Insert Multimesh Brush

I am going to talk a little bit about the Insert MutiMesh brush (or IMM) in Zbrush and show an example of how I used it in my project. This brush is pretty easy to use and create. It can be used for pretty much anything, from buttons and zippers to rocks and pebbles. In my project, I am modeling a castle house type of building and I am creating my own IMM brush to use for the shingles on the roof.

There are a bunch of preloaded IMM brushes that are already in Zbrush that can be used, you just have to click on the brushes tab and hit 'I' on your keyboard to isolate the brushes that start with that letter. If you don't find one you need in there, its very easy to create your own.

I decided to create five different shingles to use for my roof, in this photo, they are all stacked on top of each other because the next step is creating the actual brush. The first thing you want to do is model whatever you need to use for the brush, you can have as many different subtools as you want. Once they're all done being modeled, you open them all up and make them visible at the same time.  

Once they're all open, all you need to do is open up Brush> Create and hit the button that says Create InsertMultiMesh. After that, you want to hit save as and name it whatever you want. Then go to Applications>ZbrushOSX 2019.1>Zbrushes>Insert-IMM and save it to that folder. If you have a different version of zbrush, you'll save it to that folder after you click on applications if its different than mine. If you would like to create an icon for the brush so you can find it easier, all you have to do is drag out the various pieces on a sphere, go back to the brushes tab and hold alt and hit the selection button and it'll create a preview of your brush. 

This is what will show up at the top of the screen when you are using your specific IMM brush. It'll show all of the different pieces you can use and you can scroll through them and pick whichever one you need. 

This is the base mesh I am using for this project, I exported it from my castle scene as an OBJ so I can add the roof tiles onto it with the IMM brush. Any shape can be used and it will follow the curve of the base model. 

You then just scroll through the different pieces of the IMM brush at the top of the screen and choose which one you need, after that, its simply just clicking and dragging out the brush pieces where you want them to be. If you want to separate the individual pieces from the base mesh, all you have to do is go to Subtool>Split>Split Unmasked Points and that's it, each piece will be a different subtool.

There's a lot of different used for the IMM brush whether you need a premade piece or need to sculpt your own, its very easy to use and there's so much that can be done with it.