I’ve created several menus with Preferences->CustomUI->Create New Menu, but every time I restart ZBrush the menus are empty. This is after saving my custom UI and storing my config…
It’s pretty frustrating rebuilding these menus repeatedly, so I figured I would ask what the proper steps to saving your custom menus are- it obviously works for other people, so I must be doing something wrong.
very nice, thanks marcus!
Okay, that fixed it for my custom menus- but I’m having some issues with Custom Trays not saving… Specifically, if I put a Custom Subpalette in one of my trays, and then fill that subpalette with say… brushes- when I reload Z4R2 the subpalette is gone, along with its contents. Anything that was outside of the subpalette is safe. Is there another special trick for getting subpalettes to save correctly when placed inside the tray?
Essentially, I’m trying to create a sidebar of brushes that are categorized by the way I use them, and I want to put them in subpalettes so I can collapse them when I’m not using certain categories of brushes… It works perfectly until I close ZBrush…
Are you sure that the palettes are not being reordered? If I save a custom palette to the top of tray it will be at the bottom when I restart ZBrush. Could you show an image?
Did you create the sub-palettes in that position? That’s the only way I can think that you’ve done it. But the reason I think it won’t work is that the sub-palettes need to be part of a custom menu. And you can’t drag menus to that position, only individual items.
That seems like a bug to me then… because I can drag a subpalette to a tray, fill it with stuff… and then use ZBrush for as long as I like with this configuration (until I close zbrush). Once I close Zbrush all of the custom subpalettes I created just disappear…
so it works fine, it just doesn’t save- you can definitely drag a subpalette to a tray, it works great, and is a very useful way to organize things- it’s just a bug I guess…
I meant to say that there is a workaround for this. You can create a special ‘background’ button and then position the items on it. The end result is exactly the same. (For the image for the button I just used your screen grab with the other buttons masked out.)
The zip shows you how to do it, and the image shows the result. Just unzip the file and put the ZSC and the PSD in your ZStartup/ZPlugs folder. You can then drag the ‘button’ from the ZPlugin>Custom Buttons menu to the interface, then position the other things on top.
That’s certainly a useful way to organize things- but my main purpose for using the subpalette is the ability to drop it down.
For example- I would like to organize my brushes into their purposes- masking, selection, sculpting, insert brushes, etc. When I’m ready to do some polypainting, I can drop down the paintbrushes palette and collapse the sculpting palette… that sort of thing, makes is very easy to switch between tasks within zbrush. while keeping a nice clean interface and not needing to have one of the huge default menus docked to a sidebar. The reason I’d like to do it this way is sometimes I sculpt on a small laptop (15") so screen space is at a premium.
Kind of unfortunate this bug exists, because this would be very useful to have :\
I wonder if there is some sort of ‘startup’ script I could write that would recreate my tray each time zbrush starts?
What you are using is not a bug, rather you have discovered an unintended feature of custom interfaces. Sub-palettes can’t normally be positioned separately from their parent palettes, and you can only do it if you move them to the position you want when you first create them (you can’t move them about after they have been named). That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the usefulness of what you are trying to do.
If you create the sub-palettes within a main custom palette then you could have that docked to right or left instead of any default palettes. This would then work as you wish, though it would take up a bit more width than your preferred solution. Another thing you might consider is to create a custom palette for each aspect of your workflow (masking, materials etc.). These could be docked in the same way but also you can assign a hotkey to each palette (Ctrl+Alt+click on the title bar). Pressing the hotkey will bring up the palette at the cursor, meaning that you could keep the interface clear completely.
As for your idea of a startup script, I’m sorry to say that that is not possible.
This is called a bug 
But I do see your point. Hopefully someone at pixologic sees this and decides to make it an intended feature, because it’s extremely useful so long as you never close zbrush. 
Not at all. A bug is intended behaviour that doesn’t work as expected. This is unintended behaviour that doesn’t work as you want - a different thing entirely.
