ZBrushCentral

Zbrush 5.0 Wishlist (or 4.5 if possible)

Hey Kaowut,

I’m no expert, but off hand what you’ve described sounds similar to an upcoming feature in Zbrush 4r2, but that feature is not designed to manage animation appropriate topology and while I hold out hope that the kind of feature you are asking for could one day be achieved, I doubt it will happen any time soon as it would require a level of intelligence in the algorithms that history suggests is difficult to achieve. My experience with various attempts at intelligent automation suggests that were it attempted the result would likely be less than ideal topology, especially on arbitrary meshes - chances of success with this idea would be increased by dealing with a predetermined mesh but that is generally an impractical limitation on production.

Still, breakthrough’s have to happen eventually, so I may add it to my list, and thanks for adding your voice to the thread.

Sounds a bit like the auto-retopo feature in 3D-Coat, except in real-time. It might be possible, but most likely not. It is a cool idea though.

3ds Max has decent retopo abilities, but doesn’t like high resolution meshes. 3D-Coat (which is buggy) and the upcoming version of Topogun look good, but are also an extra expense a lot of artists can’t justify. Zbrush is the worst by far as it is way too labor intensive to be useful on a frequent basis. Like many others, I really do hope we see an update to this soon.

PS: Someone mentioned updating the navigation tools. This gets mentioned a lot around the net, but is usually shot down by the hardcore Zbrushers who like to say navigation is just peachy. The navigation has never really been too much of a problem for me, but adding presets that make navigation work the same as your favorite 3D app seems like a reasonable idea to ask for. Even though I know how to navigate in Zbrush just fine, the ability to make it work like 3ds Max would certainly be welcome. Going back and forth always results in brain farts (for lack of a better term) and it always takes me a few moments to re-adjust my habits. This can actually get annoying when using GoZ a lot during the course of a day. I guess one could just as easily ask for their favorite 3D app to have Zbrush-like controls, but seeing such a request fulfilled is about as likely as pigs sprouting wings. If you think how Zbrush users treat those who request navigation updates is bad, you should see what 3ds Max users say when people ask for Maya-like controls lol. :wink:


Vector displacement, ptex, auto-retopo, and 64-bit are the future. Viva La Revolución!

It does sound like the 3D Coat feature ! That is why I thought it could be doable. The main difference as you said is the fact that it is in real time…

But that is exactly the kind of challenge Pixologic would be up for !..
To be honest I couldn’t think of any other company capable of offering this in their package.
I also feel like it would be the perfect artist friendly retopo tool and I can soooooo see it in the next release !
Now regarding the fact it is not animation friendly retopo I agree but Zbrush doesn’t strike me as being a pipeline friendly software anyway and I’m totally cool with that.

Zbrush is on its own… pushing boundaries… doing its own thing.

You either love it or hate it, use it or ignore it but it will be there in case you need it…
A bit like an old friend really.

Nice initiative Francis!

Here are my suggestions to improvements

High priority

  1. Fix smooth uv bug
    There is a button for smoothing uv’s (tool/geometry/suv). It works when you divide the model, but when you go down in subdivision the uv smoothing of the higher subdivisions dissapears. This leads to that my poly painting exports does not match my smoothed uv in maya. There are time consuming workarounds for this, but it would be nice with a fix.

  2. Add blending mode to polypaint layers
    Poly painting on layers should have blending modes, just like the different shaders has (normal, multiple, screen etc). At the moment polypainting is only applied as “normal”.

  3. Add functionality to map material attributes
    It would be nice to be able to paint a specular map (or ohter map) in zBrush and see the results without have to export it to another 3d application and render it there.

low priority

  1. Fix uv-border shrinking on gemoetry border edges
    If you have a geometry tube with holes in the two ends, the uv of of the geometry border edges will shrink if you export a displacement map with smooth uv’s on. It also happens if you divide the model and apply “smooth uv/suv”. The workaround is to crease the model before exporting the the map, but it is easy to forget.

Nice initiative Francis!

Here are my suggestions to improvements

High priority

  1. Fix smooth uv bug
    There is a button for smoothing uv’s (tool/geometry/suv). It works when you divide the model, but when you go down in subdivision the uv smoothing of the higher subdivisions dissapears. This leads to that my poly painting exports does not match my smoothed uv in maya. There are time consuming workarounds for this, but it would be nice with a fix.

