In this short tip, I will try to summarize all hard-surface tools, which I know in ZBrush. – ZModeler – Clip/Trim/Slice brushes (Ctrl+Shift) – Various hard-surface brushes like trim dynamic, pinch, chisel, dam standard, planar, etc. – Duplicate -> Slice brush -> Select brush -> Delete hidden -> Optionally ZRemesher -> Panel Loops for paneling […]
Author: Ruslan Nazirov

Mixing Boolean and Subdiv workflows
Initially, this tip was written, when I tried to cut certain shapes on cylinder object and have to make a clean high poly version of it for bake normals. Boolean workflow speeds up your work in that case but doesn’t have good compatibility with subdiv workflow (to make low poly cylinder perfectly round, for example). […]

Etherlinker for UE4
Today I want to share my project, Etherlinker for UE4, which will allow you to interact with Ethereum blockchain from Unreal Engine 4It’s open-source and free, has built-in VR and multiplayer support and lots of other features. Why you may need this project: You want to add an additional source of income for your project […]

How to encrypt data with AES-256 in UE4
In this short tip, I will show you how to encrypt data with AES-256 in UE4. The code will be written in C++ but can be used later in blueprints. First thing what you need to do is to create a class, derived from UBlueprintFunctionLibrary. Then add two methods to the header: After that implement […]

How to get sculptable mesh from low-poly mesh with bad topology in Blender.
Let’s imagine that you quickly created required mesh with Boolean modifiers (or with any other way, which produces bad topology) and now you want to sculpt additional details and make a good high poly mesh. First what you need is to increase polycount for your low poly model. But with bad topology, it’s really hard […]

Quick Tip #6: Optimizing performance of VXGI in UE4
Before optimizing VXGI, make a complete scene first (or at least a level block out) – many parameters depends on the environment.Do not use specular tracing in very glossy environments (average environment roughness should be > 0.2) and with manually tuned reflection captures.For the best performance do not use movable spot/point lights and use only […]

Quick Tip #5: Texture planning for modular environments
Let’s imagine that you want to create a texture, which has different areas, related to the specific meshes. For example, sci-fi panels. If you just randomly create these areas on texture, you will get bad grid snapping and as a result much longer mesh placement, especially for big environments.How to avoid this? Texture planning!This texture […]

How to use Image Plate Plugin for Unreal Engine 4
In this quick tip I will show you how to use new Image Plate Plugin for Unreal Engine 4, which allows you to mix any videos with your scenes in UE4.Follow these steps:1. Create UE4 project and activate Image Plate Plugin2. Capture or find a video, which you will use as a background3. Convert it to […]

Quick Tip #4: How to build lighting in a big landscape.
If you tried to build lighting in a big landscape in UE4 with a lot of foliage, you probably noticed that it’s almost impossible to do this if you don’t have a supercomputer or two (and even then you probably will get a lot of warnings, like lightmap UV overlapping for your foliage or lightmaps issues for […]