ZBrushCentral

ZScript problem for Marcus and anyone else who likes ZScripts....

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

|Hi Everyone,
|
Hya ZBer!

HI MARCUS!!!

I have a weird thing happening when I record and playback a ZScript, it goes sort of epileptic on me…
What I did was record the process of taking a Sphere3D from start to finish, in this case sculpting all the way to animating displacement maps and when I try to play it back it fails right off on the sculpting part.
I used only the Standard brush normally, with Alt, and with Shift for smoothing.
I turned it into a DynaMesh before I started sculpting.
Long before I get going it begins to twitch and hop around all over the place for no apparent reason. It adds masks when I didn’t use any and crushes areas and ignores others.
Then when I change a texture to an alpha I get an error.
I haven’t a clue what is wrong, so I did it again but somewhat less sculpting…
Same thing, spastic twitching but slightly better, then it does the texture to Alpha conversion just fine but leaves the Alpha palette over the screen, gets rid of the tool pallet from the right slot that it sits in (I forget its actual name) and fires up the movie like it should skipping the whole part I wanted to display in the first place!
That is the second file.
Are there things that ZScript can’t record or something? Am I doing stuff too fast?

Heres the files:

I would love to use this to make tutorials and stuff but something always goes wrong, this time I don’t think it was me, I have this process down and can do it without needing to undo or anything.

Anyhow, thanks for the help!

Cheers!
Mealea|

#2

Might be better to break it into smaller bits and chain it together. There’s a limit to characters in scripting. Your blobby thing just wandered off the left side of the screen :wink:

#3

Mealea,

Most of the problems with zscript recording are caused because the document size doesn’t match. It’s important to Initialize ZBrush at the start of the recording and I think also it is worth setting a new document size in the Document palette, just to make sure, turning off the Document>Wsize button first.

Having said that, zscript recording is not as reliable as it once was and it is almost impossible to track down the errors. Trying to edit a recording is very difficult because you have to keep replaying the script to check progress.

If you are wanting to record a tutorial it is better these days to use the undo history to record a movie, or use a screen capture program like Jing.

HTH,

#4

Oh drat…
Thanks Marcus…
Ok so if I make the document fit on ANY monitor (Im thinking small here) it might work? what about that thing where I have to open the tutorial slot thingy at the bottom to hit the play button? Does that change things too?

Also this was a great feature, is it going to be fixed?

Doug, I can’t make it into smaller bits, its a recording of one small simple workflow, breaking it up makes it into a bigger more complex workflow. There is only one place where that would be possible or useful but it would just make it very confusing I think.
Im using the script thing to make is so that what never shows up in videos because they are too small and get crushed by YouTube and Vimeo by terrible lossy compression is easy to see. The idea is that not only do you wind up with the ability to see everything you wind up with ALL of the parts as well.
The video I made has a huge amount of detail, nearly all of which is lost because of bad compression that I did not use, the object I did it on was about 15 million polygons (not something I could upload to ZBC) and the surface flows over and into it self flawlessly, but NOT on youtube, its like mush oozing about instead.

Maybe Jing can fix that but its demanding that I make an account on some server to even run… blah… they even had the audacity to claim their server is secure too, I love that, it’s so quaint.

Ok Im going to do it again at 512X512

Marcus, is there any plan to fix this stuff, or has ZBrush simply outgrown its ability to record it self?

#5

Not necessarily too much more complex. Just more files to deal with ;). Record Part 1, something which might be manageable, save. Record Part 2 etc. ZScript could then load each small chunk to play in a sequence? Maybe Marcus could confirm/clarify my hopefully not too vague plot? :wink:

#6

Mealea,
I honestly don’t know whether zscript recording will be fixed. With ZBrush movies and so on it is not used as much as it once was.

Just make sure that your recording includes the resetting of the document size so that that happens on the user’s computer during playback. The zscript window at the bottom of the UI, and any zooming you do will not affect the recording.

HTH,

#7

OOOH!!!
I see, so it does the reset on THEIR end as well as on mine!!
I GET IT!
Im so dumb, I figured that I could skip that since I had just started ZBrush and the first thing I did was start recording!
OFF I GO TO TRY AGAIN!!!
(Grandiose music starts accompanied by chaotic crashing noises and general enthusiasm!)

