Liquid: New ZPlugin

[ryankingslien]

liquidBanner.jpg

Welcome to Liquid!

Liquid allows you to use ZBrush's sculpting tools on your texture map or on the unshaded color of your canvas. To enter Liquid , press "L" on your Keyboard or the Liquid button in your ZPlugin's palette. Liquid will drop your model to canvas and allow you to alter your texture. When you are done either press "L" again or Freeze in the Zplugins palette. Liquid will then pick up your model from the canvas and apply your alterations.

With Liquid you can:

Use ZBrush's move tool to push and pull your texture.
Use ZBrush's pinch brush to pinch in areas of your texture. Also, you can press Alt while using Pinch to enlarge areas of your texture
Use ZBrush's smooth brush to smooth out distortions you made.
Use ZBrush's morph brush to undo your distortions.


View a wireframe of your distortion by pressing View Distortion.
Use ZBrush's dynamic levels of resolution to make global or local modifications.
Use Fade to fade the effects as the surface turns away from the viewer.
Use DoubleSided to project your modifications to both sides of your model.

:b3: :b3: :b3: Download v2 here (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=28100&stc=1):b3: :b3: :b3:

3/3/06: v2 is released. Fixes some issues people experienced with initializing ZBrush and added two new features: the ability to save out your distortion mesh and to load one back in.

To install, unzip content to your ZStartup/ZPlugs folder. If a ZPlugs folder doesn't exist just create one.


Press Help in the Liquid interface to learn more. Enjoy and happy Pixoling!!

Ryan


liquidBannerThumb.jpg

[yoogy]

Wooooow - Looks great , i will tested next time -

Z-Anx :tu: :tu: :tu: ;)

[DarthWayne]

Now this is a plugin that is going to be damn useful for using existing textures you've made on new models......in fact thers a whole host of things you could do with it! I was actualy wishing there was soemthing like this a few nights ago, so you must be a mind reader.

5 Stars for making a plug I'll find really useful! Thanks for spending time to make this.

Wayne...

[ever]

sounds verry cool, got to testit.
greetingz ever

[DarthWayne]

well works like a dream and best of all easy to use (trust me, your not going to need a manual for this one!). I used it to take a texture fro my bouncer Wip and fit it to this quick sketch. This is going to be one of my favorite plugins. Only problem I came accross was that it mirrored my texture from front of face to the back of the head, but thats no biggy really.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?p=257318#post257318

Wayne...

[zzagno]

i have some problems: i cannot see the psd buttons (i just see a big "?") and also zbrush crashes when i initialize the plugin..any suggestion?!?! :o

[cy]

Works fine here great script for fixing UV distortions. RYAN you are soon to be a nominee in the Zbrush Scripting Hall of Fame.

2003 Inductee
Svengali
2004 Inductee
Cameyo
2005 Inductee
Marcus Civis
2006 Inductee?

[andreseloy]

Andreseloy

[wenna]

Thank you for this plug-in! Haven't tried it yet, but it looks like fun!


wenna

[ryankingslien]

DarthWayne -
By default double sided projections is on. To turn it off just turn off the DoubleSided button by clicking it till it is no longer orange. Glad you like it. :D


Thanks guys for the kind words. :)

Ryan

[ryankingslien]

zzagno - What system are you using? Do you have the LiquidData folder directly under your ZStartup/ZPlugs? What is the exact error it gives you, if any? Can you provide a list of the plugins you have installed?

Ryan

[50'sKID]

You guys are like the 'Energizer Bunny' with these plugins, you just keep going, and going, and going. Many, many thanks! 50.

[Erklaerbar]

Many thanks! Gonna try out right now :-)

E.

[RockmanEx]

Ryan, its good to see this thing in action...Its better than I could have envisioned..have fun in Montreal!

[Thomas Mahler]

Man, that's a great addition to PM. Good stuff, Ryan, thanks!

[Atwooki]

Very nice Ryan; thanks a lot :tu:

I can envisage this plugin having a multitude of delightful purposes, not
least for UV corrections here and there as mentioned earlier....

I gave this a quick going over last night, and all went well, although on
occasion the whole texture seemed to 'jump' at each mouse-down /
brushstroke when used on a 3D model :eek:

That aside, a great addition to the ever-expanding toolset!
cheers

Chris

[Dickie]

This should prove to be quite useful!

Thanks, Ryan!

