Sneak peek #1 of ZBrush 4R2

[Pixolator]

Hi:)


In this thread I will share with you some information regarding the exciting features that are planned to be included in the next ZBrush update.

The next update will be ZBrush 4R2 (ZBrush 4 Release 2) - it will be a free upgrade to all registered users.

ZBrush 4R2 is currently in development, when we reach beta-testing phases I will be able to post information regarding its release date.

To get the Z4R2 preview rolling, I'll start with a sneak-peek of the next update to the BPR renderer.

Best Preview Render

The BPR renderer in the next version has been updated to a full 32-bits floating-point HDR pipeline. BPR in Z4R2 is capable of rendering high quality
images while utilizing improved materials, lights, and environment mapping.

::::::Test renders of the wristwatch which was created in ZBrush 4 (Click here to see the wristwatch movies (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=86043))
Z4R2_Image01.jpg


::::::The next image is a render of the Motorcycle which was also fully created in ZBrush 4 (Click here to see the motorcycle movies (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=95181))

Z4R2_Image02.jpg
Note: After posting the the 2nd movie in the above thread, I diverted my attention back to programming tasks and did not complete the 3rd movie.
Following the release of the next update, I will make more "time for art" to either finish the Motorcycle Part3, or start a new project with ZBrush tutorial movies.



::::::In Z4R2 you'll also find a new LightCap/MatCap designer. LightCap (Light-Capture) is similar to MatCap (Material-Capture) but is applied directly to the environment, not to a particular material.

Z4R2_Image03.jpg



::::::You will be able to easily incorporate your sculpture into an HDR background by using R2's ability to apply shadow to the background-plate as well as auto-generate LightCaps to simulate the environment lights and reflections.

Z4R2_Image04.jpg
Z4R2_Image05.jpg
hdri.jpg



::::::Both LightCaps and MatCaps, can be utilized by the real-time preview renderer, this means that you will be able to use 'fancy' lights, backdrop and materials while sculpting your mesh!



I'll post more Z4R2 previews and information at a later date.

Have Fun ZBrushing,

-Pixolator

[Gary Komar]

awesome pixolator :tu: :tu:

[jovomo]

It looks fantastic and i'm very happy to updated the BPR in the future.

[SIM-R]

Yes!!! Fantastic news . Can't wait to try this out ..........

[Xsmoke]

Wow those images look amazing!

[manzarek123]

Ay caramba!! tremendously lookin' forward for this release:tu::tu:

[mr_max]

WOW ,awesome ... :tu:

[andreseloy]

:tu: Incredible but True!
Pixologic Team is The Revolution!:tu:
Thanks

[womball]

Finally the lighting is getting some much needed loving. The results look impressive hopefully the render times are quick too. Now any chance that there are better grouping functions for subtools? like grouping subtools by folders?

[squidinc]

those renders are straight out of zbrush? without photoshop jiggery pokery? :eek:

[kmkenpo]

Me being a wet blanket again. The renders are fantastic, but... in the attached picture, I think I may have noticed something that is a little picky... OK... I'm anal.

Have a blessed day,
-kmkenpo

[uaun]

Impressive addition, thanks for the sneak peek. Can't wait to see what else is coming in R2!!

[rudymassar]

Great upcoming update! Mike's Mechs invading Holland looks really convincing :)

[091181]

Yes!!!! Thanks Pixologic.. Waiting for that update..:tu:

[Aumakua]

WOW Looks truly awesome! and still free!?! Thank you! can't wait :)

[Doqpelgänger]

love transparency now

[shhark]

awesomeness! is there a estimated release date yet?

[InkySpot]

Awesome.

[EricShawn]

Wow, some of the renders rival raytracing renders in quality (to some degree). Can't wait for the day that Zbrush has a raytracing renderer and GI. But in the meantime, this is a really great stride.

:tu:

[fshayong]

awesome work,:tu:

[Ace-Angel]

Awesome, yay, blah blah blah.

Are we actually getting any info about bug corrections or not? That is more important for some us then what you guys 'added'. I mean those are nothing to be proud of since some programs in under a year integrated Pixar-Sub-D and PTex...considering how powerful ZBrush's render engine is, and how much was added to it, I thought you guys would throw it as a fluff at best, not a main title header for what is to come.

If this is honestly what is the 'main' meal at this buffet, I would hate to see the appetizer and ice-cream at the end.

[crumbaker]

how's the auto retopo coming along?

[Jerick]

Calm yourself a minute, Ace. This is pre-beta info. Studios are pretty hush hush in the alpha phases. This bit of info is brought to us by the goodness of their hearts. Hold off a little while before it would we worth while to throw out some hate. Bug fixes are always a prevalent need and they are working on them as they crop up. Thing to also remember is from a marketing standpoint, it's not great advertisement to talk about bug-fixes as the major item. A sense of innovation is the key and improving the artist's options even by a little bit makes the prize more delectable. In the mean time, just try to hold the angry view until you see the actual product, then tell it as it is.

[dargelos]

ohhhhhh no... im weak and unpatient. i will have to suffer. please release this short. there will be any improvement in the rigging area... ?

[bizzybbest]

These look great.
What I would love to see in the next release is the option to paint directly to texture. Creating plug-ins that Go back and fowarth between photoshop is ok and still usefull, but it's something thats been missing and would enhance any workflow. It would be nice to have the choice.

[nightwoodwolf]

i uses zbrush since the days of zbrush 2.0, now days there are alot of demands on technologies that becoming more and more standardized in the industry specially at work pipeline in the studios ... i have all the respect in the world for Pixologic cause they gave us what others couldn't back then, however in so many threads here on zbrushcentral alot of professionals in the industry requested some updates that some competitive packages addressed already, i wish my number one company in the world "Pixologic" could do the same .. i like the fact you guys keep pushing the envelope by creating new features but in all honesty i suggest you to work on the other issues on the other hand, Utlizing more than 4G mem ( 64-bit version ) .. Vector displacement ( we use it alot at work with Renderman and MayaMan "Film/TVCs") .. linux version (both big and small studios yes uses Linux ) ... and few other suggestions from your fans here on the forums starting from beginners /intermediate / to senior artists ... I'll drink for the day when these updates comes true in Zbrush next versions

thanks for great continues success ... cause pixologic your success is our success,you help us create better art ... Cheers

[RawSunlight]

Beautiful renders!!! I'm excited :)

[jakobweiq]

need PTex!!! ;)

[testure]

Calm yourself a minute, Ace. This is pre-beta info. Studios are pretty hush hush in the alpha phases. This bit of info is brought to us by the goodness of their hearts. Hold off a little while before it would we worth while to throw out some hate. Bug fixes are always a prevalent need and they are working on them as they crop up. Thing to also remember is from a marketing standpoint, it's not great advertisement to talk about bug-fixes as the major item. A sense of innovation is the key and improving the artist's options even by a little bit makes the prize more delectable. In the mean time, just try to hold the angry view until you see the actual product, then tell it as it is.i would agree with you.. if i weren't still working around bugs that have been in since Z3. Some even as old as Z2.

just sayin... pixologic has set a precendent already, what he was saying is perfectly fair given the circumstances.

[mutte696]

Ok, my jaw dropped again!!! can't wait to get my hands on this!!! Nice work Pixocrew.

[XIII]

Can we PLEASE get support for lowercase firle extentions. Maya throws a fit wit the all caps extentions that ZBrush uses by default.

[Santis]

Oh yeah, this is awesome! :cool: :tu:
Yesterday I was actually thinking about when the next release would come.

[Asyme]

Looks very nice.

I'm torn though between wanting to cheer pixologic for still providing these free impressive updates and frustrated (possibly unfairly) because the core modelling, texturing, pipeline stuff still needs work.

Modelling is brilliant in zbrush, but retopology has moved on lightyears from when pixologic first implemented their solution. The lack of a 64 bit version still hurts as well.

Texturing is particularly bad. I work in games - I really need a more viable photoshop like solution with multiple layers, pds exports and not being limited by poly counts. This has lagged behind for years and ends up forcing my studio to use apps like mudbox more and more which is leapfrogging zbrush. We're also still limited after all these years to only a couple of file formats - which seems insane.

Rendering is great - but a vast majority of users will export from the package and use, say, vray for their final model.

I can't really complain with a free update, but I always get the impression the development of the package is partially based on what interests pixologic, rather than what the users are asking for. In some respects that's made them the innovative and wonderful package we all love; in others it's meant much needed areas are ignored for years at a time.

[Danny R]

Fantastic that the render quality will be improved. I make 100% use of the ZBrush render, then import it to photoshop. This is my workflow (and I think a lot of people work like this), so I am very happy with this upcoming update.

[Mahlikus The Black]

This, as well as many other things, is why I will always live here with Pixologic until the end of days! I, for one, am truly honored and proud beyond words at being witness to the revolutionary growth of this fine company and its unmatched flagship, ZBrush!

Bravo Team Pixologic!

You all never fail to keep your followers invested and yearning for more!

Though you constantly reinvent yourselves, you still manage to redefine this industry while staying firm on presence and purpose.

Kudos!

[mykyl]

Like some here I am torn between loving the results of the renderer and the fact that osx users still don't have the feature to look for references within zbrush (the web connection) or the ability to have sub directories within lightbox. The sub directories thing is the most important to me as I have no way of organizing my work using it so it is a mess of models at the moment.

Hopefully these missing features will be added in this upcoming update.

Cheers anyway

Mike Ross

[Shawry]

very impressive, nice transparency and the lighting cap looks great.. But i'd more impressed with a 64 bit Zbrush :D

[Ecthelion]

Awesome. The robot renders look great; this white porcelain/plastic render is amazing.
LightCap! You guys are crazy...:tu::cool:

[earthtriber]

very exciting! thanks guys

[shrikant09]

Great !!!

[manuleptit]

I have to agree with most of what's been said. Users actually interested in rendering are, I think, more likely to export their file to another program and start rendering passes. All these rendering features are very very good for people like me though (people that really understand nothing about rendering and don't want to bother learning Mental ray or Vray or whatever ^^)

They are trying to make rendering easy and accessible to the average Joe, and I can't blame them for that. The only actual renders I ever made were done with BPR because rendering is something quite counter-intuitive and hard to get your head around. So to sum up on this, improvements in rendering are good for noobs like me but still not very satisfying for users that know how to get the most out of Vray, Mental Ray etc..


As far as I am concerned, I have to admit I cannot wait to see a new retopology workflow appear in the next versions of Zbrush (Retopo from Polypaint? Colour-coded extraordinary vertices detection? RetopoMaster?) because when they get there, people will have no excuse to use Polymodeling anymore. The only problem of digital sculpting is the incredibly high number of Polygons and crappy edgeflows that make your model not-usable for anything. But as soon as it gets retopologized... hehehe ;)
So maybe instead of making rendering easier, why not make retopology easier? It would make more sense I think.

So, yeah, I think Zbrush has a lot more potential on the modeling side of things than any polymodeling program. Therefore, I think engineers, programmers and artists teams at Pixologic should focus their efforts on making their modeling workflow even better.
The Clay Algorhythm changed our lives, the same for the Clip Brushes and ShadowBox. This is the kind of novelties we want to see again and again ^^

[jonathanmax]

Absolutely awesome Pixologic teams! but please fix some current problems (i.e: auto masking, make 3d...) and stability for the next release!:):):)
U guys r having the best sculpt software!

