Multiple zsphere subtool movement problem

[Nancyan]

I hope this helps, but if not, please restate your difficulties and I’ll try to help.

BTW, I started my positioning by going into deformations and hitting “unify” for each subtool. Then I scaled on all axis in deformations to make the dog small. And finally I “offset” the dog in deformations on the necessary axis’so it was in the position to be held. Lastly I used transpose rotate and move to position the arms of the person. It does take some getting used to the rotate, scale and move transpose tools with zspheres, but once you get the hang of it you’ll find it gets pretty automatic. Same with transposing with Deformation, expecially now it’s in real time with ZB4…a fantastic new addition to ZB, I might add.

MORE ABOUT MY POST EDIT:

After posting this I tried hitting “A” and playing around with the adaptive skin density and sculpting on the preview mesh. I was snag the sculpted preview as an adaptive skin and it didn’t seem to corrupt my zspheres. I tried setting each subtool to its own density level, sculpting, making adaptive skin, switching back to zspheres, etc. Nothing broke and the sculpting stayed put, which is odd…my faulty memory tells me this failed for me in the past. In any event I’m really curious why your mesh exploded.

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[MealeaYing]

For the sake of demonstrating this I made a new document and two new characters, nice simple ones named BubbleBut and NippleNut.
This is them standing happily next to each other in the land of Z:

With the normal Preview I get the same thing, and would have to hit the MakePolyMesh3D button to do any sculpting, not that sculpting poor BubbleButt at this stage of things would help him out much, with Adaptive skin I dont need to PM3D button in order to sculpt or subdive but as you can see, I need a doctor first or more likely an origami expert…

One interesting thing is the difference between projects, the one with the Octopus while not very different did different things, it let me make a non-scrambled mesh but one that was nearly impossible to move and that caused the Octopus to “drift off into space” as I move around in the work area.

I can show pictures of that too if needed…

Thank you for bothering to read all that, I tried to make it a bit more fun then it is but its fairly appalling, I have only been able to do to two things with Subtools the whole time I have had Zbrush, make eyes, and destroy stuff. Oh… and make my self go crazy…
The Origami expert is chasing me with a pair of scissors.

Cheers!
Mealea

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[Nancyan]

This is a very strange problem Mealea. I can’t think that either your program is corrupted or you are including some step without realizing it.

I copied your forms and followed your process and got this:

I wish I could figure it out…very challenging problem which I can’t seem to repeat. I’ll keep trying though.

(btw, if you keep the largest dimension of your inserted pics to about 500 px its easier to both view them and read your text, otherwise it requires zooming in and out to read and refer back to the photo )

[Nancyan]

What exactly do you mean by “I saved him as a subtool”?

I made each part and then cloned it for extra reassurance I wouldn’t lose it, then hit “T” to drop it to the canvas. Then I redrew a zsphere and repeated this for the other form.

Finally I cleared the deck, chose one (clone or original, doesn’t matter) and appended the other.

Is this what you meant?

[Nancyan]

Yeehah! Three of my own posts in a row…but I think I may have figured it out.

you wrote:

“The transpose tools simply did not work, (all three little circle things and with symmetry on and off) as a preview mesh it was destroyed, distorted and mangled him beyond anything anyone would even want to survive, (very sad. We hid his body next to Jimmy Hoffa’s).”

You do not want to use the transpose tools on a preview mesh that has an associated zsphere armature. The whole point of the zsphere armature is to create and pose the basic mesh. It seems to be ok to sculpt on the preview, but you don’t ever want to move/scale/rotate the preview with transpose or deformation tools or as you have probably noticed , you move the mesh out of sync with the zsphere armature.

Always go back to the zspheres to make these types of adjustments, or alternatively create and work on an adaptive skin that is disassociated from the original zspheres.

[MealeaYing]

What exactly do you mean by “I saved him as a subtool”?

GRIN! I misspoke there, I just meant I saved them as individual tools, not as subtools, that came after, sorry… However even if I hadent saved them I would have the same result…
So…
I Make Zsphere person
Save as tool
Append make new Zsphere person
Save as tool
Append first Zsphere person (now I have two, one on top of the other)
Try to move one of them(Zspheres only, not mesh yet)
If I use CTRL and grab the root Zsphere I can move the model, BUT when I make it into the mesh it appears somewhere else (usually where the tool appended to(that was happening in the earlier stuff with the octopus)
If I use the deformation Pallet to move (again, Zspheres) the mesh explodes like in my picture…

So as you mentioned, and I think you must be right, I must be doing some other step in middle of all that that is screwing things up… the question is what, and if so where did I learn to do it…
One possibility is I picked something up from watching tutorial videos that were geared for ZBrush3.x… however I don’t know honestly.

