Lazy Mouse 2.0

Advanced controls for your sculpting and painting brush strokes.

The LazyMouse v2 is an enhanced version of the original LazyMouse, giving you accurate control of your strokes. The updates bring new creative processes where you can continue from your previous stroke, as well as allowing your strokes to cross over each other without buildup.

 


Stroke Continuity

The ability to chain strokes together is provided by the Stroke >> Lazy Mouse >> LazySnap function. If your cursor is close to the end of your previous stroke, this feature allows you continue that stroke. The LazySnap value defines the detection distance be­tween the end of the previous stroke and the beginning of the new stroke. If your cursor is within the detection range, you will notice that it will be relocated to the end of the previ­ous stroke when clicking on the object surface.

If you intend to make multiple strokes that are close together and don’t want them to be connected, you will likely need to change this setting to a lower value.

Another important factor to consider is pen pressure as this won’t transition between strokes. Pressure variations between the two strokes can create a visual artifact at the connection point. This will only be visible with some very accurate and sharp brushes. In that case, if you want to produce clean strokes then an alternative is to work without pressure. This can be disabled in the Brush >> Tablet Pressure sub-palette by setting the Size and Z Intensity values to a horizontal curve at 100.

An alternative is to use a mouse for these strokes.

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On the left, the first stroke. On the right, the stroke has been continued.

 


Non-Buildup of Overlapping Strokes

Some brushes, when combined with Lazy Mouse and a Morph Target can keep the same depth when they cross. Without this functionality, creating complex shapes based on strokes can become problematic whenever you cross over an existing stroke.
This functionality works well with Stroke Continuity (explained above) since you can continue your strokes while keeping them at the same depth. As with Stroke Continuity, it is advised to work with a constant pen pressure in order to produce perfect crossing of strokes.
The are some easy, yet important rules for the Non-Buildup functionality:

  • It works only with brushes based on the Chisel, and Layer brush types.
  • It requires Lazy Mouse to be enabled.
  • You must first store a Morph Target by pressing the Tool >> Morph Target >> StoreMT button. This action will keep the current depth of the model in memory, allowing ZBrush to ignore any changes made by brush strokes that come after the morph target has been stored.
4R8_62

On the left, one stroke crosses another without using a stored Morph Target. On the right, the same stroke but with a Morph Target stored prior to sculpting either stroke.

 


Click-to-Click Straight Lines

It can sometimes be necessary to create straight lines for your strokes. To make this process easier, you can use the Stroke Line function:

  1. Start your stroke as usual.
  2. Without releasing the cursor, press and hold Shift. A line will appear between the end of the stroke position and the current position of your cursor. An indica­tor of angle will give you its value or indicate 45° increments.
  3. Move your cursor to a new position.
  4. Without releasing the click, let go of the Shift key. ZBrush will connect the two points with a straight line, using your current brush.

Important!

Note: To produce straight lines, you can also use the Stroke >> Lazy Mouse >> Backtrack function and Line mode.

 


Stroke Pause

If you want to keep the current brush with its pressure and start another stroke at another position, simply press and hold the Spacebar without releasing the click. Now move the cursor, which will change to a cross to indicate that you can move the position of the stroke to another location. When you arrive at the location of your choice, release the Spacebar to continue your stroke.