ZBrush Tutorial: Submarine Hatch: Adding Valve
by Ryan Kingslien

Now, its time to create the hatch’s valve mechanism.  We are going to use a simple wheel and spoke arrangement.

In this tutorial we will use:

• Primitives
• ZSpheres

We will need to be familar with:

• SubTools
• ZSpheres

First select Ring3D from the Tool palette.  Go to the Tool: Initialize menu and set SRadius to somewhere between 10 and 20.  Remember, you want a thin wheel.

Select the hatch door from the Tool palette, press Tool: SubTool: Append and select the Ring3D that you just edited.  Note, it will give you a choice to convert to a polymesh or keep it as a ZBrush Primitive.  You will want to press Yes to convert it.  If you don’t then you wont be able to sculpt it.

Use Tool: Deformation: Size to decrease the size of the SubTool.  Move slider to -100 a few times.

We will use zspheres to create the spokes.  Press Tool: SubTool: Append and select a ZSphere.  Press R and scale the ZSphere down to fit better.

Turn on Radial Symmetry as shown except you should work with Z symmetry.  Create one row of ZSpheres that will serve as roots.

Then click on any root, press CTRL and drag up or down to push the zsphere out along the normal.  This create the straight line of the spoke.  It is essential that you click on one of hte roots BEFORE you press CTRL.

Turn on Transperancy and make sure everything is sized correctly.  You may have to rotate the zsphere if you worked with X symmetry.  You can do this in the Tool: Preview window.  Simple click in the Preview window and rotate the model like you do in the ZBrush canvas.  Then press Tool: Preview: Store and the model on the canvas will adjust its orientation.

Press A to check the mesh.  This looks good.  Then press Tool: Adaptive Skin: Make Adaptive Skin

Append the skinned ZSphere to the model.  Press Tool: SubTool: Append and select it.

Spend some time cleaning up the polygroups so that all spokes share the same group.  This makes life much easier down the road.

Here we go.