I miss Zapplink and Imageplane so bad… I don’t feel like Lightbox covers the same ground that these two apps offered.
I am heavy into the recreative side of art.
This is going to be a little long winded. I apologize in advance. I hope it all makes sense ( I might have to edit it a few times ) This was my favorite trick in 3.5 R3
My method of working with Zapplink and Imageplane goes something like this.
Load an image-
Crop and Fill-
Bring tool back into the scene.
Position it in the same pose as the ref object on the “Plane 3d” image in the background. Save this position as a view.
Since Zapplink and Imageplane didn’t work well with transferring the color information onto the models using the morph brush. I devised a little trick to work around it in regards to shape matching, and instantly fell in love with it.
This is what I did to solve that issue. I would move the model away from the ref image and shrink it. I would store that as a position change as well. I had the position store buttons from Zapplink docked under the Object’s display document window.
I could click back and forth on these postion buttons at anytime, while still monitoring my sculpt. Essentially I created a flip book. One button drops the model directly over the image. The other makes it disappear. Clicking back and forth on those buttons would show me what was on and off shapewise between my Zbrush object and the ref object in the background image.
Another thing I could do was this. If the next image I wanted to load was the same size as the previous image on the 3d plane before it. I could get that image loaded in without having to do anything else to correctly display it in the background. All I had to do was turn off the recently loaded image texture in the Quick Pick section of the Texture Pallet. Click on Load Image and select a different same sized image and Tada! I have a new image ref in the background.
I was hoping there would be a way to store model and background image positions using the new animation line in Zbrush 4. I can’t even get Lightbox to act like Zapplink and Imageplane did. No more model position stores, No more model opacity slider, No more background 3d plane images to cycle through in the Quick Pick area of the Texture Pallet.
I know someone is going to suggest Shadowbox. I use more than simple front and side views for study when doing this type of stuff. Also, it’s nice to be able to move the sculpting model around independently from the images behind it, so you can line them up and work on them.
Using the transpose tools to pose the model up with the Shadowbox images would be tedious and destructive to the objects absolute symmetry.
You can move the object in relation to the ref image loaded up with Lightbox. However setting the image up so it always is displayed in the same location and storing the models correct “Line Up” position doesn’t seem to have an answer yet.
The Lightbox image is in the way of the sculpting object as well. It’s no longer just an image. It will transfer the images texture onto the object as soon as you try to sculpt on it. If color is on- it grabs the color. If add or sub is on- it grabs the texture. I don’t want that to happen all the time.
If the animation timeline adopted the ZAL object position button properties as well as some sort of IP 3dplane import background image feature. If you could store a different 3d plane background images on each new point in animation timeline, and you could change the position state of the store buttons on each new point on that animation time line. Allowing the user to set/store the model in a different position on each point in that time line to match the new image- While retaining the previous store positions on previous location points on that timeline. That would be pretty damn awesome. Also returning the model opacity slider back as well. I bet people would really dig it.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Lightbox for dropping images onto the model and using images and alphas to make 3d textures as well, but trying to make it work as background image ref without the options that Zapplink and Imageplane gave up, is killing me. Everything else is Amazing, and I hate that I’m whining about this, but it was a very important function for my needs.
Is there no hope? Is this stuff gone for good? Am I missing some sort of technical walk around with Lightbox that actually allows me to perfectly emulate what I used to do with ZAL and IP? I miss my favorite trick. I’m sorry, please dont think I’m hating.
(Yeap this took many, many edits- damn I feel bad)
