Zbrush | Creating startup file and navigation basics

Hi Everyone, my name is Michele. As mentioned in the previous tutorial, I’m going to divert from masking tutorials today. I will be focusing on creating a startup file for a Femaledemohead followed by how to rotate, move and zoom on the canvas using shortcuts. From this tutorial onwards, I will not be showing any of the navigation shortcuts which will greatly reduce the amount of overlay work during editing.

Alright, let’s begin! Let’s Press “,” to open up the lightbox, Under Project, Double click on Femaledemohead. Press “F” to center the head, Turn off symmetry by pressing “X”, turn off perspective by pressing “P” and last but not least turn on “Double” at Display properties under Tools. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if the moment we open up our zbrush all that has been done for us?

Let’s do that. I am going to show you how to save a new startup project file on your desktop which ends with zpr, which stands for a project file. A Project file saves almost everything you see on your canvas related to your model, even your subtool layers. Let’s save a copy of this project before adding more subtools. Go to File> Save as> Startup_FDH_3D_1 on desktop. Then let’s say I click Polymesh3D a few times. There are now 4 numbers of the same FDH here under tools. Let’s save that again as a startup file. Go to File

Save as> Type in Startup_FDH_3D_4. This way we know it’s a startup file with female demo head that’s a polymesh3D. 4 just stands for 4 number of FDH. Now let’s close Zbrush.

When you open it up using this project file your multiple FDH would still be there. This also means project files are much bigger if you have a lot of subtools compared to just saving one Tool out. So just be aware of this file size issue when saving files with lots of subtools. If you want to delete the additional subtools that you don’t need, just click on it to activate it, then go under Subtools to click on delete. Clearing them one at a time.

A quick save file, in case your Zbrush crashes is also a ZPR file. You can access your quick save files under lightbox. By the way if you don’t want to launch lightbox at startup adjust the settings under Preferences. Let’s turn off the “Open at launch settings”. There, it won’t launch itself on startup. You will find Quicksave settings under Preferences too. Maximum number of files, amount of time zbrush rests before quick save happens and deletion of quick save files.

Alright that’s all for the settings. The next time if you need to startup with a file like this, just double click this project file on your desktop and you can skip the few buttons we pressed in the beginning.

Now let’s move on to rotate, move and zooming. There are two ways to rotate your model on canvas. Clicking on the background and right clicking on the model. The easiest is rotating on the background by tapping on the background and move your pen around. The pivot point is the spot you’re clicking.

If you don’t want the part you’re editing to rotate away from you, right click on the part you’re editing and move your pen to rotate. The pivot point of your rotation is on the model where you right clicked. That’s the center of your rotation. If the speed is making you dizzy, you can change it by going under Preferences> Interface>Navigation >Rotate speed, slide the reading to the lowest number of 0.25. If you want Zbrush to remember all your settings next time you startup Zbrush go under Preferences> Config>Store Config. That will save all your configuration. Let’s say if you want to do some videos to share and restore it to the standard settings before editing, Click on Preferences>Config>Restore Standard UI. To go back to your own settings, Restore Custom UI.

Next, let’s look at how to zoom in closer and zoom out further away from your model. Holding down CTRL, right click on your wacom pen and hover left to zoom out, hover right to zoom in. You can also adjust the speed at Preferences> Interface>Navigation >Scaling. Adjust the slider all the way down to 0.25.

Next let’s learn the shortcut for move. Holding down ALT, right click on your wacom pen. Hover your pen to the left or to the right. Alright, that’s all for navigation. Pretty easy huh! Let’s go through them again so that it’s easier to remember. Press F to center the model. To Rotate on the background, Click and move the pen To Rotate on your edit, Right click and move on your edit, To Zoom in(+), CTRL, hover left Zoom out (-), CTRL, hover right To Move it? Press ALT, right click hover any direction.

Last but not least, Remember to subscribe, Click on the word then Hover right to turn on the notifications. Adios!

I’ll see you again in the next video!