“Answered”…? This would be one of the most used features if it was stable.
If there are so many crashes, we could benefit from a list of “base settings” in preferences as a datum to start from. Settings such as memory settings can affect almost everything. Maybe if we knew what not to do, it would help. 
I’m getting the same problem, but only after I switch textures
windows xp 64
i7 quad core
2 ati radeon hd 5700
32 gigs ddr3 ram
Originally posted by Gnawbie
windows xp 64
i7 quad core
2 ati radeon hd 5700
32 gigs ddr3 ram
S-W-E-E-T! nice system! nice gaming rig!
I have tried everything, and it always crashes. So I am leaving this feature alone. :td:
Same was with me.
XP64 and almost every time a crash when I hit the Z-Button for painting the texture to the model.
I played a bit with the loaded texture sizes and as I reduced the size of the textures that caused crashes it initially worked well.
But after a restart of ZB4 the crash-problem is again here, also with reduced texture-sizes.
Damn.:mad:
As SpotLight is a really, really nice tool (maybe the best one and most usefull I have ever worked with in ZB so far and, very untypically to ZB, it’s very easy and intuitive to use), I would beg Pixo urgently to fix this problem as soon as possible.
A further tip:
Spotlight is also excellent for use as reference-picture-supplier when you sculpt. For me it works a lot better than trhe tricky Image-Plane-Plugin.
Simply load the different reference-pictures in spotlight and use the Opacity-function on the wheel. 
Finally for me worked the advice already posted by Dicki at Page 1:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Pixologic\ZBrush 4.0\ZStartup\ConfigFiles
and deleting the 2 files I found in there. After I deleted them, it seems to be working fine now.
Unfortunately the above fix did nothing for me either… I agree with what others have said, spotlight is too amazing to not use, however crashing this much makes it almost not worthwhile, which is a real pity. It’s obvious it is a problem for many so we should at least get a proper response from pixologic, acknowledging the issue and offering a fix or a promise for a fix.
Pix are pretending it’s not actually happening to people, so the solution is to forget Spotlight and use another tool.
Here is how I stopped getting crashes with Spotlight:
-
Import your larger images in from the Texture pallete, not from Lightbox. This eliminates the triple click in Lightbox crash.
-
Don’t undo a “delete image” command in Spotlight.
Doing the above I have not had a single Spotlight crash, whereas before it would crash all the time.
Hope this helps.
Unfortunate, but I believe you are right. Pixologic, can you prove us wrong and give a reply that is worthy of your loyal customers? You guys are so (deservedly) proud of your software, why not acknowlegde the little shortcomings? Just let us know you guys are working on it, it will be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Toink
just another un-listened to voice…
spotlight is mind blowingly unstable… it’s such a wonderful tool but basically… I cant use it ever… zb crashes outright… and don’t anyone dare say it’s my system… my comp has more then enuf power for this…
We have repeatedly tried to duplicate this, on multiple computers and without success. Being unable to duplicate it naturally makes it very difficult for us to try and promise a time frame for a fix…
One thing I would like to check is, if you are encountering crashes with SpotLight, have you tried reinstalling ZBrush? It should be a full reinstall where you delete the ZBrush 4 folder after uninstalling, removing all leftover files so that the reinstall can be a clean slate.
Also, please make sure to have Draw>Rgb turned on BEFORE doing anything with SpotLight.
an official reply… finally!
I tried the full uninstall / reinstall I’ve also used the trial version and installed it on my laptop and my girlfriends laptop… with the same crash present… it does not make a difference if it’s an imported mesh or a mesh generated with Zbrush.
however I’ve noticed there are certain things that seem to cause it to crash more often.
1: having perspective turned on.
2: drawing near the edges of a model
3: multi sub-objects
4: not having compacted memory recently
5: using a brush stroke to quickly after a previous one
as for hardware requirements I think my systems are more then enough.
i7 3.6 ghz 12 gig ram… dedicated scratch drive… and all the other trimmings
if you would like me to record a video or arrange a teamviewer presentation I’d be happy to.
Hope this helps
Alex
Hello everybody new to this site althouygh I have been reading loads of post, now thought its about time I joined
I have found that if you add images from the web or your own then save the spotlight, which is kind of a good thing for reference later it works fine
1 Just add to spotlight
2: Texture > Save Spotlight
3: Voila it works, at least for me
Have a great one 
I can get spotlight to crash by leaving a ‘from uv check’ switched off texture in the texture palet.
It had been crashing a lot, but this was the thing I did that I never do
Hope that helps someone.
Seems to have fix the problem as well. I have not crashed since and able to hit Z off and on, paint, and sculpt all with spotlight.
I escaped the wreck without using the “Z”. It’s inconvenient, but allows you to work.
Anything further on this? I also get this repeatedly, and it seems to happen when toggling Spotlight on/off with the “Z” key.
System:
Mac Pro 8 core @ 3Ghz (2008 model) 6 Gb RAM, Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB DRAM, Windows Vista 64 bit.
I’m getting the same thing too. I can go for maybe 10-minutes max before zBrush crashes if I’m working with Spotlight. The solutions in this thread didn’t do any good.
I’m convinced it has something to do with the images. I’m working with lots of 3dsk images, so it could be their size.
Also, it seems to happen when I use one of the spotlight buttons, like Scale or Rotate. So I’m guessing it’s something that happens when Spotlight tries to manipulate a really big image.
The problem is that it’s so random that I can’t give exact steps to reproduce it. It works for a few minutes straight, then all of a sudden a scale operation will crash zBrush.