Tutorial! How to lose subtools and influence death.

[retleks]

I’m sure this is a feature, as all of zBrush’s quirks seem to be, because there would be patches and stuff if they were not, right? Right. Well this one is a doozie.

Bring in some obj’s and make them all subtools. Now, if you look at your subtool rollout while you do the following, your mind will explode. But it’s okay, it’s a feature.

Sometimes, somehow, the eye for the subtool you are working on will be clicked off, and I don’t know how that’s possible, but whatever, it’s a feature. Now, with that eye clicked off, and another subtool’s eye clicked on, ctrl+shift click on the subtool with the eye clicked on. Still have your eye on that subtool rollout, brain freaking out yet?

You may have noticed that all subtools with the eye clicked off, have now disappeared from the rollout. Brilliant! no amount of ctrl+shift clicking will bring your babies back, gone into the void that is zbrush feature hell.

Or is it?

Now, I lost an hour of work (only an hour, because it’s zbrush, and those features have tought me to save regularly). However, after tons of fiddling around trying to figure out how the feature worked, I think I’ve solved it. This next part is amazing!

After you’ve been resusitated, you need to do what you just did until you have but one subtool left. So, unclick all the eyes, except for one, and ctrl+click on that one… everything is gone, you’re left with one subtool. Now, click the eye of that subtool TWICE (off, then on again), and BAM! You can see everything again, just ctrl+Shift click on one of the previously hidden meshes and all of your subtools will appear again. Now take your blood pressure meds, and throw a party, everything is okay, it was a feature after all.

I’m sure this is all well documented somewhere in the wiki or the manual, I must have skipped over it, or maybe my brain had a hard time working that one out, and I apologize for that. I can’t wait to see what you do with the next release.

Good day gents.

[aurick]

I’m sorry, but I can’t duplicate what you’re describing. Maybe it’s because the exact steps have been jumbled a little among all the sarcasm; I don’t know. :rolleyes:

To begin with, which version of ZBrush are you using? 3.0, 3.1 or 3.12?

[retleks]

Hey, Aurick, thanks for trying, I’ll try to be more clear, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll try recording something. And the sarcasm’s only because I love zBrush, and I want it to be perfect.

Anyway, I’m on 3.1, Vista 64 ultimate, 8 gigs, 2x 8800 gt Version 181.20 (things have been weird since installing that, so I’ll revert and try to repro then).

Just Make polymesh3d several Sphere3ds or import several objs and combine them together as subtools.

Whichever subtool you have in focus, click the eye off like you would to hide everything else, which works (all of the eyes will be off).

Click one of the eyes other than the subtool you have in focus, don’t switch subtools, just make one of the others visible (or multiple, just leave the one in focus off).

Now ctrl+shift click the subtool who’s eye is on (will be any of the other subtools that is visible). This brings that subtool into focus, and hides your previous subtool that was in focus. Furthermore it removes it from the subtool rollout (my ui is the default “Tool” on the right).

This is where I started cursing. Because I thought I had lost a lot of work… which I did, because I hadn’t found a fix for it at the time.

Here’s the fix:

You have to do the above until you have just one subtool left in your rollout. And when you have that, you have to click the eye twice. Turn it off, and turn it on. When you turn it on again, all of your subtools will appear in the view, greyed out, but they will not be in the rollout until you ctrl+shift+Click on one of them, then they all come back.

So yes, it feels broken, and looks broken, but it isn’t neccessarily broken.

[aurick]

Ok, thank you. I’ve been able to duplicate it with a model that I just created and haven’t saved. If I load a previously saved model with SubTools, I can’t duplicate the behavior.

Do you get the same results?

[retleks]

I first noticed it on a file that had been saved several times already, and just in case tried a fresh one with no luck.