Calling for Zbrush opinions

[Trevor Hunsaker]

OK...... Go......

[MasonDoran]

i have used 1.5 for texturing game models but it crashed so many times that i was better off with photoshop. I currently have no use for normal mapping....but after testing 2.0 i found they did do some major improvements to the UI which was previously deplorable. Now it has some useful tools for doing really fast high res sculpting.


Keep in mind...for professional use Zbrush may not be used for much more then generating displacement maps and normal maps. A lot of the fancy gimmicks can only be used within Zbrush ie: hook tool and the 2.5d brushes. These tools although nice...are limited to Zbrush and render engine of Zbrush. You could then save it as a bit map and use as a texture in other 3d apps....or export the model as .obj (with baked texture maps)

The core concept of Zbrush revolves around artists using Zbrush to create 2d illustrations with 3d tools in Zbrush. In a professional environment such as Game Dev or Film....this is not of much use.

[Timefly]

i've just been working with zbrush 2 for the last few weeks..trying to get to know the workflow of this new software (i've used maya for 6 years..use it professionaly too) now i've finally managed to make zbrush output displacement maps and render them in mental ray and renderman (this latter was what took time..the shaders..settings etc, the dispmap creation itself is easy enough)

so after some initial frustration im now completely hyped with the prospects of just that part of zbrush, as an "addon" for other applications.

as for the rest of zbrush, i've only started getting to know the modelling tools, which seem to be very creative and different than other modelling tools..the stuff i've done so far has been great fun doing...

only looked into the texturing etc. very little, but from what i tried that too looks interesting and creative as workflows go

my thumbs up if you're to use it for dispmaps for sure (which on its own can take your work to another level imo), and possible other stuff too

Cheers

Timefly

[bluemagicuk]

Yes .. get it
Another usefull point is the alpha map geometry generation tools which I found
to be very usefull.

If you do buy it ... remember to save a LOT because in my experiece
it crashes a LOT ...

I am still having some teething problems with displacement but thats not z brush's fault it is my lack of experience with it.
Displacement works fine ... just having some problems with integrating
it into the way I do stuf.

Z Brush is fantastic imo .. i still find creating bace models in
maya is faster but adding details and using alpha maps to create
geometry is seriously fun stuff.

If you are a student in the states you can get it for like $100 cheaper from studica.com ..

[GatorNic]

So far it has been great and once I got over the intial UI hump I like it a lot. I have not experienced any crashing problems, atleast in the new version.

Yeah, I would consider it mainly an add on to other 3d programs. I still prefer modeling low res to medium res geometry in Maya or Max and then importing to do detail.

The amount of flexibility with the brushes is amazing and if there isn't one that does what you want, just make your own. I wish I grabbed a copy while it was $399 and got the free upgrade.

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