How can I map the camera rotate, zoom and pan buttons to single keys in ZBrush? I see there are buttons in the RMB quick menu that pops up, and there additional buttons on the side panel near the axis rotation selection buttons, but when I map them to a button they don’t work. For example, I mapped the ‘rotate’ button to the ‘q’ key, and it shows that it was successfully mapped, but nothing happens when I use the q key. Same for the rotate and move buttons.
I struggle with hand pain and ZBrush navigation requires a lot of needless hand gymnastics when i use my tablet. I don’t want to sound like i’m overly complaining here, but pressing on the pen key to access the RMB is really killing my hand.
I’m aware of navigating via clicking in the background and by using the area outside of the document ‘frame’ but I don’t prefer those methods. I’ve also made a custom script in autohotkey, but this doesn’t work unless i’m at a computer with AHK installed, obviously.
Surely there is a way to perform this most basic of customizations?
Edit: I can’t find another suitable solution anywhere, so here’s my custom AutoHotKey script below for anyone who wants to use dedicated hotkeys in ZBrush. It looks for the following custom hotkey combos and sends the corresponding ZBrush commands to perform viewport pan/rotate/zoom navigation: ‘CapsLock + q’ , ‘CapsLock + w’ and ‘CapsLock + e’ hotkey combos. It ensures CapsLock stays off during use, but will remain a functional key outside of ZBrush. As long as you dont have CapsLock custom mapped to anything, all of the native ZBrush shortcuts will work the same.
For those unfamiliar with AutoHotKey who might find this script useful:
-Install Autohotkey, then copy/past the above script into a blank notepad document, and save it with the file extension “.ahk” anywhere on your PC. Double-click your newly created .ahk file and the script will open/run with AutoHotKey and a tray icon will appear which you can right-click on to pause/terminate the script with.
Have you tried right -click navigation? It is not enabled by default. You have to first enable this in Preferences > Interface> Navigation, and then Store Config (Preferences> Config) to save the changes for the next startup. Most tablet software will let you re-map functions like RMB to a different location on your pen or tablet, which may be easier for you.
Thank you for your reply, Spyndel. I have right-click navigation enabled, but the problem I’m running up against is that I still need to hold/press a button down on my tablet pen every time I want to to do a right-click, which aggrivates my hand.
I tried remapping each of the navigation functions to my tablet (I’ve tried both a Wacom and Huion tablet), but it’s customization software wont let me specify that I want the Alt button held down, followed by the right mouse button, followed by a release of the alt button, all while keeping the right mouse button held down until I let go of my tablet button just to perform a zoom (which, in all honestly, is a ridiculously convoluted set of buttons to press to perform an action).
Additionally, this doesn’t work correctly when I map the alt key and right mouse buttons to individual tablet buttons and try the above key gymnastics manually.
So far it looks like the only solution is a third-party one. I put my AHK script in the original post for anyone interested in dedicated hotkeys.
The classic navigation sounds like it might actually be a better fit for you. It may seem convoluted, but it is designed around a tablet to let users accomplish more there with gestures, and less need for complicated button combinations on the keyboard. Everything is accomplished with a tablet gesture, and the alt button. There would be no need to hold a button on the pen down, if that causes pain. Once committed to muscle memory, you wont even think about it any more.
However, if you’d like to make a suggestion for better accessibility features for users with certain physical conditions, that should be done via support ticket–one suggestion per ticket. Otherwise your issue is likely to be missed by the actual developers.