Interestingly the stuff with the transpose tools (not just in relation to this problem) come and go, some objects deform when they should not and others work just fine, sometimes I can use the middle circle thingy to move a sphere in any direction I want and at other times it causes it to deform, I have no idea why that is but with eyes for example it often takes up to 4-5 tries to keep them round (in fact wanting to do a little sculpting on eyes is where I learned that you can’t touch PM3D button if you have subtools… why that is I don’t know, it seems natural to me to look at something and think I need another object. I can add the object but I don’t dare touch it… not fun and fairly confusing when I see all the things in ZBC with hundreds of subtools all intricately sculpted… I sit here and think HOW DID THEY DO THAT??? And then I pop a couple more eyeballs or what ever…
Speaking of which, the thing holding the octopus is going to have a whole lot of eyes and other… um… problems…

Ok… I’m starting to babble on a bit here…
I think you’re right, I must be doing something in the middle of all this that is doing something odd…

Oh yah, I will start cropping this stuff! Sorry about that!

Cheers, and Thankyou for the help!
Mealea

[MealeaYing]

What exactly do you mean by “I saved him as a subtool”?

GRIN! I misspoke there, I just meant I saved them as individual tools, not as subtools, that came after, sorry… However even if I hadent saved them I would have the same result…
So…
I Make Zsphere person
Save as tool
Make new Zsphere person
Save as tool
Append first Zsphere person (now I have two, one on top of the other)
Try to move one of them(Zspheres only, not mesh yet)
If I use CTRL and grab the root Zsphere I can move the model, BUT when I make it into the mesh it appears somewhere else (usually where the tool appended to(that was happening in the earlier stuff with the octopus)
If I use the deformation Pallet to move (again, Zspheres) the mesh explodes like in my picture…

So as you mentioned, and I think you must be right, I must be doing some other step in middle of all that that is screwing things up… the question is what, and if so where did I learn to do it…
One possibility is I picked something up from watching tutorial videos that were geared for ZBrush3.x… however I don’t know honestly.

Interestingly the stuff with the transpose tools (not just in relation to this problem) come and go, some objects deform when they should not and others work just fine, sometimes I can use the middle circle thingy to move a sphere in any direction I want and at other times it causes it to deform, I have no idea why that is but with eyes for example it often takes up to 4-5 tries to keep them round (in fact wanting to do a little sculpting on eyes is where I learned that you can’t touch PM3D button if you have subtools… why that is I don’t know, it seems natural to me to look at something and think I need another object. I can add the object but I don’t dare touch it… not fun and fairly confusing when I see all the things in ZBC with hundreds of subtools all intricately sculpted… I sit here and think HOW DID THEY DO THAT??? And then I pop a couple more eyeballs or what ever…
Speaking of which, the thing holding the octopus is going to have a whole lot of eyes and other… um… problems…

Ok… I’m starting to babble on a bit here…
I think you’re right, I must be doing something in the middle of all this that is doing something odd…

Oh yah, I will start cropping this stuff! Sorry about that!

Cheers, and Thankyou for the help!
Mealea

(my internet connection is going haywire, I dont know if this will get out)

[Nancyan]

By any chance did you used radial symmetry when making your zsphere armature?

[MealeaYing]

heh…
Its funny you should ask that, I love that feature but in these cases no Im not.
But out of curiosity, why?
(ok… now I’m not sure, regular symmetry yes I’m almost positive, radial no, I would have had to turn that on via the transform menu not just by hitting X right???)

[MealeaYing]

I think you found it!
I just made two things out of Zspheres and used NO symmetry and had no real problem moving them aside from rotate in the deformation menu being weird (Fixable I think as Marcus said using the Unify button, I will test that now…)
Hang on…
one more little test!

[MealeaYing]

ok yes.
Symmetry SEEMS to be destroying my mesh.
Unify is good BUT you have to unify ALL subtools, unifying one does nothing its just unifyied to it self… or something or… ok I dont even know what I just said…But still unify on both tools and they move, rotate and turn into mesh as normal…
ok… one last test…

[Nancyan]

Here’s my theory…he heh. theory. 2 separate problems.

1. you are moving and rotating subtools while in preview mode. You may not notice you are doing this if you are accustomed, like me, to flipping back and forth between the two modes. It just has to happen once and you’ve moved off your connection. I did it myself in testing and I didn’t realize I did it…took forever to catch myself at it.

2. When you attempt to move with transpose tools, expecially that octopii with all its legiliscious parts, I’m guessing it got jumbled up and some little sphere went inside where you couldn’t see it. Or you inadvertantly tapped on the model in draw mode thinking you were in move mode and you created a tiny zsphere that you didn’t notice which got moved inside. That will cause an explosion or serious deformation. Its tricky to get the hang of moving the whole zsphere mesh with the transpose tools. I practice it alot. You need to be sure you are clicking on the root sphere while holding down ctl - hold and drag. If you don’t do it right, be sure to undo with ctl z - don’t try to rearrange the parts. Then try try again! :lol:

[MealeaYing]

ok…
now I cant replicate it.
I did everything the same as the Bubblebutt and NippleNut example and it worked as it should have, I can move them rotate them etc…and make meshes out of them…
Now the question is what changed…?

[MealeaYing]

Here’s my theory…he heh. theory. 2 separate problems.

1. you are moving and rotating subtools while in preview mode. You may not notice you are doing this if you are accustomed, like me, to flipping back and forth between the two modes. It just has to happen once and you’ve moved off your connection. I did it myself in testing and I didn’t realize I did it…took forever to catch myself at it.

