ZBrush - Hypothetical ultimate feature list

Noth

Hey guys I'm compiling a list of things in ZBrush that I wish were done better, and things I consider to be bloat or just not really carrying their weight, curious what sort of things come to mind for you. Happy to talk about the good things too though! I might be working on something..

cons
- constant document resizing, documents in general
- 2.5 not being 3D
- camera rotations take a bit to get used to, compared to 3D
- per-subtool options, like colorize, you have to go through each subtool manually to disable them -- subtool doesn't have any macro controls on itself for global subtool managment
- sub-tool groups took for ever to get added, and imo are sort of unintuitive and janky still
- tools till this day are weird -- I never really learned how to manage them, and just restart ZBrush when I want to start something new or I've polluted that area with too many clones, etc...
- no subtool multi-select -- what is this, 2002?
- sometimes when I'm merging subtools I merge the wrong one then I'm fkd because you can't undo that..

bloat
- why so many matcaps? who really uses all these?

pros
on the plus side, I really love the brush engine!

Vexod14

Hi there

I'd add a few cons :
- Dynamic subdiv's crease levels always resetting to 15, while user might not want that (I often opt for 1 or 2 depending on the density of my topology), maybe recall the latest used value or allow to store it in the preferences
- Add a way to clearly set off Dynamic brush size everywhere (it's on because a few brushes rely on it if I remember correctly, maybe this setting should then be on only on this brush and never turn on others if these are set to dynamic off)

On plus side : 
- I love the new retopo UI/UX, it's wonderful to finally have a decent way to manually control the retopology, and for some reason it's just pleasant to use

Noth

oh nice! Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

Good points btw, thanks!

iam717

mmm, well I've had lights breaking when trying to use the mats customize utility to setup a scene once or twice, if that could never happen that would be great, it used to also get "lost" behind that preview sphere (you could click) to put the light behind the object, which kind sucked the 1st few times.

Forget why i had to restart the app all the time, oh yeah the u.i. breaking if you tried to customize every aspect of the application, damn really wished it never did that.  Haven't touched these since the issues just took up to much time to sort out & moved onto new applications. (though recently finding "bugs", in those two now) oh i mean "special features".

.The cloth simulation when i tried it seems to take a long while (for me) to get used to, seems they need "brush markers", to get the tool to do what people need it to do.  

As they already have the brushes you'd think they'd link them somehow to the simulation controller an we could then just perhaps, preview brush stroke a couple of angles of the general idea & the thing would figure out how to do it all in its simulation to get to the nearest approximation of the example we gave it..

Probably over complicated the idea but someone has to get what i mean.

Any who looking forward to whatever.

Oh i echo multi-tool selection especially having to work with folders to hide things to work on other things, i guess its complicated to recode/add these things in which is probably why they haven't yet.  (after fiddling with codes (for fun/learning) i see the issues that can happen.)

Noth

@iam717 hey! you mentioned "moved onto new applications" does that mean you replaced ZBrush with something else? do tell, thanks! Good points, thanks.

Neox

a "real" camera/perspective
undos on any action
proper scene management, with objects and groups and subgroups etc. like any 3d dcc really

zetheros

default startup document can be changed and you can delete/add matcaps, brushes, etc in C:\Program Files\Pixologic\<<your version of Zbrush here>>\ZStartup

yea basically what other people said. I haven't found a way to close individual subtools to save on memory, I need to close zbrush entirely if I want to have less subtools open. Other than that, the opening animation of a nested child dropdown menu can close the parent dropdown menu sometimes which is a bit annoying. I'm on 2022 though, so no idea if they've fixed this already

edit: Zmodeler has instability issues with lower poly meshes, particularly 1-sided meshes, fairly often and will CTD; same with Select Lasso (ctrl+shift+click to select polyloop) this will also CTD fairly often on lower poly single sided meshes

Noth

@Neox LMAO yes, just some outliner like maya would be stellar. I'd also like to be able to r-click export from there too, or multi-select and export all or something from some root node, etc.

Could I  ask for clarification on what you mean by undo on any action? like UI edits too or what? camera movements? it's already per-subtool isn't it?

Neox

Noth said:

@Neox LMAO yes, just some outliner like maya would be stellar. I'd also like to be able to r-click export from there too, or multi-select and export all or something from some root node, etc.

Could I  ask for clarification on what you mean by undo on any action? like UI edits too or what? camera movements? it's already per-subtool isn't it?

delete a subtool has no undo for instance, splitting meshes by groups etc

a few actions warn you "this can not be undone"

the biggest strengths of zbrush are also the core issues in many cases

it is a 2.5 illustration tool, that allows you to manipulate the brushes/tools (hence the name), which was considered so powerful that artists adopted it like crazy and it shifted in that direction more than the initial 2.5 illu base, but it is there and likely cant go away.