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New Update: PSNAP (QuickSave) Plugin - ver 1.5 - FIXED July 10, 05

Shared ZScripts & Macros
#1
        • FIX - PSNAP Version 1.5 - another update * * *

    The PSNAP_FIX.ZIP file attached below is an updated version of 1.5 with several fixes - Thanks goes to Digits who convinced me to revisit the script once more.

    It still works the same except a couple of glitches have been vanquished. As to the question about PSNAP and the Mac. I don’t use a Mac myself, but I have had no Mac owner report any problems. Could someone who uses a Mac verify that? Thanks - Sven

    WHAT IS PSNAP?

    PSNAP is a plugin that provides a set of six buttons used to streamline and automate the saving of your Works-in-Progress.

    For example: You are working on a 3dModel and you want to make sure you don’t lose time you’ve already invested in construction.

    You would use two of the PSNAP buttons, MODEL which first lets you save your model under an original name, then M+ which saves incremental versions of the same model using the original name and appending sequential numbers to it.

    If you press the MODEL button you could assign the name TREE to your original model. PSNAP will save it to disk as TREE001.ZTL (.ztl files are ZBRUSH model files).

    From that point each time you press the M+ button, another copy of the current model is saved to disk. PSNAP automatically increments the name so that, over time, you’d save, TREE002.ZTL, TREE003,ZTL, TREE004.ZTL and so on .

    You are doing two things here. First, you will have saved a bunch of versions of your model, from its earliest form, to its final result, and all the steps in between. More importantly, you won’t lose your work if something causes Zbrush to crash (not that Zbrush ever crashes…)

    PSNAP provides you with the following Six-Button set (the seventh button is PSNAP help.)

    IMAGE and I+ buttons save .psd or .bmp or .tif files
    MODEL and M+ buttons save .ztl files
    DOCUM and D+ buttons save .zbr files

    Press these at anytime to create files: save a 2D version of your Canvas, save your 3D Model or save your multilayered Document with its custom materials.

    TO INSTALL PSNAP:

    Very simple. Download and unzip the PSNAP.ZSC file into your ZSTARTUP/ZPLUGS directory.

:large_orange_diamond:small_orange_diamond:large_orange_diamond:small_orange_diamond:large_orange_diamond:Click here to Download:large_orange_diamond:small_orange_diamond:large_orange_diamond:small_orange_diamond:large_orange_diamond:

The next time you startup Zbrush you will find six new buttons labeled with the above names in the ZPLUGIN menu under a subgroup named Svengali.

NEW TO THIS VERSION (PSNAP 1.5):

(1.) Important note to previous users of the PSNAP utility. You must REINSTALL the PSNAP buttons which will DISAPPEAR from where you had placed them on your interface.

Why? Because the new buttons appear inside the Svengali subgroup, having been removed from the PSnap subgroup. Simply Ctrl-drag the buttons from the ZPlugin menu onto your ZB interface again and press Ctrl+Shift+I which will update your custom interface.

(2.) SubD polymesh models with multiple levels will now be saved at the FIRST level. In a model with many levels, the disk storage savings are considerable. Reloaded models will be at SubD level 1 but all of the other levels will be intact. After being saved, the total count of polygons, points and subD levels will be displayed in a popup Note. Left click the mouse button to continue.

(3.) The DOCUMENT button pair is new to this release. Some users will be happy to see this while others will never have occasion to use them. If you are one of the latter, simply leave the pair of Document buttons off your interface.

Please report any bugs or strange behavior and, PLEASE TEST FIRST by saving and reloading one or more of your non-critical models.

I would really like to acknowledge beta-testing help from: Scott Spencer, Aminuts, and especially Marcus_Civis who also suggested several worthwhile improvements in the code. Appreciated the feedback you guys!

Sven

#2

You did it again! lol
Nice aproach, thx again Svengali

#3

What a toaly cool idea!

I love this Idea… Thankyou very much for makeing this!!
this will help me alot!

here are a couple of ideas you may want to use for future versions

:small_blue_diamond:In wings 3D we have a function called autosave…

Would it be possible to incorperate a time into a plugin?

