ZBrush 2026.1 rebuilt how user assets are stored. If your custom brushes, alphas or materials vanished after upgrading, this is why — and here is how to get them back.
SculptBox is a ZBrush brush manager for macOS and Windows that indexes your brush library wherever it already lives on disk — so your brushes stay findable even when ZBrush changes its folder layout again.
ZBrush 2026.1 replaced the old scattered asset locations with a single user folder per system account. Previously custom items could live in the install directory or in shared public folders; now they must all live in one place.
| Before 2026.1 | 2026.1 and newer | |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | …/ZBrush (Version)/ZStartUp/…Users/Shared/ZBrushData(Version)/ | /Users/[you]/Library/Application Support/Maxon/ZBrush_[HashValue]/ |
| Windows | C:\Program Files\…\ZStartUp\…Users/Public/Public Documents/ | C:\Users\[you]\AppData\Roaming\Maxon\ZBrush_[HashValue]\ |
Two consequences matter in practice:
ZBrushData(version) folder is no longer created, so anything you left there is not picked up.Everything lives under a ZStartUp folder inside that user directory:
[user assets]/
└── ZStartUp/
├── BrushPresets/ ← custom brushes (.ZBP / .ZBR)
├── Alphas/
├── Materials/
├── HotKeys/
└── …
[user assets]/
├── QuickSaves/
├── LightBox/
└── PluginData/ZStartUp/ subfolder: brushes → BrushPresets, alphas → Alphas, materials → Materials.ZBRUSH_USER_ASSETS_DIR. Reset to Default reverts it — restart ZBrush afterwards either way.Every major ZBrush release has moved or renamed something, and each move costs you an afternoon of hunting for brushes you already had. Managing a large brush library by folder shape alone does not scale — and ZBrush's own browser gives you no search, no tags and no real thumbnails.
SculptBox takes a different approach: point it at your brush folders and it indexes them where they are. It parses .ZBP files directly to show real thumbnails, gives you instant search, tags and favorites, and can send a brush straight into ZBrush — and it does all of that without ZBrush needing to be running.
That means the next time Maxon reshuffles the directory, your library does not go missing: it was never tied to ZBrush's folder layout in the first place.
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In the per-user asset folder — macOS …/Library/Application Support/Maxon/ZBrush_[HashValue]/ZStartUp/BrushPresets, Windows …\AppData\Roaming\Maxon\ZBrush_[HashValue]\ZStartUp\BrushPresets.
No. From 2026.1 ZBrush will not write to the application root, and the shared ZBrushData(version) folder is no longer created.
Only if they sit in the new per-user ZStartUp location. Anything left in the old install or shared folders will not appear.
Yes — thumbnails are parsed natively from the .ZBP files, so ZBrush does not need to be running, or even installed, to browse your library.