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Rotation on newly-created ZSpheres?

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#1

Just took advantage of the current pricing deal on ZBrush last week after seeing some really amazing stuff - I’ve been a Lightwave hobbyist for years, but modeling was always so tedious that it tended to stop me before I ever got to the animating stage.

Along comes ZBrush! A lot of modelers claim “it’s like working with clay!”, but nothing else delivers on that like Z.

So, I watched the Ken Brilliant alien tutorial and found that it all seemed to make sense, but I’m still running into interface hurdles when I try to emulate what I saw. Specifically, when I create a new ZSphere, it seems to be rotated at some odd angle so that when I try to model with X-axis symmetry, the “mirroring” of my pen movements happens from lower-left to upper-right (on screen). No amount of rotating seems to be able to change this, and I’m officially stumped.

Any pointers on this (probably very basic) problem greatly appreciated - can’t wait to start seeing some of the ideas that have been trapped in my head for years actually start to take shape!

#2

Hi RB and welcome aboard! This is a “problem” that everyone seems to have to overcome at first but it is easy enough to get through it. First draw your sphere. Go into rotate mode. Under preferences turn on DOTS (this will let you see the mesh as you position it and give you a clearer understanding of what you are doing) Position your cursor inside the colored 3d gyro then click and hold the mouse button down. Now drag the mouse upwards and around until you see that the pole of the sphere is positioned at the top of the sphere. Now move your mouse cursor off the object to somewhere on the canvas. Hold the shift key down and click the left mouse button. The sphere will snap to perfect alingment. That should do it. Here is a script SphereOrientation.txt that illustrates this. When running the script turn SHOW ACTIONS on under the script menu and turn REPLAY DELAY up to 1000. :+1:

#3

Mentat - thanks! I’ll give that a try when I get home tonight.

I think my problem also has to do with the way I’m making the sphere - looking a another tutorial, it stresses dragging straight down to create the sphere, while I’ve been doing the Photoshop-centric “drag diagonally” method, which probably accounts for the sphere starting off with the weird rotation in the first place.

#4

A very quick way to orient your 3D objects with precision is through the Transform>Modifiers>Info menu. You have three sliders which change depending on the transform mode that you are in.

When in Draw mode, they show the XYZ position of the pixol under your cursor. When in Transform>Move, they allow you to enter values to set the exact position. Transform>Scale lets you resize, and Transform>Rotate lets you choose your orientations with great accuracy.

To turn a sphere so that the poles are North and South, use these settings: X 90, Y 0, Z 0.

By the way, it’s the Sphere3D tool that you’re referring to. The ZSphere is a completely different tool for full body sculpting and other complex meshes, which will be available in version 1.5. :slight_smile:

#5

Aurick,

Thanks for the additional info - very helpful!

Also, thanks for clearing up my mis-statement - guess I’m so excited about the possibilities the ZSphere will open up, I’ve decided to start calling everything a ZSphere :^)

#6

Also, I’ve found it helps if you just align the green line horizontally. Otherwise, just load the alien head script until it says “We’re ready to start modelling” or the like.

I know, lazy but sometimes the button combinations and their effects on other settings can be a bit confusing for new users. Like sometimes I have problems rotating an object with the rotate tool, it’s much easier to rotate it in edit mode.