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Multiple zsphere subtool movement problem

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Once again I’m stumped! Shocking huh?

What i am trying to do is make a few things out of Zspheres and have each one be a subtool, what is happening is that I cant move them, if I make them into a mesh I cant edit the Zspheres any more and if I don’t I cant move the tool…
If I just hit A on the second tool and move that it SEEMS ok until I hit A again and then the whole thing jumps back to the original append position, and if I edit it at all the whole thing comes unhinged and polygons go flying all over the place…
Does that make sense?

I can try to make pictures but that could be tricky as what I end up with dosent make much sense.

Cheers and thanks!
Mealea

#2

ok I think I can make this more clear having reread a few things…

I will use a simple example for this and since what I am doing is the most complicated thing I have done in Zbrush so far I will try to have it relate directly…

I have made two Zsphere objects, one is a person (sort of) and the other is an octopus, what I am trying to do is put the octopus into the hand of the person as a subtool.

When I append the octopus it shows up in the chest of the person.
When I try to move it as Zspheres I move a few Zspheres destroying the octopus.
When I move the octopus after hitting A it moves ok (if i am lucky and it dosent distort) and I can sometimes place it in the hand of the person.
Having done that i want to hit A again and make the octopus back into Zspheres and do some editing so fingers and tentacles are entwined and dont poke through each other, Im sure that makes sense right?
What happens when I hit A is the model jumps out of the hand back into the chest and I have spent a lot of time doing nothing.
If I edit the Zspheres at all hitting A causes total chaos with the octopus turning into a bunch of scrambled polygons.

There are many other problems with this project but I will save those for another time, some of them are just stupid things I did Im sure.

Anyhow, I hope that makes sense. Its getti ng embaresing to only be able to work with one object

#3

The best way to work is to do your moving in zsphere mode. Any changes you make will be reflected in the preview mesh. You can move the whole zsphere model by holding Ctrl and moving the root zsphere. (If you have symmetry on you’ll be constrained to an axis.) The root zsphere is the one that stays two-toned when it’s not selected.

#4

Ok!!!
That worked for moving it, I had to change it a bit so the root Zsphere was grabbable but its moved! Now however its upside-down, is it possible to rotate it like that? I set the transpose tools to rotate but thats not working…

Thanks very much for the help already! I have an ugly workaround if rotating isint possible… basically turning my octopus inside-out… hehehe

Grin!

#5

One other thing, where is that information other than you telling me it? I have read a mile and a half of stuff about Zspheres and never saw anything about that and I find it sort of surprising… maybe I just dident understand what i was seeing and did see it…
hmmmm…

#6

The simplest way is to use Tool>Deformation>Rotate. You can use the Size and Offset options too. (Again, be sure to do this in zsphere mode not preview.)

As for information on zspheres, I’m afraid it is in need of updating. I believe that one of the videos has information about moving mannequins [zspheres] using the deformation palette but you’re hardly likely to have thought of that when looking for information.

#7

Ok interesting, I tried that and the only one that works is “Move”, the rest, rotate etc all do what they normally would… that is with out the control key down.
Very strange.

As for the information about Zspheres I sort of had an idea that might be the case… I have started to recognize when things are relative to Zbrush3.x which I have never seen other than in a lot of videos…

Thank you Marcus, I will keep at it, in the mean time I have discovered something very interesting in the fog pallet… my attention span is destroyed!

Cheers!
Mealea

#8

You are using the Deformation menu in the Tool palette, aren’t you? No need to hold Ctrl.

#9

Actualy I was referring to Transpose tools while holding Ctrl… that worked great for Move but not the others…
I’m looking at the Offset and Rotate stuff in the deformation pallet now… it seems to be working but its slow going with Offset (like a millimeter at a time) and extremely odd with Rotate, like the center of rotation is very far away… however when I switch between Zsphere and Preview (A) mode it dosent leap off into oblivion or self destruct, and THAT is wonderful!
More in a moment…
GRIN!!!
This is getting fun instead of maddening!

#10

ok… weird…
I see what is happening, I have to use rotate and get it right the first time and then move the object into position.
If I do Rotate after I move it it is rotating around the point it was appended at, not in relation to it self. (this also explaines why I thought things were just vanishing before).
And I’m betting that is fixable…

Right?

:o

#11

on top of everything else Im having network problems… hehe.

Marcus.jpg

Thank you Marcus!

#12

Looks good! :slight_smile:

Yes, using the Deformation palette the center of rotation will be the main pivot point - the center of the first subtool. What you can do is temporarily set the pivot to the center of your zsphere model by using Transform>Set Pivot. The drawback is that this will move the zspheres to the central point, so you’d have to rotate the zspheres away from their intended position. Using Transform>Clear Pivot will set the zspheres back to their correct position.

#13

GRIN!
Thanks Marcus,
It sort of looks good but its not, if I move around like zooming in and out the octopus slides out of the hand into random places so I have to stay at that level of zoom… and by zoom I mean scale I think.
Honestly I’m totally lost, I spent over an hour rotating the octopus and moving it from inside the chest to where it is now, hundreds of tedious little movements (and 3 crashes) and the result is not permanent, I can only use it at this scale/zoom or what ever. Is that normal?
What if I had 20 octopi?
Or 50?
I think I am doing this wrong but I dont know…

GRRR… Im in the middle of trying to figure this out and Windows is demanding a restart for some update… blithering silly stupid windoidisim… $^@^$#@!!!

#14

Windows is an evil snotgurggle… but it gave me a chance to step back and look at what I am trying to do, I need to review a bunch of basic tutorials, something is weird and I don’t know enough to figure it out.

#15

doggieandme.jpg

I hope this helps, but if not, please restate your difficulties and I’ll try to help.

