Wireframe cages are handy. Â Â They’re pretty easy to make. Â In fact, you can make a wireframe of any mesh’s level 1 polygons quite easily. Â Â You start with your basic mesh, and apply UVTile UVs from the UV pallet. Â
Subdivide the model 3 or 4 times so you have some nice detailed geometry to work with and store a Morph Target use “StoreMT” on the Morph Target pallet–we’ll need this later. Â
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Next, we want to mask the wire look. Â This is easy–alpha 28. Â It just looks like a square smaller than the the full alpha space. Â
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Use “Mask by Alpha” on the Masking subpallet and invert. Â I filled out the mask top and bottom squares from my alpha because I’m going to want a place to drop in a logo later. Â
A quick application of inflate and we have the shape protruding up from the basic object. Â
If only Zbrush had a way to just save this frame and chuck the rest. Â It does! Â Remember that morph target we saved? Â Well, there is another handy button on the Morph Target panel marked “Create Diff”. Â Press it once and it will create a new tool in the tool pallet which is the difference between the existing mesh and its stored morph target. Â Since we only raised up the wire shape, that’s the only difference and that’s what we’ll have left, leaving us with nice wireframe shape.