  2. Add blending mode to polypaint layers
    Poly painting on layers should have blending modes, just like the different shaders has (normal, multiple, screen etc). At the moment polypainting is only applied as “normal”.

  3. Add functionality to map material attributes
    It would be nice to be able to paint a specular map (or ohter map) in zBrush and see the results without have to export it to another 3d application and render it there.

low priority

  1. Fix uv-border shrinking on gemoetry border edges
    If you have a geometry tube with holes in the two ends, the uv of of the geometry border edges will shrink if you export a displacement map with smooth uv’s on. It also happens if you divide the model and apply “smooth uv/suv”. The workaround is to crease the model before exporting the the map, but it is easy to forget.

Thanks for you input MorrisCowboy

Here are some new suggestions:
1. Better Material Management: (basically, make it work more like Maya and other packages)

    [list=1]
  1. Don’t replace current material with imported one. Imported materials should simply be added to the list without taking the place of some existing material.

  2. Blueprint materials, and Material instances: Materials should be applied as instances of a given material type (the blueprint Material), that can be edited and applied (such as to multiple objects) independently of the blueprint material or any other instance of it. So, subtools A and B could share an instance(instance01) of Material01, and subtool C could have a separate instance(instance02) of Material01. If changes are made to instance01, then both subtoolA and SubtoolB are update, but SubtoolC is not.


[/list]2. Better Texture Management:

    [list=1]
  1. When importing a texture image, there should be an option to apply it to the currently selected tool

  2. When applying a texture to a subtool via it’s Texture Map palette, you should be able to import a texture directly through that interface without having to do it through the Texture Menu first.

  3. You should have a choice of either embedding a texture directly in the Ztool, or have it source an external file.

  4. When texures are embedded in the Ztool: You should be able to have multiple objects share a single texure map, and there should be a good interface for managing your texture and material assignments, whether the texture is sourced externally, or embedded.


[/list]

NEW suggestion(Derived from suggestions by Zeddicus and Mahlikus The Black in posts 256 and 260 (pg 18) of the following thread: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=157573&page=1&pp=15)

Make use of the middle mouse button. Example:

MMB = Draw size
MMB + SHIFT = Focal Shift
MMB + CNTRL = Zintensity
MMB + ALT = RGBintensity
MMB + ALT + SHIFT = BrushModifier

Updated master list:

Top Priorities:

  1. 64bit (This is THE most important feature above all others)
  2. Subtool folders (organize subtools by folders (at least 5levels of nested folders please))
  3. vector displacements
  4. paint and bake across multiple uv spaces (via all texturing methods, and with any number of layers - I hate it when stuff gets left out)
  5. Ptex

Asset Management:

  1. Import multiple obj’s at once with options to1. make each a separate Ztool
  2. combine them into one Ztool with each obj as a separate subtool
  3. combine them into a single Ztool with all obj’s merged into a single subtool2. Update geometry via import on multiple subtools at once (a specialty import interface that lists all subtools and allows you to select the desired import obj file for each (don’t forget to enable the user to specify within this interface the SubD level to import to), plus the ability to set a default target that will be automatically associated with a given subtool)
  4. Export multiple subtools by similar method as that listed above (I know that some of this functionality is available through the MultiMapExporter, but I envision something much more robust)
  5. Ability to remove individual Ztools from the Tools list (clutter control)
  6. list of recently opened files (Unique list for each open/import type - texture, alpha, Tool, Geometry Import, Open Zproject etc, but also access to lists associated with all other open/import dialogues, no matter which one you are using)
  7. Do NOT rename subtool when importing new obj into it’s place (very annoying to have to rename my subtools all the time)
  8. Ability to select and perform actions (such as delete, or set display properties double-sided to on) on multiple subtools at once
  9. DON’T delete an objects UV’s when it is exported with the Txr button turned off in the Export subpalette. Create a separate button to delete the uv’s on export, and cause the Txr button to only affect whether the object’s texture is exported or not.
  10. Full keyboard character support for typing subtool names (such as an underscore “_”)
  11. Allow multiple tools in the tool list to have the same name (I hate it when Zbrush renames stuff on me)
  12. Import multiple obj’s via drag and drop into the interface, and automatically group them as subtools of the same tool. Also drag and drop multiple Ztools (which are not grouped under one tool).

