hiding and masking ‘buttons’?..are there any?
i know about the shorcut keys for hiding/revealing polys and the making shortcuts but are there any ACTUAL BUTTONS for these also?
main reason why i ask is when i use my laptop in pure ‘tablet mode’ there is no way to access these functions from just the pen and the user interface of zbrush3.1…unless they’re hidden away soemwhere or if not can they be scripted into a custom rollout ?
so anyone want to elaborate on if it’s possible to add buttons for these features?
in the Tool palette in the Masking category, you can show/hide masked geometry with the HidePt and ShowPt buttons. From this palette you can also Show/Hide your mask with the ViewMask button, invert your mask with the Inverse button, and even clear the mask with the Clear button.
Also, you can create a mask based on several properties of a loaded texture, such as Intensity, Hue, Saturation, and Alpha.
If you have created poly groups for your mesh and wish to divide your mesh into separate subtools based on those polygroups, then you can hide/show each subtool/polygroup from the Subtool palette
yeah i realise that…it’s not a replacment for the shortcut keys though is it?
with those you can only select on pre determined parts such as polygroups or the alpha you can’t MAKE a custom selection to hide/show or paint a mask onto your model as there are not “buttons” for
1.drag rectangle hide/show
2.paint mask
if i wanted to polyloop a band of olys on an arm there is NO WAY to do this without the shortcut keys…which are not available in tablet mode…
maybe version 4.0 will have these in the u.i…also a scale in/out button like the brush size buttons so we can nudge in/out left and right as well.
my last question is still >>even though they don’t exist in the U.I of 3.1 can someone script them into the u.i ‘as is’?
i think i understand what you’re asking now, but not sure it’s necessary. you’re wanting to press a show or hide button and then drag out your selection? no, there is no comparable button set, but i’m sure there doesn’t need to be, because as often as you have to press the hotkeys to get the selection you want, buttons would not be efficient. If you’re using a tablet, your keyboard should never be out of reach. I don’t know what kind of tablet you’re using, but even if your keyboard is out of reach, the wacom tablets have customizable keys on the pad itself (they can even be customized per application). I’ve customized mine as Shift, Ctrl, Alt, and Space so i can do exactly what you’re describing without a keyboard (although, i need the keyboard there for other things… naming tools on save, etc). Tablet mode doesn’t mean you can’t use your keyboard, in fact there really is no tablet “mode”… if the tablet is plugged in you can use it and the keyboard together… and the mouse, too. there’s no limitations except the one’s you impose on yourself. The ZB interface is thought out well.
i don’t know about nudging or slider-type buttons, but there are buttons for panning, zooming, and scaling the view of your model just like you would do with shorcut keys.
well yeah i can have my hp pc in pc mode and not 100% tablet mode but really the idea of ‘shortcut keys’ ususally mean they are a shortcut for a button somewhere…but alas this looks not to be so as there is no alternative to the key combination pressed to get masking or hide/show polys
maybe zbrush 4.0 will attend to this
being able to fold my hp pc into just the screen for a pure tablet mode should mean we can use an app still via the u.i. buttons on the app…unfortunatly pixologic havin’t thoght that much about this and the people who use tablet pc’s in tablet mode where the tablet doesn’t have programable keys to overcome the programing shortcomings of zbrush currently are out in the wild…
as an extra Q can we remap key shortcuts in zbrush like in lightwave, max
etc.
and back to my main Question can we MAKE buttons?
sorry, i didn’t realize you were using a tablet pc and not ‘a’ tablet.
you can only change the shortcuts associated with buttons.
no probs…i should have posted a pik;)
hey, thats really nice.
would it be too inconvenient to use a USB keyboard?
I’m having the same issue. I just bought the tx2500z with 4gigs of Ram and 64bit Vista for $796 after tax and shipping. Smoking deal. But for Zbrush, what to do about that darn ctrl shift and alt keys that seem essential for a lot of functions.
There are mini keyboards out there, hopefully no bigger than your hand, or special gaming keyboards with configurable keys that are a lot smaller.
Right now I’m looking into my iPhone. There are several toubpad/keyboard apps that let you control your computer. But the first one I got exposes a problem with this. Using the ctrl key, shift, etc on that iPhone app is not live. While holding down say the letter A would cause a constant stream of A letters to the computer, the ctrl key didn’t work the same way, it sits there glowing until I tap another key, like O, for ctrl-O, which worked in Zbrush.
So I hope to find one that does true live responses to ctrl and alt and shift. Prices vary from $2-$8, so not much to risk. The guy I bought an $8 one from has offered a refund from paybal. But his is still incredibly usefull as you can create custom sized buttons and record keys into them. So you can record ctrl-S, then label the button as Save, or even a string of characters, like an e-mail address. All the F keys are there, arrow keys, and so on.
On solution I’m pondering if there is a way to remap some useless keys in Vista, like PageUp, Home, End, that I never use to then act like ctrl. Then maybe the iPhone app would have some success and Zbrush would never know the difference. Maybe some software called AutoHotKeys will do that.
Okay, hopefully this solution might work I’ll try later tonight. I’m going to use the app for the iPhone called Snatch. Click here: http://appshopper.com/utilities/snatch But first, I will use AutoHotKeys to remap say Home to Ctrl. Then hopefully hitting Home on the iPhone will work. But you can only tap in the iPhone, not hold. So then comes in Vista’s Sticky Keys. Before going into tablet mode, I’ll hit right shift 5 times to turn it on. Now, when hitting ctrl once, it’s stickied, brushing will create a mask and release the ctrl key. Double tapping it locks the key, so I can mask all I want until I tap it once more to disable.
This, if remapping Home to Ctrl, and using the iPhone to tap home, and the sticky keys keeping ctrl active, then it should work. Even double tapping ctrl, the double tapping alt, lock both to unmask as much as you want.
Snatch also lets you create custom buttons you record keystokes in. So I could create a button labeled Mask, for lockign the ctrl key with two taps, and one caled qMask, for a single tap for a one time mask stroke. And buttons for whatever else commands I want to create.