{"id":238,"date":"2008-12-29T00:01:43","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T08:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lovecraftforest.com\/blog\/?p=238"},"modified":"2023-04-01T16:06:12","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T16:06:12","slug":"zbrush-mechanical-part-3-springing-into-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"Zbrush Mechanical Part 3, Springing Into Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Springs are fun and a handy way to add a common mechanical detail. \u00a0 Zbrush has a built-in spring generator, called the helix primitive. \u00a0 A little setting of the initialize parameters and we get something like this:<\/p>\n

\"Basic<\/a>
Basic Spring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(You did know about the initialize subpallet didn’t you? \u00a0 If not, load up a few 3D primitives in Zbrush and look down the tools menu for the subpallet with “Initialize”. \u00a0 Here you can set all sorts of neat starting shapes for your primitives before making them into a polymesh.)<\/p>\n

I didn’t make this a polymesh right away, keeping it as a helix primitive. \u00a0 I’m going to use a little know feature of primitives–col masking. \u00a0 Also, to give me some more resolution, I divided my spring a couple times by going to the geometry subpallet. \u00a0 (Yes, you can divide primitives the same as polymeshes!) \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inside the masking subpallet are some handy features that only work with primitives marked “col”, “row”, and “grid” with a couple mysterious slides marked “sel” and “skip”. \u00a0 You push any of these buttons on an unmasked primitive, nothing seems to happen and thus many a tyro is frustrated by them. \u00a0 This is because these buttons selective remove<\/em>\u00a0masks, not add them. \u00a0 (It feels\u00a0counterintuitive\u00a0to me too, but this is ZB, after all–which often feels like it was built on “opposite day” at first.)<\/p>\n

The sel slider will choose how many adjacent rows or columns of the primitives polygon grid will be selected. \u00a0 The skip slider will \u00a0then decide how many to skip before selecting. \u00a0 To get a nice box cutout, I’m going to select 3 and skip 4 which will give me a nice alternation. \u00a0 Now, before I go rushing to pushing the “col” button, I do the all important first step–I hit the “mask all” button on the masking subpallet. \u00a0A press of the magic col button and I have a nice ring mask on my spring:<\/p>\n

\"Masked<\/a>
Masked Spring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With my plain-jane spring now nicely masked, I can use “inflate” under the deformations subpallet to pull in the unmasked parts to give some additional texture. \u00a0 A little fiddling, and I have something like this:<\/p>\n

\"picture-6\"<\/a>
Textured Spring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Add a couple of creative cylinders, and I have this:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Completed<\/a>
Completed Spring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Springs are fun and a handy way to add a common mechanical detail. \u00a0 Zbrush has a built-in spring generator, called the helix primitive. \u00a0 A little setting of the initialize parameters and we get something like this: (You did know about the initialize subpallet didn’t you? \u00a0 If not, load up a few 3D … Continue reading Zbrush Mechanical Part 3, Springing Into Action<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[3,62],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zbrush","tag-3d-tools","tag-zbrush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sculptedmesh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}