hi I ve noticed , my zbrush project is slow... when I open my project data, is so long, near 5 minutes.... I ve save this particular project in a external disk.... NOT SSD ... jjust a simple USB hard drive. a portable external hard drive....
I ve this options, save the project in my windows's disk .. ( I always prefer to separate my files in folders in softwares, month , type of proyects and sub-folder) that's the reason why I do not like to save on windows 7 in my case.
another options to save the project is another "slave" HDD , wich is sata 2.0 and common hardrive where I put my Steam games XD and some backups (photos, references, guides, etc) this HDD is sata ...
I need some suggestion , to the next month...I defenetly buy a SDD , by the time I need to work in HDD....
how about "undo-history" my project is near 3300 undo history... could be possible to slowing my project? .... my ztool is full of subtools...
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I like to formalize my projects by year, month , just to be organize in my searching and like to keep clean things in my windows.
You can export all subtools, you can export only visible subtools, you can delete the undo history, you can restrict the undo history to a specific number, you can choose to export undo history with your export file, you can export as an fbx, an obj, you can keep quicksave files.... there is a lot of options, each useful for different purposes. Uploading a 7gb file seems insane. You definitely don't need to wait five minutes to open the app every time you want to do some work.
I don't know what you exact situation is, but I can tell you how I typically work in Zbrush: I bring in my model from Maya. I subdivide, do my sculpting, and I do quicksaves every 5 minutes or so when i am working. Once I get to a point where I've made a good amount of progress, I save a ztool for backup, both locally and in an online cloud. When I am done working for the day, I quicksave again and also save another ztool. When it's time to continue, I open a new project and load the ztool. Now I have a clean project, nothing extra.
If I am going between Zbrush and Maya, I use the fbx exporter/importer in the zPlugins menu. You have options there about how you want to export. Entire subtool, only visible, export polygroups as materials, etc etc. Very useful.
This is very basic but very important part of working in 3d -- moving files around. No need to be guessing at things, all the info you need is available on pixologics website, if not in any number of videos on youtube. It's not particular fun or interesting reading the manual or trying to understand computer science stuff, but it's well worth the time as once you know what's going on you can stop feeling frustrated and start focusing on the art.
I made a start canvas with all the settings I need then and saved that into the project folder in ZBrush. Start up the canvas (with a simple primitive) load my tool into that document and keep working. I dont save the history just the tool. Saving the tool under the tool palet at the top: Save As means I can save a large tool at about 25 subtools often under a gig, and of course open them again.
ZBrush is great but it typically eats lots of disk space if you let it. You have to adjust the quick saves every session under preferences/quicksave. I set mine to save every 30 or 60 mins and the max files to 3 otherwise that alone will gobble up your disks. I set save history to off as well.
Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omLZ94UcaoM&t=22s&index=2&list=PL1mx-FCKqrqGBcXhvaZNhTWYazrSrDNPM