Feature request: make it easier to use Pixologic's Alpha Library (SOLVED)

Feature Request
1

https://pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/alpha/ is arguably one of the best resources for sculpting alphas.

The TOS of Pixologic permits the use of the library for whatever purpose, commercial or otherwise, using any software, as long as you do not distribute the alphas themselves to others. This condition would prevent Nomad from bundling the alphas in the app, or acting as any kind of middleman. It, however, doesn’t mean that Nomad can’t make it much easier to import these alphas. The problem right now is that they come as zipped psd files if you download them from the site, which makes it a chore to import them into Nomad. I think it would be awesome if Nomad could directly use these zips.

2

On next release you can drop them in bulk inside the Nomad/alphas folder.

I only have partial support of psd files thought, not sure if the ones from pixologic would work.

3

Cool! Well, that’d solve my problem because then I’ll just write a script to convert them in bulk and copy them there. Accommodating the direct import of these zipped psd files could still help others I guess.

4

Oh wait, forget it, I just tried it again, this already works, zip and everything! I was just impatient and I didn’t see the import show up.

5

I’m confused, are you on Android? (App folder was always visible there)

6

Nope, iOS. However I was talking about importing alphas from the UI, which was already possible, I was just impatient and didn’t notice the alpha showed up eventually.

7

Does nomad read subfolders? my alpha collection is heavily organized that way.

8

No folder management for now, and also everything original file that you store in the Nomad folder is deleted and convert, so that’s something to keep in mind.

9

Can you add option to load whole subfolder in nomad/alpha, so we can load and change a collections of alphas

10

If I add sub folder support, I would need to do it for Projects and Alphas.

I’ll probably do it at some point but it’s not top priority for now.

11

I think it would be really convenient if Nomad would (in the future) integrate with the Files app and expose projects, alphas, reference images, hdrs etc there.

Also on this note, for project management then you could use the system provided in-app Files interface (the same way e.g. Keynotes does). However I know it’s a big consideration because of the cross platform implications.

12

Make sure to update to 1.30, Nomad folder is visible again.

You can see the change logs in Nomad Change Log

Ah… not going to happen for the reason you listed :slight_smile:

1 Like
13

Oops @stephomi, what I wrote here:

is in fact not true. What is going on is some weirdness with the import. After I imported an alpha in the converted png format, Nomad duplicated that alpha for some reason when I subsequently tried to import the zip version of it instead of failing.

1 Like
14

I’m confused, I know that I don’t support zip for now though.

I don’t understand if you are talking about the import button or simply putting files in alpha folder.

1 Like
15

I’m talking about the import button, when trying to import a zip file. This currently either silently fails, or, as described above, if it has the same name as an already imported alpha, that alpha seems to become duplicated afterwards.