ZBrushCentral

Spotlight, saving images and interacting with the background? [Answered]

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi

I am not sure if these set of features are available within Spotlight because I am unable to find a way to make them work basically in the Spotlight setup.

-How do I save a manipulated spotlight image(edited in the spotlight)? I tried the save screenshot thing, and that also takes the screenshot of everything, so quite useless. Btw I am not talking about saving the Spotlight collection, that is a different thing.

-How do I bake or fill the background(the main canvas) with the active spotlight image? Cloning does not work, and the grabdoc from the texture palette is naturally useless.

Sure I can use Photoshop or Gimp for most of these things, however it is more convenient if these features above were possible in Zbrush.

thanks

#2

http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Layer_Palette
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Document_Palette

#3

Thanks, however I do not think that there are any answers to my questions on those help pages. I am asking about spotlight not the actual document.

#4

No one but you can read the information and hopefully grasp how the software works. There is a ton of information available from those links. Good luck.

#5

No one but you can read the questions and hopefully grasp what the questions are asking. There is a ton of points in the questions above.

#6

ZBrush is VERY complex. I pointed you to what is a goldmine of info. Each aspect of the workflow has many features. Spend some more time reading and I know you’ll be able to achieve that which you wish.

#7

this is what happens when one has too much free time, little to do.

Now back to your reply. I have been a Zbrush for nearly 10 years and I don`t find Zbrush to be very complex, there is documentation enough about some features. I am asking about a specific issue. If you have never experienced the issues I have outlined above or needed any of those please stop polluting this thread. I know you can do it, just do not attempt to click on this topic again, I know you have the soul of good manners and can just keep your generous contributions to community for another topic. You can do it!

#8

Know what your tools do.
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Spotlight_functions
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Working_with_Spotlight

#9

Admins please delete this topic. Certain trolling activities forces the valuable time of the original poster to go down to waste while trying to keep this topic under humane and civilized for all human beings. I realized that I have made a mistake by placing a reasonable question in Zbrush support forum.This was waste of bandwidth, human hours, server space, administration and maintenance time.

thanks

#10

K I looked around for a direct route and can’t find one for ya. So the work around is to use the plane tool to fill
the screen. Make polymesh 3d and under polypaint, click colorize. Then use spotlight to paint it on the plain. Then you
can grabdoc and save off the texture or make it your background.

#11

Finally someone who knows what I am talking about. I am glad that the admins have not deleted the topic for now.

Matuka that is what I have been doing, but for some reason I was thinking that there should have been a better way to achieve that to be honest, given the fact that one modifies images merges, collages etc. It is quite odd that saving a modified spotlight image has not been thought about. Although maybe there is a way, my gut feeling is along what you looked into so far about it.

I cannot even paint or clone into a filled layer, given that a filled layer has a fixed depth. So the spotlight must have a limitation of interacting only with 3d models and itself.

The down side of the plane method is the precise transfer of images. It can be quite tricky to deal with really highres images like 4k for example.

#12

I also was going to suggest the Plane3D method but then thought that, yes, it would be alright for smaller rez images, but like you mentioned, would not be a good idea if you needed something large. As you would have to use polypaint and ploypaint is dependant on mesh resolution, then you just wouldn’t be able to subdivide the plane enough to get a decent transfer. This has bugged me ever since Spotlight was first introduced. It would be so nice if you could use Spotlight to paint directly to texture like you can in Projection Master. Then mesh resolution would not be a concern. Another thing that would be nice is, and you can’t do, is use Spotlight in Projection Master. Hopefully, Pixologic will implement these in a future version.

#13

The plane method is really the only way you could do it, I think. (Like you, I do not understand why there is no way to directly save images.) The problem is that you’d need to create a plane that has enough polygons to support the necessary polypaint resolution, so a 4K map would be about 16 million polys. But also when you transfer the color from Spotlight you would need to have the image and plane at full size to avoid degradation due to scaling. If you can set your document size to the image size, and display the whole thing at once, then this isn’t too difficult but anything larger will need doing in sections - a bit of a nightmare.

#14

I’ve edited this thread where we got a little off track. :wink: I’d like the rest to remain as it’s something that comes up now and again and will be useful to others.

Thanks,

#15

Thanks marcus_civis

Is there anything in the api that would let us script this out at all? I am not sure if the scripting api even might know which spotlighjt is active or even if anything is active regarding spotlight. It feels more like a blackbox.

#16

You’re right, I’m afraid. You can switch Spotlight on and off, and add textures to Spotlight but that is it as far as zscript control is concerned. It’s impossible to choose a texture in Spotlight, or scale it to a particular size - both essential to come up with a scripted version of what you are trying to do.

The only thing you could do with script is create the plane and then paint over it. This does work, as I tested earlier today.

I’m not actually sure whether you might be just as well off simply taking a screen grab with the ZBrush document window set to maximum. (You would need to set the Opacity of the image to max.) With that method there would be no need to worry about document size or image plane resolution, as the Spotlight texture sits over the whole ZBrush workspace.

#17

marcus thanks for the insight. I am going to stick to 8bit screenshot method for now since this is the simples. I just hope that this will be implemented as proper feature at some point.