ZBrushCentral

Tile Helper Zbrush Plugin

I have been sitting on this plugin for a while and I finally got a break to clean it up for you guys. It didn’t really fit in with my other plugin so I made it into it’s own. Huge, huge, huge thanks to Marcus here for getting me unstuck so many times. The guys a genius!

This plugin is basically a very basic array with some other canvas tools to help with making tiling sculpts. It takes a single Subtool and will duplicate then transform along the X,Y based on sliders. Then you can check the tiling with the “Tiling Preview” button.

Main Plugin

  • L: Constrains the values of the two neighboring sliders so they move together.
  • Rows/Columns: These determine how many duplicates are made.
    - X/Y Distance: These determine how far each mesh is offset from each other.
  • Clone: If enabled, when “Tile” is clicked the script will be performed on a cloned version. This is recommended because finding the right distance to offset can be somewhat “guess-and-check.”
  • Random 90 Rotation: This button will randomly choose visible subtools and rotate them either 90 or 180 degrees on the X axis.
  • 90: Disable to only rotate 180 when “Random 90 Rotation” is pressed.
  • 180: Disable to only rotate 90 when “Random 90 Rotation” is pressed.
  • Tile Preset 1-3: CTRL-Click to save settings. Regular click to restore saved settings.

Canvas Tools

  • 128-2048: These buttons resizes the canvas to the respective size.
  • StartUp Size: Restores document to size when Zbrush launched.
  • Tile Preview Size: This slider determines what size the mesh will be previewed at when “Tile Preview” is pressed.
  • Tile Preview: When pressed the mesh will be tiled on the canvas so you can see how the mesh repeats.

Here is a short video showing off how it works.

//youtu.be/NnQcWBRbB0M

Here area few examples I made very quickly with the plugin.

Download!

It’s still somewhat experimental and beta. There is a known UI bug for a few people that will be fixed very shortly. I have some things planned but I am not really an enviro artist so I would love any suggestions on how to make it better for you guys!

Attachments

brick.jpg

roofing.jpg

table.jpg

tileHelper_plugin.jpg

Awesome plug.

Thank you!

Awesome!! Love it thank you so much for sharing this useful little plugin it works great!:sunglasses:small_orange_diamond:+1:

p.s.
Also really thankful for the closed captions on your video too, very helpful for a person with a hearing loss, how did you do that if I might ask? Was the CC made in UTube or you making it in another program?:slight_smile:

Nice plugin. is it possible to to offset every other row by 50%? sometimes the brick is not directly placed below the upper brick, but offset to the left or right by about 50%. Kind of like this… tate-mosesian.jpg

Ah! I totally forgot to add the example images! I edited the first post with a few images to show what I made while testing the plugin.

@Seavannah: Thank you! Yes I made the captions in YouTube. I don’t really have alot of YouTube experience. This was only my second or third video uploaded to there. I don’t quite know all the ins-and-outs yet but I am glad they were helpful. I will continue to use them in the future!

@ninjatastic: I was considering incorporating a feature like that into the plugin but I feel that Zbrush already has a really good way of doing this. Here is what I did to offset the bricks in the example image above.

  • Hide every other row. These are the rows you DON’T want to move.
  • Using Deformation>Offset move ONE brick the desired amount.
  • At the bottom of the Deformation menu there is a button “Repeat to Other.” This makes the same offset to all other other visible subtools.

Depending on how much you initially set the X/Y slider too it may take multiple presses.

I didn’t even know UTube could do that thanks so much, you may not have experience with UTube but you taught me something new for sure. I have been trying my hand at CC/ subtitle software forever and haven’t found one that works.

Love the images so inspiring I already can think of how this plugin will help a bunch and make some things a whole lot faster for me! Love the little metal cart that’s awesome!:smiley:

I experimented a bit with it, and it’s pretty nice so far !

My only concern is that it creates a ton of tools, and really get the tool palette kinda messy, I would love to see a option to “Acccept” and apply the tile, also an option to merge all the the subtools would be quite nice

Many thanks for sharing! This looks very useful indeed. :+1:

Cheers! :slight_smile:

Thanks for your suggestions. I did really want away to preview it before the tile similar to how the Subtool Extract works but I don’t think that is possible.

I went back and forth on if I should have an option to merge the end result. The one big drawback is that right now with the way I have it executing is it would be incredibly slow. The script can already be kind-of slow with dense meshes. Using “Merge Visible” is probably much faster and more flexible than letting my script do it.

I may re-write some parts and add it in if there is enough interest.

On Mac, there is a overlapping in the palette, if you use interface button size 38.

It happens to “tile preview size”
overlapping.jpg

Thanks for letting me know. I should have a fix for it up very soon!

Small update fixing the overlapping buttons. Thanks for those that pointed it out. If you don’t have issues with overlapping buttons you can ignore this.

More features coming soon I promise!
Download!

Works fine now with the new update !

Thanks for the very useful plugin and the quick support :+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

I tested in 4R4, kinda nifty, but :
-X and Y Distance are inverted
-There’s no slider for the Random Rotation
-you can’t choose the axis of rotation

I see ‘Array’ options only in the video…?

Hey guys. Just wanted to pimp my Zscript tutorial that just released.

I teamed up with the guys at Eat3D and made a 4 hour tutorial on scripting in Zbrush. No need to be a smarty-pants-programmer to learn Zscripting. It’s very easy to learn. The tutorial starts with an introduction and goes through the process of making a final plugin.

Check it out.
http://eat3d.com/zscripting

Now that the tutorial is done I plan on updating this tool sometime soon-ish.

Hi Nick,

Sorry to hassle you ( I know you’re very busy with your other wonderful plugins)

I can’t seem to get the Tile Helper Plugin to work properly in Z4R6

Objects don’t appear to tile uniformly no matter how many times I adjust the sliders.
Most of the duplicates seem to sit on top each other.

Any ideas?

Hi. Not a problem at all.

It’s working for me in 4R6. Off the top of my head it sounds like a scale issue. Did you import a mesh from another software? As a test try using one of the Zbrush primitives and see if it still happens.

Hi Nick,

Thank you for the reply.

Yes, I did try the plugin out with the default primitives converted to polymesh.

I still had no joy.

I vaguely remember having trouble with the plugin from Z4r5 as well.

My workspace and brushes have been heavily modified thru past releases.
It could be a config issue.

The last time I could use Tile Helper properly was with Z4r4.
I’m glad to hear that it works with Z4r6.

Thank you for your time and clarification.

Looking forward to your future Plugins.

Many Thanks,

Neil