[Tomala]

Animation, rendering who cares of that? Zbrush meant to be sculpting aplication.
Maybe You should ask people from time to time what they realy want to see in next zbrush and not making such mistery around every release.
Even autodesk realized that comunication with customers is necessary.
Don't get me wrong, I just don't like the direction that zbrush take.
Best regards,

Tomek

[lucek91]

Tomala why you are still complaining. Try to appreciate new render, maybe one day you will use it (i hope);D Who needs new retopo or x64 version - nonsense.

[HumbertTheHorse]

Once again, love you guys! Really, I do.

[pOiNtPuShEr]

Holy smokes!!! :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[HerraPuputti]

I use Zbrush mainly for newspaper illustrations. Better renders are just what I need. Thank you very much!

[Knacki]

When I clicked on SNEAKPEAK I was curious to find something really useful for my sculpting tool.
This is for what I bought ZBrush and for what I am learning it.

But some users seems to use exclusively ZBrush.
For those it should be a blast I guess.

But I hope it's not the end of this sneakpeak.
I hope it's more just the beginning toy and you keep the best for the end .
...like striptease ;)

Knacki

[Burchigb]

This is great news.

Just trying to figure out the current release and BAM a new update comes out.

Like the program a great deal.

:-)

[Nemoid]

Awesome add !!!! being able to render so well i n ZB is a great thing. And...hey this is only the first thing unveiled for R2, who knows what comes next ? Maybe better retopology tools will be coming as well. So don't be negative at the start, and let's wait patiently to know what Pixolator is cooking this time. Thanx Pixologic ! :)

[nezumi]

Thats what I am talking about! Previews, sneak peaks! Amazing work Pixologic and DOUBLE THX for showing us whats to come instead of just being silent. :tu:

[klausknuth]

Who could stop them now? ;) :D
Can't wait !!

[Danny R]

Animation, rendering who cares of that?
Tomek

I do.

[Julian_K]

I do.me too :)

[Julian_K]

Animation, rendering who cares of that? Zbrush meant to be sculpting aplication.
Maybe You should ask people from time to time what they realy want to see in next zbrush and not making such mistery around every release.
Even autodesk realized that comunication with customers is necessary.
Don't get me wrong, I just don't like the direction that zbrush take.
Best regards,

Tomekyou do realize that when they ask they will probably get just as many asking for improved rendering as those who want something else ?
plus, they anyway certainly do observe what people ask for around here and with every new release we did get quite a few more very useful features/improvement, apart from rendering.

Oh and... if you want to compare Pixologic with Autodesk - try asking Autodesk for a free upgrade to the next Max/Maya/Xsi/Mudbox ;)

[jamesT]

Great render of the zwatch man!!! Nice material selection! I NEED that timepiece on my wrist :idea:

Excited to try these new render features, just keeps getting better :tu:

[Ace-Angel]

Calm yourself a minute, Ace. This is pre-beta info. Studios are pretty hush hush in the alpha phases. This bit of info is brought to us by the goodness of their hearts. Hold off a little while before it would we worth while to throw out some hate. Bug fixes are always a prevalent need and they are working on them as they crop up. Thing to also remember is from a marketing standpoint, it's not great advertisement to talk about bug-fixes as the major item. A sense of innovation is the key and improving the artist's options even by a little bit makes the prize more delectable. In the mean time, just try to hold the angry view until you see the actual product, then tell it as it is.Please note what I'm about to write is NOT a personal attack to either you or the good people of Pixo, they're humans, just like us, who work on a product at the end of the day.

First of all, I understand that, it's fine, and while my previous rant may have sounded sour, it honestly wasn't. The thing that perplexes me is when a new release comes along, for every hundred people who shout "YAY" we only have one "NAY", and that "NAY" usually gets shucked in one corner. I'm honestly starting to hate ZBrush's userbase, because they're killing ZBrush.

"WAH, animation would be cool for Turntable."
*Done*
"WAH, but we want real animation, we cannot use a recording program."
*Erm, Done*
"WAH, I need to render stuff."
*Simple enough*
"WAH, but I need real SSS and backdrop scene integration, not fake fresnel!"
*Ooookay...erm...done*
"WAH, I cannot Hard-Surface in ZB"
*Control loops will help?*
"What the **** are control loops? Do something bitch!"
*Ugh, fine!*

Then people like me come along and do this:
"Dear Pixo, do you mind giving an ETA on when base updates that have become base-work-pipelines in both the movie and game industry will come to ZBrush?"
*...*
"Pixo? Hello?"
*...*
"Don't leave me, I love you!"

So what is the problem you ask?

~(64-Bit) You don't need 64 bit to use ZBrush, I'll be the first one to admit this, but when people like Scott Spencer in their Tutorials are pushing 6GB of RAM in ZB, me mailing ZB and asking if there is a way to do such as thing and getting the bold faced answer of "No" doesn't help.

AT LEAST the bloody promise that ZB might one day become 64-bit if we hung around long enough will be enough to keep me going, but it doesn't help when they stay quite about it. I mean honestly, what would happen if they just hinted us that 64 bit might one day come? What? You guys think Mudbox will become 128-bit or that Andrew with 3DC might come up with 256-bit?

~(Hard-Surface) People complained about this issue greatly, as in we don't have the tools. It was pretty stupid for me since we could still model in out 3DS Packages and with control loops still export something workable, but no, Pixo thought it was a good idea to put time and effort in creating Brushes and Tools to do this, when they could have done one simple thing, create a system, a la Pixar-Sub-D to automatically do the hard surface retention properly.

If some lone scientist guy was able to figure out how to create a Max Plugin which imports Smoothing groups, surely Pixo could have figured out a way to keep the hard edges for a 90* mesh.

~(Animation Timeline) I feel indifferent to said tool, but I honestly believe they could have been working on stabilizing the Deformations tools rather then doing this.

-(ShadowBox) I feel indifferent to said tool, but honestly believe they should have at least cleaned the said tool. One of the walls in ShadowBox is bugged and will give lower resolutions then the other walls, and sometimes, the walls won't even increase in resolution when ordered too.

And why is it called ShadowBox? I'm frankly suprised you people didn't stick a Z instead of an S. ZhadowBox...afraid Cthulhu might get you or something?

-(Retopology) Honestly, just drop this tool already. It's bad enough since 3.5 version it flips the normals of mesh if they're not connected in Sym mode, but the fact that you cannot add points which 'conform' to your model as desired forcing me to delete entire sections of the model?

What? You guys have some kind of masochistic fetish where you rub yourself as you imagine poor little guys like me crying my-self to sleep because we have to delete entire portions of our character?

If it means the tools can become better by some magic, just stick a Z infornt it guys, Zesus...

-(Texturing) Stop calling it Polypaint, this is the only point in ZBrush which brings my blood to a boil, I'm a pretty calm guy, and if you read my previous points, you'll notice that generally you can skimp on them with other packages, but this is the needle in my side.

VERTEX-PAINTING! You Vertex-Paint in ZB, not Poly-paint, for Poly(gon) would at least imply some kind of Face painting in question with a ideal ratio, not the blending of colors between vertices!

And how come you guys didn't call it something else with a Z in it? What? Was saying ZolyPaint too hard?

I don't hate you guys, but honestly guys! Every single update to date has been a useless cavalcade of mediocrity which could have had an easier solution or not been added because we already have the tools in other platforms.

You guys had a powerful render system which was amazing, and that fact that we could modify it around as needed was fantastic. You guys updated a few things, and thank you, really, thank you, the ability to simulate refraction and convexity of glass so easily is amazing, but everything else was already there, done, all people had to do was explore the tools.

Please, just tell me what your road-map is and I'll be very happy. If you guys are going to keep on pampering the to the people who are simply lazy and want a bajillion things in one software and sometimes not even bother learning the in and out of ZB to get things done, forcing you to create a homogenized dumped heap of a pap software, then please tell me.

At least then if I get my heartbroken, I'll get it broken by Mudbox when using it, not from a company who had the potential for a great software but kept on the giving to the lower demographic just because they asked more useless stuff.

[Sparky3d]

wooooow this rocks

[nDman]

you do realize that when they ask they will probably get just as many asking for improved rendering as those who want something else ?
plus, they anyway certainly do observe what people ask for around here and with every new release we did get quite a few more very useful features/improvement, apart from rendering.

Oh and... if you want to compare Pixologic with Autodesk - try asking Autodesk for a free upgrade to the next Max/Maya/Xsi/Mudbox ;)

Well said.


As a render leader in animation industry i must say this is an excellent update for Zbrush.This is a great support to zbrush users, many of them will not need to purchase any other software to just render thair models or thair arts.

For 64bit and better topology (current topology in zbrush is good, it just need to be a bit automatic) I will wait for next updates. I know Pixologic will do it nicely.


[I have some idea about topology, how i can send them to you?]

[robotball]

Hey I love the folks at Pixologic and I know they work really hard and yet I do agree with many of the complaints raised (although Julian_K's response is right on - every one is gonna ask for everything). But I will say this as my small bit of advice: You will have a much easier time getting hold of Pixologic's ear by posting cool artwork as often as possible. When they SEE how you use the tools it gets them excited and more motivated to improve ZBrush, add tools, etc. People have been posting cool BPR renders since the release of ZB4 and that gets them excited about BPR so hence, more improvements to rendering.

If you start posting whatever images you can and include your workflow and grab their attention you'll start seeing the tool change the way you want. Don't like retoplogy in ZBrush? post some images of your work and show them why you don't like it. The guys at ZBrush are human beings just like all of us. They like shiny, pretty things. simply complaining in the forum every once in a while is not going to get you as far because everyone is always doing that all the time (yes, I get tired of the knee-jerk cheerleading too but knee-jerk bitching isn't any more productive).

Not that they don't listen, they do, but when they SEE what you're doing they get inspired. Go back in time and watch Meats Mier's early ZBrush DVDs, see how many techniques he developed and see how they evolved into common tools (mesh extraction for example) look at Zack Petrock's early ZBrush DVDs and see how that inspired Transpose.

I'm not interested in starting a flame war or smack down or anything, its just my opinion. Yeah, I want instant retopology but at the moment posting images of new retoplogy tools is not as sexy as some cool renders.

but really what I would like is the same software developed in the movie "Weird Science" that allows you to instantly print a living super model with super powers but that may be a few years off still. Even is it does come out I doubt I can sneak it past my wife.

[nDman]

-(Texturing) Stop calling it Polypaint, this is the only point in ZBrush which brings my blood to a boil, I'm a pretty calm guy, and if you read my previous points, you'll notice that generally you can skimp on them with other packages, but this is the needle in my side.

VERTEX-PAINTING! You Vertex-Paint in ZB, not Poly-paint, for Poly(gon) would at least imply some kind of Face painting in question with a ideal ratio, not the blending of colors between vertices!

And how come you guys didn't call it something else with a Z in it? What? Was saying ZolyPaint too hard?



Yes we need something is not in zbrush currently. But i have some word about this part of your writing.
Look at this quote from Mudbux 2012 new features:


UV-Less Painting: Enjoy the freedom of not having to create UVs before you paint! Texture artists can now eliminate or reduce the time-consuming and often difficult task of creating UVs; even complex assets comprised of multiple meshes can simply be loaded, and painted right away. The resulting high-quality textures can be exported as...

Don't you thing they try to make a similar thing like that you say ZolyPaint?
And Zbrush have this for many years.

