Hi Eddy, and thanks for replying. I think what has happened is exactly what you are saying. You’re so comfortable with it that it makes sense to you, but to someone not familiar with it, it’s a bit more difficult.
What I meant by it being a hack, is that it appears to be very much a work-around solution rather than a pure one. In other words, you’ve overcome the limitations of the software by using your initiative (which is great), but in order to get it to work, you have to go about it in an unorthodox way. You have to make concessions and compromises in order to get it to work.
First off, the unzipped file was stored in a directory called LayerPaint, so it didn’t load and I only noticed after searching fruitlessly for it. Then, after installing it and trying to use it, I got error messages saying that it couldn’t save a file to the LayerPaintTemp directory (which doesn’t exist), so I had to go and create that. Then, I didn’t notice that the tooll bar actually gets the new layers. I simply didn’t notice it and it wasn’t pointed out very clearly. On top of that, I had presumed that this would be a case of being able to “see” all your layers at one time as you paint on one of them, and this doesn’t appear to be the case. Without that functionality, I couldn’t use it. I also had some problems painting multiple colours on one layer in that it only seemed to store one. It also seemed like I was constantly getting messages telling me to press cancel, then to hit New layer again, then to press No, etc. I have no idea what the History and Paint versions of the model I painted are, but it seems to constantly swap the two out and even swap models out if I try to paint two seperate models. I sometimes have to Reset, other times not, some times I can add a layer, other times not. All in all, I just feel very confused by it. The documentation is not really very clear at all.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I had hoped it would be as simple as the 3D Layer system currently is. Create a new layer, show it/hide it whenever you want, delete layers, see your other layers as you paint, etc.
This is the one feature that’s stopping us using ZBrush in a production environment for painting models. It’s so frustrating. I REALLY appreciate your efforts on it, and I wish you the very best of luck with it. Unfortunately, until it can be improved and made simpler to use, I can’t see myself using it. Having said that, I’m obviously an idiot as I’m constantly having problems with polypaint as it is, but I don’t see many others complaining about it, so it must be just me and my stupid way of approaching things.
