ZBrushCentral

ZBrush's odd naming convention

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

hi,

Is it me missing something, or is the way ZBrush names and renames duplicated subtools a bit odd -

you have a subtool - named ‘object’

duplicate it and ‘object’ becomes -

‘object1’

your duplicate is now ‘object’…

surely it makes more sense to keep your original as ‘object’ and suffix any duplicates 1,2,3…

to make matters worse it doesn’t switch to the new duplicate, so before I noticed all this I’ve been working away on ‘obect1’ not realising it’s my original. Not switching to the new tool is a pet peeve when appending a subtool too - most 3D software selects the new mesh at import. I know ZBrush isn’t ‘most 3D software’ but even so, if you’re listening Pixologic ;-]

I’ve been feeling a bit dopey recently so I may be looking at this wrongly…

any opinions on this?

#2

Look and confirm you’re not going to get hit by the bus before you step into the street. :wink: Meaningful naming of objects is always helpful, you could then load them from a text file.

#3

I’m talking about the suffixing of the sequence number to the original. By which I mean; if I name a subtool ‘greenGoblin_LftHand_glove’ it should remain that in ZBrush, not become ‘greenGoblin_LftHand_glove1’ when I duplicate it. The duplicate should be ‘greenGoblin_LftHand_glove1’, not the original.

If you duplicate a number of times, the original could potentially become ‘greenGoblin_LftHand_glove12’ as the renaming step occurs every time. So ‘greenGoblin_LftHand_glove2’ becomes ‘greenGoblin_LftHand_glove3’, 4 becomes 5 and so on. If you duplicate again later during a sculpt, the whole thing happens again, so it’s near impossible to keep track even if you diligently rename each time.

#4

to make matters worse it doesn’t switch to the new duplicate, so before I noticed all this I’ve been working away on ‘obect1’ not realising it’s my original…I’ve been feeling a bit dopey recently so I may be looking at this wrongly…

I think it does switch to the duplicated object, which is where you’d be getting confused. It’s like when you duplicate a layer in photoshop; the duplicate get placed higher on the layer stack (above the original, not below) and becomes automatically selected.

If you have a subtool called ‘teeth’ and you duplicate it, you now have the duplicate (‘teeth1’) selected. Teeth doesn’t get renamed, just pushed down.

If you then duplicate teeth1, you now have the resulting ‘teeth2’ selected. It doesn’t go back and rename both ‘teeth’ and ‘teeth1’ to do what you would suggest.

#5

If you go by the Online Doc’s which state “The Duplicate button will duplicate the selected SubTool and add it below the selected SubTool.”, then se7enhedd is correct. The original does get renamed and the duplicate assumes the original’s name.

#6

I beg to differ Cyrid. I’ve just tried the whole thing and it doesn’t behave as you suggest. My original does get renamed, remains at the top of the stack, and remains selected.
I only noticed because of the undo slider - if you try a few strokes on a mesh, then duplicate, you’ll see that your undo history is now on ‘teeth1’. ‘teeth’ which is underneath, has no history. In my book that makes it the duplicate.

I’ve just created a subtool ‘ball’ and used the move brush a few times - then duplicated a few times - the only mesh with an undo history is now called ‘ball4’. So again, that says to me that the mesh is being renamed each time

It doesn’t make much sense to me though zber… =/

#7

Me neither! I hope it does eventually get changed.

#8

While I may or not like the way it currently works, there will be people who’s opinions differ. There’s more than one way to accomplish what you are trying to do. Better method may be to clone the tool and rename it and append it to your massive stack of subtools. There are limits, push at them but don’t go beyond critical. Do you need 12 gloves because you have 6 different styles, maybe your creature has 12 arms, will it be posed? There’s many options.

#9

I can’t imagine why the current system would be regarded as ‘better’. True, there’s different ways of achieving the same thing, but some are more work arounds to a problem that shouldn’t be there. The scenario’s you mention don’t benefit from the current naming convention, nor would they be hampered by a more logical one.

I dont need 12 subtools right now - I was more trying to describe a situation where the suffix numeral can go way up if you don’t keep tabs on things, due to the continous step re-name. Recently I’ve been duplicating a mesh to decimate for import into other software for checks. Obviously, once I make an adjustment to the original I’d need to duplicate again if I want to decimate, retopologise or otherwise run some process. Life would be much easier if the original stayed the same and subsequent versions carried their own suffix, which in turn stayed the same.
It can cause problems with GoZ too, where the name is used for identification simultaneously by other software. I’m of the opinion that asset names shouldn’t change arbitrarily.

#10

You are correct, it does seem seriously backwards and you can demonstrate this by having a look at your undo history:
Object (you’re supposed original) has none.
Object_1 (the apparent copy) has an undo history.

This has driven me nuts for a long time.

Figure this one out when you have thirty subtools and you aren’t sure what to append next:
MorphDiff_PM3D_Cylinder3D_5

GRIN!

#11

I think this wants flagging up as a ‘feature request’ or bug report. I only have five subtools in a current project and I’m still getting hopelessly lost.

I’ve always defended ZBrush’s UI - now I’m beginning to see the chinks…

Is there anyway of getting the official word from Pixo - ie. why it’s like that.