniform topology density. It al­lows you to create fine details or very large shapes on the fly by only adjusting the Draw Size.
As explained in the next section, you can adjust the global settings of the Sculptris Pro mode to accomplish any of these results:

    • Keep the tessimation constant without having the brush size control its density.
    • Have tessellation only, without decimation.
    • Modify the factor by which changes to Draw Size modify topology.

PolyPaint

Sculptris Pro is compatible with PolyPaint and this works in the same manner as for sculpting: Depending on your brush size, it will add polygons as necessary to accurately paint vertex colors. This means that you can produce a fine paint stroke even if the model is low resolution.

Restrictions

As explained above, Sculptris Pro only works on models without subdivision levels. It also has some other restrictions to keep in mind:

    • Backface masking is not supported and should be turned off.
    • Drag Rectangle and DragDot strokes are not supported. Only Dots, FreeHand and Spray strokes are supported by Sculptris Pro.
    • Any brushes that generate content will not work, such as IMM/Insert brushes, Curve brushes, etc.
    • UVs are not preserved.
    • Masks are taken into consideration by Sculptris Pro. Mask intensity will affect tessimation, determining how strongly the polygon structure will be modified.
    • The Brush auto-masking setting, Mask By Polygroups will not work with Sculp­tris Pro.

Important!


Sculptris Pro improvements available in ZBrush 2021.6 include the ability to work with partially hidden meshes and using the Chisel3D / VDM brushes. The new Snake Curve brushes will also work with Sculptris Pro.