BTW, I started my positioning by going into deformations and hitting “unify” for each subtool. Then I scaled on all axis in deformations to make the dog small. And finally I “offset” the dog in deformations on the necessary axis’so it was in the position to be held. Lastly I used transpose rotate and move to position the arms of the person. It does take some getting used to the rotate, scale and move transpose tools with zspheres, but once you get the hang of it you’ll find it gets pretty automatic. Same with transposing with Deformation, expecially now it’s in real time with ZB4…a fantastic new addition to ZB, I might add.

MORE ABOUT MY POST EDIT:

After posting this I tried hitting “A” and playing around with the adaptive skin density and sculpting on the preview mesh. I was snag the sculpted preview as an adaptive skin and it didn’t seem to corrupt my zspheres. I tried setting each subtool to its own density level, sculpting, making adaptive skin, switching back to zspheres, etc. Nothing broke and the sculpting stayed put, which is odd…my faulty memory tells me this failed for me in the past. In any event I’m really curious why your mesh exploded.

Attachments

doggieandmemesh.jpg

#16

For the sake of demonstrating this I made a new document and two new characters, nice simple ones named BubbleBut and NippleNut.
This is them standing happily next to each other in the land of Z:

BubbleButtAndNippleNut.jpg

With the normal Preview I get the same thing, and would have to hit the MakePolyMesh3D button to do any sculpting, not that sculpting poor BubbleButt at this stage of things would help him out much, with Adaptive skin I dont need to PM3D button in order to sculpt or subdive but as you can see, I need a doctor first or more likely an origami expert…

One interesting thing is the difference between projects, the one with the Octopus while not very different did different things, it let me make a non-scrambled mesh but one that was nearly impossible to move and that caused the Octopus to “drift off into space” as I move around in the work area.

I can show pictures of that too if needed…

Thank you for bothering to read all that, I tried to make it a bit more fun then it is but its fairly appalling, I have only been able to do to two things with Subtools the whole time I have had Zbrush, make eyes, and destroy stuff. Oh… and make my self go crazy…
The Origami expert is chasing me with a pair of scissors.

Cheers!
Mealea

Attachments

Wharrgarbl.jpg

#17

This is a very strange problem Mealea. I can’t think that either your program is corrupted or you are including some step without realizing it.

I copied your forms and followed your process and got this:
awwwcute.jpg

I wish I could figure it out…very challenging problem which I can’t seem to repeat. I’ll keep trying though.

(btw, if you keep the largest dimension of your inserted pics to about 500 px its easier to both view them and read your text, otherwise it requires zooming in and out to read and refer back to the photo :slight_smile: )

#18

What exactly do you mean by “I saved him as a subtool”?

I made each part and then cloned it for extra reassurance I wouldn’t lose it, then hit “T” to drop it to the canvas. Then I redrew a zsphere and repeated this for the other form.

Finally I cleared the deck, chose one (clone or original, doesn’t matter) and appended the other.

Is this what you meant?

#19

Yeehah! Three of my own posts in a row…but I think I may have figured it out.

you wrote:

“The transpose tools simply did not work, (all three little circle things and with symmetry on and off) as a preview mesh it was destroyed, distorted and mangled him beyond anything anyone would even want to survive, (very sad. We hid his body next to Jimmy Hoffa’s).”

You do not want to use the transpose tools on a preview mesh that has an associated zsphere armature. The whole point of the zsphere armature is to create and pose the basic mesh. It seems to be ok to sculpt on the preview, but you don’t ever want to move/scale/rotate the preview with transpose or deformation tools or as you have probably noticed , you move the mesh out of sync with the zsphere armature.

Always go back to the zspheres to make these types of adjustments, or alternatively create and work on an adaptive skin that is disassociated from the original zspheres.

#20

GRIN! I misspoke there, I just meant I saved them as individual tools, not as subtools, that came after, sorry… However even if I hadent saved them I would have the same result…
So…
I Make Zsphere person
Save as tool
Append make new Zsphere person
Save as tool
Append first Zsphere person (now I have two, one on top of the other)
Try to move one of them(Zspheres only, not mesh yet)
If I use CTRL and grab the root Zsphere I can move the model, BUT when I make it into the mesh it appears somewhere else (usually where the tool appended to(that was happening in the earlier stuff with the octopus)
If I use the deformation Pallet to move (again, Zspheres) the mesh explodes like in my picture…

So as you mentioned, and I think you must be right, I must be doing some other step in middle of all that that is screwing things up… the question is what, and if so where did I learn to do it…
One possibility is I picked something up from watching tutorial videos that were geared for ZBrush3.x… however I don’t know honestly.

Interestingly the stuff with the transpose tools (not just in relation to this problem) come and go, some objects deform when they should not and others work just fine, sometimes I can use the middle circle thingy to move a sphere in any direction I want and at other times it causes it to deform, I have no idea why that is but with eyes for example it often takes up to 4-5 tries to keep them round (in fact wanting to do a little sculpting on eyes is where I learned that you can’t touch PM3D button if you have subtools… why that is I don’t know, it seems natural to me to look at something and think I need another object. I can add the object but I don’t dare touch it… not fun and fairly confusing when I see all the things in ZBC with hundreds of subtools all intricately sculpted… I sit here and think HOW DID THEY DO THAT??? And then I pop a couple more eyeballs or what ever…
Speaking of which, the thing holding the octopus is going to have a whole lot of eyes and other… um… problems…

Ok… I’m starting to babble on a bit here…
I think you’re right, I must be doing something in the middle of all this that is doing something odd…

Oh yah, I will start cropping this stuff! Sorry about that!

Cheers, and Thankyou for the help!
Mealea