ZBrushCentral

saving tools vs projects and documents...

Hello,

new to zbrush and the forums. awesome stuff!!

Can someone explain when it’s best to use each save option? When is it best to save a project file opposed to a Tool?

And when I’m working on a tool… do I constantly have to save as? Or is there a way to just save my current progress, quickly?

thanks for the time,

:lol: can anybody help??

You’ll need to copy all between

 and 

, not those words, save as “SV_Tool.txt” to someplace like C:\Program Files (x86)\Pixologic\ZBrush 4R7\ZStartup\Macros\Misc
This will put a button in that place where you can find it.


//Thanks to marcus_civis for this button that saves the current tool with the same file name
// or asks for a new name for ZBrush default tools
[IButton,"???","SV_Tool, NO WARNINGS, IF NAMED, SAVES OVER THE EXISTING TOOL!!",
 [VarSet,toolPath,[ToolGetPath]]
 [If,[StrLength,toolPath],
  [If,([StrFind,"\",toolPath]==-1)&&([StrFind,"/",toolPath]==-1),
   //not a full path - use Save As"
   [IPress,Tool:Save As]
   ,//else we have a full path 
   [VarSet,toolPath,[StrMerge,toolPath,".ztl"]]//must add on file extension 
   [FileNameSetNext,toolPath]
   [IPress,Tool:Save As]
   [NoteBar,[StrMerge,toolPath," saved..."]]
  ] //end if
 ]//end if
]//end button

@Thors Nuts…

hehehehe… the nuts of gods.
I digress…

There are a couple of ways of saving things quickly, the first is simply doing “save as” and not renaming your object, quick and simple.
Even quicker is QuickSave which is at the top of the ZBrush window on the right.
This will VERY quickly save your whole project.

Using Save As in the Tool pallet will save the object you are working on at the moment, meaning anything you have on the canvas and any subtools.

Saving a Project is for when you have a a lot going on, for example you might have a tool with many subtools on the canvas, and a lot of other tools loaded as well but not active. This will create larger files but is often a good option if you are actually working on more than one thing. For example say you have made a person and a chair but have yet to append the chair as a subtool because its not done and the person would get in the way.

Saving a Document will flatten your 3D stuff, or offer the option to save the tool (objects in ZBrush are called tools).
Basicly this is a picture of what ever you are looking at, you can also export images from the same menu in various formats.

QuickSave is very cool in many ways, you just need to remember to NEVER hit Init ZBrush in the Preference Menu, or Default ZScript at the top of the window, both seem to delete ALL of your QuickSave files and THAT is not much fun.
QuickSave can be configured in the Preference Menu under oddly enough: QuickSave.
The files that you save using this automatically go into a directory easily available via LightBox, and while you can only save up to 100 things using this you can always back up the directory if you need to.
QuickSave is automatically running, and while this is terrific it can be annoying, I have it set to wait 600 minutes so it doesnt get on my nerves, I just need to remember to hit the button once in a while.

On top of all that there is also Export, this is great if you need to get your objects and stuff into other programs and can save in a number of different formats.

I hope that helps!

Thank you for the advice… sorry I didn’t see this earlier to say thanks but I didn’t receive any notification.

thanks again, very helpful