Dickie

[ryankingslien]

Atwooki - The zscript uses a 3D plane to project the texture back onto the model. If you click on the canvas and not on one of the verticies of the 3D plane you essentially rotate the 3D plane. Does that describe what was happening to you?

Thanks for checking it out. :)

Ryan

[ryankingslien]

Thomas - Yeah, I was using the technique in Projection Master first and then was shown how Projection Master does its business and just made Liquid its own little Projection Master. Only for textures though. Zscripting is pretty cool. Once I learned how to use memory block and routines everything went pretty fast. I included the zscript code for those who are interested in. I am a big fan of open source.

I should state here that if it wasn't for Marcus', Ken's and of course Pixolator's help I could not have got this far! Thank you gentlemen! :)

Ryan

[Enigma]

Thanks Ryan!


The plugin is so sweet, I'll probably be using it on a daily basis.

[ryankingslien]

Enigma - wait till ya see whats next! :D

`r

[marcus_civis]

Great work Ryan! :tu: I look forward to seeing your next zscript project... :)

[Abyssis]

you rocks ryan-man :cool:

Thank you well...

[jvpt3]

Much thanks.

[Jhotun]

Ummm, i think that maybe i´m the only one having errors with this zplugin.

Ok, so i load a model with some subdivs, then import my texture and flip vertical. Place it on the canvas and hit L.
It all seems to go well, i do some small modifications moving the texture and when happy i hit L again. It drops and everything seems ok. Then i realize that i have double side texture. Try to undo, but it does not work. Then, i change my texture back to the original and hit L again.
Now, the texture on the object inside the Liquid seems to be wrong as hell. Nothing is in place like if the projection had failed totally. I hit Exit and the texture on my object is correct, but it seems that if Liquid has a temp buffer, it is not cleared when entering a second time.
Even more, after some frustrating tries, i do a Init Zbrush to start again. I load my model, my texture and hit L. Then while the entering progress, a message appears during a second or two saying something like "swith to the correct subdiv level..." and when Liquid enters, my model has dissapeared. If i exit, the model still is dissapeared, and the only way to get a mesh back to the canvas is to reset zbrush.

I have experienced some more strange behaviors with this, but all of them seem to start when entering a second time on Liquid, since the first time it works ok.

Am i doing something wrong? Is there anyone with similar problems? I´m really excited about this plugin, but as it is working for me right now, it is impossible to use.

Later

[ryankingslien]

Jhotun - I am really sorry for the late response! :|

I should really turn Double sided off by default. I will do that in the next version.

As for undoing texture projections. You can't currently undo texture projections from Projection Master and my script uses the same technology so you can't do it from mine. That said, i can certainly insert a little code that will save out your texture as a backup that you can restore later if things don't go over well. I thought of doing that a bit ago. My first thought would be to save the texture into a memory block. This would create an image buffer that you could use to recall the last texture before projection. :)

Liquid should work multiple times. I have tested it several times and all is well here. I will try to duplicate your problem, though.

As for your model disappearing and not redrawing onto the screen correctly we have to go back to basics.

When you draw a model onto the canvas you draw with Material, Color and Depth. For some actions, Liquid turns off material, leaves color on, and sets depth to 0. If you exit Liquid without pressing the Exit button it is conceivable that those settings would stay the same. All you have to do it to press MRGB on the shelf and then make sure ZAdd is on and that Z Intensity is set to 100. Chances are that will fix it. No need to restart ZBrush. :)

Did you get Liquid from the link above or did I send it to you directly? Earlier versions had the problem you described above.

Ryan

[Atwooki]

Hi there, Ryan

As for undoing texture projections. You can't currently undo texture
projections from Projection Master and my script uses the same technology
so you can't do it from mine. That said, i can certainly insert a little code
that will save out your texture as a backup that you can restore later if
things don't go over well. I thought of doing that a bit ago. My first thought
would be to save the texture into a memory block.
This would create an image buffer that you could use to recall the last
texture before projection. :) Something like that would be verrry handy for ZAppLink, too, in respect
of storing the 'temp' file somewhere that was exported over to the image
editing prog... ;)

Chris

[Jhotun]

ryan: No problem :D I´m using the version downloaded from this thread, but really, this seems like a bug or something. I have tried to make it work on other machines and still the same thing. The main problem is that it seems that when you enter the liquid for the second time, the 3d plane seems to be flipped backwards. I cannot find any explanation for this strange behavior :( also, i have always exited the plugin with the exit button.