2. When you attempt to move with transpose tools, expecially that octopii with all its legiliscious parts, I’m guessing it got jumbled up and some little sphere went inside where you couldn’t see it. Or you inadvertantly tapped on the model in draw mode thinking you were in move mode and you created a tiny zsphere that you didn’t notice which got moved inside. That will cause an explosion or serious deformation. Its tricky to get the hang of moving the whole zsphere mesh with the transpose tools. I practice it alot. You need to be sure you are clicking on the root sphere while holding down ctl - hold and drag. If you don’t do it right, be sure to undo with ctl z - don’t try to rearrange the parts. Then try try again! :lol:

hehehehe…
/me goes bat****…
Ok Yes to everything mostly!
Octopi’s root Zsphere is internal but that wasent it, more on that in a second…
you said:
“you are moving and rotating subtools while in preview mode. You may not notice you are doing this if you are accustomed, like me, to flipping back and forth between the two modes.”
VERY VERY Likely. But maybe only one of what looks like a number of problems and they led to more confusion and obscured what was ACTUALLY happening… I think…

It seems that I need to hit the UNIFY button on ALL subtools,
That radially alters the size and placement of things but solves two problems, movement (size rotation and placement) and making mesh out of my Zspheres. If each subtool is “unified” everything works nicely. I think… at least it seemed to just a moment ago…

holy shi… AHEM… stuff.

–EDIT Forgot about the octopi comment, its in the center and I moved it slightly so I could get at it, I don’t THINK, but I cant be sure of that now as there are SO MANY COPIES! (microscopic ZSpheres are microscopic thus hard to find)

PHEW!
The question now is why symmetry led to unity… and on that note I’m making a VERY strong drink.
And I suspect I owe you one.

[MealeaYing]

“legiliscious parts”

hehehehehehehehehe!!!

[Nancyan]

I’m going to join you in that drink! And symmetry was just a thought. Possibly when it gets left on when its not needed, things go wonky, like with transpose move, etc…just a possibility, I haven’t been able to get good results testing it.

I use unify for all my subtools as a starting point. I’m not even sure that’s what it’s purpose is, but it helps with getting things positioned from a central place.

[MealeaYing]

I am now having trouble replicating my own problem…
I’m not sure what is going on here…
very very very odd…

I think what I am going to do is start over from scratch and see what happens.
My thought is that you were right when you said maybe I was doing an extra step somewhere and in maybe starting over and keeping track of what I’m doing should help.

the tests I’m doing are little ten second things where as things like the Octopus and the thing holding him are a bit more involved… well in theory just more ZSpheres but still…

ok… more soon as something either works right or breaks!

GRIN!

[Nancyan]

Inevitably when I’m starting out with some new process in Zbrush I incorporate some little thing that breaks the workflow and its hard to pin down…suddenly the bad habit is gone. Happens to me all the time. Often I never discover what I was repeatedly doing wrong.

Conduct a test and wiggle a zsphere or two inside and then press A to see it bork.

I’d recommend also that you get the basic forms down and positioned and committed before you add little details like small zspheres for facial features. Just as a procedure it may greatly help avoid the risk of dragging a zsphere inside. I’m going to do this from now on.

Thanks, btw for the link to the tutorial vid on creating an personalized interface. That’s an excellent tutorial and I benefited from watching it again. I worked out a menu palette which serves nicely for my needs…and in the process brought up ANOTHER issue which I’ll post in the troublemakers…er troubleshooting forum. :lol:

[MealeaYing]

You’re welcome and Thank You!

Its very odd, I’m still having trouble in a wide range of ways with subtools, I find them nearly unmanageable. They jump around, destroy each other and themselves and generally drive me nuts…
Am I correct in thinking that you cant link them if you want to move a bunch at once?
I seem to have no concept of the way these are supposed to work, how I am supposed to use them in relation to each other, or why any of the things they do happens at all.
A good example of this is making a boooleen, I did it once and have never been able to do it again.
I think that there ought to be a bit of background information about these things explaining not just: do this then this, and now do that, but WHY you do it in some particular way.

On the plus side, at some point its all going to click somewhere deep down inside all that swirling stagnated air in the bottom of my head and something will ignite. At that point I will need more memory and who knows what else… oh, LOTS of coffee!!!

GRIN!

[Nancyan]

I think the subtool master may be just the ticket for what you are trying to accomplish. That said, I haven’t yet explored it’s mysteries…just going by heresay.

And Booleens :rolleyes:

They are so dang fussy! I had the same experience as you Mealea, did it ONCE and then I couldn’t repeat the experience. But it’s funny you are mentioning it now. Last night I was playing around with them. I noticed its very easy to think you’ve set things up and when you don’t like your result and delete the resulting subtool to try again, its easy for the settings to revert back…wrong axis…wrong subtool now selected, etc. annoying.

Just be sure you have all the axis greyed out (any thing on an axis is too fussy for someone just learning this and x seems to pop back on randomly) and confirm that the tool being acted on is the one selected. I keep it at the top of the subtool list. I’m not sure if that is necessary. Then its a matter of figuring out the best resolution for the resulting mesh and getting everything lined up correctly.