#8

same problem here,i just start zb and start record zscript,what i do is just drag out a sphere and use clip brush to clip somewhere out,lately,when i recall the zscript,the mouse cusor move but nothing happen…i am using circle stroke,but when play the script ,the stroke always square…and nowhere being cliped…so sad…(i try macro insteal but still notthing happen…)

#9

Well it looks like recording things you do in menus and palettes is ok and works fine (with some very ugly exceptions such as converting textures to alphas and stuff) so this is good if you are just automating something. It also seems like sculpting is out, it simply doesn’t work so doing tutorials with this is sort of over till its fixed which is sad because I just got to the point where I need it and have the skills I need to be able to use it.
Movies are sort of ok but they have no actual tangible result, this would if it worked.

I tried again with the initialize thing on and it failed in exactly the same way… that was rather disappointing.

So…
Its back to making movies…

Marcus, I have tried that undo history thing a while ago and its baffling, the results are this weird stuff where my objects are swinging all over the place and its impossible to follow, is there any way to make it NOT do that?
If the object is wafting all over the place while someone is trying to watch what you are doing it makes it impossible to see, I don’t even know what that problem/feature is called so I don’t know how to make it stop…

Jing sadly is out, they have some serious limits which I would exceed in no time flat. One of them being my own bandwidth quotas from my ISP. That and I don’t want to be forced to make an account just to get it to run.

#10

Hi Mealea,

CamStudio is open source screen recording software and, from what I have seen, very popular.

and also CamStudio 2.7 How-To Tutorial

#11

I have that, but it can’t keep up (I sculpt faster then it can cope for some reason). Also it still makes nothing but a static movie.
The whole point of wanting to use scripting to do this is two things:
The first is I have to type less. (oh thank god)
And the second is that the person using the tutorial can not only see the whole process, but end up with the actual result.

Another way of looking at the scripting method is that I am sending them the movie, the project file and ZTools, AND the ENTIRE PROCESS of making them, that is, or was, a stunning ability.
To type one simple thing out step by step is very tedious and takes the user through a VERY tiring process, not to mention what a mistake on my part causes (you have corrected a few!).
Simple things often take 20 or more steps and video doesnt have the detail and I don’t have the equipment or bandwidth to make them better.

Im trying to understand the UnDo History thing for making video but its nauseating so far… I think Im doing it wrong…

#12

OK, you might like to try this macro to help with zscript recording. Download and put the text file in your ZStartup/Macros/Misc folder. If ZBrush is running, press Macro>Reload All Macros and you should have a new button called ResizeDoc under the Misc tab.

This is how you use it:

  1. Press the ZScript>Record button to start a new recording. When it asks if you want to initialize click Yes.
  2. When initialization has finished press the ResizeDoc button in the Macro palette.
  3. In the Draw Size slider click the Dynamic thingy a couple of times so that this is included in the recording.
  4. Carry on with your sculpt how you want.

What this does is set up a specific document size for playback. It should take care of a lot of the problems. Making sure that the Dynamic draw size is set during the recording is also important.

Download here:

#13

When you are using the Undo History to record a movie you can adjust how the model is positioned/scaled in the Movie>Modifiers sub-palette. To minimize movement, set:

HRecenter to 100
HPosition to 0
HOrientation to 100

These settings will mean that the model revolves in the same way as when you sculpted it but remain central and the same size.

#14

Thanks Marcus, the script didn’t work, I mean it worked but it didn’t fix the problem, it looks like I need to do this some other way.

The History thing is just baffling, to be honest I don’t know what its for or why it does… um… whatever it is that its doing.

I think Im stuck with timelapse and telling people to use things like VLC so they can go frame by frame.

#15

I presume you have opened the text files you’ve saved from a recording to try and make some sense of it all. Sometimes you can achieve the same effect with a drag rectangle that takes many lines of code the other way.

#16

I have opened them, but I don’t understand what dragrect has to do with it, what do you mean?
None of these things has any need for dragrect, all Im doing is sculpting with the Standard brush.

#17

Ok, for instance. You have a mask applied and do a ctrl drag to clear it. That code can be replaced with [IPress yada yada clearmask instead.

#18

But Im not using masks… are you talking about doing a dynamesh update?

#19

If that was part of your workflow, yes. I’m trying out a few things here, bits and pieces, to see if they’ll run sequentially by button click after the first one. If that works, should be able to tie them together. I think a big part would be to plan it all out before hand. Are you using Dynamesh in your sculpting?

#20

Yes, but this was just a simple test and it failed in so many places that the dynamesh part is almost irrelevant, it also failed to display menus, had errors on the texture to alpha conversion and in fact even hid the tool pallet completely defeating the whole point, so there is no real sense in my continuing with ZScript for this.
Planning is not the problem, the functionality is no longer there as Marcus pointed out earlier.