How to use the reference graph in ZBrush

to share his technique of using reference maps in ZBrush, as he himself said, "I've been using ZBrush, I've known spotlight and image planes, but until I took my first Cintiq companion (a tablet computer) , I found the powerful role of image planes and spotlight. "

' I have two good computer screens at home, so every time I do something, I use zbrush on one screen and a bunch of reference maps on another screen, like this:

When running Cintiq Companion, you can operate on one screen, the screen size is good, companion 2nd Gen resolution is amazing, but it must be admitted that these are not ideal:

So here are some ideas on how to use the reference map:

Image Plane Collage:

Every time I hear image plane, I think of the front or side view of the role reference table, but lately I've been using the image plane option in ZBrush to put all my references in the background and keep them visible when I carve.

I created some reference diagrams with Photoshop and saved them in PNG format. The PNG file is then loaded into the image plane by the image plane palette in the texture palette, so that the 3D model can always be in front of the images, and you can keep reference to the background reference map.

One of the cool tricks here is to create multiple tiles for the background, and then load them into a separate view from the image plane sub palette:

How to load multiple image planes:

1, load the first image plane: Open the texture palette below the image plane sub palette, open the "front" (should be the default) and then click Load Image, as shown in the following figure:

2, Storage view: Select the image you want, as your first "reference board", and then click the "Store View" button, as shown in the following image:

3, load the second image Plane: Click the "Back" button will change the view, just loaded the background image will temporarily "disappear", through the "Load image" button to load another image, and then click "Store View" again. You can then switch between "front" or "Back" by clicking on the "Reference Board".

Small tips:

image plane will be adaptive to your document size, so it's usually a good idea to keep the tile reference image and document size.

• You can quickly remove the image plane by cleaning the canvas (Ctrl + N).

• If you have cleaned the canvas (deleted image plane) and want to retrieve it, you need to go into the texture palette, select the collage image again, and then click the "Image Plane" button, and if you put some buttons on your custom UI, this step can also be optimized:

Spotlight:

Before I started sketching, I used spotlight primarily when I was adding textures, but I found it useful to keep the reference graph on the screen all the time when sketching.

Small tips:

1. Spotlight projection: Because Spotlight is used as the mapping modifier for the active brush, we do not need to map the image to the model, so we must close the "Spotlight" in the Samples sub palette under the Brush palette Projection ", so you can use the selected brush to draw or carve freely, no matter how close your model is to the reference image.

In the state of Spotlight projection open:

2, Eraser (eraser): You can also use Spotlight "erase" part of the image, save screen space, leaving only the part to be referenced.

Select "Paint" on the spotlight Runner and draw the reference map in pure black, ZBrush will view these black areas as transparent colors. (If you have a uniform background color, you can choose "paint" instead of manually drawing/erasing the image, holding down the CTRL key and dragging the mouse to remove the color.) )