From the course: ZBrush: Tips & Tricks

Using the new Snake Hook brushes - ZBrush Tutorial

From the course: ZBrush: Tips & Tricks

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Using the new Snake Hook brushes

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- The SnakeHook brush has been around for a long time and it does some interesting things. The problem up until now is that the affected head on objects is so extreme that it becomes unpractical quickly. I'll show you what I mean in a bit. Now with ZBrush 2018, there are some new varieties of the brush as well as a whole new feature that really allows SnakeHook to live up to its full potential. Let's see how it all comes together. Okay, so we've got a regular model here. And let's switch to the SnakeHook brush, B, S, and you can find it here, SnakeHook. Now let's just use this to grab and pull on the model. So you can see what is doing is it's stretching out these polygons but at a certain point, it just becomes really, really difficult to maintain any sort of smooth topology with this. So let's hit Control + Z to undo that. So there's a new feature in ZBrush 2018 called Sculptris Pro mode. And if we turn this on, it works great with SnakeHook because what it does is it automatically subdivides the model to maintain smoother topology. So let's turn on our wireframe with Shift + F and zoom in on that. So you can see that it added little triangles all along to keep any one triangle from getting too stretched out. So let's undo that and just witness this as it happens. Okay, so that's great. So let's just zoom out a little bit here and try something else. So one thing I've noticed with this is that you know, it's really great, it works nice but the effect kinda peters out towards the end. If you wanna create some really long tentacles or something, eventually it's gonna reach a point where it just kinda dies off. So let's undo that and switch to a different brush. B, S and Snake Sphere. So let's try that again. So with Snake Sphere, the interesting thing you'll notice is that it maintains a diameter. It doesn't peter out so you can create things that are as long as you want. Now this brush only works when Sculptris Pro mode is turned on. So if we turn this off and undo that, and then try to use it again, it's not really going to create much of an effect at all. It doesn't quite know what to do with it. So just make sure that Sculptris Pro is turned on when using the SnakeHook brushes from now on. Now there's one other variant of the SnakeHook brush that I wanna show you. Let's go ahead and turn off symmetry mode. Hit B to bring up our brushes, S for the brushes that start with S and let's get SnakeHook2. And let's just create a horn right in the middle of the forehead. So what you might notice is that when I drew this, the horn came out straight. That's because SnakeHook2 works based on the direction of the surface rather than the screen. So if I switch to the regular SnakeHook brush, B, S, H, and I try to draw a horn with this one, what you'll notice between the two of these, the difference is that this one is drawn relative to the screen so I'm looking at it from a particular angle and so it's going to draw out relative to the plane of the screen whereas SnakeHook2 is going to draw relative to the surface sort of perpendicular to the surface. Now there is one final SnakeHook variant, SnakeCactus. I'll let you play with that on your own, it's a little bit of a gimmick, it doesn't really do anything other than make cacti. But it's kinda fun to play with. Alright, so the basic thing to understand is that the SnakeHook brush is much more useful now in combination with Sculptris Pro mode and there's a few more ways to use it as well. It's really great for when you're making tentacles and branches and all kinds of things like that.

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