Yes Zbrush have bugs, any software have bugs. We use 3ds max az primery 3d software in our company and we say **** words to autodesk for all that overlooked bugs in it but still we love it !!!

[aurick]

A peek, by definition (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/peek), is not seeing the whole picture.

So it always mystifies me when Pixolator shows a "sneak peek" at what's being worked on and then some people assume that's all that's in the works. :p

[phrenzy84]

Such a tease :)

I wonder if those renderings could be animated and separate channels rendered out?

I tool long for new texturing toolset, and vector displacements would be lovely. Crosses fingers.

[ghostdancer]

A peek, by definition (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/peek), is not seeing the whole picture.

So it always mystifies me when Pixolator shows a "sneak peek" at what's being worked on and then some people assume that's all that's in the works. :pPossibly coz they are making assumptions and want a whinge
sorry state their opinions
its still pre Beta, the Devs may not even know whats going to make into the final cut, give em a break

[SpaceMan]

but really what I would like is the same software developed in the movie "Weird Science" that allows you to instantly print a living super model with super powers but that may be a few years off still. Even is it does come out I doubt I can sneak it past my wife.:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::D:p:tu::tu::tu::tu: :tu::tu::tu::tu::tu::cool:

[campi]

Yes we need something is not in zbrush currently. But i have some word about this part of your writing.
Look at this quote from Mudbux 2012 new features:


UV-Less Painting: Enjoy the freedom of not having to create UVs before you paint! Texture artists can now eliminate or reduce the time-consuming and often difficult task of creating UVs; even complex assets comprised of multiple meshes can simply be loaded, and painted right away. The resulting high-quality textures can be exported as...


This refers to PTEX implementation in Mudbox. And PTEX is nothing else than assigning one texturemap per face and storing this information in a very memory-friendly way. It is miles ahead of Polypainting. But of course Polypainting does have it's uses and I use it for first color passes even on Feature Film Assets. Unfortunately sooner or later you will always hit that wall where you just can't get any more detail in there.

[SolidSnakexxx]

Wow...this is so exciting!!!

[neil77]

:cool: :tu:

[chemkid]

thanks for this sneak peek! ...the next upgrade (even a r2) is free, too?! too cool!

cheers and happy coding!


chem!

[gasoil]

lets face it it will be difficult to please everyone...this said Pixologic has proven over and over again that their out of the box approach is the freespirited and most efficeint way to create new tools and workflows...many seem to forget what life was like before they first came with Zbrush...it was and still is one of the most significant changes in Cg in the recent years....also remember that the Entertainment pipeline or even worse the film pipeline is by no means a standard of workflows tools and processes in any way.The constrainsts that we face in production are very specific of other tools that have as well many limitations that are totally unknown in other industries.For example Modeling for film or game really is a very very small proportion of what a modeler tasks can be across all the disciplines and industries.I know that most of Zbrush users and people in this forum work in a film pipeline or would like to work in a film pipeline...i can tell to those that the many self imposed limitation in film that i have to face every day are borderline ridiculous and an old heritage of times when there were very little tools available.Fortunatley a new generation of soft engineers, artists and TDS are ready to break the mold and come with
new ideas and approaches and ANY new flavor is very wellcome....i have recently come across very interesting if not totally new ideas like realtimephysically accurate rendering or Voxel sculpting to say a few...this are companies or individuals whose projects started with a big bold statement and a very healthy "says who?" while every critic is welcome i will always salute the effort of a company that is ready to go where the others wont because there is not a road previously traced....and that is called vision.

[LetoAtrell]

Wow that is looking freaky awesome!!!! Can't wait to put my hands on! Hopefully it will be released for both win and mac at the same time!

[dustbin1_uk]

This looks awesome!!!

I seriously look forward to this and the other features not yet mentioned. :)

One thing I am holding my breath for, and I REALLY hope Pixologic are working on for a not too distant release, is something like Auto Retopology like that in 3D coat. Or at least improving to the tool set used for retopo. Once I have that, my life will be almost complete. :)

But back to this preview, this looks simply amazing!!! So glad the rendering from ZB is working better than ever before!!

[The Namek]

really looking forward tho this. I'm also someone who tries to stay in Zbrush as much as possible for everything and I will also render out everything in zbrush. I can't be bothered much with technical issues of exporting, uv-coords , ....

But I do understand that those having to work with Zbrush professionally get a bit frustrated with bugs or lack of more pressing issues. It does seem that zbrush has catered more to the "artist" then the "professional" lately.

Personally I always love discovering a new version of Z, so i'm looking forward to it ;)

[HaloAnimator]

This is definitely awesome... i haven't used BPR but I definitely will when R2 comes out... and I also would love a 64bit version of zbrush for baking my normal maps with Adaptive and it doesn't crash Zbrush (I have 12gb of RAM)...but i love my Zbrush **hugs it**.

And I do hope that R2 will fix the normal map issues (seeing the cracks in the map and trying to hide it sucks on many models) and I honestly, I do miss seeing ZMapper... I make game models and now I am forced to bake out a normal map, export the texture, and see it in Unity3D... not a bad deal but i love having options.

Can't wait for it

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/1924/yayzz.jpg

[Ballo]

Imo the render still looks like the "zbrush render effect". But anyway it is a good adiction that light shader.

Right now I'm making a modeling course with Mudbox. My boss honestly ask me if zb is superior to MB. Because he knows that zbrush is big users app and for him users=money. But you don't have a easy answer to that.

In my opinion, ZB is far superior for modeling but not for painting. A link with photoshop isn't a professional solution.

It's a shame, at the end we choose Mudbox because it is a better balance app. With a better painting integration and work with multiuv's I would choose ZB for the course.

I hope this summer Pixologic bring us a great surprise in this field. I pray for that.:lol:

[INFINITE]

Cool.

Will the viewport be able to support real-time transparency now? for things like eyes?

What about turning masks on or off with a button, not their view port visibility but their functionality.

True Multi UV support? will the Smooth UV button be fixed? how about be able to export Smooth UV textures? for Colour and Masks?

[KonginChains]

@ INFINITE: What's the deal with the smooth uv button? Isn't it always been when left ticked on, when subdivided, the model will smooth the uvs accordingly just like when you smooth something in maya, the uv's get smoothed along the border as well.

I don't have a clue what smooth uv textures is supposed to do though that you would want pixologic to implement in their new release.

[michalis]

So, a BPR improvement. Some nice previews maybe. Thank you ! With a more or less problematic perspective camera... Without a real ray tracer, with all this wrong shading.
Anyway, where is the retopo and auto retopo engine?

[Jester]

My top wishlist is:

1. I need the ability to switch between layers on any level. Going up and down just to switch layers is time consuming and pain in the neck

2. Fix layer bug. When I make a layer, sculpt on it then switch to lower levels, and delete the layer the footprint of the layer remains on the upper levels.

3. If I hide a portion of a layered mesh, polypaint is going nuts.

4. Do something to the camera. I know it's not a real camera, but it's drives me crazy that my model lines up perfectly in Softimage with the concept art, but not in ZBrush.

I use the layer in daily produtction, but those bugs really annoying. To be honest I do not think that the majority of the user base is interested in BPR, animation, etc. I'm pretty sure they want production ready toolset.

I love ZBrush, that's why I'm so cared about the future development.

[pugman]

I have only one wish (hair).
This is such a powerfull app as it is.
Good luck and thanks to the ZBrush team :D

[EricShawn]

I'm in complete agreement with most here. Great improvements, but the bugs described above should be fixed first.

[Keeper]

Oh Great, more things I don't need


Seriously, I used to be able to retop in Zbrush, but now I'm forced to export, go into Topogun to retop.

I can't even bake to a low poly model in Zbrush anymore - I again, need to use another external program.

For UV's too, I use an external program.




So basically, If all most of us use Zbrush for is modeling, WHY Don't Pixologic work on Streemlining it for...uh.....modeling?


Sure, rendering is cool, but your Retop is Broken, baking from a high to low poly model is impossible, and there are a lot of bugs to be fixed :confused:


Make it stable for modeling and make it 64-bit, thats all we ask.

[fearnight2000]

Don't get me wrong, every new update is welcome. But i feel that lately Zbrush has gone the wrong way. It adds features that restrain the workflow only in Zbrush and do not allow further implementation on other animation packages. The turntable, the new rendering, the animation, shadowbox, all of these restrain the whole process in Zbrush. Most of us go back and forth between Zbrush and other applications such as Max, Maya, etc and we need features that will allow better implementation of Zbrush's features in those programs. Mudbox seems to be on the right way as it's workflow is connected to such applications (the recent addition of ptex and vector displacement prove this).
What i would really like to see in the new release are:
1. A 64bit verion
2. Better implementation of the layer painting with blending modes etc.
3. The ability to directly paint on the model while painting on it's texture and not polygons (polypainting).
4. Vector displacement maps support
5. Ptex support

[mastone]

That HDR image looks like it's being shot in Scheveningen ( I live in the Netherlands so it's fun to see stuff like this )

With regards to the features I have to agree with most here, although I do like Zbrush, it has it's annoying problems :

- Please do something about the UI, Although I applaud your bloody strive to be different, please don't be different just for the sake of being different, in my opinion the interface could use a big facelift structurewise, making it a bit more conventional

-Update the layer system, because at this moment they are quite a pain in the ( bliep), discern between paint and sculpt layers, under paint layers make it possible to paint the specular/transparency/sss etc besides just color.
To make it absolutely clear I don'tmean painting the black and white values, but actually painting specularity which can be seen in the Zbrush viewport

-Conform file managment to somewhat normal levels so get rid of Ztools/projects, maybe even make it possible to hook a zbrush file to your Maya/3ds Max/C4D project creating a link between the 2 packages so that every change you make in Zbrush in color/Displacement get's updated in the background to the 3d app of choice and files get placed in the correct folders

- Make it possible to import a shader or mimick a shader from a 3d app into Zbrush and be able to paint the colormaps in zbrush so that it looks as near as possible in Zbrush further reducing the back and forth stuff.

-Shelves/marking menu's/floating windows:
Don't know if you know Maya, but there is a great functionality which is called a shelve where you can store your most used tools for quick access the same goes for marking menu's when you press SPACEBAR in Maya you get a pop up(hotbox) where you have the same stuff you have in the regular viewport, this way you can turn of all interface buttons and have the whole screen as your " playground" ( in Maya you can turn of all UI elements by pressing CTRL+SPACEBAR), it would be great as well if you are able to rip out certain menu's and make them floating and put them on another screen.Now you guys have a functionality where you can click on an icon so that it import the whole menu to the right, at least make it possible to be able to drag submenu items to the right instead of for example the entire tool menu only the layer and subtool submenu, this way you can keep the interface clean.



-Lightbox:
Just get rid of it, I know no-one who uses it at least turn it off by default if your fond of it ;).

-Brush editor:
I know this isn't in the package right now, but I would like to see a feature/functionality like a brush editor which you can open in Zbrush, where you have this preview swatch like a mini viewport with a sphere on which you can paint and once you painted a stroke it disappears, it would have the same function as the brush modifier but more intuitive with all the controls to edit the brush properties


-64 bit installer:
It would surprise me if you weren't working on it.


It's all nice and well that there is an update to BPR and such, but you have to realize that your tool is most of the time only a part of the pipeline, not the pipeline, ad competitors like Mudbox, Mari , modo, Qudam to the mix and you are really in a tough spot especially when you look at those 1st two they both have big companies behind them of which one owns basically the entire 3D application market and is really streamlining their workflows between the packages. another thing is that an application like Mudbox is easier to get into because of the interface and have outdone you guys in some area's ( PTex support, vector displacement) and if my hunches are right on the way they are heading they will kick you out of the market in the long run.


My main " advice" would be as suggested by some other people who posted before me: Focus on the core and if there is time left sure fix that HDRI functionality, but making sure you keep in the world pipelines should be your main priority and I believe that means fixing the stuff mentioned by me and others, which in short is conform 3d functionality to the main industry used packages Maya and 3ds Max and use the 2d functionality and workflow of a package like Photoshop, then people will pick it up more quickly( keep in mind that most people in the industry need to learn a wide variety of packages and if they have to choose between 2 packages where one is using a whole different workflow then what is to be expected, they most of the time will pick the other which uses a certain common sense)

[mastone]

I just thought of something:
It could be totally impossible to implement, but what about deploying Zbrush to Maya, basically having a Zbrush viewport in Maya, which hooks into the whole projectstructure of the maya scenefile ( and creates a backup copy incase of a crash when creating the link).
Zbrush is open in the background and has a livefeed to maya, but when you are in the viewport of Zbrush you can paint displacement/color maps and such in realtime ( I mean actually painting the maps and not sculpting ).
create a toolbox and a shelf in Maya which you can dock with the channeleditor or keep floating and has all the neccessary controls/hook ups with Zbrush.

I say maya because that's my main app of choice the same stuff could be added for 3ds Max and C4D.

[INFINITE]

@ INFINITE: What's the deal with the smooth uv button? Isn't it always been when left ticked on, when subdivided, the model will smooth the uvs accordingly just like when you smooth something in maya, the uv's get smoothed along the border as well.

I don't have a clue what smooth uv textures is supposed to do though that you would want pixologic to implement in their new release.The SmoothUV button is broken and has been for a while. As is the layer system when importing old ZBrush 3.5 R3 files into ZB4.

SmoothUV's (Subdivided UV's) are handy for allot of things. Than compared to Linear UV's. I recommed a Google on the topic.

Cheers

[fidget]

you guys rock. to be able to incorporate HDR lighting in Z would be so epic. Thanks for pushing innovation.

PS: please try to come out with an auto-retopology feature like in 3D-Coat. that would be sweeeet.

[massageboy]

Im just a casual artist who uses this software and PS to make large prints and have no need for other software (thankfully). Been using Z since 2.0. Would love to see some core issues resolved to make casual users enjoy the experience as well.
Wish list:

1: Floating menus with multi screen support ( menus all on one screen and a whole screen of viewport.
2: 64 bit support
3: Improve retopo
4: Hair and fur would be handy

[aurick]

Make it possible to import a shader or mimick a shader from a 3d app into Zbrush and be able to paint the colormaps in zbrush so that it looks as near as possible in Zbrush further reducing the back and forth stuff.

You can already do this. That's what MatCap is -- Material Capture. The simplest method is to (in your other package) make a 1024x1024 render of a sphere with your desired material on it. The sphere should be just slightly larger than the render, or you'll get a black ring around objects when you create the MatCap.

Now in ZBrush, import the render into the Texture palette. Select any MatCap material. In the modifiers, replace the current light sphere image with your imported one. (Just click it and select your alternate texture.)

Save your material. You now have something that looks exactly like the shading in your other program.

There's a lot that MatCap can do, such as sampling information from a photograph. See Here (http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/MatCap)

[dargelos]

I won't suggest any change...but I hope that users would be more interested in the rigging-animation stuff inside zbrush.I think rigging with zspheres has a lot of potential and i would love to see some improvements in that direction. I dont wish zbrush to change to behave like other apps that are already in the market I am happy its navigation system and UI. i dont need many changes in retopo , right now its simple but powerfull.

[kallesh3d]

Hay,,,Thanks Pixologic. Its relay good stuff..!

[robotball]

it really isn't.

All this talk of redesigning ZBrush to fit into one pipeline or another is completely wrongheaded. No ZBrush is NOT mostly used for film, its NOT mostly used for games, its NOT mostly used for jewelry design, or for this or that. It's an artist's tool. It IS imperfect but it is not meant to simply reinforce the status quo of factory floor style production for any one particular industry.

Yeah, I wish it they could fix things like 3D layers and retoplogy as well and they know that and I believe they are working on it (I hate that goddamn QuickSketch button and why is it Lazy Mouse? shouldn't it be Lazy Brush?)

I got my own laundry list of complaints just like everyone else (my ZBrush list pales in comparison to my list of Maya+mental ray complaints BTW). For good or ill I know Pixologic is going to treat ZBrush as a tool designed by artists for artists.

They want to change the way art is created not satisfy some lazy bitch who can't be bothered to spend 10 minutes laying out UVs or create decent toplogy.


if they start redesigning ZBrush to please one segment of the user base then the will alienate the rest. Game studios have very different pipelines than film studios which are very different than commercial studios and so on. What if ZBrush is redesigned to work seamlessly with Maya? Yay for Maya users, too bad for 3ds max or Modo users or Cinema 4D users other users. How many programmers do you think Pixologic has? what happens when Autodesk makes a change that breaks the integration? what happens when one day Maya goes the way of Electric Image? Its true that most of my students are Maya users but a good 20% of them are not and I've even taught people who have never touched any kind of digital art software before (these people also had 20+ years experience sculpting with something called "clay").

ZBrush is not a Maya plug-in. It never will be and it never should be. ZBrush should not be made to conform with one particular pipeline because, as has already been pointed out, pipelines change constantly and are often guided by economic concerns not artistic ones. Pipelines are designed for maximum efficiency - not a bad thing at all but the goal of a pipeline is to use the individual talents of a pool of artists to produce the best possible commercial art at the lowest possible cost to maximize profits (for a bunch of jerks with MBAs). Pipelines are just like assembly lines. ZBrush is not meant to be a drill press or a robot arm or a spot welder. It is an artists' tool. Yeah, its gonna piss you off sometimes but you can try and use an ounce of creativity, ingenuity and initiative and learn your tools.

Sorry about the rant but if I hear one more newbie complain that ZBrush needs to be integrated into Maya or needs to be more like Mudbox or whatever I'm going to puke.

And I love Lightbox and I use it all the time.

[nezumi]

Couldn't agree with you more. :tu:

[Etcher]

gasoil, robotball; couldn't have said it better -> if some of us didn't think outside the box, we would still be living on a flat disc... .

quote:"Both LightCaps and MatCaps, can be utilized by the real-time preview renderer, this means that you will be able to use 'fancy' lights, backdrop and materials while sculpting your mesh!"

How cool is that! Getting closer to WYSIWYG - Woot :) .

[Kanga]

Brilliant work as always Pixo!

[martiangirl]

As a noobie user I look forward to all the exciting new FREE updates.I haven't got around to rendering anything yet as I am still struggling with the fiddly topology. I am sure those clever clever people are taking on board everyones comments and doing their best to make Zbrush the most user friendly awesome product they can.

I look forward to the next update and fingers crossed for some magical topology wand:)

Keep up the good work and keep pushing those boundries.

:) xx

[squidinc]

it really isn't.

All this talk of redesigning ZBrush to fit into one pipeline or another is completely wrongheaded. totally agree, some people seem to think zbrush was made for their industry and nothing else


having said that.. a better retopology tool would be nice, preferably one that does it all for me :D

[michalis]

This watch is a brilliant render. A useful r-engine for some presentations! Just a minute... where are refractions? :confused:
mmm better export it and render in a decent engine now. Good luck. :lol:

This robot is also great, and great modeling !!! I'm sure the artist used all the 'boxes and remeshing' features of zbrush.
The render isn't convincing of course. Better export it again but after some re topology. I can imagine. Something close to re build this excellent sculpt in a decent spline modeler. :rolleyes:

Real serious detailed sculpting happens after re-topology, so, pixologic, do what you have to. Meanwhile, a year ago, I bought 3DCoat, what else could I do? And still ZB is my major and favorite sculpting app.


ll this talk of redesigning ZBrush to fit into one pipeline or another is completely wrongheaded.

But you also agree that we need some decent retopology system and this only is almost enough to zb fit in any pipeline.

[Dan-Burke]

As always, Pixologic is cutting-edge and offering an amazing value. Thanks for the previews!!

[Nemoid]

IMHO, the status in which Zbrush is now comes form the fact it is an artist's tool, originally conceived for 2.5D illustration, but being adopted widely from 3D artists once Pixologic implemented sculpting into a fantastic way, which actually changed even traditional 3D workflows. They changed the 3D world forever despite not programming a real 3D app. :)

So, the main fact is: Zbrush doesn't builds up onto traditional tools used in 3D production. It is not that kinda app. It has its own tools wich make similar things into a different way.
When dealing with production, its clear that a strictly 3D artist, needs a coherent workflow, so there are 2 ways to deal with this.

1) having an app which addresses exactly all their needs, mostly coming from traditional 3D tools and workflow.
2) working around the fact the artist oriented app works following it's own way and workflows.

bugs when dealing with provided features, useful for 3d artists, for example smooth UVs or layers, or other known bugs into the current toolset are surely to be fixed. But it's nonsense to claim for rendering being enhanced or lightbox not being a perfect tool.

I am sure that ZB will provide new exciting tools in the near future, as there are interesting technologies out there to be implemented, ( sculptris dynamic tesselation, or also voxels, anyone? also i agree onto vector displacement) and current tools to be further enhanced for a better experience. Retopo is there but can be enhanced. :)

But, since the app is both an artist oriented tool with its own philosophy and a useful app for 3D artists, forcely using traditional 3D apps and workflows for their workflow, it isn't easy to find the correct balance between those 2 souls. :)

[oofnish]

Looks cool, I think -- honestly I'm not sure what features you're showing off here. Not sure I understand what you're getting at with 'lightcap' ... is it basically a second layer of environment mapping that gets applied across all subtools? Excited to see more about the next version of course.

Does 32 bit bpr pipeline mean that materials/textures can now have an actual alpha channel for blending? *hope* I mean, HDR can be mimicked with three exposure renders and a photoshop wizard -- alpha blending can't...

To echo a few of the other voices in here, I'm hoping for texturing/painting bugfixes and improvements. ZB is so close here to being perfect! Bug: polypaint layers don't mix correctly. Feature hopes: Blending modes between polypaint layers, and direct texture painting! Oh, and a dodge paint mode.

[sculptor.zb]

WUHUUUUUUU..... NOW I'M EAGERLY WAITING FOR THIS UPDATE VER.. PIXOLOGIC ROCKS!!!!!! :tu: ;)

[askue]

I hope that they made some better ReToPology tools and maybe fixed that issue with the transparency. please please. can't we have some ReToPology tools that rival those of 3d coat. can they be stable and not so troublesome? give us tools give us hope! can we start seeing vector displacement? will we have real-time tessellation sculpting? will we get a leveling brush that will take the lumps out of hard surface (Leveling might take in the average of a stroke and remove bumps). some stability with our spotlight when using larger textures. we need these updates please please!

CAN WE HAVE THESE THINGS PLEASE?

[pimeto]

I couldnt care less for BPR... knowing that those renders took probably a dozen passes to make..... lol

What i need is working 3dlayers/ polypaint. Fix the brush cavity automasking...

And the most important thing EVER!!!

ARE YOU ATLEAST WORK ON A 64 BIT version ?????????????????

