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Surface Pro and Tablet API woes

ZBrush Usage Questions ZBrush 2022 Usage Questions
#1

I’ve been trying out Zbrush with a Surface Pro tablet, and it all seems well for my needs apart from a niggling problem.

I want to use it in full tablet mode, so I need the ctrl/shift/alt etc buttons to be onscreen overlays and used with the finger touch input. There’s quite a few pieces of software which give this functionality, and as I understand it it is a requisite that I use the WM_Event tablet api in Zbrush as this is the only option that allows both touch and pen input simultaneously. (testing seems to confirm this)

So far, so good, I can get this all working, I have pressure, I have simultaneous touch and pen input, so I can use alt/shift/ctrl etc. The problem is that certain zbrush pop up menus do not register clicks from either touch or pen. Menus like delete subtool, merge down, the undo warning etc. I have to plug a mouse or keyboard in and use the trackpad to advance further, as there’s no way to close these menus.

This only applies to the WM_Event api, those menus work fine with the other apis, but then I lose the touch+pen input.

Any ideas?

#2

Sorry, I can’t answer your question directly but if there’s no solution then an option, albeit less friendly, is to put the Ctrl, Alt, Shift keys on you UI. They can be found in Preferences:Utilities:Key Modifiers, Then at least you can toggle their state with a pen click. Good Luck.

#3

Hey, that’s an interesting solution! I didn’t know about those buttons. It’s super clunky in practice though.

I made some scripted buttons for delete and mergedown that do away with the pop up, so that’s working. I can’t really do that for the undo warning when you scrub back a long way, and I’m sure there are other pop ups of this type I’ll encounter as I play around some more.

It’s frustrating as it’s so close to working really well…

#4

Hello @Matt-Clark ,

ZBrush does not support touch input at the current time on any device. If you attempt to use it on a tablet device with touch input only, it may partially work or not work at all. Any running screen overlays can interfere with the functioning of the UI.

For best results with ZBrush , I recommend the device be used with keyboard input for navigation, and any touch/overlay features disabled.

For further information:

https://pixologic.com/zbrush/system/

Thank you!