022 Mask With Alphas Video Lecture | Zbrush: Create Realistic Modelling - Professional Skills

now another thing you can do is add
alphas and I didn't get into this with
the standard brush but let's go ahead
and just talk about alphas as if we're
using them for brushes as well as mass
because they're both relevant so for
instance with the standard brush we've
got a stroke of dots we didn't talk
about stroke either so we'll go ahead
and fit that in here so right now the
default stroke for our stroke for
standard brushes dots and what that
means is you can drag it out but it's
kind of you can see if I go fast it's
kind of leaves some dots behind that's
just kind of a faster way to sample your
stroke as opposed to going to freehand
which will kind of do the same thing but
I I guess it's a little bit smoother
it's kind of up to you to choose I
usually just leave it on dots I've for
years I've just looked at I thought so
that's you know there's dots in this
freehand not a whole lot of difference
between the two but they're basically
you drag out a line or with freehand you
drag out a line now exact same thing for
any of your like ctrl and shift a smooth
brush is if you want to change that to
freehand hold down shift change that
stroke and now you can smooth with a
freehand again I just leave that on dots
mask pin is freehand by default you can
change out the dots if you want and just
mask now it gets a little bit
interesting when you get in here to drag
rect drag dot and that kind of stuff so
we'll start talking about alphas and
then implementing drag record drag dot
with those so with a standard brush if
we change at the drag rect and that's
going to do is if I just drag it's going
to drag my brush stroke which right now
is just almost nothing and just drag it
out of my mesh so I can just kind of
drag that out and I guess that's
interesting where it gets interesting is
if you change your alpha to something
will do something obvious let's like us
do a star I'm going to do alpha 10 now
if I drag this out we have it's masking
your brush automatically through this
alpha and then doing a standard brush
stroke through that alpha now this is
also interesting so and this is with the
drag rec so basically I'm dragging a
rectangle and it'll stop dragging when I
tell it to stop that's basically that
what that is you'll notice if we do that
with the masking brush I'll hold down
control and change this stroke to drag
rect and then change that alpha to alpha
which is a star and now when you drag
this out it's going to drag out a mask
and it's not going to drop it until I
say okay this is where I want it now
you're going to notice it kind of
feathers out towards the edges that's a
function of this focal shift so
basically let's uh let's use our
standard brush let's turn off our alpha
so go into alpha turn it alpha off and
then change this back to drag dot and if
we just use a focal shift of zero you're
going to see it's just a nice basic
fall-off around the object here if I
crank up that focal shift you're going
to see how my cursor changes that's
basically the difference between the
edge of the brush is the outside of the
circle and then the focal area of the
brush is the inner circle and the more
the bigger the circles differences are
the more fall-off you're going to have
if I crank this focal shift down to
negative 100 that's both basically going
to be the stroke all the way up to the
edge so it's going to be ziad all the
way up to the edge so let's do that
we've got standard brush and we're going
to do focal shifted on negative 100 and
then focal shift at zero which is just
our standard default stroke and then
we're going to do focal shift at 100
which is almost not doing anything I'm
going to drop this down to like 80 so we
can demonstrate that a little bit better
so you can see has a very tight focal
shift and it kind of fades out and then
this one is just the zero is see that
the brush size is the middle one and
then it kind of fades out to the edge
and then this one focal shift negative
100 as I drag this focal shift down that
inner circles meeting the outer circle
that means there's literally no fall-off
by the time you get to 100 so knowing
that let's go back to our masking brush
and hold down control drag rect is
selected our alpha is a star and if I
drag this out you're going to see okay
it's a star but it kind of feathers out
towards the edge if I control drag out
here that'll unmask which is of course
the hot gesture for clear hold down
control and then change your focal shift
and negative 100 so that inner circle
meets the outer circle and then drag
that on you're going to see there's no
fall-off that doesn't get any gradient
towards the edge
is there so that's one way to control
how much of your mask or your alpha
shows up is make sure you change that
focal shift so it doesn't kind of fuzz
out towards them from the middle of the
stroke towards the end and keep in mind
like if you have the clay brush selected
or turn dynamic or any of these you can
change these strokes so if we have a
clay stroke of drag rect and we change
the alpha to a star this will be like a
clay brush that's brushing on a star so
if we go back to standard brush drag
rect and a star and we do it right next
to there see the difference you know the
clay brush is a little more flatter a
little more subtle standard brushes you
know a little more tubular like when you
drag it out you know they behave like
the same brush only you've made it a
drag rect stroke and you've made it an
alpha let's go and turn these off and
we'll go back to the clay brush turn
these back two dots and then off off and
let's go ahead and apply that to our
mask pin so we played around with mask
pin with the drag rect let's go ahead
and do drag dot now the difference
between drag rect and drag dot is the
drag rect you're dragging out a
rectangle of that alpha a drag dot
you're actually dragging out a version
of that alpha based on your brush size
so right now it just looks like a spot
because my brush size is so small so
they hit s and then break my brush size
really big and then hold down control I
can now drag dot that alpha around so
this is my drag dot of my star my cool
thing is as long as your brush brush I
say the same you can just drag out
copies like so now if I change this from
a drag to a drag wreck trying to drag
out stars of the same size and getting
them position correctly is a little bit
tougher like I'll just miss that once
let's start out lower than this one here
whereas if you're in uh gonna make a
little smaller whereas a drag dot you
know that they're all going to be
uniform because you're not changing your
brush size now if you do change your
brush size so I'll make you both size
smaller oops
yeah so make your brush size smaller
then hold down control then you can do
different sizes of different sizes
you've uniform and also be careful that
if you start control tapping it's going
to blur and then control Hall tapping
will sharpen so let's take it back down
to dots here so the same thing exact
same thing with brushes so if we go to
standard drag dot and brush alpha oops
let's do
star now our focal shift is still at
negative 100 so if we crank that it back
up to zero and then start dragging these
out you're going to see that it's a star
but towards the edges it kind of fades
out and sometimes that's what you want
you know it's not a bad thing
necessarily but if it's not what you
want change your focal shift down to
negative 100 and then it'll get stamped
on there all the way out to the edge
just like that
so again between the mask brushes the
mask modifier brush and the regular
brushes all of these things the stroke
and the Alfa's play the same kind of
role only ones with masking and one is
with the actual brush so let's go ahead
and drag her and do slider back
somewhere we just started there we go so
hold down control we try to talk a
little bit about this and spray when we
get into poly painting it might be a
little bit more relevant but you can
actually spray on your I wouldn't
probably spray on a mask but for say the
standard brush we change this to a spray
and we change this to like a square
alpha what you can do is you can kind of
spray on change the intensity down you
can actually spray on it kind of looks
like some noise you can hold down alt
you can use very quick surface changes
it kind of like surface noise which
we'll get to you know so you can kind of
spray on brush strokes if you'd like and
that'll that'll come in handy sometimes
if you get into some organic stuff but
we'll go ahead and change that back to a
dot stroke no alpha and now we're back
to a regular standard brush now this is
still a lousy intensities we're going to
change this back to like maybe 33 our
focal just still at negative 100 so it's
going to kind of do that super tight
stroke around there something to change
that back to zero
oops there we go and now we're just at a
regular standard brush