I guess my title says it all. how does one start zbrush without the light box and huge sphere at start up.
1) Turn Preferences>Lightbox>Open at Launch off and save your UI.
2) You could create a macro where you exit Edit mode and clear the canvas. You could then assign a hotkey to it. At launch, press the hotkey to immediately get your blank canvas.
The startup sphere is meant to go hand in hand with Light Box, and Light Box will become much more integrated/powerful in ZBrush 4. If you’re a sculptor, I don’t really recommend fighting with it – I think that if you give it a chance you’ll discover that it’s infinitely more useful than ZBrush 3’s startup screen was.