Later

[ryankingslien]

JHotun -

I just tried this around six times this morning and I do not get the problem you are reporting. Is anyone else experiencing this?

One thing that would really help me diagnose this is a zscript recording of the problem. Just record a basic example of the problem. I can look at that and see what Liquid may be doing that is causing you problems. If you can send me a zscript of that just email me at ryan@pixologic.com :)

Best,

Ryan

[MattSilverstein]

just wanted to chime in to say, first, that this is a tremendous plug. when it works, it works beautifully. i love it. unfortunately i seem to be having the same problem as jhotun. works fine the first time (create a ztool, drop into edit mode, create a texture, PM a few brush strokes, pick up out of PM, then drop into liquid, edit, pick up out of liquid). next time i drop into liquid, my model appears mostly black. by moving my cursor outside the document bounds and rotating the plane i can reorient it so that it looks correct again. but when i try smudging the texture again it seems unstable. the texture moves a bit before and after each "smudge". can't quite figure out whats happening....if you have any questions i'll do my best to answer.

-matt

[ryankingslien]

Hey Matt -

Thanks for the kind words. The best thing is to send me a zscript recording of the problem.

When you encounter the problem just go to the zscript palette, click End Record, save the file out and upload it here. I can look through that and see if the zscript is doing something it shouldn't (I hope).

Also, the distortion plane can be rotated. I am not sure what you mean by unstable but if you click on a part of the mesh that is inbetween vertices it will rotate the mesh. Either way a zscript may help me understand. :)

r

[Jhotun]

Oops, for some reason i did not see the email notification :(
I´m gonna try to record a zscript with the problem.
Matt, maybe it would be a good idea you do the same. I think that this strange behaviour has to be with something we have installed or something on our computers that maybe escaped to the betatest purge :P

Glad to know that ryan is there :)

Thanks!

[Jhotun]

Ok, i have tried to record a zscript but for some reason it is not working :P Sorry, i have never done that before so i think i need to read some posts before posting crap here.
Instead of that, i have done some screenshots of the problem. I hope this can help.

Here we go:


1.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727569%27,%271.jpg%27,1,0%29)

2.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727570%27,%272.jpg%27,1,0%29)

3.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727571%27,%273.jpg%27,1,0%29)

4.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727572%27,%274.jpg%27,1,0%29)

5.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727573%27,%275.jpg%27,1,0%29)

6.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727574%27,%276.jpg%27,1,0%29)

7.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727576%27,%277.jpg%27,1,0%29)

8.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2727577%27,%278.jpg%27,1,0%29)


So, the problem seems to be when entering Liquid for a second time. Initialize does not seem to clear everything on the backstage.
Oh, i forgot to say that if i click on the Move or Draw button inside liquid... they dissapear :P Just like when you ctrl+click on any button. Veeery strange.

I have a lot of job to do from now until sunday, so i think i will not be able to try to record the zscript for now, but as soon as i can i´ll try to record it.

Later


EDIT: Ryan, i did the MRGB and Zadd thing. Yeah, the model draws correctly without the need to restart zb, but when entering liquid, it is still invisible.

[marcus_civis]

Jhotun and Matt,

Until Ryan has a chance to look at the code here is something you might try:

1.Start ZBrush and use the Tool>Load Tool button to locate and load the LiquidPlane.ZTL from the ZStartup/ZPlugs/liquidData folder.

2.Immediately press the Tool>Export>Export button to export the tool. Save it as LiquidPlane.OBJ to the ZStartup/ZPlugs/liquidData folder, clicking Yes to overwrite the existing file.

Now you can test Liquid to see how you get on. Be sure NOT to Initialize ZBrush during a session when you are using Liquid because clearing the Tool palette will cause the plugin to malfunction.

HTH,

[MattSilverstein]

hmm...so that totally worked. thanks, marcus!

i'm too tired to stress test it right now, but will report back if i have any problems or discoveries.

i did try to record a zscript, by the way, but failed miserably (my first attempt). will try again when i have a bit more mental energy...

-matt

[ryankingslien]

Thank you Marcus! I will review the code when I get back to the office on thursday guys. Thanks for all the hard work with screen shots and testing! We will get it right yet! :)

I am guessing that one of Liquid's automatic assumptions is getting all screwed up.

