ZBrushCentral

Zspheres help?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I am just starting with Zspheres, following the Zbrush tutorials very carefully, but can’t even get started, because nothing works the same as it does in the videos.
First, when I start with a Zsphere, then hit Shift+A, the sphere does not change to solid color, though the spheres I’m painting on it do change.

Second, the drag arrow only adds one more sphere, which just inflates, not drawing a line of spheres on the surface of the first. They are also not embedded, but act as separate objects, and when I click Shift to blend them, that doesn’t work. Every time I stop and start, the previous lines drop into the canvas and are no longer editable.

I can’t rotate anything in 3D, just flat on the surface, so cannot see the back or turn the model to add spheres on the other sides.

There is obviously some setting I have wrong, though I always start with Init Zbrush in the Preferences, and try to follow the videos step by step.

What am I doing wrong?

#2

I think you are confusing Zspheres and Zsketch. If you plan to work exclusively with zspheres, then don’t press shift a or you will jump into Zsketch mode, and as you stroke on the initial zsphere you are “sketching” each line is a different polygroup therefore a new color. You are not, however looking at an adaptive skin preview, which I’m guessing is what you were expecting to see.

I’m not sure what you mean by the drag arrow, but if you are referring to the cursor, drawing out individual unconnected spheres that only get larger and you can’t rotate the view…that’s because you forgot to press “edit” after you drew out the initial zsphere.

You didn’t mention which videos you were watching. If they preceeded Zbrush 3.5, well zsketch didn’t exist prior to that and shortcuts may well have changed and are confusing you.
Start out learnng how to use Zspheres from the Pixologic classroom and when you fully understand them, progress to zsketch. And note that with Zspheres you press just “A” to toggle from a zspheres view and an adaptive skin preview view.

#3

Yay! I figured out what I was doing wrong. To make the Zspheres function the same as the Zbrush.com tutorial video, load the default 3D sphere, THEN click Zsphere, and everything works just fine.

Now, my next question: why does my program NOT load the default sphere at startup? Not really a problem, since I can do it myself from Lightbox, just wondering…