Geometry Control:

  1. Stop offsetting the location of models on import – this leads to problems, such as the breaking of symmetry tools like SmartResym. Or, at least cause these tools to account for the offset.
  2. Ability to properly scale a Ztool (with it’s subtools and all subD levels as well) by a percentage, and in a manner that does not alter the proportion of fine details held on Higher SubD levels relative to the lower SubD level details (see the following Thread for clarification: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showth…ed=1#post845810)
  3. Retain HD geometry when importing an altered mesh to the lowest SubD level (when retopo work has been done on the model)
  4. NEW (for further thoughts on this issue see posts 55 through 59 of this thread (page04)) Do not allow base topology to change simply by subdividing it. Right now, if you bring in a mesh, and do nothing but subdivide it one time, you’ll find that your base geometry has been changed – it has effectively been smoothed out a bit. This phenomenon in Zbrush can create real headaches. For example, if for some reason you need to duplicate an object’s base geometry, say that of a shoe, so that you can do a unique hi res sculpt on it, since Zbrush has already smoothed it out once, it has already deviated from it’s original build, and now when you take a fresh copy of it and subdivide that you’ll find that it is smoothed out even more. It’s a copy of a copy scenario. It is equivalent to re-compressing a jpeg over and over again using the jpeg compression algorithm – every time you do it you loose some more of it’s fidelity to the original. This particularly spells disaster if your model is composed of several pieces as they begin to separate at the seams. Another scenario where this creates problems is in cases where you bring an object into Zbrush that you do not intend to do any high res sculpting to because you need only apply a smooth operator to it when rendering in a package like Maya – however, say in the case of an eyeball, you want to subdivide it in Zbrush to make sure that you get a proper and snug fit between the eyeball and the skin of the eyelids. In this process you may rescale and/or reposition the eyeball in Zbrush as well, and therefore the simplest thing is to export it to maya to retain the new scale and position, however, since the base mesh has been smoothed out in Zbrush, now when you apply the smooth operator in Maya it actually comes out smaller than it was in Zbrush, and therefore no longer fits the base mesh for the body.

Sculpting:

  1. Rotate brush - a brush that rotate’s portions of geometry that fall within it’s radius, using the center of the brush as the center of rotation. Drag left and right rotate’s the geometry perpendicular to the camera view. Drag up and down rotate’s the geometry parallel to the camera view (ie in and out relative to the camera view). Holding shift will snap the rotation to one of the two options, while without it allows for smooth combination of rotating in all different directions. Holding the alt button inverts any alpha. Holding Alt+Cntrl inverts the the influence of the brush so that rather than being strongest at the center, it is strongest at the edges (based on the focal shift) . A brush option to add a fade to the influence at the edge when the focal shift is inverted.
  2. Multiple Blendshapes (Should be a non-workaround method - ie creating separate blendshapes on different layers, or timeline positions are workarounds - I’m looking for an independent list of blendshapes)
  3. (Suggested By: wethand) Save masks function that is independent of saving to an alpha or texture
  4. (Suggested By: santis) Robust set of retopo tools on par with those in topogun and 3dcoat (see some specific recommendations from “it’s Alive!” in post #24)
  5. Closely related to the retopo tools requests - Complete and advanced set of traditional polygonal modeling tools (please closely examin the tweak tool in Softimage, and features of the NEX plugin for Maya by Draster for idea’s). Basically - make it so that people will never again feel the need to go to another program to do any polygonal modeling/sculpting tasks. Please give special attention to creating tools/brushes that enable the artist to slide the topology of an object across it’s surface, without changing the shape of the object.
  6. (Suggested By: brettSinclair) Lattice for stencil tool (also see the slurp tool in Mari)
  7. make Zproject brush work in symmetry (with option to have the mirror side simply copy the results of the work done on the origin side, or pick-up the reference topology unique to it’s own side)
  8. (Suggested By: dobbie) Clip Brushes: Be able to cut holes into a mesh. (now you can only do it if you made a hole in shadowbox)
  9. (Suggested By: It’s Alive!) Offset Axis symmetry feature (see post #24 of this thread, about half way down, for details)
  10. (Suggested By: HaloAnimator) The return of Zmapper (see item #3 of post #27 for details)

Texturing:

