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ZAppLink and Painter X!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hiya,

First, lemme say I really like ZAppLink…really nice addition to polypaint!

I am a Painter X fan (having used it since it first came out on the Mac), and I’ve set up ZAppLink to use Painter X just to see how it would do.

Although I don’t see a way to preserve the layer masks in Painter, I am happy with one layer to paint on…the brushes are just awesome in Painter and the watercolor tool is great.

Trouble is, Painter keeps opening a new instance of Painter X every time I hit ZAppLink from Z-Brush, whereas Photoshop knows to update the same instance of the program (probably coz ZAppLink was written for Photoshop specifically).

Has anyone used Painter with ZAppLink and have you found a way to prevent Painter opening a new instance every time? This seems to confuse it and corrupt its settings file, meaning a re-initialization of Painter, re-setting hotkeys and custom toolbars, etc.

Does anyone know how to add layers in Painter and collapse them to preserve the layer mask? Haven’t seen a way to do this. In CS3 I just collapse layers and although there is no prompt, the layer mask is preserved.

I figure at worse I can just close Painter after every session, not a big deal…just wondering who here is using Painter for ZAppLink along with Photoshop. :smiley:

Dan

#2

I have Painter 9.5 and I can go back and forth between ZBrush and the same instance of Painter. I just do a save in Painter then go back to ZBrush. Maybe Corel did something in version X to screw that up.

#3

Ahhh, good to know. I would expect it to use the same instance of Painter X as well…I might try a Painter X re-install if it keeps happening.

Are you able to use multiple layers, collapse them and preserve the layer mask from ZAppLink?

#4

I havn’t used ZApplink extensively, but as far as I know, you can create all the layers you want in Painter, but you can only drop (collapse) the ones you created. You would select all the layers you created, then go to ‘Layers’ menu and click ‘Drop’, which would drop your new layers to the canvas, but don’t touch the ZShading layer or mask layer.

#5

Good point, I could just drop them to the canvas without touching the mask layer. I was trying to merge them into the mask layer like I did in Photoshop. Thanks. :wink: