ZBrushCentral

ZMats+31 - update for ZBrush 3.1

[attach=87566]Svengali ZB3 plugin ZMatsplus31.jpg[/attach]

ZMATS+31 is not an upgrade but has simply been made compatible with ZBrush 3.1

ZMATS+31 is a handy manager for ZBrush Materials.

The ZMATS31.ZIP file contains all the necessary files.

NOTE: When I posted the original ZMATS, some people mistakenly thought I was posting a library of materials. NO. The ZMATS+31 plugin simply provide you with a tool for MANAGING your own materials. You have to create or load your own library. There are several existing libraries that you can download and convert for use in ZMATS+31. Read about these options in the original ZMATS thread >> HERE << . Be sure to checkout the handy filename conversion utility generously posted by Marcus_Civis in that same thread.

ZMATS+31 FUNCTIONALITY

:large_orange_diamond: Multiple Bank Storage: There are five BANK buttons (A,B,C,D and E) and each bank can store four hundred materials. Total material storage for ZMATS+31 is 2,000 different materials.
:large_orange_diamond: Each material being stored is applied to a sphere and Best Rendered. (The spheres are branded with a depressed “Z” to better display some characteristics of the stored material.)
:large_orange_diamond: The Undo button lets you recover a previous material if you accidentally load a new material before saving the old. The Undo operation is one level only.
:large_orange_diamond: The Help button provides a complete explanation of ZMATS+31 button functionality.
:large_orange_diamond: The Find button brings up a window displaying a block of forty materials at a time. Ten page blocks of materials can be veiwed sequentially using the arrow keys. You can also jump directly to any one of the ten blocks by pressing one of the ten block buttons. At anytime you may click on a specific material thumbnail, which immediately loads that material. The five slot windows are updated so that the loaded material is displayed in the center slot.
:large_orange_diamond: The Best button will apply a best render to your model for three seconds since some materials characteristics are only seen in best render mode. After three seconds, a preview render is reapplied to your model.

INSTALLING ZMATS+31

Just unzip the contents of the Zmats31.zip file into the ZPlugs directory.

Next time you start ZBrush 3.1 you will find a new button, the ZMats+31 button, in the Zplugin palette in the Svengali submenu. This button can be Control-dragged onto one of the shelves on your interface and made a permanent part of your startup UICustom.cfg file by pressing Control+Shift+I. Now, anytime you need to load or save a material just press the ZMats+31 button.

PREVIOUS USERS OF ZMATS PLUS

If you were already using the ZMats Plus plugin with ZBrush 2, you can continue to use your collection of materials by copying the contents of the Bank (A,B,C,D and E) Folders into Bank folders in the ZPlugs\Zmats31 directory.

ZMATS31 FOLDER AND SUBFOLDER CONTENTS

The installed version of ZMATS+31 Plugin should look like this:

ZStartup\Zplugs subdirectory will contain:
Zmats31Launcher.zsc
Zmats31 subdirectory

ZStartup\Zplugs\Zmats31 subdirectorywill contain:
EMPTY.jpg
left1.jpg
left5.jpg
leftEnd.jpg
light2.jpg
matexample.psd
right1.jpg
right5.jpg
rightEnd.jpg
templights.ZLI
TempMats.ZMT
undo.ZMT
UnDoA.ZMT
UnDoB.ZMT
Zmats3.jpg
ZMATS31 - ReadMe.txt
Zmats31.zsc
ZmatsPlusThumb.psd
ztool.ZTL
bankA subdirectory
bankB subdirectory
bankC subdirectory
bankD subdirectory
bankE subdirectory
Lights subdirectory

ZStartup\Zplugs\Zmats31\bankA subdirectory will contain:
BankA folder.txt

ZStartup\Zplugs\Zmats31\bankB subdirectory will contain:
BankB folder.txt

ZStartup\Zplugs\Zmats31\bankC subdirectory will contain:
BankC folder.txt

ZStartup\Zplugs\Zmats31\bankD subdirectory will contain:
BankD folder.txt

ZStartup\Zplugs\Zmats1\bankE subdirectory will contain:
BankE folder.txt

ZStartup\Zplugs\Zmats31\Lights subdirectory will contain:
LightBank folder.txt[/COLOR]

ZMatsplus31-ICON .jpg

Attachments

Svengali ZB3 plugin ZMatsplus31.jpg

A much awaited update…this is great! Many thanks.

Sounds really cool!

EDIT: Allright, Im sorry… I cant get it to work. More specifically, I cant get any of the materials to show up. What am I doing wrong?

Norman3D,

I’m not quite clear on what problem you’re having - when you say “I cant get it to work. More specifically, I cant get any of the materials to show up…” What isn’t working?

Please be aware that the Mats+3d Plugin is just a materials manager, NOT A MATERIALS LIBRARY. YOU must provide your own materials which will be stored there.

Most people will have a folder or folders full of materials downloaded from the forum, and it is those that you will want to load, one at a time, then save into the various Bank slots. With the convenient save and load capabilities that ZMats+31 provides, you will also very quickly begin to customize existing materials to suit your own needs and save your materials variations into ZMats+31 as well.

If you are having some other kind of problem, please be specific in describing it. I will try to reproduce it and if necessary, quickly provide a fix.

Thanks for trying ZMats+31! :slight_smile:

Svengali

F Y I

In this version of ZMats+31, I had to disable color selection because of a new problem in ZScripting for ZB3.1.

:large_orange_diamond: Saving a material in any bank slot will picture the material on a sphere and will also capture a color swatch of the current color and place it in the lower right corner. The appearance of most materials depends in part on the color applied along with the material so it is important to capture both color and material.