  1. (Suggested By: arsan) Paint your model from a 2D (uv) view of it that does not involve an elaborate work-around (see posts 22 and 23 of this thread (page 2) for more info)
  2. (Suggested By: Francis Bezooyen) Paint masks (even sculpt?) on your model from a 2D (uv) view of it.
  3. Layered PSD texture support (i.e. paint to texture (not just polypaint) in layers and export and import those layers to PSD’s with all data intact)
  4. Simultaneously sculpt, and paint to multiple synchronized texture maps or “channels” (using Mari terminology). Ie - I would like to be able to have multiple profiles attached to a single brush, each one associated with a different map (color, spec, other), and having different settings. For example - while sculpting, I want to be able to simultaneously paint to a color, a spec, and a custom map, each map being painted using either a different texture image, material, flat color, or even a completely different brush (so, have a master brush that can have multiple “sub brushes”, that are each associated with a different map or channel, and even a specific layer of that channel).
  5. NEW Better Texture Management:1. When importing a texture image, there should be an option to apply it to the currently selected tool
  6. When applying a texture to a subtool via it’s Texture Map palette, you should be able to import a texture directly through that interface without having to do it through the Texture Menu first.
  7. You should have a choice of either embedding a texture directly in the Ztool, or have it source an external file.
  8. When texures are embedded in the Ztool: You should be able to have multiple objects share a single texure map, and there should be a good interface for managing your texture and material assignments, whether the texture is sourced externally, or embedded.6. NEW (Suggested By: morrisCowboy) Fix smooth uv bug: There is a button for smoothing uv’s (tool/geometry/suv). It works when you divide the model, but when you go down in subdivision the uv smoothing of the higher subdivisions dissapears. This leads to that my poly painting exports does not match my smoothed uv in maya. There are time consuming workarounds for this, but it would be nice with a fix.
  9. NEW (Suggested By: morrisCowboy) Fix uv-border shrinking on gemoetry border edges
    If you have a geometry tube with holes in the two ends, the uv of of the geometry border edges will shrink if you export a displacement map with smooth uv’s on. It also happens if you divide the model and apply “smooth uv/suv”. The workaround is to crease the model before exporting the the map, but it is easy to forget.

Layers System:

  1. Layers Folders (same concept as Subtool Folders)
  2. (Suggested By: arsan) Make it possible to switch between layers no matter what SubD level you are on, and whether the subtool is partially hidden or not
  3. (Suggested By: arsan) Add Bake current layer option
  4. (Suggested By: arsan) Preserve existing mask when creating a new layer
  5. (Suggested By: arsan) Separate layer systems for painting and sculpting with options similar to those in photoshop (like in mudbox)
  6. (Suggested By: brettSinclair) A layer system that doesn’t require a press record.
  7. (Suggested By: brettSinclair) Erase brush (erase sculpting on specific layer).
  8. Copy, cut and paste options (via masking) to move portions of one layer to another

Lighting, Materials and Rendering:

  1. (Suggested By: dobbie) More best render options. (like being able to tweak number of samples etc)
  2. (Suggested By: brettSinclair) Standard materials common to most 3D apps, such as Phong, Blinn and Lambert.
  3. NEW Better Material Management: (basically, make it work more like Maya and other packages)1. Don’t replace current material with imported one. Imported materials should simply be added to the list without taking the place of some existing material.
  4. Blueprint materials, and Material instances: Materials should be applied as instances of a given material type (the blueprint Material), that can be edited and applied (such as to multiple objects) independently of the blueprint material or any other instance of it. So, subtools A and B could share an instance(instance01) of Material01, and subtool C could have a separate instance(instance02) of Material01. If changes are made to instance01, then both subtoolA and SubtoolB are update, but SubtoolC is not.
    UserInterface:
  5. A Major UI overhaul. Zbrush has a beautiful interface in many respects, but there are some major limitations to it as well. Tyrellcorp (in post #46 of this thread) pointed out the copious amount of scrolling he has to do in the tool menu and suggested placing the Tool import/export/load palette in an independent location that would always be accessible without scrolling as a way to solve this. I suggest taking it further – I do a lot of scrolling in order to access other features of the tool menu as well. I think it’s time for Zbrush to see a major UI redesign that introduces tabs to the UI, and the ability to move subpallettes as a whole when redesigning the interface. I also want to be able to drag and drop interface items on the fly, and to place them side-by-side as I please, control the layout of tabs, set auto-hide feature etc. An example layout that would be possible with these features would be to have two columns on the right (or more) – one with the Tool import/export/load palette at the top, and the subtool pallette below – the other column could have the remaining Tool menu items organized and accessible via tabs (either at the top or bottom or running down the sides of the column – as the user decides), perhaps with several sub-menu items grouped under a single tab. Both columns could collapse (independently) to the side and be accessible by tabs running down the sides of the Zbrush window, and/or auto expansion (think of the autohide layout in Softimage). If an artist needed to make a similar change to several subtools (such as turning the texture off), such a layout would allow them to to have the Texture Map and Subtool pallettes open side-by-side, enabling them to quickly switch between sub-tools and make the needed change in the Texture Map subpallette. (Note also how handy it would be to select multiple subtools and make the change to them all simultaneously as suggested in the Asset Management section). The latest photoshop versions have introduced some slick UI features like these that would be worth drawing inspiration from, and other programs have similar features as well (Mari for example).

