ZBrushCentral

Subgroup possibility?

Sometimes i have tools that have many subtools and it becomes a little unmanagable when trying to hide certain groups. So is there a way to write a plugin that would allow for subgroups of subtools, and be able to hide those groups at will, for instance you have a whole body with accessories and environment, so you would have a subgroup for say, the head, eyes, teeth. another subgroup for body, gloves boots. etc.

Hiding/showing groups of subtools through zscripting is possible although it might require some simple workflow rules.

I believe Marcus or Svengali posted some code on how to determine which subtool is currently selected. By simply using the order that the subtools appear in as an index number it should be simple enough to do what you want. The only thing lacking may be a proper interface for organizing the groups of subtools.

I’ll give it some thought but by then Marcus will probably have something ready for you :smiley:

yes i was thinking it might be something like that, no idea how to approach it though. i wonder if its possible to read the subtool name as well, so if you put a number in each with some sort of iteration, 1a, 101, 102, etc then it would know that is a specific group. hmm.

A feature like this has been asked for before and I did consider it for SubTool Master. The problem from a scripting point of view is that it’s impossible to keep track of subtools with any degree of certainty - users can change their names, duplicate names are possible and the order can be changed at any time, spoiling any numerical index. In the end I chose to implement the switch visibility and shift up functions as simple aids to working with groups of subtools.

The best solution would be a way to nest subtools, so that, for example, clicking on a character’s head subtool would show a separate subtool list with helmet, goggles or whatever. However this is beyond zscripting and would need to be coded into ZBrush.

had a feeling it was something like that, hopefully in zb4. Thanks marcus and tveyes.