Just bought Zbrush 3.0 a short while ago, had been meaning to for a while but finally got round to it, being purely a hobbyist at the moment had to count the pennies 
So I’ve been playing in the background, lurking the forums and thought I would step out into the limelight for a moment to introduce myself and show what I’ve been doing\learning in Zbrush.
Rather than start with sculpting anything straight off the bat, I’ve been looking at the tools in Zbrush and trying to get to grips with the UI, concepts and workflow. started with importing and exporting objs inbetween Zbrush and LW and I think I’m slowly getting to grips with most of it (still get a few hiccups and obstacles).
Reason for that is I intend to start modelling my meshes in LW and detailing them in Zbrush for rendering in LW. Later on I hope to reduce the detail I model in LW as my ability in Zbrush improves and lastly try some of those Zspheres
K so after doing the usual play around in Zbrush that i assume everyone does, playing with the sphere and pulling into ever contorted shapes I took a look at the brushes and created my own alphas and played with settings and tried out using layers, subobjects and Zproject brush - My results;
Just the std sphere with my playing with aforementioned tools, zip is just a simple LW obj imported to see how it all looks.
Now to the Questions
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When I ordered Zbrush Online there was an option to have a CD cut and delivered which I’m pretty sure I selected, how long does this usually take to arrive as I havent got it yet.
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When I was playing with the Alphas and Brushes one thing that struck me was that it would be useful to have a brush that used a mapped\Divided Alpha for variety an example of this would be having a 9x9 grid on an alpha that enabled either\both Sequential and random settings so that say grid postion one held the letter A, 2=B etc that as you used the brush the alphas showing the letters would spray onto the canvas randomly or sequentially much like the tube brush operates in PSP (or used to, havent used PSP in a while). This sort of thing would help with randomness in skin\surface patterning etc. is their a way of doing this already, is it a possibility with say a Zscript or something worth asking for via email for possible future inclusion.
3)I played with the Smooth brush in the demo version of Zb2 i Dloaded and bought 3 played with that a short while then tried 3.1 as it was out just after my purchase and I have to say I dont see why alot of people are grumbling about it, to me it seems the brush has been given far more options, perhaps having come to the app so late I’m not ‘stuck?’ in a certain workflow and more willing to accept changes than say someone who has been a user for years and used to a certain way of doing things. I would say give it more of a chance before asking for it to be changed back, and from what I can see you could create a brush more akin to the old and save it and use it as your own default old smooth brush anyway.
4)with 3.1 and LW moving to 9.3 is there any chance SW or someone similarly experienced could rewrite the Docs to reflect the changes as I did have to stumble a bit in the dark through a couple of steps which I had wished refered to the versions I had or had gone into more detail when importing Zbrush back into LW. (part of this is prob. due to my own inexperience)
5)Brushes resetting themselves, is their a way I can have brushes reset to their defualt states after I have played around with them? Although I have been exploring this side of Zbrush alot, I find I sometimes during playing with the settings want the brush back in its default state without having to fiddle with all the options in the diff. drop down windows. maybe a hotkey seq. I dont know for SHift+Alt+click brush in menu to have it revert or something?
now 4 and 5 were spur of the moment queries whilst i desperately tried to remember the more important 6) which i have completely forgotten and will hopefully remember before I run into the same thing again lol.
