From the course: ZBrush 2020 Essential Training

Working with subtools - ZBrush Tutorial

From the course: ZBrush 2020 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Working with subtools

“

- ZBrush often invents new names for things that are called something else in other software. Now, you can have multiple objects in your scene in the same way a Photoshop document can have multiple layers, or a 3D scene in Maya can have any number of models active at once. ZBrush calls these individuals objects subtools. Let's see how it works. So, as a simple refresher, we've got tools which are like separate documents, so we've got the T.Rex skull as one tool, Hank as another tool, and then underneath that we have subtools in this palate that can expand out. And there can be 999 different subtools, although I rarely have more than 50 or so, and each one of these can contain its own 3D model. So if we turn on transparent mode we can really see these through the other subtools. And you can do a lot of the same things that you could with Photoshop layers. So for example, you can duplicate them. So if we wanted to create an extra set of eyebrows for example, we could go and click duplicate, and then switch to our gizmo, and then move that up and he's got two sets of eyebrows. Very realistic. You can also delete subtools. Let's say we want to get rid of this extra set of brows, just click delete. Now ZBrush lets you know that you cannot undo deleting of subtools. So if you're comfortable with this, you can click always okay. You can also rearrange them, so for example we've got the hair selected right now, I kind of like to have hair up towards the top just because I think of hair as being on the top of a character. So you can just click on these arrows to move them up or down in the list, or you can hold down shift and click and it'll shoot all the way to the top, or on this middle chute all the way to the bottom. Now to select these you can just click on them, however you have to be careful. If you actually click on the icon, what can happen is it'll accidentally turn on this start mode, which is a way of grouping them together. However, that's not usually what you want to do. You want to be careful. So I like to click right on the name instead of anywhere else because otherwise you can have problems. So subtools can be made visible or invisible, like we just saw, we could turn off any of these to make them invisible. Now one thing about this is even if it's made invisible, you can still click on it and it will become visible, because it's the active subtool. But if we switch away from it, now it will be invisible again because it's not the active subtool. Now you can make them all visible or invisible if you hold down shift and click on the eyeball for the active subtool. So that just hides all of them, and if we do that again, it'll make all of them come back. To help them stay organized, we can also rename them. So let's click on Hank and click on rename, and we could type in something else like body. Another way to select subtools is to use these up and down arrows and you'll just cycle through the list. You can also select subtools in your canvas by alt clicking on them. Finally, you can add new primitives to your scene by clicking on append and picking a primitive here under 3D meshes. And that's just going to add it to the bottom of the list. So we can scroll down and find it here. And now we've got a new torus. Okay, so as you can see that in concept it's not too different from most other software. Hopefully this information can help you keep your scenes organized when you have multiple objects to keep track of.

Contents