So say every 5 minuets the plugin will save a file in the tool’s directory called AUTOSAVE.ztl…perhaps an auto disable for this also, so when rendering things it wont interupt durring the render process…

…

:small_blue_diamond:One other suggestion would be a little toggle button for incremental saves…
so it will make a new file every time you hit the + button…
thus:
filename 1.ztl
filename 2.ztl
filename 3.ztl
filename 4.ztl
filename 5.ztl
filename 6.ztl
filename 7.ztl

I am not a very together person when it comes to saveing my tools and paintings… I forget all the time, and sometimes after makeing a mistake I save over my work, thus I have to start over… this way I can go back a couple of saves and recover some of my work.

anyways, just an idea…

THis is a great plugin you made, I am going to be useing this all the time…

Thanks for makeing this for us all :sunglasses:small_orange_diamond:+1: this is very nice of you.

#4

Thanks guys,

Hey Polaris,

Check out the snap help screens [?] and you’ll find that both + keys do exactly what you suggest, incrementing the Image or Model name each time you press it… file001.ztl, file002.ztl, file003.ztl, etc.

As for a timer inside ZBrush… I haven’t found one. If you do a google search on Freeware timer, you’ll find there are hundreds of them. Just run one in the background and everytime it pops up, press Snap and +, and you’ll never have to worry again :stuck_out_tongue:

Sven

#5

Thanks Sven

once again you’ve made your number one fan very happy:D

I used the old version quite regularly and ya just made it easier!!

Thanks again!

#6

LOL!

I was just comeing here to edit my post before anyone saw it LMAO…

Very well done !!!

Thankyou sooo much for this!

BTW, yea the timers are comonly called tea cookers… I have one in linux, and in Black box for windows…

This is a great idea! I will just keep hitting the button after every save :smiley: (and remember to disable it when I render ;):+1: )

I give this post and this Zscript the five tu rateing! Excellent!
:sunglasses:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:+++

Thanks alot for this :smiley:

#7

I like it, I like the features, and the “easy to do” mode but there is something which can be really cool:
How about making buttons with “save image”, “save model”, “+” and “-” so we can drag them and add them to our interface.

Or nother thing, you know when you save an image, does it always have to be saved in the main folder?

:idea: Or Svengali, why not instead make the MRGZBGrabber get an image so it will collect them within the texture section then we can always export them, the rest is facinating, think about it ok… Take care!:slight_smile: :stuck_out_tongue:
-Iván

#8

Aztec,

Hmm. Interesting ideas.

  1. I’ll test the notion of individual plugin buttons that do each of the SNAP functions. One thing I feel I should add to the current plugin launch of SNAP is an automated return to the Script that was active before SNAP was called up. That way, if you are in the middle of something in another Script, (and that script maintains persistant variables) you can just pick up where you left off.

Will let you know in this thread if I get individual plugin buttons setup.

  1. One of the features of this current SNAP release is that you can choose ANY folder for saving images or tools to, and that becomes the default folder for future saves. Try it.

  2. I think there might be too many issues in automating MRGBZGrabber, I’ll leave that to someone else :).

Sven

#9

Aztec,

I just posted a new version called PSNAP which installs individual buttons in a subgroup under the ZPlugin menu.

I appended it to the first post in this thread.

Thanks for the suggestion, it makes much more sense this way! I also made the buttons work so the ZScript that was running before the save gets reloaded automatically.

See what you think.

Sven

#10

I am going to try it right now.
Thanks for listening :smiley: and once more because u showed us what a master-scripter you are.:+1:
-Iván

#11
        • FIX - PSNAP Version 1.5 - another update * * *

The PSNAP_FIX.ZIP file attached below is an updated version of 1.4 with several fixes - Thanks goes to Digits who convinced me to revisit the script once more.

It still works the same except a couple of glitches have been vanquished. As to the question about PSNAP and the Mac. I don’t use a Mac myself, but I have had no Mac owner report any problems. Could someone who uses a Mac verify that? Thanks - Sven

WHAT IS PSNAP?

