Live Boolean

Live Boolean is a process that we can use in Zbrush to allow for the creation of quicker geometry by allowing the starting base geometry to be cut away, built upon, or using the areas that are shared between another additional piece of geometry.  For this I will demo creating a simple cylindroid that if it was modeled in a program like Maya would take a much longer time due to the issue that performing this same process would create unusable geometry.

Now to use Live Boolean first it must be activated.  on my setup it is located in the upper left hand side of the screen 3rd button from the left sitting next to the Light Box and Home Page buttons. once this is activated then you can start the process of creating a Live Boolean piece.

Now that Live Boolean is activated you'll need to set up a piece to act as your starting piece of geometry.  This can be done by clicking in the subtool menu the downward facing arrow in the upper left of the selected subtool.  Doing so will create a starting point for your Live Boolean and will continue down the list of subtools until it either reaches the end or is stopped by the start of another Live Boolean line.

So as I explained earlier now that the setup is done I'll be demoing a quick easy cylindroid so due to this we will first start with a simple cylinder and set it up adding additional polygons during the initialization to allow for a smoother piece then the original low polygon geometry that would be given with out any adjustments.  Following this we set up this piece to be the start of the Live Boolean by clicking the aforementioned downward facing arrow.

 After adding this piece we will then add the first pieces of geometry to be removed from the base for this demo I needed two cubes which I scaled down to size and positioned where I needed them in the piece allowing for setup for the first removal.  for that we will then need to look back at the tool bar.

Now looking at the pieces inside the subtools there are three icons that use circles that are used inside Live Boolean.  First is the Union option, the left option, which allows for the two pieces of geometry to be combined as if they were one piece of geometry.  Next is the Difference, the middle option, which takes the area of the piece of geometry and removes that from the base piece of geometry.  Lastly we have the Intersection option, the right option, this takes the piece of geometry and the base piece and removes everything that is not inside the area that the two pieces overlap.  For demo I will be using the Difference option.

Now we can take the same process and then use this with a cylinder to cut out the area in between allowing for a punctured hole.

Then we can follow this up with another set of cylinders to place an indent allowing a screw a resting place inside the cylindroid.

Finally we can then taper the top of the cylindroid by using the ring and allow for the finishing touches on the cylindroid before we finalize.  Allowing the Live Boolean to take something like this.

And turn it into the cylindroid.

After you are happy with the piece created in Live Boolean then you can take into the finalization.  To do so inside the Subtool toolbar there will be an option towards the end called Boolean.  Inside this option you'll see a option to "Make Boolean Mesh".  Clicking this will then allow Zbrush to go and combine the pieces together into one mesh.

Thus giving the desired cylindroid as one piece which is then placed inside the options for processes like the simple brush allowing you to pull it out and save it as a tool to be implemented into the main piece that you are building.

And that is a quick and easy explanation of the Live Boolean tool inside of Zbrush and compared to modeling this out in Maya which would of taken hours was created in Zbrush in a matter of minutes.