thank you Neil 
@alpha placement
- use square and center buttons for decals and such to keep proportions
- use UV maps for surface alphas
- some brush settings allow spacebar to reposition the alpha
but i agree would be nice to be able to position it perfectly, like drawing it out from one point to another,
a snap to point feature would generally be nice, at least in low poly applications, curves have that feature -.- but curves are finicky and like persian cats or somin, very delicate XD,
but you could probably make a uv mapped plane to position your alpha and then use a curve to get it in place -.-
for the last few scenes i didnt use real alphas tho, just some noise masking to split stuff into naturalisticly grown polygroups,
would be important tho if you make a real city or whatever and use height and road maps that need to match, i suggest UVs for accuracy in that case,
match em i photoshop and use the same, duplicated ground object with the same UVs to project onto
and heck, i need other apps all the time XD
realflow for proper fluid stuff, max for uv fixing and complex animations, smooth groups and such, ps or premiere for post, marv designer for cloth or some photometry apps to capture realistic objects…
but do i always need those?
no, but i almost always need ZB somewhere in between if not for the most and fundamental part, and i rarely ever use anything but ZB for personal edutainment like these projects,
i like my hammer and my chisel, no blisters even, its just so intuitive once you get into ZB, i probably use other apps for much longer and wouldnt say ZB has a fancy UI, but no other app is so much fun…
if i may inject an anecdote here, i worked on some indie movie’s final cg scene and had to literally make a turd… floating through water… to shape a word… it was, without any negativity, a **** job…
but i enjoyed to scratch the cracks and wrinkles into that turd 
ZB talks to my creative and entertainment side of the brain more than it is bothered by the technicality some apps throw at you,
which is all cool and useful, but i dont need to think about every fricking vertice all the time if i just wanna make a banana,
at some point, for production for example, i have to think about it again of course and ZB often enough lets you do that too,
just use the most productive, easy and enjoyable method you can think off…
after testing huge scenes out now i must say its not optimal to do it in ZB,
its very fast once you get a workflow going, did the last two scenes in one, extended day, but the size restrictions in sliders, brush sizes, max affected area, etc are a bit limiting in terms of scene size,
for true CAD you would need better snap and numerical settings for angles and positions etc, and proper splines to work with.
as i see it atm, ZB is most geared towards detailed, human sized characters, and you can stretch that meaning into a low detailed city, a medium detailed forest or an ultra high detail earring,
but you gotta split it up at some point and work with subtools to keep growing your scene and adding detail… but even then it stays relatively fast compared to points on screen and such…
i easily could still work in realtime on my last 9mil points city which i could hardly have done in archicad for example…
