

When your model is divided into polygroups (which is something you really ought to be doing if you aren’t already!) you are able to affect the amount of influence your brush has on a polygroup using the Mask by Polygroups slider. Despite its simplicity it finds its way into this list because, aside from brushes, it’s the function I use the most frequently in ZBrush. You’ll find another box of tricks from Nick Miller and my favorite tool from this is actually very, very simple. Give it a try, there’s a bunch of additional cool functions! I can’t even begin to work out how he’s managed to do this but it works extremely well.

Some of you may have already heard of Ryan Kittleson but did you know he has a bunch of additional functions in a plugin he calls Ryan’s Tools? Within this box of magic is a button called Smart Subdiv which subdivides the meshes without this shrinkage. The lower the poly count, the greater the shrinkage. One of the most useful aspects of this plugin I’ve found is actually the splash screen which explains how the scaling system works.Ī common problem with ZBrush is that when you subdivide a mesh it shrinks slightly. As you might expect the plugin gives you control over the precise scale of your model(s) and essentially works around ZBrush’s scaling system. But there are several reasons you might want to set a real-world scale in ZBrush, particularly with the emergence of 3D Printing technologies - Scale Master is the response to this. The reason ZBrush handles scale differently is correlated with its ability to handle millions of polygons. Over the past few years I’ve heard a few complaints about ZBrush’s non-standard way of calculating scale. Not only does the ZBrush to Photoshop plugin give options for 24 different passes (24!), it will also render them all out automatically and arrange them appropriately in Photoshop, so you can jump straight into compositing! Some of the passes are really clever too, such as different light angles so the lighting can be completely changed after rendering. It can be quite time-consuming saving them all out individually and compositing them in an app such as Photoshop. When you render in ZBrush you get up to 7 basic default render passes. This plugin has shipped with ZBrush since version 4R8 and is incredible. An unofficial version for Blender is also available under the name GoB, which is what I use. If your 3D app isn’t in the default list of apps, supported third-party versions are available for Modo, Lightwave, Daz, Poser, and more.

GoZ will allow you to transfer all of your models between most 3D packages with one button click and can even carry material information too. The reason this is first is because if I had to choose to keep only one item from this list it would be GoZ. GoZ is not strictly a plugin for ZBrush but rather a plugin for other apps you use with ZBrush. In this article I’m going to cover the plugins I use the most and why I think you should too.
#ZBRUSH ZSPHERE DOWNLOAD#
These include the official plugins that come shipped with ZBrush, official plugins you need to download and third-party plugins that a few clever people have developed (for free!). ZBrush has a bunch of different plugins that don’t always get the attention they deserve.