[robotball]

yes and I did mention improving the re topology in my bourbon fueled rant, it's a huge issue. The fact that 3D coat users can retopo in less than 10 minutes should be a wake up call to Pixologic. i often retopo my models all the time regardless of their intended use and it its annoying (just like UV mapping) but my rant was largely targeted towards those that seem to think ZBrush has a single purpose. Now let me get back to my hang over...

I think Nemoid's latest response was really excellent.

[Muratoff, Adam]

I couldnt care less for BPR... knowing that those renders took probably a dozen passes to make..... lol

What i need is working 3dlayers/ polypaint. Fix the brush cavity automasking...

And the most important thing EVER!!!

ARE YOU ATLEAST WORK ON A 64 BIT version ?????????????????

Yes, 64 BIT please!!!

[michalis]

+1 robotball, and +1 for the bourbon (I really mean this, same here :) )

I strongly believe in a after retopo detailed sculpting, a fast 2-3 min autoretopo just to help sculpting flow. Retopo for animation is a different case and we're alone on this.
Insisting on this magic autoretopo feature as some more eastern eggs are coming from pixo, very soon. ;)

[Dman3d]

sweeeet:tu:

[bisenberger]

Pixologic rocks :cool:

[vedanta]

This is an absolutely stunning breakthrough for ZB. !!!!
Again, what planet are you guys from.....

[TVeyes]

I was racing up the highway on that Pixologic bike right until I realised I was on a futuristic green motorbike, and then I crashed into some trees. Who can I sue? I prefer blue motorbikes when I crash.

Love the preview. Hope you never stop doing them. LightCap looks like it could solve all my problems I have using just MatCap'ed materials. Wonderful. Thank you in advance :tu:

Btw, I like how robotball (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showpost.php?p=823532&postcount=92) thinks.

[Nancyan]

I'd be happy to pay for an upgrade just to get back the things that were already part of Zbrush that no longer work properly or at all. If Zbrush never added a single new feature I would have no complaints.

"But its a free upgrade!" means little to me if it also means, as a customer, my input doesn't matter and I'm expected to accept what is offered and feel like an ingrate if I complain..because its "FREEEEEE". I can't even go back to version 3.5 because its unsupported. Despite the added bells and whistles added to version 4.0 (which are an entertaining distraction, I admit) for my purposes the earlier versions' features served me better. I lost it from my system when I had to reinstall after a crash. If upgrading to Zbrush was something you had to purchase, then like other programs, the earlier version would still be supported. And I would have supported the company by purchasing the upgrade (I always do this), but I would have had the option of using an earlier version. I would like this better then any mesmerizing shiny baubles dangling infront of me in the form of even more new "crashy" features.

[Blu Ego]

I like lightcaps, which I think are a simple technique to use image based lighting as we can see in videogames or mudbox. Something like baking the environment in a cubemap which always aims to the light position.

But I agree with some people when they say to better streamline the modeling pipeline.

What I would like to see more, are some fixes:
- Freehand stroke. After 3.5 using clay brush without lazy brush has become impossible. I hate it, as it doesn't feel natural and sexy as before.
- Smooth UV button in the geometry panel (with the ability to convert/rebuild easily from linear to smooth and viceversa)

and some requests:
- Multiple options when baking displacement maps,expecially for the way UVs are smoothed (maya and renderman for example have different kinds of smoothed UVs)
- PTex and better layering as suggested before

I think that maybe for a R2, PTex are too much (even if I think they probably will be there), but I really really really hope to see the first two points fixed.

[sathe]

It's pretty entertaining seeing the reactions of individuals who have zero clue whatsoever as to how to light anything in CG let alone the lack of technical knowledge to even understand the buttons they will soon be clicking in hopes of getting good renders out of zb...

[Tyrone70]

I'd really like a way to save render settings in it's own file like you can with light settings. I don't know if there is currently a work around for this, but a straightforward method would be nice.

[yusefkerr]

I'd agree with the general tone of this thread - free updates are really appreciated but even so my workflow is still held back by the scaling issues that come with using GoZ. Its true that Zbrush is used for different purposes so these are the issues that affect me as someone really still learning to make game-ready models and models for 3D printing:

1. Efficient retopology tools would be truly amazing - I am on the verge of getting 3Dcoat just for this.

2. I'm a novice with rendering but I'm not anywhere near convinced with those giant robot lightcap examples. Perhaps I'm not getting the point here but to me those robots dont blend in with the background image at all.

3. Overall I have to say I find Zbrush's interface confusing - this isnt because I'm more used to another program, in fact I started on Zbrush. Rather it is often down to the naming of things and their placement eg. MatCAPS being applied to individual tools but lightCAPS being applied to the whole scene? The terminology would confuse me. Similarly the use of zspheres for modelling and ALSO rigging took some time to get used too, because to me as an inexperienced learner I couldnt tell when a zsphere was a modelling zsphere and when it was a rigging zsphere. Its almost like Pixologic are trying to conflate features that have little to do with each other technically and this is supposed to make things more intuitive but in reality it just muddies the water. Like if you have oil paints and water colours mixed up in a bag - there are lots of potential options there but if they arent laid out neatly its hard to see whats going on. I guess this is an adolescent phase between having a techy (control) modelling tool and having an artsy (intuitive) modelling tool.

[phrenzy84]

Am I one of only a few who know of a Topogun? It has so many features. Especially with 2.0. Retopologize asymmetrical meshes etc

I love zbrush but a cheap tool like topogun fills all my retopology needs.

[Cryrid]

I'd like to see more focus on things like retopology and painting too, but personally I see no reason to give Pixologic flak over things like the names of matcaps and lightcaps or zbrush's UI (which I continue to like the more I use it). Even in standard 3d applications there's generally a difference between materials (which only affect the models they are applied to) and lights (which affect the entire scene). Nor do zspheres seem confusing when you understand that what they are is why they have multiple uses.

[remcv8]

Nice!!! It makes Z-brush self sufficient. This is the whole reason that I bought Z-Brush in the first place. Ask and you shall receive. It has always been the case with these guys. Always improving and developing the software based on what the people want. Pretty cool!!! Thanks Guys!!!

[samuraiwu]

Really Awesome***65281;***65281;***65281;

[Beneto]

I can appreciate the improvements on ZB's rendering system. I am still using Mental Ray via Maya for any higher quality final renders, but for the quick renders needed regularly to show the art director and crew, BPR is pretty efficient, simple and fast.

I am looking forward to this.

[wayniac]

Nice updates to BPR guys! Think I'll be using that a good bit ;)

It's been stated numerous times in the thread already but want to reiterate:

1.64 bit support so we can use up all the gigs of ram we have idle.

2.Seperate 3d paint layers with channels and psd support with respect for masks, blending modes, layer groups, etc. They need to be working directly to texture if need be rather than being constrained to polypaint alone. This includes multiple UV sets being supported and multiple UV quadrants too!

[jinchoung]

actually, my desire is not so much new features but just making the features we have more accessible.

for instance, it seems like it would be entirely possible to make a "begin retopo" button with a script instead of having to manually create a zsphere tool and do all the other button presses before you start retopoing....

some parts of zb feels like "first blush" implementation. it forces the user to go through all the steps that need to happen under to the hood before you get to a certain functionality... but we don't NNEEEEEEED to be exposed to that underthehoodness and it makes casual use harder because you (read: *I*) keep forgetting what the bloomin' procedure is to retopo or polypaint etc.

being exposed to the under the hood stuff is cool if it buys you some low level of understanding that is useful... if it allows you to take that knowledge and do other things or understand some fundamental computer graphics principles. but not when it's just a simple lack of necessary automation.

just a general once over on the interface so that you can get to things with one button push when one button push will do would be really nice.

jin

[DPGrafik]

Just throwing in a vote for 64-bit as well (both platforms - no windows only this time please) ;)

And could you fix the bug with zsketching? i can't use the feature at all without getting a weird memory crash :mad: :cry:

[superrune]

I have a quick question that doesn't seem to have been adressed. Looking at the shadows and shading in these previews, they seem to be very harsh and CG-looking. Will there be an option to render linearly (both into photos and not), for more realistic lighting and shadows?

[Zedeeyen]

It annoys me that you are working on new features when you still haven't fixed all the things that were broken in the last release.

[manusito]

Nice updates to BPR guys! Think I'll be using that a good bit ;)

It's been stated numerous times in the thread already but want to reiterate:

1.64 bit support so we can use up all the gigs of ram we have idle.

2.Seperate 3d paint layers with channels and psd support with respect for masks, blending modes, layer groups, etc. They need to be working directly to texture if need be rather than being constrained to polypaint alone. This includes multiple UV sets being supported and multiple UV quadrants too!+1 here.

ZBrush is my favourite modeling tool by far, but IMHO other programs... (ehem 2012) have taken the texturing side a bit further. Or at least comparing the ease of use to get the same functionality that ZB offers.

[fishjelly]

I would also like to take advanatge of my OS's current horsepower as well as the Ram. And please level the playing field between Mac and PC........I shouldn't even have to say that....but I did. Mac users need to have the same work environment that PC users are currently enjoying.

[oofnish]

Oh, and in the off chance someone's looking at texturing in ZBrush, i'd like to request a setting to make ZBrush use a standard (read: not upside-down) uv space. Its more of an annoyance than anything, but I always forget to flip the textures. Depending on what the next pipeline step is, that can mean a good amount of wasted time or confusion

[Dragon]

Nice!!! It makes Z-brush self sufficient. This is the whole reason that I bought Z-Brush in the first place. Ask and you shall receive. It has always been the case with these guys. Always improving and developing the software based on what the people want. Pretty cool!!! Thanks Guys!!!I couldn't agree more!


for instance, it seems like it would be entirely possible to make a "begin retopo" button with a script instead of having to manually create a zsphere tool and do all the other button presses before you start retopoing....
jinOoooo, this would be so cool (it would most certainly beat out Topogun!!)

I have to say, coming from a background of computer tech support, folks, it's amazing these 'computer programs' run at all!! I worked for Quark (the page layout program), and one day, the Program Engineers showed us what goes into making Quark. We (the tech support dept) were absolutely blown away. These folks (the programmers) everyday have to look at millions and millions and millions of lines of CODE. When an issue arises from a user, these programmers must sit day after day looking at all this code to try and pinpoint the issue, then, fix it HOPING that their fix does not conflict with another part of the code. And of course, to do so, they must run test first (many, many test). Now, you have to imagine, this does not take just a few minutes to do not even a few hours, but days even months. And keep in mind; this is with only ONE issue.

So, as you can see, it's not that companies like Pixologic DON"T care about their customers, they do, it's just well, as many folks up here have already said, they are people just like you and I doing the best they can every day.

Give them time, they will fix issues 'as best they can' (they must keep moving forward with new features etc-user requests), and... the program will become better on each update.

As I use to tell our customers at Quark "remember the days of typing by hand your columns, cutting them out with a knife, putting glue to the back, pasting it down to the board (following the blueline guides you had to make by hand with a ruler), as well as any photos that went along with the column to then only find out, you misspelled some words and the photos were the wrong ones. You then had to start over again?"

Don't know about everyone else, but, I'd rather deal with a 'few' issues than have to go back and do it the old way.

Yes, I too have had my 'issues' with computers and programs, but, as time goes on... I get it! We just have to be patient "and all good things WILL come to those who wait".

