ZBrushCentral

Startup Material Issue + changing lights on startup

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello! I’m very glad we now have a simple button to store a different material as the startup mat. For me however it hasn’t been working very well - it seems it wont do it with certain materials. I’ve tried saving out the material into zStartup/Materials too so that its sure to find it - but it is never that material on startup, strangely it selects a different one that was not assigned and is not red wax. Is this just a bug and is there a work around?

All I did was make a duplicate of the basic material so I could tweak various parameters to my liking and that’s what I want to be loaded by default. I wanted to use this as my base so that I can manipulate lights on the fly in the viewport to refresh my view of things which of course doesn’t work with a matcap. Any help in getting this fixed is appreciated.

Secondarily, I know you can store a startup document and ofcourse UI config, but neither of these seem to capture light settings. For example if I have two lights on, and one is colored slightly - there doesn’t appear to be any way to retain that as a default for zbrush. Is there a way, and if so what is it? Otherwise, I’d suppose I’d have to macro that and just press the button on each startup.

Thanks in advance for insight/help with both/either of those things!

~Cliff

#2

As an update to the second question, it seems as though light settings are in fact stored - but are overwritten by the settings in a Zproject.

#3

I’ve found I can not successfully macro light setups. Recording a macro that moves the default light, turns on another, moves it, changes the light color for me produces a button that does turn on the second light, but puts both lights in the same position and doesn’t change the color of the light, but does change zbrush’s color selection (not the specific swatch for lights).

I’d love to be able to do this, if someone experienced with Macros could tell me if something else is needed or if this just isn’t currently possible in zBrush that would be much appreciated.

~Cliff

#4

Be aware that lighting doesn’t really work well with matcap materials. They have their lighting baked in, so you may not see changes, or may experience strange behavior if changing the default lighting with Matcaps in use.

Lighting presets can be saved in the lighting palette, or as part of a .zpr project file. I’m not sure I’d recommend changing the default if you want to use matcaps, even if it is possible.

#5

Yeah certainly I’m aware of the matcap thing. I’m working with materials that do respond to lights so that light can be an effective tool to use while working on things and helps you not get too used to viewing it in only one way.

I was however unaware of the ability to save light presets. That’s nice, I’ll experiment with that. I suppose I could save a preset, then record a macro of opening that preset, and have a few that I can quickly cycle between that way via buttons or hotkeys.

I’ll give it a try.

#6

Well that’s sort of what I was hoping for in a way - creating multiple light presets and making macros to open then then putting those on the UI allows some quick toggling between different types of light, with updatable files. Excellent.

Now just have to solve the startup material thing.