PSNAP is a plugin that provides a set of six buttons used to streamline and automate the saving of your Works-in-Progress.

For example: You are working on a 3dModel and you want to make sure you don’t lose time you’ve already invested in construction.

You would use two of the PSNAP buttons, MODEL which first lets you save your model under an original name, then M+ which saves incremental versions of the same model using the original name and appending sequential numbers to it.

If you press the MODEL button you could assign the name TREE to your original model. PSNAP will save it to disk as TREE001.ZTL (.ztl files are ZBRUSH model files).

From that point each time you press the M+ button, another copy of the current model is saved to disk. PSNAP automatically increments the name so that, over time, you’d save, TREE002.ZTL, TREE003,ZTL, TREE004.ZTL and so on .

You are doing two things here. First, you will have saved a bunch of versions of your model, from its earliest form, to its final result, and all the steps in between. More importantly, you won’t lose your work if something causes Zbrush to crash (not that Zbrush ever crashes…)

PSNAP provides you with the following Six-Button set (the seventh button is PSNAP help.)

IMAGE and I+ buttons save .psd or .bmp or .tif files
MODEL and M+ buttons save .ztl files
DOCUM and D+ buttons save .zbr files

Press these at anytime to create files: save a 2D version of your Canvas, save your 3D Model or save your multilayered Document with its custom materials.

TO INSTALL PSNAP:

Very simple. Download and unzip the PSNAP.ZSC file into your ZSTARTUP/ZPLUGS directory.

The next time you startup Zbrush you will find six new buttons labeled with the above names in the ZPLUGIN menu under a subgroup named Svengali.

NEW TO THIS VERSION (PSNAP 1.4 and the 1.5 fix):

(1.) Important note to previous users of the PSNAP utility. You must REINSTALL the PSNAP buttons which will DISAPPEAR from where you had placed them on your interface.

Why? Because the new buttons appear inside the Svengali subgroup, having been removed from the PSnap subgroup. Simply Ctrl-drag the buttons from the ZPlugin menu onto your ZB interface again and press Ctrl+Shift+I which will update your custom interface.

(2.) SubD polymesh models with multiple levels will now be saved at the FIRST level. In a model with many levels, the disk storage savings are considerable. Reloaded models will be at SubD level 1 but all of the other levels will be intact. After being saved, the total count of polygons, points and subD levels will be displayed in a popup Note. Left click the mouse button to continue.

(3.) The DOCUMENT button pair is new to this release. Some users will be happy to see this while others will never have occasion to use them. If you are one of the latter, simply leave the pair of Document buttons off your interface.

Please report any bugs or strange behavior and, PLEASE TEST FIRST by saving and reloading one or more of your non-critical models.

I would really like to acknowledge beta-testing help from: Scott Spencer, Aminuts, and especially Marcus_Civis who also suggested several worthwhile improvements in the code. Appreciated the feedback you guys!

Sven

#12

This is excellent Sven, thank you for providing us with such cool stuff that makes ZB sooooooooooo cool…:+1:

#13

Awesome work! I especially like that it now saves the object in the first level. That’s going to save a whole bunch of space on my HD!

#14

This is just soooo much sweeter, Sven - top stuff :+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:
Not much more to say, other than to reitereate what Chad said above :slight_smile:

Excellent and thank you!

Chris

#15

I think it bears saying again - this is an excellent update to a very useful plugin. Thanks for the hard work Sven. :+1:

#16

Great Update Sven :+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1: Thanks buddy

#17

Thanks everyone,

The PSNAP utility has evolved quite a lot over the last year. Until the next version of ZBrush is released, this is probably the last PSNAP update. That’s not to say there aren’t other model scripts in the works. Stay tuned. :slight_smile:

Matthew: thanks for booting the PSnap update image to the top row. Now more people might be tempted to tryout the update. Appreciate it!

Sven

#18

Thanks Svengali this is really good stuff.

Much appreciated

#19

Thank you very very much, no more paynefull saves :slight_smile:

#20

Thanks so much for the update as I use PSnap all the time! It makes it so easy! Thanks again!