I am new to Zbrush an having problems continuing my projects. When i open them up i can’t select, scale them or go into Edit mode to continue with my work.
Why is this?
I am new to Zbrush an having problems continuing my projects. When i open them up i can’t select, scale them or go into Edit mode to continue with my work.
Why is this?
It sounds like you may not be saving them in the correct format
When saving in ZBrush there are essentially three ways to save:
File -> Save As (This saves your model, scene, etc but most people will tell you to not do this as well). This is saving everything with a .ZPR extention
Document -> Save As (Don’t do this, its for 3D illustration not sculpting)
or
Tool -> Save As (The usual recommended way). This saves the tool you are using. Tool is the ZBrush term for a 3D model. Whenever you save your work its best to save the tool itself. You can tell you did it correctly because it is saved as a .ZTL file.
Now, to open this file back up, you go to Tool -> Load, choose the file, and when you do you can drag it on to the canvas. BEFORE YOU CONTINUE hit the “T” key to go in to Edit mode where you can continue sculpting on your model.
If you don’t hit the T key right away and the mesh (or tool) keeps drawing on the surface over and over no biggie, hit “control + n” to clear the canvas and redraw your tool. If control + N doesn’t work, hit T again then control + N to clear the canvas and draw your tool again.
It sounds like a confusing mess at first but once you get used to it it becomes second nature.
EDIT: Special thanks to zber2 for pointing out my mistake in the original post (Oh, and not to mention for helping me learn how to save in ZBrush too
)
I’m another new user. I found all this confusing as well. So when you reload a saved tool, does the size you drag it to make any difference? So far I’m saving as projects so that I can just carry on from where I left off.
3DKiwi
Thanks a lot for the explanation. Been searching for one for awhile.
The size you draw it on the canvas has no effect on the model itself. You’re only scaling relative to the canvas; not relative to the model’s internal coordinate system. (To affect the “real” size of the model you need to do something like a Size deformation or use TransPose in size mode.)
Put another way, scaling the model on the canvas is the equivalent of zooming in or out with a camera.
If you reload a saved tool the size you drag it to will not make a difference. You can always scale the tool or zoom closer to it.
Also just a warning although documents are convenient, always save your tool too. There are ZBrush videos out there showing how to try and recover a tool from a corrupt document. I’ve never had it happen but apparently it isn’t uncommon.
EDIT: Aurick beat me to it
No problem. I had the same question not long ago. I kept losing work and zber2 and someone else (sorry I forget who) chimed in and taught me how to save documents properly.
Could anyone please explain why saving as .ZPR is not recommended? I’m new to ZBrush and saved my model as a tool, now when I import it and draw it on the canvas, as soon as I let go of the left mouse button after dragging it out, all my nice hard edges go smooth. Maybe if I had saved as .ZPR, I wouldn’t have to draw it out and it might not do that. I don’t know, though, I’m new to this. Thanks!