ZBrushCentral

Brush error throws intermittent diagonal lines - driving me nuts!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all,

When sculpting in ZB, I sometimes get a bug where the brush drops a long diagonal line across my canvas.

The line always originates from my brush tip, and runs at a 45 degree angle, always towards the top left of the canvas. It doesn’t ‘draw’ the line, but rather it just appears suddenly.

It’s completely random, and can occur on any file, at any resolution, with any brush.
When it occurs, I ctrl-Z the last action, and the line disappears, but will usually happen again after one or two strokes. I might get through an entire model without seeing it happen, or it might happen regularly.
It’s particularly annoying if it happens and I miss it, then notice right at the end of the sculpt.

I’m a coin designer, working in bas-relief, so I don’t know if this is an issue confined to one plane, or if it would occur on a full 3D model.

Any help or suggestions would be gratefully received!

Edit:
Forgot to put my setup.
Win 10 Pro
17 4790k, 32gb DDR3, GTX 1060
I’m using an XP-Pen 22E Pro graphics screen, but have had the same issue on a Wacom Intuos 3, and a new Intuos Pro

1 Like
#2

Hi @MattBon

Which version of ZBrush are you using?

#3

Hi Mattbon

Sorry you’re having some trouble!

Unfortunately, the community forums are going to be of limited help diagnosing a system specific technical issue. You may need to contact Pixologic Support. Make sure you’re using the most up to date version of Zbrush before doing that.

Just to offer up some casual suggestions, though, it sounds like your system is hitching periodically, or getting hung up on something or other, causing a momentary input lag. Things to consider:

  • Make sure you’re using a WinTab compatible tablet.

  • What else is happening on your system when the events occur? Is there a lot of multitasking going on? Zbrush is a very resource intensive program, and you dont want it to compete with a lot of other processes (streaming media, antivirus activity, other CPU intensive program tasks).

  • Is it possible you’re in mid stroke when an auto save occurs? If you’re confident in your manual file saving discipline, you can effectively disable autosaves in the Preferences > Quicksave menu by maxing out the Duration sliders. See if that elimintaes the problem.

  • It’s also possible there is a hardware issue at work. Power issues, heat issues, HDD issues could all be responsible for things like this.

  • I’m accepting your statement that this happens with multiple tablets, but it could also be a tablet driver issue.

  • on the OS level, disable any “press and hold” features, or any gesture features like Pen Flicks, or any feature that makes the OS have to think about what your pen is doing more than usual, as these features can cause input lag.

If nothing here is helpful, you may need to contact Support.

#4

I’m up to date. Zbrush 2020.whatever the recent update was!

Edit: I should also point out that I’ve had this issue across more than one piece of hardware.

#5

Probably a wacom driver issue. =(

#6

I can’t offer you a solution but I can say that this is an issue and one that I have noticed for a while now. I know that I am not alone either. Kris costa mentioned it in his video tutorials and other artists I have spoken to have said the same. Most dismiss it as a tablet issue yet I have not encountered it in any tool except zbrush. Granted it is by far the one I give my tablet the most rigorous workout in, I still use my tablet in any other tool I can from substance to maya, with no noticeable issue in this regard.

I can sometimes recreate the issue by hitting certain angles on the tablet, grated the specific angle can be hard to catch at times I seem to hit a lot doing detail work. In fact, yesterday while live streaming I must have hit it what felt like 30-50 times.

For me after I undo it is sometimes followed up by a loss of pressure sensitivity for a single stroke then everything goes back to normal unless I hit the angle again.

I originally suspected this was a wacom tablet driver issue but I have had this issue for years and have rolled my tablet back as well as updated it and never seen any resolution of this issue. I use a wacom Mobile studio pro and both as a standalone tablet and using it as a cintiq attached to a variety of different desktop PC’s I have always had this issue.

While this could still be a diver issue, one thought was that this may instead be related to the lazy mouse line snapping feature. Though I am not pressing shift during a stroke it is almost behaving as if I am and then it’s as if it is throwing the cursor into the top right corner of the screen then snapping back to my stylus position resulting in a diagonal line drawn across my surface.

I know we are not the only ones and I really hope it can be resolved, on a 40mil poly mesh with multiple layers even having to hit undo can be a frustrating delay in the workflow.

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#7

I would agree, except that I don’t use Wacom at all.
I’ve been using an XP-Pen screen for the last 2 years, and I get the same problem as when I was using Wacom.*

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#8

Reassuring to know it’s not just me!
There’s nothing more annoying than getting to the end of a sculpt and spotting a fine diagonal line cutting across the details…

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#9

Oh, thats good to know! Then Hopefully Zbrush will fix it!

#10

I have done some testing in the past few days and While it still may be a driver issue of some sort it seems directly tied to the lazy mouse, turning it off on my brushes removes the issues (of course I lose some of the nice smoothing of my brush stroke in the process.) It can be seen happening repeatedly in the video I recorded while livestreaming. I will link to the exact time below.

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#11

I Have that issue since Zbrush by default has LasyMouse ON. LasyMouse feature conflicts with any tablet brand drivers. You will get this bug 100% if you stroking with LM on.

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#12

That’s interesting - thanks.
I don’t always have LM on, but I’ll start monitoring and see if it only occurs with LM.
At the very least it gives me some pattern to watch for. Up to now, it’s been seemingly random.

#13

Yep, without LM you want get this bug and if you will than in much less possible amount. But the strokes will look worse with LM off…

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#14

I have that issue as well. Still not fixed.

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#15

Just chiming in to say I’ve been having this very problem for the past few weeks or so.
I’m using 2022.0.8, Windows 10, with Intuos Pro.
I’m not sure why it’s been occurring more frequently lately. It’s been a while since I made any changes to my setup.
If anyone has found a solution (besides turning off lazy mouse) I’d love to know.

#16

I’ve been getting it more frequently too.
I can never recreate it, as it’s intermittent, but I see it most when drawing a constrained line with Lazy Mouse activated.
I get to the end of the stroke and the brush line jumps off to the top left of the canvas.

When it does happen, I ctrl-z over and over, and the line simply jumps in the same way. If I draw the stroke from the opposite direction, it doesn’t jump.

It’s super annoying as sometimes I get to the end of a sculpt and find a thin diagonal line running across my model that only shows up in certain lights.

#17

I don’t know why it really happens, but I can certainly say it is not a zbrush issue, it happens to me in any software when I am using a drawing tablet, it also happens with Wacom (bamboo and Intuos at least), and Huion (kamvas13 and Kamvas16PRO) this leads me to think that is an OS thing (seen it happen on windows and Mac too), or something as simple as electrical latency.
In general terms, latency is the time that elapses between a request for information and its arrival . Sometimes lag can happen on a network, on a device, or both at the same time. Anytime a signal is sent and processed, some degree of lag is to be expected.
In short I think it will mostly always happen with any pen device, sometimes there might be a lag in the pen’s signal and the pointer will reset to the top left corner.