And no, I don't work for Pixologic, just getting wiser and more patient as I get older (GOD and my wonderful children have taught me this.)

[sonn]

Fix the brush cavity automasking...

I'm 100% certain that's been fixed. I mean, how could it not be :confused:

[Nemoid]

actually, my desire is not so much new features but just making the features we have more accessible.

for instance, it seems like it would be entirely possible to make a "begin retopo" button with a script instead of having to manually create a zsphere tool and do all the other button presses before you start retopoing....

some parts of zb feels like "first blush" implementation. it forces the user to go through all the steps that need to happen under to the hood before you get to a certain functionality... but we don't NNEEEEEEED to be exposed to that underthehoodness and it makes casual use harder because you (read: *I*) keep forgetting what the bloomin' procedure is to retopo or polypaint etc.

being exposed to the under the hood stuff is cool if it buys you some low level of understanding that is useful... if it allows you to take that knowledge and do other things or understand some fundamental computer graphics principles. but not when it's just a simple lack of necessary automation.

just a general once over on the interface so that you can get to things with one button push when one button push will do would be really nice.

jin

agree on this. many workflows should be streamlined alot.

[MyPeople]

new rendering? who cares. when are we going to get 64 bit/ decent topology tools?

[Santis]

I agree. Sure the new stuff looks awesome, but it will not replace the Mental/V-ray rendering for most people.
A good topology tool and some bug fixes would narrow down the pipeline even more, making Zbrush an even more accomplished application :tu:

[DPGrafik]

We'll then.
I'll try the positive attitude and say off course they have fixed the bugs (zsketching in particular) memory management etc.

And then new features are more than welcome, i couldn't agree more about a rework on the topology tools. Other apps are way ahead. I like the way 3dcoat does it, were you draw on the model which way the egdes should flow.. way cool :D

Do any of you think it's realistic to expect 64bit? or is it such a major thing that it's not something we can expect before Zbrush 4.5 or Zbrush 5?

[Avan-AMS]

Thanks for not letting the 2d / 2.5 artist behind, Im glad to hear about this much needed ephinephrine shot, i hope this and whatever else you guys are up to is enough... I been whining for years about a decent rendering engine I hope this is it!!

[nezumi]

Just a little comment for the ones who think "why render? It will not replace MR/VR for most people" ;) Following this line of thinking we would kill competition and innovation. There would be no reason for anything new - what for if we are comfortable with what we have? Probably Zbrush would never have been created because at the time it wasnt a big competition to what we had work wise. Was more of a toy and then just changed the face of 3D as we know it. We dont know, here and now, into what this render may evolve in the future, right? It may be just nice addition to ZB - that is perfectly fine. Also - we dont know how zbrush will evolve and what place in zbrush will take its own render. We simply do not know the future so lets just wait and watch instead of holding back devs. Zbrush is honestly one of very few programs out there not in fear of innovation. Mudbox is playing safe being more of a maya extension, using some features selected from zbrush (remember how long it took for make posing tool in mudbox?). 3Dcoat is trying to have all possible features of all possible programs but is slow like hell and used for retopo mostly :D Zbrush is a leader for a reason. You may dislike its gliches, bugs, unorthodox UI or whatever - but it is the one who is a game changer. Let pixologic try this render feature - I am sure there is lot waiting for us in the feature.

[WingedOne]

I can't even run ZBrush 4 since my computer died and the back-up computer I'm using now isn't SSE2 compatible. It's so frustrating. :cry:

[nDman]

Just a little comment for the ones who think "why render? It will not replace MR/VR for most people" ;) Following this line of thinking we would kill competition and innovation. There would be no reason for anything new - what for if we are comfortable with what we have? Probably Zbrush would never have been created because at the time it wasnt a big competition to what we had work wise. Was more of a toy and then just changed the face of 3D as we know it. We dont know, here and now, into what this render may evolve in the future, right? It may be just nice addition to ZB - that is perfectly fine. Also - we dont know how zbrush will evolve and what place in zbrush will take its own render. We simply do not know the future so lets just wait and watch instead of holding back devs. Zbrush is honestly one of very few programs out there not in fear of innovation. Mudbox is playing safe being more of a maya extension, using some features selected from zbrush (remember how long it took for make posing tool in mudbox?). 3Dcoat is trying to have all possible features of all possible programs but is slow like hell and used for retopo mostly :D Zbrush is a leader for a reason. You may dislike its gliches, bugs, unorthodox UI or whatever - but it is the one who is a game changer. Let pixologic try this render feature - I am sure there is lot waiting for us in the feature.


Very wise words.
You said story of my big mistake in 3D life. at the realese time of Zbrush 2 i'm tried to learn it. but after using it for some day i thinked it's useless, it's a toy (silly).
But now it's 6 month i'm started to use it again and i think, i just wasting my life on poly, nurbs and solid modeling. this is that thing i always wanted.
For sure the new render engine have many uses and i thank to pixologic to make it for us.

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Hey Aurick ...and news on if the new release will have fixed the cavity mask slider on the brush menu?...so miss that function :cry:

[Santis]

Just a little comment for the ones who think "why render? It will not replace MR/VR for most people" ;) Following this line of thinking we would kill competition and innovation. There would be no reason for anything new - what for if we are comfortable with what we have? Probably Zbrush would never have been created because at the time it wasnt a big competition to what we had work wise. Was more of a toy and then just changed the face of 3D as we know it. We dont know, here and now, into what this render may evolve in the future, right? It may be just nice addition to ZB - that is perfectly fine. Also - we dont know how zbrush will evolve and what place in zbrush will take its own render. We simply do not know the future so lets just wait and watch instead of holding back devs. Zbrush is honestly one of very few programs out there not in fear of innovation. Mudbox is playing safe being more of a maya extension, using some features selected from zbrush (remember how long it took for make posing tool in mudbox?). 3Dcoat is trying to have all possible features of all possible programs but is slow like hell and used for retopo mostly :D Zbrush is a leader for a reason. You may dislike its gliches, bugs, unorthodox UI or whatever - but it is the one who is a game changer. Let pixologic try this render feature - I am sure there is lot waiting for us in the feature.
Well just a little comment back at your way of thinking: "why complete something and make the program the best at what it's created for, and one of the best at, when we can expand it and ad a lot of new cool features?" ;)
Following this line of thinking we would stop progressing towards the most relevant aspects of Zbrush, that most of us uses it for, and just make an all around program that can do everything, but not terribly well.


I think it's great that they expand its render capabilities, and I also love the unorthodox UI.
But my point is, I would love to do retopo inside of Zbrush without being frustrated, I mean, the feature is there, right? Why abandon it? I hope they will solve it for this version, maybe in the next sneak peek :)

[HARDGORE]

zbrush need specular and gloss map layers like mudbox

[pugman]

I pretty new to ZBrush but not cg. ive checked out all the apps that give
and can aford any one of them,but i decided for Zbrush in my point of veiw the best app going ,it just needs a few things fixing IE a good render .hair, it has the
fiberbrush in 2.5 d why not convert that to 3d. retro would finish the app so you
would not need the likes of max, maya .
also a better export format

[kursadk]

Has cavity mask brush bug been fixed in this update? Basically color brushes do not take the cavity option(when enabled) into consideration.

[jinchoung]

as a follow up question to "who cares about BPR", i'd like to know the thought behind it from the pixologic side. i don't really expect an answer but i'm just floating it out there... especially since it speaks to the concerns of many in the thread.

i have to confess that i'm on the side that isn't concerned at all about any kind of rendering capability inside of zb aside from that which affects sculpting and viewport interactivity.

until zb gets to the point where it can replace prman or mr and do things like hair etc, what is the point?

that's the question but i'm pretty sure that pix has a rationale about it and it would be interesting to know what it is so that the rest of us who can't get a good grasp of that possible answer can be brought up to speed.

i guess one thing that i can guess at is so that zb becomes more useful for digital illustration peeps who don't necessarily use other apps to render in and want zb to be a one stop solution.

another more distressing thought is that along with the previously introduced animation features, zb is striving to breakout of the mold of digital sculpting and illustration app and become a full fledged 3d app???? kinda like modo is doing? "distressing" because as good as zb is at what it does, i can't imagine using the zb style interface to do any of the animation work i do in maya.

if that's the goal, i'm cool with it - zb has a track record i buy into... but that would be interesting to see....

jin

[Tomala]

Well just a little comment back at your way of thinking: "why complete something and make the program the best at what it's created for, and one of the best at, when we can expand it and ad a lot of new cool features?" ;)
Following this line of thinking we would stop progressing towards the most relevant aspects of Zbrush, that most of us uses it for, and just make an all around program that can do everything, but not terribly well.


I think it's great that they expand its render capabilities, and I also love the unorthodox UI.
But my point is, I would love to do retopo inside of Zbrush without being frustrated, I mean, the feature is there, right? Why abandon it? I hope they will solve it for this version, maybe in the next sneak peek :)Thats exactly what I'm talking about. :tu:

[Half Life]

i guess one thing that i can guess at is so that zb becomes more useful for digital illustration peeps who don't necessarily use other apps to render in and want zb to be a one stop solution.
I think this plays a bigger part in the "logic" of why/how ZBrush is developed than 3D-centric users want to admit... I think the reality is: any useful 3D-only workflow is simply a happy byproduct of the vision of ZBrush as an 2.5D illustration package.


another more distressing thought is that along with the previously introduced animation features, zb is striving to breakout of the mold of digital sculpting and illustration app and become a full fledged 3d app???? kinda like modo is doing? "distressing" because as good as zb is at what it does, i can't imagine using the zb style interface to do any of the animation work i do in maya.
jin
This part I do find more puzzling as well -- but one thing is for sure, there is no way you could animate the topology and polycounts that you can in Zbrush in many other applications... I honestly think that if they are going to pursue this aspect much further they would be better off spinning it off into a separate animation package because the ZBrush UI is reaching saturation.

Best,
Jason.

[aurick]

as a follow up question to "who cares about BPR", i'd like to know the thought behind it from the pixologic side. i don't really expect an answer but i'm just floating it out there... especially since it speaks to the concerns of many in the thread.

When you look back over the various interviews that we've done with artists and studios you'll notice that there's a common thread where production artists love being able to very quickly show their work to a director without a lot of hassle. BPR provides another tool by which this is possible. The faster you can show your work and get approval, the faster you can proceed. And of course, the better that render looks the easier it is to get approval.

On top of that, there's often a demand for turntable renders. It can help you land a job. It can help you show off your work. It can help you get director approval, win contracts, etc. BPR helps make turntables look better. So that's another thing of benefit to production artists.

TimeLine goes hand in hand with this. It can help you quickly create more impressive turntables -- such as fading in a wireframe overlay, sliding in a view of the unwrapped texture next to the rotating model, etc.

Of course there's another side of TimeLine, by the way -- one that is incredibly powerful when you actually start using it, but unfortunately something that most people don't seem to have discovered. TimeLine can help you sculpt! You can use key frames to set up visibility sets with your SubTools, link layers to work together so you can test your blendshapes out in ZBrush as you're making them, switch between views where you have textures applied, different materials applied, basic materials and so forth. Heck, you can even set specific views of your model so that you can easily jump between them.

