Artof.NickMiller
Tools...
I love tools. I love being able to automate tasks and make annoying processes magically easy with a button click. I love analyzing the problem and trying to find the best way to go about solving it. My heart goes out to the people much much smarter than me that create tools for the community. Below are a couple of my attempts.
Huge thanks to Matt DeLucas and Marcus on the Zbrush Central forums for all their help with these scripts.
Photoshop QSaver
Spending time file browsing is annoying. QSave is a custom Panel which is designed for quickly saving a file over and over again to a set path . My primary goal was to speed up texture iteration by removing the resizing and browsing process when you save a file from the source but this tool can be used to save any images quickly.
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- Simply click "Set path..." to chose where you want to save your file.
- Click "Resize" to set what percent you want the file saved at. Your settings will be remembered so you can set it once and forget about it. Default is 100%
- Now whenever you click "Save TGA" or "Save PNG" the file will be saved to wherever you set your path with the same name as your PSD. Any preexisting file with the same name will be overwritten so be careful!
- Ideally your source PSD and game texture will have the same name so that the assigned game texture will automatically update in your 3D application.
*** Window 64 users may have to manually place this file in the directory C:\Users\"Your Name"\AppData\Roaming
Zbrush Plugin
Zbrush is probably my favorite program ever. I will absolutely admit to being a Pixologic fan boy. However there are some processes that can be tiresome. I set out to learn Zscripting to hopefully relieve some of my Zstress.
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- Mask Grow: this script will attempt to grow your mask similar to how you can grow a selection in Photoshop. Enter how many polygons you want it to grow by in the slider and click grow. This is best used at medium to low SubD levels. At higher SubD levels it takes forever and the effect is barley noticeable.
- All SubTools to SubD level: this script will put all your subtools at the SubD level indicated by the slider. This is similar to "All High" and "All Low" in the SubTool menu only with more customization.
- PP to Mask: if you have any Polypaint on a visible layer this script will convert it into a mask with one click.
- Colorize Toggle: this script sets colorize on or off for all your SubTools. I can't believe this isn't a built in feature.
- AutoMask PG: ordinarily the brush setting "AutoMask by Polygroup" is a slider. While this feature is awesome when you want it... it's irksome when you don't. This button toggles between 100 (on) and 0 (off) with a button press. Ideally this button should be pulled into your interface somewhere so it's handy.
Photoshop Actions
I use actions to automate many tasks such as exporting and resizing but those actions are all over the internet and easy to make. These are a few unique ones that I made and use quite often.
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- Center Guides: places a guide horizontally and vertically at the exact center of the document. Useful for tiling textures or making alphas/matCaps for Zbrush
- Lines from Silhouette: makes a outline from a layer with a solid color. Useful if you need clean linework but don't want to painstakingly draw it all.
- Center Guides from Selection: places a horizontal and vertical line shape at the center of whatever you have selected. Useful for finding the center of a complex or organic selection. Credit goes to Whitney St. Charles for this bad boy.
- Copy to new Doc: trims and exports for web your current layer. Useful for exporting multiple Web/UI/Animation pieces that are complied in another program. *** note: if you need transparency you will have to make a new document with the BG set to "Transparent" instead of "White"
- Expand/Contract 1px/5px/10px: these are bound to function keys to quickly expand or contract a selection. Very useful for overpainting textures or making boarders.
- Quick Properties: my best attempt at a quick rename hotkey. Bound to F7 by default it will bring up the layer properties so you can rename the layer and when you hit enter it will select the next layer down. Hit F7 again to continue renaming down the stack.
- Roughen Selected Edges: runs a filter on a selection to give the selection texture. Useful for texturing metal or any rough boarders. Run on thin selections to get really nice edge scratches.
More will be added as I get smarter.