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Zbrush, Attack of the "CRASH MONSTER"!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Moderators,
If this is in the wrong place please move to appropriate location.

Dear members of Zbrushcentral,

I am a new member no more than a month old. My first thread on here was met with mature and open minded, (and even more surprising), extremely helpful people. I did not expect that from a public forum.

That being said I am hoping someone can assist me in my problem. It is driving me insane to the point I have smashed my keyboard in a fit of rage and had to buy a new one yesterday…Yeah it was stupid, also that was uncharacteristic behavior for me to be sure.

I am studying Zbrush harder than I have ever studied anything in my life, I love the program and the ease by which one can create such complicated models. I am killing myself man, I only sleep like 2 hours a day and the rest of the time I study Zbrush. I am trying to use it in my graphic design jobs.

But I feel like a sucker. Everytime I mess around with Zbrush to make anything it always decides to crash on me.

…CRASH ON ME… My question is why?
This program wasn’t cheap, and I was one of the few people who actually purchased it. i know many people who have found the torrent online and have less problems than me.

I am plagued with crashes with both 4 and 4r2. As a noob what takes others minutes to complete takes me an hour or more. It is no surprise that when it crashes on me and everything I had is lost I get pissed. I save but sometimes not soon enough. I am kind of in a hurry, because I need to make some 3D objects for a website. I know how to do it, but I can’t get that far because of the crash issue.

So community,…Whats the deal with this?

I have enough problems trying not to make irreversible mistakes myself while modeling, the last thing I want or need to deal with is the added stress of project crash.

Anybody want to give me some advice…Advice that doesn’t have to do with my anger management problem. :lol:

#2

Sweeeeeeeeeeeet!!!

Just crashed again…:evil:

#3

Hi there.

I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having these problems. They are not typical.

However, in order for us to be able to assist you it is important that you follow the forum policy regarding this kind of question. Please see the announcement at the top of the Q&T forum. (Click Here)

Thanks!

#4

“2) A complete screenshot of the ZBrush 4R2 interface, taken just before performing the action causing your issue. This screenshot should not be altered in any way.”

That’s difficult considering I don’t know when it will crash.

But thanks for telling me, Ill post my specs and try to get a screenshot and or explain in detail exactly what led up to the crash.

Sorry for posting wrong everyone…I’m new, and still learning Zbrushcentral.

Device

Name: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT

Total Memory 2797 MB

current display mode: 1366 X768 (32bit) (60hz)

Windows 7 (64bit) operating system

AMD Athlon II X 2 245 processor (2 CPUs), ~ 2.9 GHZ

Memory 4096 MB RAM

Page file 1524 MB used 6664 MB available

Direct X 11 installed

Hard dick space 185 GB used , 47.7 GB available

I will post screen shot as soon as possible.

#5

Setting aside the fact that no two PC confiurations are the same, not everything can possibly be tested for, and you may be experience an issue on the hardware level, or with your system configuration, all I can do is speak to you in generalities, since your post is general in nature, rather than reporting a specific issue, accompanied by the appropriate system info.

Zbrush is a cutting edge program able to handle extremely large polycounts and perform a lot of crazy actions you can’t really do elsewhere. It gives you a lot of freedom. Anytime you get that kind of freedom, it means giving the user the ability to perform combinations of actions that might impact program stability.

Experienced users, learn what sort of things to avoid, and what workflows work the best. New users will often blunder right into problematic actions. They often use the software in ways that aren’t recommended (for instance, increasing poly limits above the threshold for program stability, or beyond what their system can comfortably work with). Your experience with the program will improve as you become more savvy about its use.

Zbrush 4 was very stable for the most part. There were, and are, bugs that will crash the program performing specific actions. There are definitely “risky” situations, which you will learn require extra caution. Using GoZ to juggle things back and forth between two open programs is always a dicey proposition. R2 introduces new functionality, and with it, new associated bugs that need sorting out, and so could be considered slightly less stable overall. Periodically, you just get some random weirdness.

But I promise you, even with the new version, crashes are few and far between for me during my typical workflow. I can work all day and never experience a crash. Right now, I’ve been working for about 12 hours straight. When a crash does happen ( they do occasionally happen), the recovery feature usually kicks in and dumps a copy of the file into the recovered files directory, which may help you recover work.

If you are experiencing crashing behavior in excess of that, it either has something to do with your workflow, or your local configuration. If there are specific actions that are making you crash every time, you should report that, with the necessary system information to let Pixologic investigate.

In the end, nothing will serve you so well in the world of digital art, as a completely paranoid mindset. I dont have a single 3d or 2d graphics application that is 100% stable. Not even Photoshop. Sooner or later, they will all crash on me. So you simply develop the habit of saving often. I don’t even trust auto save features, as those can sometimes contribute to crashes, or worse, corrupted files.

If you reach a point in your work where you would be unhappy having to achieve over again, you save. It’s that simple. I save at least every 15 minutes, in any program, and more frequently during difficult procedures I wouldn’t want to repeat. Paranoid perhaps, but I don’t fear crashing, and a few seconds to save a file saves far more time than minutes to redo work. If a crash loses me a significant amount of work, I have only myself to blame.

#6

Thanks for that information.

I never thought it was aZbrush problem honestly, though it may have come across sounding like that.
I was just wondering if it happens to other people and if so what they may be doing to cause it.

I know for a fact that I am probably subdividing too much. But I didn’t think 4.5 million poly count was that big of a deal when I see some people going as high as 6 just to work out some details.

I was having some problems with my project, and I wasn’t getting the detail I needed so I had to move up in division. then whenever I would attempt to use dynamesh nothing was working like I remembered. I was losing all my detail and ending up with a doughy model. So I was upping the res of the dynamesh then it would crash on me.

I have no doubt my computer is a problem here, since I live in the tropics and my computer over heats.

Not more than a few minutes ago while trying to use dynamesh again my computer just shut off having reached maximum safe operating temperature.

I will by a new another fan for it, and see what I can learn about using the dynamesh more effectively.

#7

By zbrush standards, it’s not, all else being equal, but it varies with your system’s capabilities. It may be too much for some computers. Generally speaking, Zbrush shouldnt have any problem with that amount even on older hardware, if you have a reasonable amount of ram, but there are always extremes. Your system specs dont lead me to believe you should have a problem with that. I don’t, however, know how you might have Zbrush configured on your system.

If you’re having temperature problems, that in itself can cause instability in any software you’re trying to run. If you’re reaching shut down temp, that’s a serious hardware issue, and you should address it immediately.