Beginner question: Rendering in Zbrush vs Rendering in Vray

#1

I’ve been studying Zbrush, I just learnt what displacement, bump, normal maps, UVs, shaders and materials are recently and so would appreciate feedback on the following:


Question: If all the work needed can be done in Zbrush except for rendering and lighting. Should I also render in Zbrush or should I take it to Vray on maya or 3d max? How much different will the results be? Would anything be limiting me staying in Zbrush or would there be a huge advantage in working in Vray, please note that that exact light placement and multi characters in a scene is important to me.

My initial understanding was that “Zbrush offers rendering options but Vray is much more powerful so most prefer to work in Vray” but after reading up on the basics it seems the reason rendering is done in Vray is also because Zbrush is only part of the process and animation for example is done in 3ds max so Vray is better than going back to Zbrush.

But if I’m working on a 2D image for example is moving to Vray a good idea or should I stick with Zbrush rendering?

#2

Basically, Zbrush rendering isn’t really rendering in the sense that Vray is. Vray(or any other biased/unbiased) render engine is doing it’s calculations based on energy conserving laws and other physically-based phenomena. Whereas Zbrush isn’t. Whilst both renderers ‘cheat’ to a certain degree, Vray will render using highly sophisticated algorithms to achieve photorealistic results.(with a lot of know-how on the users behalf regarding lighting/material set-up of course.

This isn’t to say that Zbrush can’t achieve beautiful renders. In fact, I’ve seen some amazing renders from Zbrush. It’s just more suited to artistic/illustrative renders; which certainly is not a bad thing. Zbrush in conjunction with multiple passes and photoshop compositing can be a wonderfully liberating way to create illustrations without the many hours of set-up/render-testing required to send all your assets to Vray.

This probably wasn’t a great explanation but it really depends on your goals and the look you want to achieve.

#3

Actually Daniel your answer was right on the mark.

My goal is: “Using 3D technology in order to study light to a degree to be able to imagine it for 2D scenes”. So accurate physics and photo realistic effects is my primary concerns, illustrative purposes second.

Note: Studying photographs and that lit sphere illustration did not do it for me. So I decided to sort it out for myself and I got into the 3D world.

So, gotta study Vray… that book is 1000 pages :frowning: . And just getting familiar with ZBrush took so much study. Ah well, better get to it I guess.

#4

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