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Help with setting up backdrops images

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hopefully I’m posting this in the right spot…

Doing a tutorial from a book on Zbrush 3 and having some trouble setting up my reference images. Maybe something has changed from the time this book was written.

The book is telling me to use the image plane ztl and then I’m supposed to append the polyspere to that. But once I do, how can I set a transparency to the sphere so I can see my reference image through it? The book is telling me to go to the texture panel in the tool pallette and click the Txr>Col button but I don’t see any such control. Can someone tell me how they go about setting up background reference images in Zbrush 3.5? Thanks!

#2

For the sake of your education, I would suggest you install 3.1 and use that to learn on until there is more documentation, learning material, and plug-in support for 3.5. Don’t let things that are beyond your control stunt your progress.

how can I set a transparency to the sphere so I can see my reference image through it?
I’ve seen folks on here saying that there is a feature request in place which would allow you to make the active subtool transparent.

The book is telling me to go to the texture panel in the tool pallette and click the Txr>Col button but I don’t see any such control.
My understanding is that the UI got shifted around a bit, particularly the texture features.

#3

I appreciate the help so don’t take this the wrong way. But how is learning to set up a backdrop image and set up object transparency in 3.1 going to help me when I eventually come back to 3.5? I’ve been learning zbrush over the past few weeks since 3.5 was released and this is just the one thing that seems to be quite different then it was in previous versions. Just looking for a little help on this one item. Tried searching the docs, didn’t find my answer so I came here.

#4

I’m pretty new to all this and just started learning 3.1 and I’m wrapping my beginner’s head around 3.5…but until someone with more experience chimes in here, I believe you now select your texture via the Texture Map tab in the tools palette (this is a different then the texture option on the left of the screen)…then in the Polypaint tab (also in the tools palette) select the Colorize button and the Polypaint from Texture. Also you can’t make your current tool transparent…only the subtools (If I’m wrong about THIS, I’ll be thrilled). Hope this helps.

#5

Thanks Nancyan, I’ll try that out and see if that bears fruit. Appreciate the response.

#6

It’s a no go. Looking further into the docs, I found a tutorial similar to the one in the book I’m using. It’s sculpting a skull using image planes. Went through that and still can’t get it to work. I think there’s something not right with subtools in this version because no matter what settings I’ve tried, I can’t get a mesh to show transparency. Images fine. Meshes, no. I’m going to try and report a bug with it to Pixologic.

#7

I know I am late to the party here, but I am going through this exact tutorial now, except I am on ZB4 instead of 3.x. For the benefit of future beginners doing this same tut, this is what I have figured out:

I believe the tutorial the original poster is referring to is from the book, “Introducing ZBrush,” by Eric Keller, copyright 2008. It has a picture of Medusa on the cover. The tutorial starts on page 158.

In step 14 of this tutorial, the author would have you click the Txr>Col Button. This has, indeed, moved to the ‘Polypaint >> Polypaint From Texture’ button.

Regarding the image planes, I also had the same issue, i.e. not being able to make the active subtool transparent to match the pictures in the tutorial. What I am guessing is that the author actually went in and added an image cube as a subtool with the polysphere on the inside of the image cube. He doesn’t directly say that this is what he did, but that should enable us to see the reference image while scuplting on the opaque subtool. (On page 164, he gives a little blurb about the Reference Cube).

Kind regards

Dave