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SubTool visibility

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I am an utter and complete newbie on ZBrush, so bear with me on this.

I am going through the lessons on Lynda.com, which are not completely up to date with version 4R7. In the Shadowbox lesson, it shows a different SubTool interface, an older one, which has a button highlighted for “Shadowbox” which you click to make it invisible.

So I went to the online ZBrush User Manual, where it says to click on the eye icon for that particular SubTool to turn off its visibility. However, the manual says that it will stay visible until I change to another SubTool. There isn’t another SubTool for me to change to; there’s only one in this document. Even though the eye icon is dimmed, the Shadowbox is still visible.

I know this is a dumb question, but what’s the trick here? Nothing I’ve tried has worked yet.

#2

If you want to turn off the Shadowbox visibility, go to Geometry > Shadowbox and click the big orange “Shadowbox” button.

As for subtools in general, you can’t turn off visibility unless you have more than one subtool because the currently active subtool will always be visible, even if the eye icon is clicked off.

#3

Thanks, that’s certainly the way it seemed to work.

Now the thing is, in the tutorial from Lynda.com that I was watching, the instructor inserted a Shadowbox, painted a mask on it to create a shape, then turned the shadowbox off and was able to deform that shape and sculpt it. The 4r7 interface is a bit different from what they show, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn off the Shadowbox and then sculpt on the shape. If I try to sculpt the shape with the Shadowbox there, I end up sculpting the Shadowbox instead. I’m kind of at a loss as to how this is supposed to work - it’s not like the tutorial.

I suppose I can search and eventually figure this out, but can anyone save me some time and point me to instructions for how to create shapes using Shadowbox in 4r7?

#4

Ok, got it now. You mentioned that the Shadowbox button was under the Geometry menu item, which is correct. The Lynda.com tutorial shows it under the SubTools item. Had to go back and view the video again to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood, but it looks like that button used to be where they show it before, but got moved to Geometry.

Anyway, once I found the right button, everything seems to work as advertised. Thanks for the help! :slight_smile: