ZBrushCentral

Subtool management

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,

i´m currently working on a fully armored character and my subtools palette is getting really crowded…
so i´d love to hear some tips on organizing my project!

  1. I guess there is now way of grouping subtools in zbrush so far? For example: the arm-part of the armor alone consists of a dozen plates or so…
  2. Are there shortcuts for hiding/ unhiding all subtools? I know i can solo a subtool, but sometimes i need to solo 2-3 Subtools and then it gets rather annoying hiding/unhiding all others…

Any other tips on managing a bigger project (except for renaming your subtools…)?

Cheers!

#2

You can use ‘Merge Down’, in the Subtool palette to group subtools, and if they each have a different polygroup and the same number of subdivision levels, they can later be split up again using ‘Groups Split’ in Subtools palette while still maintaining their subdivision levels. ‘Merge Down’ will merge the selected subtool with the subtool directly below it in the Subtool list. Keep in mind that you are limited to the amount of polygons that your system can handle on any one, individual subtool.

The selected subtool will allways be visible regardless of whether or not the ‘eye’ icon is on or off. Turning off the eye icon on the selected subtool will turn off visibility on all other subtools, at which point you can turn on the eye icon of whichever subtools you want visible.

#3

thanx for the reply!

I already knew about merge down and i´ll probably have to merge (and retopologize) lots of subtools anyway for later use (i was asking about that in another thread about posing armor). I just couldn´t believe that such a simple option like grouping subtools didn´t exist yet. Just seen it on the Zbrush 5 Wishlist though…

I´ll try out your suggestion for managing visibility, i already noticed some weird behaviours while toggling visibility, up to now they just seemed completely random to me.

#4

Thanks for the visibility-tip, once i got the hang of it it works like a charm!

I´m considering splitting up my character into at least two tools (not subtools), one for the body and one for the armor for a simple reason: If i keep everything in one tool, the file gets really large (i´m already at 360 MB) and it takes forever to load and safe and occasionally crashes on loading or saving…

#5

You can use the Timeline to create key-frames for current subtool visibility. This would let you quickly swap between different groups of subtools using the arrow keys.

#6

hehe, another nic tip, thx!
Although at my level of expertise i don know in advance what tools i want visible, i´m mostly just switching around intuitivelely and for that the previous tip on how to handle visibility is sufficient for me…
Still think group folders would be a great addition though and shouldn´n be THAT hard to implement.
But then again.
Max in it´s upcoming release is dealing with a few of those “small annoying things” you think should have been very easy to fix a long time ago…