ZBrushCentral

help with spotlight

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’m trying to get my head around the spotlight functionality and am running into problems/questions. My main goal at this point is to load a side and front reference image to sculpt a head. I am able to load an image to the side and although I click the spotlight button, it doesn’t appear in my spotlight ribbon. And after clicking shift+z to reenable it, I no longer have the widget.

So, my questions are 1. how do I get the widget back to adjust the opacity or whatever else. 2. Is it possible to save the current image’s position, opacity, etc so that I can reopen it in the same place and continue sculpting against it later? and 3. when I rotate my model the image doesn’t rotate along with it so I’m assuming I have to turn the side image off and the front image on when I want to sculpt the front and visa versa? along with that, if I zoom in on my model, the image doesn’t zoom with it. Is there a way to make the image’s scale lock with the models so zooming into the model will keep the image proportionally locked?

Aside from the docs (http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Working_with_Spotlight) I can’t really find any good info on working with spotlight and from the forum searches I’ve run it sounds like it’s supposed to be the new way to use reference images to sculpt from.

Thanks.

#2

Show or hide widget - use just the Z key

#3

Answers, your first problem, you can use “Add to Spotlight” in the texture palette to add a texture to the spotlight ribbon if you’re having troubles getting it to show up there for whatever reason. Just select your texture, and hit the Add to Spotlight button, this will jump it into the active texture slot of spotlight. To get rid of it , hit X on the widget.

To the other questions

  1. Press Z to bring the widget back and Z again to hide it. This toggles between sculpting the model, and editing the spotlight image.

  2. Under file menu you can save Spotlight, and load it there or in the Texture menu. It will come back loaded with the texture still placed where you had it.

  3. Yes, that assumption is the way and for the second part, if there’s a way to do that, which I don’t think there is, it’s unknown to me, but again I don’t think that’s a feature of spotlight.

#4

The best introduction to using Spotlight are the online videos: http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/tutorial.php?lesson=spotlight

#5

There are so many flaws and bugs with Spotlight its ridiculous. I can’t even bother listing the issues up because I truly don’t think you guys care, as long as sales are good. I sincerely hope those issues are fixed in the coming release, though, because it would be a shame to see ZBrush out-run by other apps.

#6

@Ackidott:
If you did list them it could seriously help people like me who have a lot of trouble with it ESPECIALLY if you have workarounds or work flow sugestions.

@Gswartz: Look up “Zbrush Spotlight” on YouTube, I found some good things there, I am not by any stretch of the imagination any good at spotlight but a couple of things I found did help. Also I found that the Pixologic Spotlight tutorials were instantly way over my head and that a few on Youtube got right to the point. (at least to the extent where I was able to use Spotlight somewhat).
This is a preview but it was a good start for me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JhBsp1tGGU&feature=youtu.be

Good luck, it looks like an awesome tool and I ought to be better at it by now…

Cheers!