Miscelaneous:

  1. Real world units on axis (cm, foot etc such as in Maya), and the ability to set your unit type
  2. (Suggested By: brettSinclair) “real” 3D perspective.
  3. Ability to set the default state of any button (such as setting the Export Subgroups button to be off by default)
  4. Option to turn off old navigation scheme (the old navigation scheme can result in inadvertent rotations of the model while sculpting)
  5. (Suggested By: arsan) fix issues associated with the “alt+LMB = Frame Selection” shortcut (For more info see Post#19 of this thread, plus the following thread: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showth…highlight=frame)
  6. (Suggested By: Muddpit)An option to see how many hours you have worked on a particular piece, like a small counter in the toolbar (Comment from Francis Bezooyen – Such a counter should have an option to pause it’s count when Zbrush looses focus. Better yet, to track your activity across multiple applications, excluding others.)
  7. (Suggested By: midost (in the words of Francis Bezooyen)) When Zbrush closes, have it detect any unsaved changes to your Ztools and if any are detected ask if you would like to save your Ztool before closing. You’ll notice that Zbrush does this regarding the document which most people don’t use at all. There is an imbalance of concern there.
  8. (Suggested By: midost) An optional incremental save option similar to Maya’s.
  9. (Suggested By: midost) A crash on save will corrupt the ztl. Fixing it so that zbrush won’t corrupt a file if it crashes would be wonderful. Perhaps just some sort of check that zbrush isn’t going to crash before the tool is overwritten?
  10. Undo camera move
  11. Ability to disable the gesture controlled zoom and return to original view commands (shift + pen movement zooms in on model, shift+circular pattern returns you to start camera pose)
  12. constant location for the world axis (so that a character’s location relative to the world axis shows the same in Zbrush as it does in other packages like maya – right now the location of the world axis is related somehow to the contents of your current tool. You see it change in location as items are deleted or added to the subtool list).
  13. (Suggested By: hummel1dane (in post number 248 of the the following thread: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showth…4&page=17&pp=15)Custom symmetry axis - right now you can only sculpt mirrored on x,y,z - but imagine you could add more axis. Imagine being able to sculpt the same on all sides of a box. How cool it would be if one could actually program the symmetry, create your own guides for the points to follow.
  14. Custom camera snap angles – holding shift while rotating the camera view currently allows you to snap the view to one of the 6 main axis (x+,x-,y+,y-,z+,z-). I’d like to be able to snap to angles between these axes, and have the tools to customize what those angles are.
  15. NEW (Derived from suggestions by Zeddicus and Mahlikus The Black in posts 256 and 260 (pg 18) of the following thread: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=157573&page=1&pp=15)
    Make use of the middle mouse button. Example:MMB = Draw size
    MMB + SHIFT = Focal Shift
    MMB + CNTRL = Zintensity
    MMB + ALT = RGBintensity
    MMB + ALT + SHIFT = BrushModifier

Great thread guys. I hope some of these suggestions are implemented in the next version!

I want an option for ZSpheres to stick to the surface of a mesh when retopologising. A point should be able to be dragged across the mesh without it going through or coming off the surface. Maybe a Magnet Drag/Move option?

PRIORITY #1 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #2 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #3 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #4 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #5 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #6 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #7 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #8 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #9 VECTOR DISPLACE
PRIORITY #10 REAL 3D LIGHTS / interface

Hi
First of all your work is genius.

Please consider the following.

