Gizmo 3D Basic Operations

To enable the Gizmo 3D, you need to activate Move, Scale or Rotate mode first, either through the Transform palette or above the canvas in the default ZBrush user in­terface. You then need to enable the Gizmo 3D mode by clicking the corresponding icon.
The Gizmo 3D is the mode that ZBrush defaults to. This means that when selecting the Move, Scale or Rotate mode, the Gizmo 3D will be enabled automatically, rather than the TransPose action line.
To switch between the Gizmo 3D and the TransPose action line, you simply need to toggle the Gizmo 3D icon or press the corresponding hotkey: Y.
By switching between Gizmo 3D and TransPose, you will notice that both Gizmo 3D and TransPose action line have the same position and orientation.

 

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Placement and Orientation of the Gizmo 3D

When in Gizmo 3D mode, a short click on any part of the model (active or non-active SubTools) will position the center of the Gizmo 3D on the click location. The orientation of the Gizmo 3D will be defined by the orientation of the clicked polygon. This behavior is very similar to single-clicking on a model with the TransPose action line.
If you perform a click and drag between two points on the model the Gizmo 3D will be placed at the location of the initial click and the Z axis (blue) will be oriented along the direction of your drag. This is very convenient to align the Gizmo 3D to an accurate orientation in order to move the selection along this axis.
At any time, you can reset the position and orientation of the Gizmo 3D by clicking the Mesh to Axis and Reset Mesh Orientation operator, combined with Unlock mode (see below).

 

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Move Mode

Move mode can be done in two ways:

• Click and drag on the red (X), green (Y) or blue (Z) arrow to perform a transla­tion of the current selection along the corresponding axis.
• Click on the screen working plane arrows to perform a translation of the current selection relative to the screen working plane. The operation is done perpen­dicularly from the direction of the camera.

 

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Scale Mode

Scale mode can be done through three different methods. Please notice that the second one requires pressing the ALT key.

• Click and drag on the red (X), green (Y) or blue (Z) rectangle to perform non-uniform scaling of the current selection along the corresponding axis.
• Press and hold the ALT key then click and drag on the red (X), green (Y) or blue (Z) rectangle to perform non-uniform scaling of the current selection relative to the working plane (2 axis scaling).
• Click and drag on the center yellow square to perform uniform scaling along all three axes.

 

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Rotation Mode

Rotation mode can be done through two methods. Also, holding the Shift key during an operation will constrain the rotation to 5° increments.

• Click and drag on the red (X), green (Y) or blue (Z) circles to perform a rotation around the corresponding axis.
• Click and drag on the grey circle, aligned with the screen working plane to per­form a rotation around this axis.