Hi there,
I’m running Zbrush without many available cores and noticed that zbrush runs much better for me at lower resolutions than what my 4K monitor is capable of.
Instead of changing my monitor resolution to be set lower, is there a way to customize Zbrush to load in at 1K or 2K even though the monitor’s resolution is set to 4K?
This would allow me to keep 4K for other apps but get a speed boost with Zbrush.
Thanks in advance,
Matt
Hello @Mendler,
Let me first of all say you shouldn’t be experiencing significant performance impact in ZBrush solely from running your monitor at its native resolution. If you’re experiencing performance slowdowns, it’s probably coming from a different source, and you may want to contact Pixologic Support.
You may start to see performance impact from increasing the resolution of your canvas. If your document size is set to a higher resolution, you may start to see performance become somewhat slower than working on a document of a smaller size.
This is a tricky question because of the OS’s high DPI scaling involved with high resolution displays. Most existing content is not comfortable to view on high resolution displays without some sort of magnification. To answer your question, no, ZBrush cannot run at a different resolution than your display is set to, but it can run without high DPI scaling.
If you’re using a high resolution display, your OS is probably scaling the program window larger to some degree to make for more comfortable viewing. If on Windows, you can see this value by right clicking on the desktop and selecting “Display Settings”. The scaling is governed by the “Scale and Layout” section.
You can set ZBrush to ignore this by right clicking on the ZBrush.exe, and selecting “Properties”. In the Compatibility tab, click “Change High DPI settings”. In the next menu, enable "High DPI Scaling Override and make sure the berhavior is set to “Application Controlled”.
ZBrush will now ignore your OS’s scaling when launched. This will result in ZBrush looking extremely small if launched on a display running at 4k. You can use ZBrush’s own internal scaling functions to increase readability. The primary function for this is Preferences> Interface> UI> Button Size. Scale up the buttons until you find a comfortable size. You will have to restart the program to see the changes take effect. The appearance of the program may differ from what you are used to under the OS scaling.
Take care! 
@Spyndel This is a great overview thank you.
I believe I am indeed talking about document size, but specifically as it relates to the scale of the screen.
I have tested the DPI scaling, and it seems that Zbrush is actually more stable when it is controlling it, although the buttons ARE too small. Thanks for the tip on the button sizing, I will look into that.
HOWEVER!
This leads me to my next question which I imagine would be helpful to others:
Is there a way to maintain a low resolution document size but scale it up on the screen so it is the same screen size as a document with double the PPI (despite fuzziness or blurriness)? Do you see what I’m getting at here?
The size of the document is what is taxing the CPU, and that is directly related to the resolution of the screen. But if I lower the document size, the scale of the image on the screen becomes tiny (due to the PPI on the 4K monitor).
So can those two things be de-coupled? Resolution and Actual Size?
Wouldn’t this be a viable and interesting way to work when the economy of working at a higher resolution is struggling?
Best,
M