ZBrushCentral

conventional rotation?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Dear community,

Please, please please please tell me if there’s a way to make the rotations act like in 3dsmax or maya.

The rotating of the model in z brush drives me absolutely up the wall. It’s unintuitive and highly irritating. I understand I’m rotating the model instead of using arc rotate as in 3dsmax, but I know it is fairly easy to impliment.

I would just love to be able to rotate stuff intuitively without it ending up all sideways. Max, Maya and so on rotate the viewport like this and it is wonderful! Your model is always left the right way up.

Is it possible to make this behaviour occur in Z brush 2? I’m pretty desperate for it.

#2

(I do realise there is no viewport in zbrush2 - but I am asking if it’s possible to emulate viewport behaviour with model transforms. As though it was.)

I can’t emphasise enough how bad this is for me. It slows me right down. I love all other aspects of Z, just not the rotation model.

#3

…
Moldy 2
Pilou

#4

you can set your model to face the way you want in the preview window…store it.

then you can use Sven’s Axis plugin to snap em right left back front etc…that might be as close as you get if I am understanding you correctly.

you can also do the above then hold shift when rotating to snap it.

not sure if that will help ya…does take some getting used to rotating the model but now any other way drives me nuts.

#5

try and get used to it, its much better for sculpting in the long run. I find its easier to imagine you’re holding the model in your hand, and turning it while sculpting.

For more practical advice in terms of rotation:

-use the shift key to snap your model to 90 degree rotations. Start the drag-rotate, hold down shift, and it’ll snap into place. No matter how your model is oriented, you can get it to face you properly in 3 shift-rotate moves at most.

-when free-rotating, try and drag the mouse in straight lines, preferably directly horizontal or vertical, the model rotate will move much more predictably.

I feel your pain, I used to hate the zbrush rotation as well. Once I got used to it however, its hard to model in a ‘normal’ package like maya or max. :slight_smile:

#6

It drives me insane as well. It’s the worst rotator I’ve ever seen. I’ve run onto similar ones before and I took to calling them drunken rotators. Lightwave and Maya work great. Actually all the other 3D softwares I use all work fine. Wish Zbrush would sort it out because you do waste a lot of time trying to get the object aimed right.

The one suggestion I’d make is to get used to using the shift key to snap it to a straight view of the side you’re aimed at. There’s a lot of resistence at Pixologic to changing anything so I’d do my best to get used to it. Not likely to change anytime soon.

#7

Glad I’m not the only one. I have begun to look at SILO 2 because it is promising the painting deforming power of Zbrush2 without the crazy rotations.

Ideally we’d rotate the model to the correct orientation, then toggle an option ON, and it’d behave upright from there on :slight_smile: and it would arc rotate around the current pan point, so we could for example focus on a finger and rotate around the finger. Lovely, like Max’s rotations.

I am not asking for change, I am asking for an additional rotation method. I really would love that. I have tried to get used to this rotation method for half of my computing life - wherever it has come up, I have hated it. Modo had it too but thankfully they added the option to make the viewports rotate like Max, Maya, LW and everything else.

I would love it if… in 2.5 they added an option in preferences. Would that not gladden your hearts?

Please Team Zbrush, please will you add this option?

#8

Not a 100% sure what you are referring to with the Max function you mention but it may do something similar. Have you tried the “Local” button on the right? It’ll make the last edited point the center of the rotation, very handy.

Zbrush is incredibly powerful but the layout is bizzarre and the focas is much more on the 2.5D functions than the 3D. The joke is the real power and innovation is in the 3D. I find the complex stuff is easy but simple functions are difficult or at times impossible. I’ve gotten a fair amont of flack for pointing out issues that need to be addressed but others are pointing out the same things so maybe eventually the problems will be addressed. You do get used to it’s idioscrascies over time but it makes the learning curve far longer than it needs to be. Don’t give up on it yet. The rotation is a pain but with the Local function and using the shift key to snap to a view you can limp by. I do hope they fix the rotation eventually though. By using the shift key it seems to reset the weird kind of gimbal lock it developes.

#9

Like you say, local with max style viewport rotation would be a dream come true.

All we’d need then is for the mouse wheel to be zoom and the middle button for panning! (or give us configurable keys!)

Then… I would truely be in heaven.

#10

The next upgrade has configurable keys. That’s at least something. There are some hotkeys I’d like to outright disable. There are a number of combinations that have more than one function based on order they are released. It may seem powerful but it drives me nuts. I generally find myself redoing the selection several times. Takes away from my workflow having to think through the keystroke order everytime. I always hate intuitive interfaces. Personally give me buttons. Hotkeys are great up to a point but I find after that point they slow me down. Also having undoable hotkeys that are easy to hit accidentally is a scary thing. Had that happen many times when I was learning the software.

#11

Oh MAAAAAAAAAAAAN! Yes! I came here because the viewport rotation is absolutely horrible in ZBrush despite all of this software’s awesomeness.

Conventional rotation is at the top of my wishlist for version 3.2 or the next version. I am dumbfounded that this has not been addressed and implemented yet.:mad:

#12

Have you guys ever tried to rotate an object 90 backward so you can sculpt work on a belt going around a character in the vertical rather than horizontal?

Try that with Maya, XSI, MAX, etc. Damn near impossible. Having the freedom to rotate the object in any way rather than having the camera rotate makes working artistically sooooo much better. Every paint in corel where you can rotate the canvas easily? ever try to do that in photoshop?

Anyway, I thought in 3.12 they added the ability to use ALT to navigate or some other button anyway to make rotation “classic”.

my 2cents.