Cheers,
Ryan

[GhosTDoG]

i can load the script but it doesn't appear in the plug-in menu on (the next) startup.

greetz

[ryankingslien]

GhosTDoG -

To install, unzip content to your ZStartup/ZPlugs folder. If a ZPlugs folder doesn't exist just create one.

:)

r

[GhosTDoG]

yeb. the same procedure like my other plug-ins in my start up folder, but unforunatly it doesn't work. also didn't rename anything. strange thing.;):)


edit: u have to extract the stuff from the root folder again. i've put the entiere folder in my start up folder, so it didn't work.
works now, thx.

[warpy]

@marcus, your solution works.

@ryankingslien now for the bad things:

1. if you load one of the stock textures and not make your own one, liquid will not go into liquid mode. for examples using a sphere and the earth map.

2. when going into liquid mode the texture quality deteriorates, is this intentional ??

3. i dont see any difference when i push add more resolution. is it only me ?

4. is there a way to solve the fact that if you move a bit of texture from the boundary it carries some of the gray color beyoned the actual texture ?

cheers for the plugin, a few more fine tuning stages and its going to rock.

[ryankingslien]

warpy -

I haven't looked at Liquid yet but to answer your questions:
1. It is hard-wired not to use the default textures. There is a reason but I will re-examine it. :)
2. Can you give me a more detailed situtation? It is using ZBrush's 3d copy routine. You should get the same results you would if you went into projection master. The only difference is that Liquid will increase your document up to 2048 to try to keep as much resolution as possible. Everything is based on the texture that you go into liquid with.
3. do you mean the resolution slider in the Liquid interface? If so, you should "see" a difference. It is simply adjusting the amount of polys you have to work with in the distortion plane.
4. the primary solution is to not do it. :) If you drag grey onto the sides it will project gray onto the model. This is what the 3D Copy routine does. You can use a stencil to isolate areas to be picked up. :)

Best,

r

[ryankingslien]

warpy - what is your texture size?


r

[warpy]

@ryan good point it was on 256x256

with 4096 it doesnt lose quality.


@about the other pinching problem, does it interpolates between levels of resolutions. because it appears that it might do that on and the pinching change will appear mild on some levels while on others it will appear as intended?

[ryankingslien]

When it pinches, it is pinching a poly plane. Depending on the resolution when you pinch it, it will be either a larger or smaller difference. If you pinch it at a lower level it will hold less of its shape. I recommend that you use pinch at the highest level. :)

r

[ryankingslien]

Hello! I have just uploaded v2 of liquid! To download it go to the first post in this thread.

It should fix problems people experienced with the texture not picking up or after having initialized ZBrush. Special thanks to Marcus_Civis who fixed it!

Also, I have added two new features: the ability to save out a mesh of your distortion and the ability to load that back in!

I hope you enjoy!

Ryan

[Atwooki]

Thanks Ryan and Marcus - BIG :tu:
Much smoother overall and mesh saving ability's sweet too ;)

Chris

[ryankingslien]

Cool. Glad it works. :)


Ryan

[glog]

Hi Ryan. Ethan Summers here. The Liquid script looks VERY cool but when ever I click the lauch button Z Brush crashes. I'm using win 64 with 2 gigs RAM so perhaps the problem is there? ALso the Liquid buttons are missing icons so perhaps this is an instalation problem.

If you have any ideas...

thanks
-e

[kahshe]

I get the "you will now be dropped into liguid", I press OK and ZBrush dissapears' I'm wondering exactly where the files for this are supposed to be, I had to change things from the zip or I didn't see the plugin at all, I see it now but this is what happens, seems it works for others, any ideas.........rog

[Anatom]

Same here: no matter what I set, the zbrush2 closes when I click OK, like others did.

The raw material. Bug.
:D

Anatom

[ryankingslien]

Thanks for the notes guys. Can you list your system specs? That will help with problem solve. :)

r

[kahshe]

I have a AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual-core 3800 with 3 gigs of ram, woops I just checked my program files, the liquid data file was in the startup folder and not the plugins folder, not sure how that happened, so I moved it and tried again and viola it works. I really needed this so thanks I'll give it a good tryout now. So for anyone , check your file placement , liquid works for me now........rog

[Noggin]

Firstly: fantastic plugin_ superb for pushing and pulling pre-made textures!

