Zbrush masking help (hair)

missuskisses

I'm editing an existing hair model and would like to mask by hair strand in Zbrush so I can work on each individual hair strand. In DAZ's Geometry Editing mode, there is the "select connected" function that I find invaluable; I just select a polygon and hit "select connected" to get the entire strand. Is there an easy way to do the same in Zbrush in terms of masking? 

Thanks in advance!

Syrus_Dante

missuskisses said:

Is there an easy way to do the same in Zbrush in terms of masking?

Easy? In ZBrush?

Pixologic had added the ZModeler brush toolset in 2018 to add some classic mesh editing tools mabye those can help you with such masking tasks.

http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/workshop/zmodeler-polygon-actions

ZClassroom Lesson - Poly Mask

To activate press B for the brush selection menu, then Z to select ZModeler Brush, hover the mouse cursor over a polygon and press the spacebar to get a menu. The menu is context senitive - clould be tricky to select the face instead of an edge or point on smale hair strands. Not shure about how how to mask with the ZModeler maybe there is an option to create a Polygroup from the connected mesh that you can use to mask later.

missuskisses

Thank you very much! I couldn't get that to work for me, but admittedly, I am a newbie with Zbrush.

Does anyone know if this could be easily achieved in, say, Blender? In which case I can switch to using Blender. 

Thanks again.

Syrus_Dante

In Blender its easier, in Edit Mode (press Tab) just hover the cursor over a part of the mesh and press L to select the connected geometry. You may have to zoom in closer to select tiny parts.

Option 1

You could also use the Daz Studio Geometry Editor to create new Fae Groups, with drag selection mode select some faces then use the Select Connected shortcut Ctrl+Numpad-Multiply.

Create a face group from selection by opening the Tool Settings pane, right-click Face Groups and choose Create New From Selected, export the hair as OBJ and import this OBJ into ZBrush or Blender, don't save the Daz Studio scene and revert back to the last saved scene file with the unmodified hair figure.

After creating the morph with the extrenal editor you can load the shape as usual with Morph Loader Pro it dosn't matter how the mesh is grouped in the OBJ only vertex position counts to create the morph.

Option 2

If you just want to drag around or shorten some hair strands you could also stay inside Daz Studio and use a DFormer that you switch to Weight Map influence, then "paint" or "fill" the weight map only on the geometry selection and use the DFormer transformations in the Parameters pane to define the hair strands shape or direction. Finaly you can use the Spawn Morph button in the DForm pane to create the morph.

missuskisses

Wow; thanks!

Gonna try the whole assigning new surface groups in DAZ so I can mask by polygroup in Zbrush. Hadn't even occurred to me. Thank you so much!!

bluejaunte

Under Brush > Automasking enable Topological. It's essentially what the Move Topological brush does but like this you get to use it with any brush. I have this button out in the UI. With this you should be able to work on all hair strands but only one at a time, as they are not topologically connected. Moving just an upper lip and not the lower is another good example.

missuskisses

bluejaunte said:

Under Brush > Automasking enable Topological. It's essentially what the Move Topological brush does but like this you get to use it with any brush. I have this button out in the UI. With this you should be able to work on all hair strands but only one at a time, as they are not topologically connected. Moving just an upper lip and not the lower is another good example.

Woah, thanks so much! Going to try this now.