ZBrushCentral

Assigning shortcuts to brushes to skip the palette

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all,

I would like to ask the community for some help with the brushes shortcuts:

I have always used Razer tartarus for the shortcuts in every program I’ve used and that’s what I did with zbrush as well. (I mostly use it for the brushes)
razer-tartarus-chroma-01-02__store_gallery
But here is where zbrush’s rich shortcut list becomes a problem for me:
Only single key shortcuts are allowed unless you use them with one of the special keys (shift, ctrl, alt) which are already assigned to various commands.

The only key combination that was ‘free’ was “alt+letter” but I soon found out that there was a reason for that:
alt is very heavily used for navigation and special commands, so shortcuts of the form “alt + letter” lead to conflicts.

I tried using other ‘special’ keys to combine with letters (like pg dn/ pg up/ ins) but zbrush recognizes always just the first key.

Can anyone think of a trick to create a long list of shortcuts that doesn’t require changing a lot of existing shortcuts and being simple in format?
I don’t want to go through the entire list trying to find every shortcut that is not already assigned and moreover I’d rather have a simple shortcut (e.g. “something” + letter) so that they’re easier to memorize and change over time.

does anyone know if at least one of the combinations of the three special keys (alt/ctrl/shift) is ‘virgin’ (not having any command assigned to it)

P.S. I am well aware that you can use letter combinations to ‘filter’ the brushes in the brush palette but my goal is not to need to open the palette every time -nor use the interface buttons-.

I hope someone else has had the same problem and solved it!

Does nobody use shortcuts for brushes?
#2

Hi @Aris

The only way I can think of to narrow it down to a single key is to use Macros. Record a macro of the key combinations and assign a single key to the Macro button. Hope that helps.

#3

I think you didn’t get me, That’s exactly what I’m currently doing. The problem is not the macro, the problem is that zbrush accepts only single keystroke shortcuts.
and also: If I put the consecutive letters for a brush to a macro, (e.g. B, T, I) then what it does is open the palette, filter the brushes and then select a specific one.

What I want is to directly load the brush without going through the palette.

#4

Which version of ZBrush are you using because it doesn’t do that in mine. It loads the brush instantly without opening the brush palette.

#5

I’ve updated to the latest version but haven’t tried this since 8, I’ll give it a try!

#6

When you start recording the macro, use your mouse or pen to select the brush from the brush palette.