Template:Palette Listing

From ZBrush Info

The subjects below give descriptions of the ZBrush palettes (menus) and the controls within them. Many of these descriptions include conceptual overviews and examples. Particularly large palettes have been split into sections.

Alpha Palette

Manages alphas, which are ZBrush intensity maps. This is an important palette because alphas can be used for many more operations than in other programs.

Brush Palette

Contains all of the 3D sculpting brushes.

Color Palette

Allows setting or selecting of colors, and also filling the canvas or an object with a selected color.

Document Palette

Provides document operations; opening, saving, resizing, etc.

Draw Palette

Controls and gives information on aspects of the currently selected tool. For example, Draw sets brush size. This is not an extremely complex palette, but it is important, and many of its controls are made available as shortcuts in the area surrounding the ZBrush canvas.

Edit Palette

Controls Undo and Redo operations.

Layer Palette

Layers allow you to organize a complex ZBrush scene into different layers; each layer contains part of the scene. Since ZBrush brush strokes contain depth information, layers provide a powerful scene management tool without the need to consider if elements of one layer might block elements of another. Layers can be made invisible to more easily work with other parts of a scene.

Light Palette

Controls scene lighting; this in turn affects rendering, both in interactive and batch-rendered views.

Macro Palette

Allows easy recording of sequences of actions. This is particularly useful for recording actions that make a number of settings that define, for example, a favorite brush combination. The macro menu may come with useful or example predefined macros.

Marker Palette

Markers allow you to remember various aspects of onscreen models or paint strokes, such as colors, position, orientation, etc. You can then later redraw that model or another, using any of these same properties. Markers are also used for combining multiple models into a single mesh.

Material Palette

Materials allow you to apply complex and powerful effects to your drawings or models, giving them the appearance of fire, glass, metal, rust, skin, or many other things.

Movie Palette

Used to make mini-movies about ZBrush, for illustration and distribution to other users. As of ZBrush 3, can export to Quicktime .mov format.

Picker Palette

Controls how properties (material, color, depth, orientation) of the pixols underneath the mouse cursor affect the current brush stroke. For example, if you want to draw across part of a scene in such a manner that the pixols in that stroke are 'flattened' to the same Z-depth, but retain their original materials, you'd adjust the settings in this palette.

Preferences Palette

Allows setting of many, many user preferences. This includes UI configuration, tablet preferences, and configuration options having to do with several of the other palettes.

Render Palette

Controls ZBrush renders, both in the normal interactive mode, and in batch rendering mode.

Stencil Palette

Allows masking using 'stencils'. These can be not only stencils in the standard meaning of the word (the standard stencil is the 'french curve' drafting/drawing tool), but stencils that include gray scale intensity.

Stroke Palette

Controls how mouse strokes are applied. This is a powerful but sometimes overlooked feature of ZBrush, and well worth learning.

Texture Palette

Provides for texture management.

Tool Palette

Provides the tools (paintbrushes, models, filters, etc.) that can be used to draw in ZBrush, and many operations relating to those tools.
This is one of the most important palettes in ZBrush, and its many submenus are described below.

Transform Palette

Contains operations for transforming 3D objects into different forms; sculpting, repositioning, snapshoting to canvas, and others.

Zoom Palette

Allows viewing the canvas at different zoom factors.

ZPlugin Palette

The default location for commands added by ZScripts. However, many ZScripts will put their commands in a more appropriate location in the ZBrush palette structure.

ZScript Palette

Allows you to load, run, and otherwise work with scripts written using ZScript, ZBrush's built-in scripting language. This is likely to be used mostly by users who write their own scripts; if you commonly use a predefined script, it's usually better to install it so that it loads into ZBrush automatically.