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The deformation palllet, and crashing

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi everyone!

Hya ZBer!!!

I use the Deformation Pallet a lot and over all versions of ZBrush from v.4.0 it crashes
constantly, sometimes it gives you this obnoxious but helpful warning by undoing what
you just did with out asking, but more often than not it just nukes ZBrush and all your work.
Being unable to resize or move or rotate things make life a bit rough to say the least and
having to export things to another program seems counter productive when all you want
to do is move something over a little bit.
Some of the things in the deformation pallet work great like inflate and relax, but most of
the others are a total crapshoot.
Other than the obvious question of “what the heck?” I guess I would have to ask if there
is there any time table for this getting fixed?

Cheers! (and thanks!)
Mealea

#2

Im also running into stuff with the only workaround available, the transpose lines, this screen shot contains a transpose
line oriented to 0,0,0 and as you can see its off by a wee bit (also using Alt PrtSc doesn’t show the transpose line for
some reason hence the bloody document menu being open).

What I am trying to do here is so simple its disgusting and yet its totally impossible for some reason.

goddamedfuckingstupidpileofshittransposeline.jpg
goddamedfuckingstupidpileofshittransposeline.jpg1600×900 286 KB

#3

I guess what it boils down to is this:
Is there a precise method of moving tools and subtools that doesn’t crash ZBrush or do random things to my stuff?

#4

I think I found the transpose problem.
You can turn on Align Action Line To Axis in the Transpose Pallet in the Preferences Menu, so far
it seem to be working and I’m thrilled! Not very precise but it is at least keeping things moving
in the right direction!

[EDIT] Yep! it looks like it works! Yipppppppy!!!

#5

Hi Mealea,

Sorry to hear that you are having problems with crashing. I havn’t run into any of that yet in the Deformation palette. Regarding the Action line, instead of enabling ‘Align ActionLine to Axis’ in Preferences, you can just hold down Shift while you are drawing out the ActionLine to snap it to 45 degree increments and this will still leave you the freedom to use it freehand if you wish. Also, while using the ActionLine to Move stuff, holding down Shift while moving will constrain the movement to a straight line. I don’t know if you already knew this or not so I thought I would just mention it.

#6

GRIN!!
Hya Zber!

Yep, I have been using shift but it only works sometimes, and the screen shot is an example of it not working,
I was holding shift to get that line, from the “front” its perfect, but from the side its not (as you can see).
What it seems to be doing is snapping to the nearest vertices like it describes in the tool tip thingy for the
stuff in the preferences, but that button fixed it so I’m almost totally thrilled.
I use Shift with move all the time, and while its usually fairly good, rotate and scale are nuts and I do not
use them, they might as well be destroy 1 and destroy2.
Perspective messes all three of them up so I try to remember to keep that off, sometimes that helps.

The crashing with the deformation pallet is almost constant and for example I can do something like offset
something once, if I try to do it again it reverts back (like I hit undo) and if I do it a third time it will ALWAYS crash.
However not all of the tools in there do this, Offset, Size, Rotate, Gravity and Perspective are the worst, others
do it too but less consistently. I would say that inflate never does it as far as I remember and the others sort of at
random, but I use them less.

#7

When your drawing out the ActionLine, start on the mesh but pull the end of the ActionLine out to an empty spot on the canvas. This will keep it along the axis to whatever view you are snapped to.

#8

THAT is interesting…
When I drew the one in the example I couldn’t see the background, I was
working on a small subtool in the middle of a large wall.
Hmmmm…

Thanks ZBer!
Im going to try that now!

#9

Yep!!!
That was it, I can see (while holding shift down) the line conforming to the surface under it and once
\its clear it snaps into place.
The problem now is that I need it to ignore the things under it so I can work on little stuff, but if I zoom
out and make the action line when I zoom back in the little grabby thing at the end is off the
screen.
So… I think in this instance the thingy in preferences is the way to go?
hmmmm…

#10

If your mesh fills the entire document, you can Zoom (Zoom Document) out so you have a bit of empty space outside of the document. Dragging the end of the ActionLine to the outside of the document will also draw it on an axis. Otherwise the ends of the ActionLine will just follow the surface of the mesh.

#11

ooooooo… NOW that is seriously clever!
The only thing I have ever used zoom for is to make sure stuff was filling the canvas.
Neat!!!
Thanks ZBer!

#12

I have started getting crashes when I use the deformation pallette, particularly on Offset (which is the deformation I would most like to use, of course) but I have also had it happen on rotate a few times. The transpose method mentioned above isn’t going to be much use for me - Does anyone have this issue or know how to solve it?

#13

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I have this sort of problem all the time. I have had a sort of deep love and profound distrust of the deformation pallet since I got ZBrush.

Before the crash you should see a rather simple symptom:
What ever you did seems to undo it self IF you do something else like if you move your view you will see the tool snap back to where it was.

At this point if you do the same thing again, for example use offset, you will crash instantly.
If however you drop the tool, (IE: turn off Edit mode) and make a new canvas, and redraw your object onto the new canvas (turn Edit back on) re-orient so you see where you were and try again.
I normally would recommend saving before something like that (meaning saving the tool it self) but in this case that can create a tool you cant open later (this can cause a lot more aggravation obviously).
I know this totally destroys the natural flow of things but it can save you a LOT of trouble.
There is another approach that I THINK works as well but I am nit as sure of it:


  • In the Tool Pallet hit the Clone button.
  • Click on the clone, this replaces your orignal wiith an exact copy in the same exact spot.

If this last one seems to work for you let me know, I just thought of it the other day and haven’t had time to test it.

Cheers!
Mealea|