These are tools that aren't designed to replace your animation package but rather to speed up your work. They can greatly benefit production artists, in addition to being of value to hobbyists, concept folks, jewelry designers, toy makers and all the other ZBrush artists who don't necessarily want or need an animation package. Even if you might not use a specific feature, don't assume that yours is the only way that ZBrush gets used or even the only industry where ZBrush has a home. ;)

[kvmorgan]

I would happily pay for an upgrade that just fixed some of the broken/incomplete features--backface masking, support for aliases/shortcuts to folders in lightbox on a mac, web access in lightbox on a mac, support for real alpha channels, 64 bit support--the list goes on. These fixes will help speed up my work.

Bottom line, I never render in zbrush for final output. It is only one tool in my pipeline.

[Burchigb]

Just like that the folks at Pixologic are coming out with these outstanding updates.


Hopefully soon lightwave with have GoZ.
Otherwise hot darn!!!

[lwguy]

Just like that the folks at Pixologic are coming out with these outstanding updates.

Hopefully soon lightwave with have GoZ.
Otherwise hot darn!!!Lightwave GoZ isn't ever going to happen. Or rather, it won't happen until Core is released, which is almost the same thing as saying it isn't ever going to happen. ;)
But nobody is going to waste any time creating a GoZ for current versions of Lightwave. Newtek certainly won't and I'm sure Pixologic has better things to do than worry about a slowly dying package like LW while there are far more capable apps with better futures and more users.
Lightwave is a relic, a blast from the past. It's all but dead.
(notice my user name "lwguy" = Lightwave guy. I wish I could change it to formerlwguy...)

Otherwise, this update looks great and I can hardly wait. :D

[G_I_B_B_O_N]

I can see the benefits of having a stronger render for things like approvals and the animation for blendshapes. As long as other areas that need attention are being taken care of, I don't see a problem. There seems to be an accumulating list of things that should be fixed, changed, or gotten rid of though. The interface, which at one time was different, but fine, has become extremely bloated and generally irritating to use. An interface designer really needs to be hired to give the thing a face lift.
Polypaint since day one was a bad idea and a painting to texture map has been on the wish list of many forever.
The painting system is really bad, even with spotlight. You can apply mixing modes to your brushes, but not to actual paint layers?!?! It just doesn't makes sense. No bump, spec, gloss, etc.
Pixologic also continuously makes the argument that zbrush is made with artists in mid. My biggest problem recently has been many implementations which are not conducive to an artist friendly workflow. Zsketch forces you to sculpt on dense geometry, most anyone will agree this a bad idea b/c you want to stay as low as possible at all times for the best result. HD geometry is not helpful because your forced to sculpt a relatively small area of your mesh at a time. The spotlight interface is difficult to understand, even if you don't use it for a little while.
Even extremely small things like folder structure is an issue in Z. Does anyone save their ztools, textues, or alphas within zbrush's main folders? It gets real tiring all the time to go navigating through endless folders to get to the directory your actually sculpting in.
I hate to complain so much, really. I'm using zbrush because flat out I can sculpt in it exponentially faster and more intuitively than in the competing programs. The feel of it's sculpting is awesome. This was true 5 years ago though, and much of the flashy addons really haven't helped out as much as their little fixes (symmetrical poly selections). There's just a long list of fixes and updates it could really use, and instead of addressing them, flashy new gimmicks seem to be on top in the priority list. Seriously, I would really love if they just allowed me to turn off zbrush's native mouse gestures so that the annoying zoom out nonsense would end.

[tokio]

zbrush 4R2 renders are fantastic and it will be a free upgrade to all registered users. and still free!!!!! Incredible but True! WowwwW...Excellent. :tu: :tu: :tu: big thank for developer :tu: ..Waiting for that update.........9 8 7 6 5 4 3 ...

[Toddd]

I can totally see where BPR is useful, aurick covered that perfectly in his post. I work in a production environment every day, and being able to quickly show something is indeed an asset.

I'd really like to see implementation of localized mesh subdivision like in sculptris. I mean that has to be part of the reason pixo has Tomas Pettersson working with them, and why sculptris was of interest in the 1st place.


t.

[jinchoung]

Even if you might not use a specific feature, don't assume that yours is the only way that ZBrush gets used or even the only industry where ZBrush has a home. ;)

oh i don't! but if it's not how i use it, i wouldn't necessarily know about it either. that's why i asked - fully assuming *you guys* had a reason for doing what you do - i.e. bpr, timeline.

anyway great answer - it handily answers the question, "who cares about bpr" and should be good enough for anyone who asked - it's more than good enough for me.

jin

p.s. yes, it totally did NOT occur to me to use the timeline as a sculpting aid and using links in testing out morph targets... i'm going to have to spend a few days trying to figure out how to do all the stuff you mentioned in those two sentences or so!

[Nemoid]

What could be a good evolution for ZB is a better and more streamlined UI/workflows.
Make things less convoluted for productivity speed. Better retopo tools, since they would be very useful not to exit from ZBrush to have a complete model ready for animation purposes. No problem about the methods,: results are what counts.
Dynamic tesselation a la Sculptris could be added to the game giving us even more freedom. This is real new technology.
About painting: I'd surely like more the paint on texture system used on other apps, but being able to paint without UVs gives freedom as well. Maybe texture system could be added as well tho, because indeed is important to work a bit more like in Photoshop. My suspect is it hasn't been added because direct painting on texture is actually a resource hog.

[shafeidesigns]

I love ZB

[Jester]

Hey guys, calm down, it's just a sneak peek. I DO hope, that Layer issues, Auto Cavity masking issues will be fixed. And I DO need a 64 bit version. because I have 8 GB RAM, and I do not want to meet the message that there is not enough RAM to do so and so, and crash....


Thanks

[geniesjan]

In my dream...
it is Fur system
auto snap on the other sub tools
in Sdiv1 it is the 10%-30% fur and lower detail
with the sdiv up the fur become real count and real detail.
because it is fur
so the radius is a triangel base and no need to be modified
you may need to modify the radius in the end of fur
but not make the triangel beccome a acute triangle
of course with anit-alias

in fact....we can make fur now
but if you make the "real fur" in zbrush now
there will be some problem:

1:smoothe works,and very fine!
but it will also make fur thinner
you can thicker it back by using inflat
of course move tool works too.

2:without anti-alias...the display will become very terrible :confused:

3.no snap in skin(maybe mask works,i didn't try it)

4.too many no need operation becuase Zbrush not know it is just a "fur"

==Thank you for read...my poor English==

[michalis]

Dynamic tesselation a la Sculptris could be added to the game giving us even more freedom. This is real new technology.

Meaning, first of all, a great auto-retopo and retopo tool, as dynamic tessellation means tri based meshes. As a remesh-project function wont really help you, especially around fingers and thig-hip areas.
You already have sculptris and you'll be even happier in a few days ;)

What makes me a bit nervous (lol) is this.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=96408

And most of all, this!
http://farsthary.wordpress.com/

[squidinc]

You already have sculptris and you'll be even happier in a few days ;)
wait.. what?

[gasoil]

this will be a longuish reply but i think someone needs to tackle yet again things from the very basics.....
a 3d modeling program first and most importnat mission is to create shapes...any shapes any kind of shapes...not only humanoids or bipeds or blobby monsters or high frequency detail but any shape...hard, soft mathematical etc...
Topology is a necessity and is a constraint because of the way rigging is handled etc...there is not such thing as topology in nature...a rock does not obey any quad pattern nor any designer draws things so to accomodate a quad structure...no architect buids structures only if they can be created in quads or any engineer designs a plane with n äll quad constraint......while trough pratcice we learnt how to solve with a wireframe the human structure, it is just a simulation but even the best topology does not respect every feature of the human body...it is a compromise...in fact when we create models we create paper thin surfaces....creating wireframe is a computer limitation and highres sculpting is a flavor of modeling an dynamic tesselation another one...so far to be honest teh thing that most closely mimcs reality is Voxels as it is aware of a volume...u can drill, substract or add mass of arbitrary form just as you will substract or add clay...there is no compromise and you can boolean cut sculpt detach split and do whatever you like with it.
Zbrush is an awesome tool but by its surface based nature is showing certain limitations...try to cut a hole trough a mesh...impossible unless...unless you use remesh or shadowbox wich uses a voxel engine in the backgorund....so all teh elemnts are there to unify and stop creating 1000 different brushes wich are just a clone of the previous with a slightly different setting...if we had a real unlimited volume not a multiresolution mesh but a real volume with real mass and clay behaviour we then could create without the need to switch to zspheres or shadowbox then back to polys and it will be an effcient design.
if we are going to create shape of any sort with the eventuality of needing to cut a hole trough a surface or intersect shapes and only when ready retoplogize y think we could streamline the process and have only two steps...shape creation and retopology to suit the limitations of tools down the pipe until those tool evolve as well into something more flexible and eventually get rid of retopology alltogether...
at the moment zspheres, polys, shadowbox etc are disconnected workflows that Voxels could easily make universal and solid.Tesselation on the fly solves the pulling shapes problem but does not solve the cutting surface problem wich means u can add but u cannot substract ...it is hard to believe that everybody has overlooked such a basic principle.
Regarding toplogy and quads i have to note that originally Nurbs where all quad patches...and Ed Catmull developped subdivs in order to overcome the limitation of Nurbs...basically to be able to create arbitary topology and not be limited by quads...as you might know Pixar rendrman is perfectly capable of rendering quads,n gons and obviously tris with teh only limitaion of no more of 36 edges to a vertex...its an irony that teh subdiv algo purpose has been defeated by an all quad to death approach that has only its origin in rigging problems down the pipe . The pole problem of pinching is a limitation of the algo that can reach C1 continutity only not because of tri but beacuse of extraordinary vertices wich is 5 or more edges goin to one point...interesting enough u can achieve this with an all quad structure creating as well a pole.This is not much of an issue except if u are going to render something that needs to be so reflective that u will notice the reflection kink in c1 continuity...for any other shape u will never notice it.and funny enough this is why in Nurbs you need to create so many intermediate surfaces like blends and fillets to avoid stitching and creating poles...the blends and fillets will create a continuity that will be render as a contiguous blending surface at render time once the Nurbs are converted into...tadaaaaa tris! so basically u create nice all quad Nurbs but the mathematical solution to trim and intersections relies on tris.
For all this reasons when you have to concentrate in certain features rather than others and knowing that as Aurick said ceratin industries use Zbrush in very different ways the single most important feature is to continue to push towards what are true limitations of CG modeling compared to traditional modeling...traditional modeling can cut holes and substract and really carve shapes....traditional modeling also benefits of real light so no guessing as we have to in CG....retopo is a specific need for specific industries...there is no artistic added value in retopology, there are semi auto and auto retopo tools and it is likely that the concept of topology will be ditched all together at some point as technology evolves... i just think that the modeling paradigm revolution started by Pixo is not yet quite finsihed and has the potential to go further when the possibility to use one universal way of shape creation without the surface limitation like funky clipping curves or posibility of holes and cutting and some accuracy tools too.

[squidinc]

need some paragraphs in there mate

[jiwanski]

Please, Please, Please add Folders. I work with ztools that are often 150-200 pieces and folders is much needed.

Thanks

[MealeaYing]

I mean....
Oh my god
I havent learned 4 yet!
Oh heck!!

YAY!!!!!!

[Blaine91555]

:rolleyes: Wow, what a whiney bunch.

Thank you to Pixologic for staying true to making this a unique artists tool and not instead caving and creating another clone of everyone elses software. Thank you also for all these releases without ever asking for another dime. I've never been treated this well by ANY other software company. :tu: :tu: ZBrush ROCKS!!!

