ZBrushCentral

Custom UI - Prevent Brush and Material Button Mutation

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’ve created a custom UI for zb4 and have several buttons that shortcut to my favorite brushes and materials. I’ve noticed that if I change the brush or mat selection using the integrated pickers (that show ALL of them), the active custom button is replace with what I just picked. After a few minutes of working, my interface is now populated by these unwanted guests…throwing off my workflow.

Is there any way to prevent this by happening by locking the buttons so they won’t dynamically change like that? I’ve noticed that the buttons don’t always change when I pick a different brush/mat, but haven’t figured out the logic behind this (assuming there actually IS any logic involved).

Thanks,
Mitch

#2

can you show what you mean?

#3

Here is a quick visual example. This happens if you use the shortcut brush icon or the r-click/spacebar menu to choose the new brush type. It doesn’t appear to happen if you use the LARGE brush picker button from default UI, but I don’t really use it or even have it in my custom UI. I use the spacebar picker almost exclusively while sculpting, but this wreaks havoc with my carefully chosen palette of brush buttons over the course of a work session.

Thanks,
m

Attachments

zb4_brushmutate.jpg

#4

This is how zbrush works I’m afraid.
I have an extra Icon in my palette that is for selecting new brushes. I have a hotkey set up for that brush as well (1). 2 is move, 3 is clay, 4 is claytubes…etc.

I use the minimal layout so it doesn’t really matter to me though. TAB switches between layouts for me. I have 2 loaded into my layout folder, minimal and my custom UI. I don’t like having all the clutter on my screen when working. And using hotkeys to switch between brushes makes more sense to me.

#5

mitchfx, I’ve had a similar problem in the past and I believe your problem is that when setting up your custom brushes you inadvertantly pulled the main brush button for your custom standard brush. Delete it and try again, but make sure you are pulling the standard brush from the brush list on the bottom and not from the top shelf or the main brush icon (which looks identical, but changes with each brush selection).

#6

Nancyan,

If I’m understanding your suggestion correctly, you are saying to drag the brush buttons from the bottom list in the main brush popup menu. I have not found a way to drag from there directly (attempting do ctl-alt drag causes the menu to close), so instead I’ve been selecting the desired brushes from there first which causes them to populate into the persistant brush menu (under “brush” in menu bar) and I copy/drag from there.

If there is somethign I’m overlooking please let me know, becasue they are constantly changing and driving me nuts!

Thanks,
Mitch

#7

Try this:

Dock the brush pallette (from the top menu bar) over to one side so it stays open.

Put some geometry in edit mode so the brush palette becomes accessible.

Check the brushes there. If there are brushes you want to pull out that are not in this grouping, select them via the brush menu you get when you press the letter B and they will populate the docked list.

Now alt+ctl click drag on the brushes you want from the newly docked menu, BUT don’t pull the very top left brush (its a slightly larger square and defaults to the standard brush). This is just an indicator of the currently selected brush. So anytime you change your brush this changes. There will be a standard brush icon you can use in the list below this.

edited to correct error

#8

Yep, that’s how I’ve been doing it all along. The buttons still change frequently when I select a new brush. Guess it’s one more in the long list of ZB quirks.

Thanks,
Mitch

#9

Sorry that wasn’t helpful. I have a bunch of brush shortcuts docked to the bottom of my workspace and except for the time I accidently pulled down the first square that highlights the currently selected brush, I haven’t had the problem you are experiencing.

Perhaps your install is bugged and you would benefit from a reinstall.

#10

I’ve encountered it on 3 different installs at both work and home, so my guess it that it’s some kind of order of events/workflow that causes it to happen. Let me try to recreate it from scratch starting with a default UI and report the steps here.

Thanks,
m

#11

Ok, I reread this thread 3 more times verrry carefully and I realize you were doing something that I never do, so I retested. And yes you have found a bug in the brush selection via the spacebar. I never got into the habit of using spacebar and read right past that, sorry.

It only seems to affect the standard brush icon changing it to the currently selected brush, but doesn’t add any brushes to my custom brush palette as I think you described.

I don’t get similar problems when I access the brush palette using the keyboard “B” shortcut…everything works fine.

These days, although I made a custom tool pallette as I mentioned above, I tried docking my most use brushes to the bottom of my workspace and I tried assigning the number keys. Finally, I forced myself to learn the complete shortcut keys for my most used brushes (such as BSQ for standard), for example. And I have to say that’s turned out to be my favorite method for selecting brushes.