lightbox and shortcut/alias folder in mac

system · April 12, 2012, 10:05am

Hi,
I want to make an alias/shortcut of my texture folder to Ztexture folder in lightbox. I created shortcut of “myTexture” folder and put into / Application/ZbrushOSX 4R3/Ztextures, but i still do not see the “myTexture” folder when i launch zbrush lightbox.

Did anyone had a same issue?
thanks

Richard_Marklew · April 12, 2012, 11:03am

Aliases have never worked in lightbox.

system · April 13, 2012, 7:37am

Thanks for the reply, i know shortcut used to work in pc, but i am guessing alias doesnt work the same way as shortcut.
How do you manage to browse texture folders without copying every files to application/zbrush directory in mac?
Is there a such a way to deal with this?

thanks in advance

system · November 21, 2012, 4:35pm

I’ve tried stuff before to get an alias to show up in lightbox but I’m sure Richard is right that its never worked. But I was tinkering again and figured out a trick to be able to get something that makes it easier to navigate to an external drive in lightbox with a Mac.

First, you have to make a symbolic link instead of an alias. They are different but accomplish the same thing. If you’re not sure how, a quick search will provide different ways you can do it depending on how comfortable you are with OS x. I tried this with an alias link and it didn’t work so be sure to do a symbolic link.

The trick (and catch) to this is you have to replace the directory of one of the default areas that lightbox has at the top with your symbolic link. In my case, I picked “Document” which goes to the folder called ZDocs in the root ZBrush directory.

First I organized all my ZBrush files that I keep on a separate drive into a single folder with sub-folders.
Next, I created a symbolic link to it and renamed the link to “ZDocs”.
Then I deleted the ZDocs folder in the ZBrush directory. (It only had a txt file in it and I made a backup copy of the ZBrush folder when I installed the program.)
Finally, I copied the symbolic link to the ZBrush directory.

So now when I click “Document” in lightbox, it works and will take me to the folder on my external drive. Its not as flexible as being able to create shortcuts and putting them where and to what you want, but it works and its better than the alternative.

Lone_Deranger · December 25, 2012, 2:52pm

chipt03:

I’ve tried stuff before to get an alias to show up in lightbox but I’m sure Richard is right that its never worked. But I was tinkering again and figured out a trick to be able to get something that makes it easier to navigate to an external drive in lightbox with a Mac.

First, you have to make a symbolic link instead of an alias. They are different but accomplish the same thing. If you’re not sure how, a quick search will provide different ways you can do it depending on how comfortable you are with OS x. I tried this with an alias link and it didn’t work so be sure to do a symbolic link.

The trick (and catch) to this is you have to replace the directory of one of the default areas that lightbox has at the top with your symbolic link. In my case, I picked “Document” which goes to the folder called ZDocs in the root ZBrush directory.

First I organized all my ZBrush files that I keep on a separate drive into a single folder with sub-folders.
Next, I created a symbolic link to it and renamed the link to “ZDocs”.
Then I deleted the ZDocs folder in the ZBrush directory. (It only had a txt file in it and I made a backup copy of the ZBrush folder when I installed the program.)
Finally, I copied the symbolic link to the ZBrush directory.

So now when I click “Document” in lightbox, it works and will take me to the folder on my external drive. Its not as flexible as being able to create shortcuts and putting them where and to what you want, but it works and its better than the alternative.

Excellent tip chipt03. Works very nicely. Thanks for posting. For those who aren***8217;t a fan of creating Symbolic Links in the command line, here***8217;s a handy little OSX ***8216;service’ that you can install and run from the Finder through the RMB contextual pop-up menu.

http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/~seiryu/symboliclinker.html