  1. Export options should be global to all subtools.

I waste time setting them for all subtool.

  1. Option to make polygons visible (without having to switch to preview mode) when creating new topology and not just seeing the topology wireframe as is the case.

The opacity options are useless. Wireframes from the other side of the model confuse you if you set model opacity to transparent. If you set to opaque you can’t see what you’re doing on the side facing you because sometimes the wires sink beneath the surface.

  1. Better booleans.

To get good results you need to increase the “Remesh All” resolution very quite high. We need conventional booleans please and not this remesh-all technique.

  1. Adaptive tessellation like in sculptris.

5.Reliable GoZ.
Exporting a mesh to Maya is a bit of a hit and miss. Sometimes it exports, others it exports a star mesh or some random mesh.

  1. Export multiple sub tools at once.

  2. Brush to relax mesh with minimal smoothing effect. Like in Maya.

  3. Coordinate system and conventional transform Gizmos to allow for accurate positioning of sub tools without having to resort to another 3D package.

  4. Ability to define plane of symmetry.
    Currently if your sub tool is offset your symmetry axis is lost and using Local symmetry does not always seem to work.

  5. Interactive gizmos to control the deformation palettem like the visible deformers in Maya that allow you to accurately define the axis to bend an object.

  6. Option to export texture to png or jpeg.

Thanks

@ el.mustafa and kinan

Thanks for your input guys. Some of your suggestions are effectively repeats of existing ones, but I’ve added the unique items to the master list.

Many thanks Francis,

Just one more please
When painting or sculpting, I wish the circles that indicate brush Draw size and Focal Shift to remain visible. You see them when the brush is inactive but disappear when you start working. It would help they are there all the time if you want to place an accurate stroke e.g during masking

Take Care

New Suggestions:


  1. Set axis orientation of current tool to that of a sample topology component (edge, vertice, face or center) of current or other subtool.
  2. Create a way for us to fully customize the “Quick Menu”, including fully controlling what hotkeys, or mouse buttons will open it.
  3. X-ray view mode like in maya, that applies a transparency effect to the active subtool, allowing you to see the mouth interior for example, from the outside. Basically the transparency/Ghost effect but applied the active subtool, rather than other visible subtools. We should be able to use this in combination with the existing transparency/ghost options and the polyframe view.

Got a few new ones thanks to Z4r2. It would nice if there was a way to export the environment maps generated via the LightCap palette, preferably at 32 bit. It would be cool to be able to edit these in Photoshop or some other program, then import them back into ZBrush, or use them for IBL in another 3D app.

Now that we can do better rendering within ZBrush without having to jump to another application for compositing, it would be nice if we could export documents as 32-bit psd/tiff files, or at the very least 16-bit. The banding caused by 8-bit is a problem if we find we do need to tweak the final image in Photoshop later on.

For those who do composites, being able to save 32-bit maps from BPR RenderPass would be nice too, again because of the banding 8-bit can cause. The depth map it generates is already 16-bit greyscale, and seeing as the whole rendering system is now 32-bit, it makes sense to be able to export at these bit depths to take advantage of that. Same with importing for texture/spotlight/alpha use.

If we’re going to be using high bit depths for maps (thank goodness ZB5 will be 64-bit lol), and generating several of them at the same time (ao, depth, mask, floor, etc) then perhaps it might be worth adding support for the Open EXR format as well. Multi-layer PSD support is already on the list, but I’ll mention it anyways.

PS: Hovering over the BPR RenderPass maps says their 32-bit (96-bit for shaded and environment maps!), but saving as psd, tiff, and bmp all result in either 8-bit color or 16-bit grey files… just so anyone replying knows. Hopefully Pixologic is paying at least a little bit of attention to your ever growing wishlist.

:large_orange_diamond:I would love to have a tiny little checkbox for “Autodynamesh” wich I can activate during first sculpting steps in low resolution. Autodynamesh will be done after everystoke. Useful when working with move brushes.

:white_small_square:Very basic Move, Scale, Rotate tools with xyz checkbox as default (like sculptris, or a maya, max like arrow solution. No distortion, skew etc.) actual advanced tools could be activated via double click or hotkey.

:white_small_square:Alphabetical order in single menus.

