ZBrushCentral

Spotlight and Lightbox Issues

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

(1) In the right-hand side of the menu above the selector initiated by Lightbox, I have this terrible mishmash (see image). How can I fix this ?
(2) In this area, how can I restore it to one row, instead of two high (again, see image) ?
(3) When I have actually set a texture using the spotlight, I remove the spotlight widget using Shift-z, and then click z to start painting. The problem is that I expected the overlaid texture to disappear before I started painting, but it did not. How can I fix this ?

Attachments

Zbr1.JPG

#2

(1) Lightbox doesn’t have enough space to display correctly. Close it by pressing the comma (,) key, close the right and left tray by pressing the dividers, then open Lightbox again. It should now display correctly.
(2) Click the single horizontal line immediately to the right of ‘Hide’.
(3) You need to set the Spotlight Radius on the dial to greater than 0.

#3

Thanks, marcus. Can’t get the last part (i.e. altering the spotlight radius) happening though. I know it’s one of the elements on the spotlight wheel, and I’ve played with it, but can’t get it to work.

#4
  1. With the dial over the canvas (so you can see it easily), click on the Spotlight Radius icon to select it. The icon will highlight orange.

Spot_Radius01.jpg

  1. Press Z on the keyboard. All Spotlight images will disappear but a portion of your image will show at the cursor, rather like shining a flashlight.

Attachments

Spot_Radius02.jpg

#5

Thanks, got that. I’ve now gotten exactly to point 4, where only a portion of the texture remains at the cursor. However, when I start painting, the texture does not transfer on to the underlying surface.

#6

Sorry, got it now. I did not have RGB on.
Thanks for your help.

#7

No problem. :slight_smile: Make sure you turn off ZAdd if you don’t want to sculpt at the same time. The RGB Intensity slider and Draw Size will affect how much color is transferred.

#8

Allow me to ask a question here also…

After point 4, once you’ve done some painting, how do you call up the spotlight widget again to make modifications to the texture?
The documentation says: “To enter Paint mode so that you can begin painting, press Z on your keyboard. Pressing Z again will bring SpotLight back, allowing you to edit the texture some more.”. But that unfortunately only invokes the ‘Z-intensity’ floating slider. Am I missing something here?

#9

Did you assign ‘Z’ to the Z Intensity? The default hotkey is ‘U’. Unfortunately there is no warning if you are about to overwrite an existing hotkey. If you did then you will have to edit your startup hotkeys:

  1. Locate the StartupHotkeys.txt file in the ZBrush 4.0\ZStartup\Hotkeys folder and open it in Notepad (or the Mac equivalent).
  2. Delete the line that reads:
[DRAW:  Z INTENSITY,122] // Z
  1. Save the file and restart ZBrush. The ‘Z’ hotkey for Spotlight should have been restored.

HTH,

#10

Doh… I feel like such a noob! I did re-assign Z-intensity. :o
I followed your instructions and it’s all working as it should. SpotlLight is making total sense now.
Thank you very much for your quick assistance Marcus! :+1:

btw. love the fact that the hotkeys file is ascii based and therefore editable in such a straightforward manner. Very handy.

#11

Glad you got it sorted. :slight_smile: Yes, it’s useful that it is straightforward to correct.

#12

Just while people are talking about spotlight… is there no way to scale images except evenly? E.g. scaling along the horizontal or vertical?