There's no way to get around the fact that the ZBrush interface is convoluted. You just need to fiddle around with things and go the trial-and-error route. Luckily, there's a fairly helpful Wiki designed to get you up and running.
I also fiddled around with the RapidUI, which was a bit easier to understand, although it's still a bit of a change from Mudbox. It essentially just gets all of the unnecessary tools out of the way, and leaves you instead with only the sculpting ones.
Yes, you can change the "Alt Brush" size (defaults to 2 for some reason), it's in the "Brush" menu - look for Alt Size or something, set it to 1.
The viewport navigation isn't very hard to get used to, I think it actually works pretty well (aside from the zoom).
Why would you want bracket-controlled strength? You have a pressure-sensitive tablet, right?
However I think if you press "S" it will pop up a slider for strength over your current location, or maybe it's "B". There's a hotkey for size and strength anyway.
Personally I think Silo's method for handling brush size/strength is best, just middle-click and drag left-right to change size, up-down to change strength. Ah well...
If you want the sculpting to feel more like mudbox, )more so on the higher sub-d levels) try changing the brush autosmooth to 1, i really like how this feels. the alt brush thing is fixed in the new point beta, as well as importing problems, so just wait for the point release if your still pissed at it.
Hey I am finaly mentioned for doing something right, thanx jgarland but then I found out you just had to click the help button in the application to get the same guide. D'oh!
About Zbrush I was wondering if using the scale option to zoom would work instead of the standard zoom? Though I feel this is why my Zbrush3 is crashing half the time cause I scale it too much? <This is how I get in there with a much better "image quality" if you will to put in some nice details.
Standard zoom is f.u.b.a.r.d. at least on my comp so I use the alternative scaling option, I do this repeatedly scale up, work in details, scale down to see results, hope that helps someone.
I have not gotten far enough into the UI to adjust it to fit the easy to use 'mudbox workspace', though I do plan to or just get used to zbrush finaly.
I am later than ever though.
Mop: The issue for me is i'm left handed and zbrush is kinda tailored to right handed people as far as hotkeys go, so that's why I liked th brackets for strength control and the numpad for my brush's(And yes, I'm using a crappy Graphire 4)
$!nz: I wouldn't scale things to zoom them... how are you trying to zoom? And what do you mean by "better image quality" ?
I see a lot of people trying to zoom just by using the canvas zoom which basically just doubles the size of each pixel (some people even take screengrabs in this mode, no idea why!)... if you hold down ALT and click and drag on the canvas background (ie. not anywhere on the model/sculpt), then it should "pan" the canvas around, and while you're holding down click and drag still, let go of ALT and it should zoom. Little convoluted process but it shouldn't cause lower image quality, and certainly shouldn't crash it.
I can see my details a whole lot better than the zoom option at the side panel but, I just tried your way and it works better.
I have a 1680x1050 screen and I just tried to zoom using alt all the way and it changed my workspace window but I don't know how to fix that and it looks muddy.
Where is this zoom option, is it in one of the panels/options, where I can easily place it somewhere for easy use?
[ QUOTE ]
- traditional viewport navigation (z is just plain retarded and a pita.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Dunno if you're already doing this, but when you have a model going, you can click on rotate on y-axis. That makes viewport rotation behave very similar to Mudbox's.
And I can control my Zb's brush size with the brackets (albeit in increments of ten) Maybe its an interaface option?
making eyeballs, how do you guys do it? when I pre make them in maya the one I duplicate always has it normals flipped when I import into z, even when I fix them in maya before hand.
And another silly question, how do you scale your "tool" on a specific axis in zb3?
leave "Edit" mode, go to "Scale" mode (there's edit, transform, rotate, scale - should be in the top bar somewhere) - then you'll get a gizmo you can scale by dragging a particular axis.
Replies
$!nz brought it to my attention, so all credit goes to him.
I also fiddled around with the RapidUI, which was a bit easier to understand, although it's still a bit of a change from Mudbox. It essentially just gets all of the unnecessary tools out of the way, and leaves you instead with only the sculpting ones.
Here's a list of things I miss
-bracket controlled brush strengh
-Numpad brush hotkeys
- traditional viewport navigation (z is just plain retarded and a pita.)
The viewport navigation isn't very hard to get used to, I think it actually works pretty well (aside from the zoom).
Why would you want bracket-controlled strength? You have a pressure-sensitive tablet, right?
However I think if you press "S" it will pop up a slider for strength over your current location, or maybe it's "B". There's a hotkey for size and strength anyway.
Personally I think Silo's method for handling brush size/strength is best, just middle-click and drag left-right to change size, up-down to change strength. Ah well...
About Zbrush I was wondering if using the scale option to zoom would work instead of the standard zoom? Though I feel this is why my Zbrush3 is crashing half the time cause I scale it too much? <This is how I get in there with a much better "image quality" if you will to put in some nice details.
Standard zoom is f.u.b.a.r.d. at least on my comp so I use the alternative scaling option, I do this repeatedly scale up, work in details, scale down to see results, hope that helps someone.
I have not gotten far enough into the UI to adjust it to fit the easy to use 'mudbox workspace', though I do plan to or just get used to zbrush finaly.
I am later than ever though.
I see a lot of people trying to zoom just by using the canvas zoom which basically just doubles the size of each pixel (some people even take screengrabs in this mode, no idea why!)... if you hold down ALT and click and drag on the canvas background (ie. not anywhere on the model/sculpt), then it should "pan" the canvas around, and while you're holding down click and drag still, let go of ALT and it should zoom. Little convoluted process but it shouldn't cause lower image quality, and certainly shouldn't crash it.
ThatDon: Ahh, i see, fair enough
I have a 1680x1050 screen and I just tried to zoom using alt all the way and it changed my workspace window but I don't know how to fix that and it looks muddy.
Where is this zoom option, is it in one of the panels/options, where I can easily place it somewhere for easy use?
Thanx for the tip.
- traditional viewport navigation (z is just plain retarded and a pita.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Dunno if you're already doing this, but when you have a model going, you can click on rotate on y-axis. That makes viewport rotation behave very similar to Mudbox's.
And I can control my Zb's brush size with the brackets (albeit in increments of ten) Maybe its an interaface option?
making eyeballs, how do you guys do it? when I pre make them in maya the one I duplicate always has it normals flipped when I import into z, even when I fix them in maya before hand.
And another silly question, how do you scale your "tool" on a specific axis in zb3?