Tutorial

Zbrush 2022 Features: Part 1

Ben Courtenay

Art Heroes Contributor

The team at Pixologic have been hard at work creating and updating new features for Zbrush 2022! We're going to cover all of them, so let's get to it!

Knife Brush: There's More!

One of my favourite tools from the last update has got some additional functions: Knife Rec and Knife Circle. Now you can cut squares and circles out of your mesh on the fly! Hard surface modeling in Zbrush just keeps getting better and better (And we've not even touched on BevelPro yet).

Gizmo Focal Shift

This feature is so exciting! You can now use the focal shift to modify the Gizmo tool. Not only that, but it can be used on any Transpose tool (this includes the Transpose Cloth!)

By default the focal shift is set at -100 (which means it's off). Simply put, a mask gradient is applied to the mesh. As you slide the slider up, the intensity of the mask increases (at 100 the Gizmo won't have any affect on the mesh, imagine it as completely masked).

Bas Relief

One of the biggest arrivals with Zbrush 2022 is the new Bas Relief feature. It gives you the ability to turn a subtool or multiple subtools into an embossment.
It can work in a couple of ways:

You can project the visible subtools onto a lower subtool via the subtool palette.
Alternatively, you can turn a single subtool into an Alpha, which you can drag onto another mesh.

Highly recommend playing around with this feature!

Quick Bits!

Interpolate: You can now apply intensity and colour!
Deformation Palette: You can now use Repeat to Active, Repeat to Other or Repeat to Folder.
Visibility Set: You can now assign different subtools to different Visibility Sets.
Mask by Depth: Based on the camera angle you can apply a gradient mask to the mesh.

We've only covered some of the newest features, there's still a bunch that'll be covered in Part 2, so stay tuned!

Ben Courtenay,
Art Heroes Contributor