:large_orange_diamond: Unlike previous versions of ZMats, you cannot just click on the saved color swatch to reload the color. BUT, if you hold the cursor over the swatch and press the C key while doing so, the exact color will be captured and stored in Main Color for you to use.

Svengali

I have figured out how it works after reading your last post. I was copying all the zmt files to the bankA folder and hoping it would show up in the library.

Now I understand what I have to do. That is, selecting the materials in Zbrush and hitting Save.

Thanks a lot!

funky! thank you very much Svengali :+1:

Hi,

I believe I’ve solved the problem that was causing an improper appearance of the material in the z icons in the previously update.

When you download and install this new update (ZMATS31.ZIP) please first compare that the icon appearance AND the newly stored material in that slot match, when reloaded.

For anyone who downloaded update zip before this fix was posted, simply download this new version and unzip it over the old one.

Again, please test this version before building your new library and report any problems in this thread. I’d also appreciate feedback if you find that it is working properly…

Thanks one and all and I hope this version of the ZMats library for ZBrush 3.1 proves useful.

Sven

Thank you! :+1:

ha the undo button’s a grand thing :slight_smile: thanks!

This doesn’t really seem to work 100% for me

 It appears to save material and color but not lighting.
 
And it does not load color, or lighting correctly for me at all. 
 
 I get a "color update disabled for ZB3.1" and a "lighting update disabled for ZB3.1" errors when I try to load either color or lights on newly saved mats.

perhaps I am using it incorrectly.

The old zmats from ZB2 works in ZB3.1 and still loads color and lights fine from old materails, just not new ones though! :smiley:

Thanks Svengali!

Hello E,

Thanks for testing. You’re right - the reload color and reload light features which worked perfectly in ZB2 will no longer work in ZB3.1 - which is the reason I disabled them and put the warning messages in (and also is the reason I removed the light bank button for storing 400 light setups altogether.)

Apparently, the ZScript 3.1 interpreter includes several bugs which, in the case of loading a light file can cause a ZB crash and in the case of reading color under the cursor (by simulating a press of the C key) doesn’t retain the RGB value. However, as explain in another post higher in this thread, you CAN hold the cursor over the color swatch and manually press the C key to successfully read the swatch’s RGB value.

Sorry about all that, but after several days of editing I couldn’t find any work-arounds. In the next ZBrush update I have high hopes these two issues (and others) will be fixed. Sadly the choice came down to releasing a Mats+31 minus the store light/color features or not releasing it at all. :frowning:

Again, thanks for testing!

Sven

Aw shucks…I still love ya…even without lights…it’s one mega handy dandy must have for the zb tool box. Thanks a mega million for your time, energy and hair pulling (hope you still have a few) for our grand benefit!! :cool: :smiley:

Not sure what I’m doing wrong?, I load a material from my file to the zbrush materials pallet… then what? I tried saving using your interface, but nothing happens, I tried dragging into your interface, I tried dropping them into the A,B etc files… nothing.

Can you give a guy a break and help me to understand how to save my mats :slight_smile:

Thank you!

Bub,

Ok, here’s a quick review.

the Mats+31 plugin displays custom materials (five spheres at a time) which were stored as contents of the selected bank. If you haven’t stored any custom materials yet you’ll only see empty slots.

So, how do you save materials in Mats+31?

  1. Click the big “current material” icon which will then popup the display of the 100 plus default materials… select a material that you don’t usually use. If you have loaded a model which is in edit mode, the model will likely display the material you just selected. (If not, just press the Mrgb button and then click the Fill Object button in the Color menu which fills the model with the current color and the current material.)

  2. Click on the Materials menu and click the load button. Choose a custom material file (ending with .zmt, a file which you might have downloaded from ZBCentral or saved in a previous session). The custom material will load, replacing the default material you just chose so the model should display the custom material.

  3. Click the Mat+31 button which will cause the plugin utility to appear in the zscript window beneath the canvas. Click the Save button, then click one of the empty slots and finally click on the YES pop-up-button to confirm the save. You should soon see your custom material appear in the slot as a sphere with a Z embossed on it.

  4. Repeat steps 2. and 3. for as many custom materials as you want to store. Each bank button will offer you 200 empty slots which can become a huge library of materials to use as you see fit.

  5. Finally, to load any custom material stored within the Mats+31 plugin, first choosing a default material (as you did in step 1.) then click directly on the Mat+31 custom material slot of your choice.


Tip one: use the Find button to search through stored materials since it displays 40 custom materials at a time.

Tip two: when storing a new custom material… quickly find an empty slot in the current bank, by holding down the Alt key and clicking on the >| button (furtherest button to the right).

Tip three: Once you have a custom material loaded, you can do many interesting Variations by changing one or more of the parameters in the materials menu or by loading new Material Texture Maps into the material menu. Each new material Variation can be saved in another empty slot.

There is also a Mats+31 help button which offers additional pop-up-help documentation.

Sven

Wow! I just what i needed.

Is there no easy way to load a whole bunch of materials or do you have to do them one at a time?
Can you rename the materials once loaded?
Can you also rename the bank button?

Thanks for the great plugin btw, be great once I get things organised. :slight_smile:

oh` and what is the best way of deleting a material?

Hi Woz,

Sorry, in this version each material must be loaded and dropped into ZMats+31 manually so an icon can be generated. Also in this version, once a slot is filled, it cannot be deleted, only overwritten. (Deleting files wasn’t a ZScript option back when I first wrote the ZMats library manager.)

Maybe for the next version, after the maintenance update? :slight_smile:

Sven

No problem, I’m still finding it incredibly useful.

Thanks! :slight_smile: