021 Mask Pen Video Lecture | Zbrush: Create Realistic Modelling - Professional Skills

I was going to jump right in ahead
sculpting but I realized when I was
doing head sculpting cuz I kind of
jumped ahead and just so wanted to have
some fun I realized actually whenever
I'm asking and transposing already so
I'm going to add masking and transposing
before we get in the final head sculpt
so the first thing we're gonna do is
masking and let's go ahead and go all
the way back to the beginning here ours
near enough to it as we can
area so we'll just start with this
character now this object to talk about
masking so what is masking so just like
when you hold down the shift key and
that gives you a smooth modifier brush
so as the standard brush over here
changes to smooth whenever you have
smooth selected and when you hold down
shift it's a smooth brush which means
you can smooth your mesh as well as if
you hold down shift you're gonna see my
Zee intensity for standard brush is 35
and I hold down shift my Zee intensity
drops up to a hundred and actually my
focal shift changes as well so the shift
brush has its own properties and in
order to change those properties you
have to hold down shift and change them
so if I want to say change the Z
intensity down I can hold down shift and
drop that so now every time I hold the
shift key down it will now be as the
intensity of 21 so now a nice smooth
it'll be a very very soft gradual just a
just a you know you have to really
smooth a lot to get it to smooth hardly
at all if I want to crank that back up I
got a hold down shift and then crank my
Z intensity up to 100 and now I can
smooth like I normally would with a
smooth brush exact same thing with
masking only the mask hotkey I guess or
the modifier key is control so you see
when I hit control it goes to mask pin
that is the default masking brush is
mask pin so what does mask pin by
default mask pin is just basically a
mask brush that has two functions and
there's two different ways you can use
it the first way is just to hold down
control and then as you drag over your
mesh it's going to mask it out so I'm
really just masking and brushing onto my
object it's like a mask then I go just
move and then mask so as I'm hovering
over my object I can pick up my cursor
and there's a mask and then just like
with the standard brush if you hold down
alt it has an invert function or it digs
into your mesh as opposed to pulling out
same thing with mask well holding ctrl
and then I hold
alt you're going to see that plus sign
excellent Ness turns to a minus sign so
when I hooked hold down control it
changes to cursor that says mask and
it's yellow cursor and then I hold down
alt it goes to a minus and then I can go
through here and mask out certain areas
and mask pin is an interesting one and
that it actually has another different
way you can mask so you can mask on your
object by just dragging and dropping on
your objects you can just like brush in
masks on your object and then hold down
alt and mask and brush as well as if I
go to the front of the object here if
you hold down control and drag out in
the document here it'll actually drag
out a rectangle now because I have X
symmetry on if I drag and drop it will
actually do masking across the symmetry
line which is of course the x-axis
symmetry and if I go to the front here
and mask it'll mask all the way through
which brings up something interesting
you can actually mask through an entire
object so let's talk about masking and
hotkeys I'm actually can turn off
diamond perspective over here just while
I'm talking about masking so the hold on
ctrl and drag that'll actually clear
your mask if I have something masked and
I control tap in my document that'll
invert my mask and then if I control
drag it'll get rid of my mask if I mask
an object tap it'll invert tap again
it'll edge it invert again and then so
you can just sit out here and tap to
invert and then control drag to get rid
of it and all of these hot key things
that I'm doing are actually over here
and the mask the menu so here's my tool
menu drag all the way down so we get to
the masking submenu open that up and you
can see we have inverse masks all clear
blur sharpen grow and shrink as well as
some mask my future stuff that would get
into probably later if you hover over
these you're gonna see they have like
control a is mask all clear mask doesn't
have a hotkey inverse control I I don't
use those but you know feel free to use
those for sure but I'll show you the hot
key with the hot key it's kind of like a
hot gesture I suppose so we'll start
from the beginning so view mask is
actually what you can do and it gets a
little bit confusing is you can actually
mash something and then you can turn off
view mask and it's still masked you just
can't view it so generally speaking you
want view mask on
if you mask something
it'll actually go ahead and pop on view
mask by default the first one is invert
so you can hit control light or you can
control tap out here and that'll invert
the mask and then you can just continue
to add to that if you want to so control
and then hold down ctrl alt and you can
do something like that clear is you can
hit clear or if I control Z I can
control drag out here and that'll clear
my mask mask all is actually if you have
nothing masked you can just control tap
out here and that'll invert nothing into
everything if that makes sense and then
you can go in here and just ctrl alt and
then just make any shape that you're
planning on making a blur mask is
interesting so if I'm asking in here and
it's like you know what I like this mass
but it's a little bit harsh I want to go
ahead and blur it what I can do is I can
control tap and that'll blur my mask out
as well as sharpen mask over here you
can hold down ctrl alt and tap and then
I'll sharpen your mask up so this
actually actually comes in handy so if
you make kind of a blurry mask here and
then ctrl alt you can sharpen that up I
use that all the time when I'm breaking
apart meshes and peace and stuff so like
if I want to pop off a specific part of
my mesh I go in here and just do a quick
lazy kind of soft mask and then I'll
hold down ctrl alt just tap and then
sharpen that up and I'm good to go and
then of course I can go in here and oops
clean up my mask if I want to you know
kind of fine-tune my man's gonna sharpen
it up again and again I'm just holding a
ctrl alt and tapping in the white area
if I want to blur my mask I can control
tap on my object but sometimes it'll
leave a little mask mark over here what
you don't want so generally speaking
it's safest just a control tap inside of
your masked area and then ctrl alt tap
outside of your masked area and that'll
kind of blur and sharpen and you can
actually use that to your advantage too
so like I was saying I'm gonna go to the
side view here gonna hold down control
and just drag out here to get a
rectangle and I'm gonna drop that and
let's say you know what I like that
rectangle I just wish I had rounded
edges so you can control tap in here to
blur ctrl alt tap out here to sharpen
and there you go you got rounded edges
and it's a mask now another thing you
may have noticed is when I when I'm just
masking from the front like this it just
masks the object and nothing goes on in
the back however if I control drag
a selection rectangle a mess rect and I
drag and drop it it'll mask here and
it'll also mask all the way through the
object and this is pretty much universal
now we'll get into auto masking and back
face masking and brush options but that
doesn't really change same thing from
the side you can go through here and
it'll mask all the way through and plus
it's on X symmetry so that is also Y as
well as you know from the front and you
can use this to your advantage so you
can mask all the way through if you
don't like that you can just control
drag and then hold down alt and that'll
change that from a mask additive with
the plus sign to a mask subtract them
and actually it keeps a plus sign there
but it's actually because it's white you
know it's gonna subtract and then it
gets rid of that so that's the basic so
the basics of masks pin I should say is
mask pin or mask rectangle with mask pin
available to you if you'd like and then
of course all the hot keys so mask just
drawn it ctrl tap out here to invert it
control drag to clear it mask invert
oops invert blur sharpen is control tap
here on the blur on the mask part
control alt tab in and unmask part and
that will just continue to blur in
sharpen