Zbrush gets a bad rap for its User Interface and I think that’s due to its overwhelming amount of things you can do and its use of brand spanking new made up terminology. So to a new user it can look a little crazy, but I have something to admit…. I kinda like it. At least I like a specific thing about it, and that’s the customizing. Customizing Zbrush is simple and fast. Open Preferences, click Enable Customize then Hold down Ctrl+Alt and start dragging things around!I’m not one to normally customize software. I just suck it up and get use to it but with Zbrush it can be a time saver and with how easy it is to change, there’s no excuse not to. There is one bad thing about it all and thats keeping straight all the different files it uses and where they go if you want to save or transport your custom interface. It’d be WAY better if it was just one file, but sadly its several and that is what is confusing. I’m gonna try and set that straight.
Here’s what you need to know:
Zbrush is a large collection of files. Brushes, meshes, materials, hotkeys, tools, everything including interfaces and interface colors. All tucked away in their folders inside the main Zbrush folder.
Then there is the Config file. This file is what stores your configuration of everything inside the app. So what we need to do is load up everything we like and customize the interface how we want, save any necessary files then store our config file so the next time we open Zbrush everything is right where we left it.
I’ve placed the files in the same directory structure as they should be in your Zbrush directory.
Once all the files are in place load up Zbrush and load the user interface and the Color file, you can also cycle through these by clicking the buttons in the upper right until they come up (it just cycles through files in that folder) The materials and Hotkeys are already ready to go.
I also reduce the overall button size of my UI to get it even more out of the way and to squash everything in. This is done in the Preferences Menu under Interface. I set mine to 38. The thing to remember about this setting is that it doesn’t take effect until you restart Zbrush so you probably want to make all of the changes you want and then store your config before restarting to take a look at your shiny new setup.
Be sure to save your startup config!
Once you get everything all nice and how you like save the config so Zbrush starts up the way you want. Do that by going Preferences>Store Config or feel like you’re programming the Matrix by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I
That’s it! Let me know how it goes and how you customize your zbrush to work better. I really love how quick and easy it is to rearrange Zbrush and to make hotkeys but it’s a bummer how scattered all the files are and the extra steps you need to take to save it. It’s worth it though because once you understand how to do it, it can make your day to day work more fluid and let you move your setup to another machine.
Happy Zbrushing