*64bit (can’t wait to get ZBrush5!!!)
*16K Maps or more (8192 is not enough…)
*To get the HD-Details as 16K maps :slight_smile:
*Painting directly on the UV’s…maybe on a Splitscreen
*Ptex-Option

I know that most of the points are already listed :stuck_out_tongue:

greetings

@CGPrime: Yeah, all of that is covered already - but another voice calling for those items make’s them more likely to happen - so thanks for adding yours.

@Knacki and Zeddicus: Thanks for your additional input as well. I’ll be adding your points to the list.

FYI - some of the items that have been placed on the master list have been addressed in ZB4R2. I’ll indicate which one’s when I next post the updated master list.

Snapping when initially drawing an insert mesh object is sorely needed. Holding the shift key does uniform scale instead. One workaround to snapping is to turn on symmetry (not radial) and draw your object where the two dots converge, but this is only useful if you need something along the dead center of either the x, y, or z plane. Holding the space bar to reposition the inserted mesh object will sometimes crash ZBrush when doing this though (InsertCylinder particularly), and uniform scale via the shift key doesn’t even work with customized insert mesh objects, only the predefined ones (cylinder, sphere, cube, etc). Last, but not least, is the ability to smoothly subdivide an insert mesh object after drawing it onto your model. Subdividing results in facets with the way it works right now.

Another idea I had was a way to automatically draw an action line, say centered to the current object/subobject/insertmesh and perpendicular to either the x, y, or z plane. A button similar to the current floor button would do. Or a way to quickly draw an action line on the canvas with a hotkey to center it to the current object. The point is to speed up the process when doing a lot of action line related tasks. Constantly having to manually redraw and double check it for basic tasks is cumbersome, and creating a straight perpendicular line can be tough with small objects, especially if they have no flat surfaces.

Better/easier placement when drawing curves would be helpful. For example, locking the start and end points to where you click on the surface, as well as drawing the curve based on the direction of the normal or x/y/z plane rather than the view. This would help when trying to draw a curve in a precise location on your current mesh. Right now it is impossible to draw a curve on the side of a model because the side you wish to draw on will always be out of view thanks to basing the curve on screen alignment rather than a polygons normal. Yes, you can use an action line to fix it afterwards, but trying to do a precise rotate and move is harder than it appears, especially when using radial symmetry. Snapping the curve to the surface when moving it via an action line would be useful too, and not just when first drawing it as mentioned above. Imagine a cube sliding along the surface of a sphere, like two magnets, for visualization of what I’m trying to get across with this one.

The ability to change the default Lightbox directories would be a welcome addition (as would a working preference button for Lightbox lol). I assume that like many others, I do not use the default C: drive (which is just a small 60GB SSD on my PC) to store my work. Lightbox numbering needs to be fixed as well. For example, Shadowbox256.ztl should not come before Shadowbox64.ztl (Windows gets it right though). Pixologic should seriously consider adding 7z or some other compression to their file formats as well, especially files in the project format which tend to get very large, which is compounded by incremental saves. The difference in file size between compressed and uncompressed was pretty huge, and will help to save a ton of hard drive space in the long run.

The ability to reposition a DragRect+Alpha using the space bar would be very useful, as well as the ability to rotate it with or without snapping at the same time. Alphas are a simpler way to add detail versus creating custom InsertMesh brushes.

A ghost mode that stays on when drawing/adjusting the placement of a boolean objects on a dynamesh, as well as the ability to invert which object is ghosted on the fly. This is just a minor change to the current version of transparency and should be easy to change. A delete button for boolean objects next to the add/sub/and buttons could be useful, primarily because you can run out of undos. Would it be possible to create an unlimited undo system, perhaps using the hard drive instead of memory? That would also fix this potential problem. I’d also like to see those three buttons (add/sub/and) work properly, or be able to change from Zadd to Zsub (or vice versa) after drawing a boolean object. It is really annoying to put a huge amount of effort into getting the size, shape, and placement just right, only to find you forgot to hold the alt key when drawing the boolean object.

Hmm, how about an automated incremental save system? Or just a simple plus button in the save as dialog (like in 3ds Max) would work.

That is all I’ve come up with for now based on my Z4R2 testing. I’m sure I’ll find others as time progresses. Hopefully I didn’t repeat anything that was already on the list. :wink:

Would like a handy button in the render palette under “BPR Render Pass”, called something like “Export All”. And it would export all the render passes into one PSD with each Pass on a seperate layer.