ZBrushCentral

Sigh, position and rotation problem..

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Okay, am slowly getting the hang of things, but one thing continues to vex me…

  1. When I try and type a value in the rotation deformation, it always rolls my tool some amount of degrees randomly when I click the Rotate field to type a value… I cannot for the life of me click “Rotate” without something bleeding into the “hey slide me however I freaking feel like it this second…”

  2. Is there anyway to reset a tools position to the default zero rotation, centered position it was in when I started creating it? Even when I draw it into a fresh document, there seems to be some kind of saved incorrect positioning, which screws up doing any further symmetric sculpting since no matter what I do, I seem to have no obvious control over how to precision place it. The hold-shift key seems to have its own mind over when I can hold it down and drag a new tool in a document.

Sometimes, infrequently, it seems to lock the direction , more often than not I might as well not even be holding it down to get the tool to come in straight.

So far my biggest peeve is just with the control I have over placement and those damn teeny tiney sliders, (using a wacom cintiq 13" for most of my daily work)… those freaking X, Y, Z markers are almost impossible to hit and then the sliders do what they feel like while I am spending 10 or 20 seconds to turn on/off the X,Y,Z spots… ARGGGGGGGGG!

Any help is appreciated…

#2

Installing this will help you some. Understanding will be gained with time. Happy ZBrushing. http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?161588-quot-Axis-quot-Plugin-for-ZBrush-4r2

#3

I have that plugin, and while it is awesome for viewing, it does nothing at all to help with physically positioning the tool when the tool gets rotated when I didn’t want it to be rotated or getting it rotated back to the original position.

#4

Your real estate is a bit small, those buttons must be tiny :rolleyes: I guess you know that already though. Transform pallette has some buttons to enable/disable movement.

#5

I think there is something I am not understanding about your problem.

It is true that dealing with those switches and sliders in the deformation sub-palette is quite difficult with the tablet. You can try with the mouse if this doesn’t interrupt the way you work… Anyway, you are just moving a slider or typing a value with the keyboard, pressure is irrelevant here. So why not using your mouse to click on the rotation slider and enter the number?

What I don’t get is , how is that your tool get rotated accidentally??? How often do you need to rotate, move or translate tools like this with the deformation slider?
Why don’t you use the transpose lines more often?

Sorry If this doesn’t help you , but as I said I don’t quite understand your problem.

#6

You can try using the Magnify Glass (Shift+M). Magnify Glass settings are in Preferences.

#7

Yes, Zber2, I always forget about that Magnifying Glass…

Even when I draw it into a fresh document, there seems to be some kind of saved incorrect positioning, which screws up doing any further symmetric sculpting since no matter what I do, I seem to have no obvious control over how to precision place it. The hold-shift key seems to have its own mind over when I can hold it down and drag a new tool in a document.

When you drag the tool on a fresh document you are not affecting its initial rotation or scale at all. it just affects the view. If this helps you, press SHIFT+P to show the Grid

#8

It ‘will’ take many hours reading about the software as well as considerably longer using(or trying to use it) before you ‘get the hang of it’. Do read and experiment more. Searching these forums will more than likely get you many of your answers.

#9

Let me try and explain a bit more.

I created a zTool. Had it positioned perfectly in the document. I tried the rotate from the Deformation panel and when I clicked on “Rotate” after selecting the teeny X,Y,Z with my Wacom Stylus on my Cintiq Companion 13" screen, while the field turned red to allow me to enter a number, the tool itself promptly rotated some random number of degrees before I could type the value I wanted. After that, even though I used CTRL-Z to undo, every time I clicked “Rotate” and entered a value, like 90 degrees, the tool DID NOT rotate 90 degrees. I could never get it to go from the starting position to 90 degrees so that symmetry would work right.

Just using the transpose line doesn’t give me the accuracy I need…

It would be awesome if there were some way to select a given option from the Deformation palette and have it pop up a larger window that gave me better access to the options, like X,Y,Z selection or a specific value to type in.

#10

I’d probably select with my mouse instead of the stylus, that bit may be what’s causing the undesired rotation. Front view facing into the screen is Z so if you have the star shown from front or rear you’ll see the star but from other 4 views a diamond(probably)(assuming you haven’t actually rotated your ztool. Both the Deformation pallette and the Transpose line can be used to rotate, move, scale. You need more screen to work on and a bit more understanding of the program. Don’t give up.

#11

Awesome, yeah that’s extremely helpful, I can pop a mouse onto the wacom tablet, and with the magnify key that should also hel alot… I posted my Sea orc head progress in the WIP forum… many thanks for the tips and info.

I am really looking forward to 4R7, maybe by the time it comes out I’ll be ready to render stuff… 8 ) the video showing the new stuff is what made me go ahead and buy 4R6, I am really beginning to love the difference to sculpting in ZBrush versus laying points and polygons in other cad software, Rhinoceros 3D in particular.

Cheers!

#12

TRANSFORMERS.jpg
I made this little Zscript for you.
You can set the parameter of each axis separately. And then choose the desired transformation…For rotation, the value means angles…
So you can offset 50 in X, -30 in Y and 0 in Z for example.
This way you take your time fighting with the sliders; the transformation won’t be performed until you click on the button.
I hope this helps.

#13

Wow! You. Are. The. MAN!

Many thanks, wow, words fail.

I will use the heck out of this and eventually I’ll get the hang of this program, I’ve been using it for about 3 weeks now and when I started I didn’t think I’d even figure out how to switch between tools, I am definately going to go all in on ZBrush, anything else will be to support it.

Thanks again dargelos!