I don't know whether this will help those who are struggling with crashes etc.
The zip has an uneccessary level in the file tree. I found if you extract from the zip using "Use folder names" in to the startup/plugins folder it doesn't work.

Scrap the "Liquid" element of the path and it works fine (I was getting the crash with my first attempts)
So Liqidv2.zsc should sit thus:
ZStartup/ZPlugs/Liquidv2.zsc
and
ZStartup/ZPlugs/liquidData/.....

[Anatom]

;)

Dear Noggin, thanks for the hint.
I'm getting old. I did not check to control the Liquid data directory, which was not where it should belong.
Presently learning the plugin.

Thank you Ryankingslien!

Anatom

[mathman]

Hello. zBrush v3.1 here. I am getting the following error message box when I start up the Liquid plugin :

In the title bar: ZScript Note: Interface item could not be found.
In the msg area: Alpha:Brush00 in [IPressAlpha:Brush00].

How can I fix this ? (....had a similar problem in Zketchpad, which was resolved by dumping a bunch of PSD files into the folder ZStartup\Alphas)


thanks and regards,

Andrew

[ryankingslien]

Hello Mathman, the plugin has not been updated to ZBrush 3.1.

I will be looking into it though. :)

Ryan

[Gareee]

Any progress with this? It sounds pretty nifty!

[ryankingslien]

Hey Gareee, thanks for the interst. Its unlikely, though, that I will be able to find the time to update this.

Best,

Ryan

[Gareee]

>>>cries!<<< But I totally understand.. maybe the source code could be turned over to another plug developer, or even pixologic for updating?

I hate to see quality work lost.

[Bayushi Ishii]

Many of my thanks!

[Spinedust]

This may sound strange, but I am running Zbrush 3.1 under Vista x64 and was installing different plugins and trying them out, but then removed them all to clean up my system, but Liquid stuck around. What I mean is after deleting all the files under ZStartup\Zplugs pertaining to the liquid plugin (and all the plugins for that matter) I could still see Liquid in the ZPlugin menu in Zbrush.



Now I know Liquid doesn't work in Zbrush 3.1, but this uninstall problem took me hours to figure out, and I hope someone can offer me some insight into what happened. It may be a Vista problem, or maybe Zbrush.



OK so get this!!! Zbrush can see files on my PC that windows can't, and I am not talking about hidden files that you can make visible by changing some windows settings. The two files that were invisible to Windows Vista were Liquidv2.zsc, and in the liquidData directory the currentConfig.cfg file.



So after over an hour of digging around the Zbrush installation directory, the registry, uninstalling Zbrush, and re-installing (re-activating) and deleting the entire inner contents of the Zbrush folder the Liquid plugin menu still showed up, so I started looking at my Config files under Preferences > Config and I noticed I could see some old config files that I had deleted through windows explorer. I did everything I knew how to (I'm pretty advanced/Worked at Microsoft) to see those files, but Vista couldn't see them, probably because I deleted them (but they were still half there because Zbrush could see them and was loading them up).



SO after figuring out Zbrush could see them I use the Preferences > Config > LoadIU option to get into a browser dialogue box and right clicked to select the delete option on each file. Then I restarted Zbrush and no more Liquid menu under ZPlugin.



Now I am guessing it was a Windows Vista Zbrush quirk. If I would have totally deleted the Pixologic directory then I think all the hidden files would have gotten deleted, and when I re-installed Zbrush I wouldn't have had the problem, but who knows...



Anyone else experience anything like this?

[voolger]

I am not using ZBrush on Win Vista but the soultion could be that somewhere files had been copied to another folder. A specific folder you could look into could be e.g. C:\Users\<username>\AppData and then Local or Roaming including the subfolders. Usually you will find many folders and files from Apps you use in there. Maybe the two files you look for are also in a folder relating to ZBrush. Hope this helps.

voolger

[Spinedust]

I am not using ZBrush on Win Vista but the soultion could be that somewhere files had been copied to another folder. A specific folder you could look into could be e.g. C:\Users\<username>\AppData and then Local or Roaming including the subfolders. Usually you will find many folders and files from Apps you use in there. Maybe the two files you look for are also in a folder relating to ZBrush. Hope this helps.

voolgerNo I checked that, and there were no files there. Besides I found the solution if you read my entire post (the hidden files I deleted solved the problem). The main point was only Zbrush could see these hidden files (Windows couldn't).