Hello,
The old image plane plugin allowed me to place reference material in the viewport. Then I could alter its opacity, placement, and size.
Is there another way of doing this in Zbrush 4?
Thanks,
Brandon
You can use Spotlight. You can place any number of images anywhere and any size you want.
To work with a transparent reference image, set the opacity using the Spotlight dial. Your model will be behind the image. Turn off the dial by pressing ‘Z’ and make sure the Spotlight Project switch is off in the Brush>Samples menu. You can then sculpt your model against the reference.
Ah. Thank you.
Any idea how i can load an image plane like in 3.5 and have the plane swap out for a new image without clearing my model? I liked being able to store my model position to zapplink custom views. I need to see front and side image planes. I can load two images with lightbox and manually place them but this is a real PITA.
2 threads on the same thing, yes, sorry
you could try the image plane X tool and simply swap the texture that is being applied to it.
Thanks for the response.
whats the image plane x tool? make two poly planes with 50% uv’s for front and side and assign a texture to it?
I’d like to avoid that technique. My head is already made and i have to change it to match some concept art. If i make an x plane i will have to try to match the planes with concept art on them to the size of the head or match the head to the size of the concept art. It feels a bit sloppy to me. I’d not like to resize my head as it has to match the rest of the body, and i’d like to not guess what size my planes have to be to make the concept art texture match the model head size. Maybe i misunderstood what you ment by plane x tool.
Any help is appreciated.
… On further thought, i can just scale the x plane up to match my model without any guess work, eh?
… an x plane works very well, but it’s a lot more setup to match the size of the model. I like the ease of use of position model on plane, save position, swap image, reposition model, save position, done. Maybe im missing something here or i have my head down in the trenches. I’m unable to easily scale the planes from their center with a uniform scale.
OMG! See Brandon of GG uses this and finds it useful as well. In a dealine heavy production environment no less. It’s a real good feature guys, even more so for recreative work- which is still art.
See for me, even with the solves listed here. It’s more like a convoluted unsolve, just deal with way, for the time being.
The image match up to object play is still going to be an issue with the system as it is now. Having to manually resize and place that image each time you want it back in the scene makes my nose hairs stiff.
Zapplink and Imageplane held hands. They took long walks in the park and everyone was happy. Well most.
I wish I saw this thread first before I sputtered out my barely readable rant. Look Lightbox is amazing and I love it for other uses. But it needs to be it’s own thing and not the step parent way of doing this.
Everytime you load an image with Lightbox you will have to configure it over the model. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal to some, but the chances of re-hitting that sweet perfect placement spot is real pain some times, and when it’s a pain those position store buttons, the object transparency slider, and knowing the image will drop onto the canvas the same way, each time you load it back in. It is manna from heaven.
Sometimes there’s really only a hairs difference between being lined up and lined off. I think of this part of the process like snowflakes and fingerprints. If when doing this, you lock up your object with the ref image perfectly- You damn well better save that view file. Cause chances are you wont do it so seamlessly again.
Zapplink and Imageplane with the opacity slider made that stuff much less painful to do.
As for a plane x way or a shadowbox way. It’s not the same. Please believe me. You want the freedom to move the object around independently from the image ref- without using the transpose tools to do it.
I agree that for modelling against reference images Spotlight will not suit everyone (though bear in mind that you can use the Timeline to quickly store model positions - just click on the Timeline to store a position, then use the right and left arrow keys to cycle through views).
I have been thinking that an update to Image Plane along the lines of the old Reference Image plugin might be a good idea. Watch this space folks! 
apparently according to the below post (link) image plane still works with ZB4.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=92555
is there potential trouble installing the ‘old’ plugin?
Here is an idea,just a thought since in reality for example in maya etc image planes never really move.
Try the following make a 3d plane and load your reference, place it in the canvas and drop it, match your model to it and save a key in timeline, now drop another image and do the same… once you dropped all the images you want create a new layer on the canvas… now you can them behind the model and have a way to get your model to match it once again with your keys, only thing I dont know if possible would be can we turn on transparency as we model?
Nevermind doesnt work. 
You might get some unexpected behaviour - I’ve not tested it myself - but it won’t break anything.
This is good news, no chance to try it now. I’ll have to see how it works around sun up.
I’d still love to see the animation timeline adopt independent Zapplink Store Button states for each new segment on the timeline. As well as Imageplane adopting a set and change image on the plane 3d object feature for those animation segment points as well.
Cycling through the time line you could line your model up with several different ref images. Two store position buttons- CUI docked under the sculpting window. You can set one buttons store state to keep the model stored over the image in the same position, and you can set the other to one up so the model is shrunk down and stored away to the side from the ref image.
Click, clicky, click, and you got flipbook like spot checking against the image ref, I swear it works extremely well- as well as traditional flipbook animation shape checking does. Add a “Clear” and “Clear All” button to this CUI, and life is peachy.
I guess the arrows on the timeline work for now for position store states. The only problem with this way -if an Imageplane update adopts an animation line change/keep image feature.
You’ll have to set the image ref on the plane 3d to remain the same for two consecutive segments on the animation line before changing to the next image if you want to play the flipbook trick.
If an updated version of Zapplink adopts a independent position store feature for the time line then this wouldn’t be a problem.
I can see how that would be hard to code up. What if you have over a 100 images for ref on the timeline- Using my flipbook trick would equal 200 postion store states for the model.
Just how would you save it?
Export the views as a single view file? Save the animation line for the Imageplane image cycle through stuff?
Sorry for getting all bla bla bla. I’m trying to describe this “idea/wish” in as much detail as I can, with obvious hope to see it realized.