[tez]

Thankyou for these great gifts, I dont personaly use alot of what Zbrush has to offer, but that dont mean others dont, and these new features are a great addition to what is already a great tool.

All the free plugins we have been given, and updates, I cant see any reason to complain. I do hit a few bugs, and hope to see these dealt with in R2.

Keep up the good work guys.

[patokali]

Cool! is something like Keyshot...awesome. ;) I hope in the future Pixologic add something like Topogun, you imagen that? Really Cool!!! :idea:

[patokali]

You are right 100%! :D

[god3ila]

I just would like to add a "+1000000" for all the comments about the retopoly tool.
I'm in love with ZBrush, but for me, this topology thing is just not efficient. I like the "point and click" way to construct the mesh, it's pretty intuitive, and... That's it. It's all I like about it. For the rest, the overall workflow... Bring a ZSphere, Rigg it, edit topology, make adaptive skin, (don't forget to enable the projection button)... Com'on! I'm sure, you guys can make it a much more intuitive tool. You've made ZBrush after all, uh? ;)

[MealeaYing]

Bring a ZSphere, Rigg it, edit topology, make adaptive skin, (don't forget to enable the projection button).;)

HOLY COW!
I am just starting to try to learn this and you go an make it simple!
Four steps?!?!?!
COOL!
Thank you so much, in the stuff I have watched and read it was a lot more confusing!


GRIN!


Thanks again and Cheers!
Mealea

[jinchoung]

woah woah woah woah woah woah woah......

what have we here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUJfunSWzwI&feature=player_detailpage#t=152s

is that an unintended leak or a mistake?

i'm gonna say that it's an unintended leak! PTEX?!

everyone happy now?

:)

jin

[gasoil]

errr..that link shows Vray for Maya ...you either got your link wrong or trying to lure people into promoting Vray ? :lol:

[jinchoung]

errr..that link shows Vray for Maya ...you either got your link wrong or trying to lure people into promoting Vray ? :lol:

you're not paying attention.

listen to what he says 5 seconds from the begin time of the link i posted.

jin

[SpaceMan]

woah woah woah woah woah woah woah......

what have we here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUJfunSWzwI&feature=player_detailpage#t=152s

is that an unintended leak or a mistake?

i'm gonna say that it's an unintended leak! PTEX?!

everyone happy now?

:)

jinLOL I don't know but he did say Zbrush and Mudbox - leastwise it sounded like PTEX. Maybe someone can decipher that video at it's begining;)





:b2:

[Nemoid]

this will be a longuish reply but i think someone needs to tackle yet again things from the very basics.....
a 3d modeling program first and most importnat mission is to create shapes...any shapes any kind of shapes...not only humanoids or bipeds or blobby monsters or high frequency detail but any shape...hard, soft mathematical etc...
T
U right. But, the only app using voxels quite efficiently right now for a cheap price is 3D Coat wich is not exactly on par with ZBrush in terms of sculpting quality and feeling. It is not mature app yet even if its developing more and more.
Maybe the best solution now would be to use it coupled with ZBrush to have total freedom, and some artists do, as they tend to use several apps, ZB, MB and 3D Coat too.
However at the end, an optimized mesh ready for animation is necessary to work with traditional 3D apps, since you can make professional animation for production only there.
This is why retopology is becoming more and more important when artists start modelling from scratch in sculpting apps, but also to better remesh a model on the fly if needed.

Maybe one day these traditions 3D apps will be able to deal with huge meshes or even better, with voxel meshes, and rig/animate them who knows...but i think for now there are too much technical limitations for that.

[Francesco Mai]

Very interesting the new feature of BPR.I hope also that someone at Pixology consider to extend this not only on a single object in edit mode but also for 2.5 D.I don't know if technically is possible but I my forbidden dream I want to render a big canvas full of 2.5D drawings with a decent antialiasing and shadow + AO.I think to be not the only one to desire this..Maybe also a guy called Meats Meier wants it :D.Just to create something like these images of mine rendered in the old BPR.....If you like them there are more at http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=130089

[gasoil]

Hi Nemoid,

yes i agree with you...not saying it wouldnt be nice to have better retopology but just saying that universal and artist friendly shape creation of any sort without constraint is not yet solved today although we are quite close now...and this is why i rather see Pixo perfecting the tool rather than going in too many directions...


we need a few good accuracy tools now similar to what lets say Freeform can do when slicing with curves or projecting curves on voxels or filleting and things like that navigate trough this website and realize in the case studies how this product many many years before even Zbrush was designed started tryin to solve everydays modeling problems, notice how the ïdea of autoretopo existed before some in this forum even started a 3d program http://www.sensable.com/freeform-videos.htm....

notice how mesh difference and displacement extraction was used back then too ...notice that some of those shaping effects are feasible today in Zbrush but require some workaround basically because of the surface nature of the soft...this is why clip curves for instance work only in certain cases and this is also why you have to preplan holes in your shape wich defeats a bit the concept of being totally able to concept model in Zbrush and this is also why we have things like Goz to sort of force you out of Zbrush and solve it...again the mesh on the fly approach of Sculptris solves poly surface stretching but there is no equivalent of the opposite wich will be poly erasing on the fly...its the 3d equivalent of a photoshop that would paint but not erase...a pretty damn basic limitation im sure you agree...

A funny fact is that while Zbrush is a modeling tool, you have to realize that Film and game might be the most glamourous and visible part of the modeling iceberg yet this industry is probably the smallest and definetely the least high end of what modeling can and offers to many many modelers in other fields.

To give you an idea of how limited our poly toolsets can be try doing something as simple as a perfect extrusion offset ...it will fail even if the soft splash screen says MAYA 2011... .I think it takes more of a" bigger picture" approach rather than total revolution and this is where i become suspicious of our workflows...i fight production everyday just to realize that some people have been working in very closed pipelines for way too long...some very famous studio that i wont name here was still modeling using Nurbs a couple of years ago...i can guarantee you that other than they very proprietary tools using Nurbs surfaces there was no reason for this at all and this had a huge man hours impact in production inflating time and money costs artificially.

Bigger picture example and how digital artist are sometime alienated by branding, name dropping and trends...the concept of progressive rendering and instant feedback has been out for almost 10 years now with things like Fprime or even Modo...it is funny to see production people suddenly discovering how good that is when using this"new concept" in things like iRay for Mental Ray or Octane...i truely believe that Production is very often the mediocre approach and the safe approach because a lot of people are in the middle of production and have no time to have a look at other more recent options.Changing technologies is a great risk of course in the middle of a project so dont expect huge pipelines to start using things that hobbyist can today and right now.

For all this reasons i wouldnt take production standards as absolute standards...i still can remember how "modeling in Nurbs is the standard" from TDS not so long ago while everywhere else in High end modeling industries were trying to find a solution to solve their very time consuming stitching nurbs problem using things like voxels or solid modeling approaches ...the truth is that there is nothing that is set in stone and retopologizing is after all a thing that can be solved by hiring a Junior artist, using a small specialized tool like topogun or even using the Maya toolset u can get away with a lot actually...
again concept modleing is part of the pipeline today...the client usually couldnt care less of what topology means nor the designers directors or art directors...flexibility in shape creation, good presentation are by far more important to me...today we are even rendering decimated meshes for static or non deformable objects....as u can see retopology is needed after all in a very specific moment of very specific assets...they are often hero assets i agree but the sheer volume and scale of environment assets, vehicles props, terrain etc and there complex , often non reusable shape nature makes them a huge bottleneck in production...do the math....for a movie like Avatar for example there were a few characters with reusable base meshes...lots of love for a few models and then everything else! plants, rocks choppers props, spaceships etc...i can guarantee you that there was much many man hours involved in MODELING those than the characters and probably more tools involved too.

as a conclusion yes better topology tools will be nice....this is needed yet a very low end tool after all you just need to snap to surface and build polys on top and there are many little tools doing just this like Topogun or 3dcoat or even Modo...on the other hand there are lots of modeling scenarios that arent solved and that are much harder to solve and that no one even dare to try to solve and i would like to see Pixo focused on that first....i can see that they have tried, i can also see that the idea is there with the voxel engine in teh backgorund for things like Shadowbox or remesh all...i just want them to make a bold statemnet and perfect that...they are leader already in their approach and this way they will really distance competition big time even more.

[Cryrid]

...the truth is that there is nothing that is set in stone and retopologizing is after all a thing that can be solved by hiring a Junior artist

Well it's a mighty nice thing that those of us who wish to have (good) retopology in a sculpting application like zbrush have an extra 20-30k laying around to hire junior artists for a year to do it for us. I suppose the golden solution is still to purchase them a license for 3dCoat or topogun to do this as well?

To be honest I don't quite get what you're saying when you say things like 'and this is why i rather see Pixo perfecting the tool rather than going in too many directions...'. Many people are looking for the ability to create solid meshes. It's been part of the program for a while now, but has been neglected to the point where it has become so cumbersome and primitive. I would think, and I'm not alone here, that taking an older existing feature and modernizing it would be more inline with 'perfecting the tool' compared to actually going in more directions (which later focuses such as BPR, timeline, etc can feel like). These things exist to help keep us in zbrush longer or to let us do the task faster with it, retopo should be no different.

[gasoil]

hey Cryrid :)

no, im not suggesting you spend 30 k a year hiring a Junior Artist, while i do suggest some young digital artists could get their entry ticket in a major production that way just like roto artists are usually artist that will evolve into comp artists (im sure that if you were a Junior Artist you will be happy about this?) .... and i do understand the need of better retopology ...im just saying that Pixo took by surprise the entire industry when creating a modeling paradigm that needed some time to get used to because no one saw that coming... i also think there are some shapes and forms that are still today difficult to achieve even if Zbrush has made them easier in many ways.

it makes sense to me that Pixo explores those ways and make it much more protected from competition than spending ressources in something that u can do yourself if you cannot hire a 30 k year Junior artist for 100 usdollars right now buying Topogun and doing it yourself...

again, dont get me wrong, if Pixo comes with a better retopo tool this is more than welcome i am just saying that this is not the core of the problem nor the core of the revolution...this is a half empty half full glass question...when a lot of people between V3 and v4 were asking for better retopo Pixo delivered again new modeling paradigms like Zketching, shadowbox , clip and trim brushes...not perfect i know but quite honestly no one else in the industry delivered something similar and retrospectively i am quite happy that they focused on that rather than retopology tools...

again and again retopology is

A) not such a big deal as lots of industries do not need this (rapid prototyping, illustration visualizaition etc)

B) not such a big deal either if you are a concept artist or even a production artists as lots of softs like Maya or Max have modeling tools and plugins that make retopologizing quite easy today too(Nex or Graphite for example)...(remember that time saved in preproduction and design equals more time for production modeling anyways so at the end of the day production wins)


C)when it comes to humanoids or bipeds or anything like that quite frankly i hope you are not even retopologizing at all as you might know that you can simple reuse the same mesh over and over again this being even faster than any retopotool ever made ...we use this in the industry quite a lot and i dont think i have ever remeshed a hand since quite a long time now or a face for that matter.strangely enough the same does not apply to arbitrary shapes like a car....as those shapes are arbitrary and need to be rebuilt every single time...


D) technologies evolve...the human artistic input of designing form wil probably never die on the other hand the topology as we know it might dissapear one day and investing on that is the most precarious thing...just like 10 years ago hundreds of hours spent on building Nurbs patches will today be considered no less than ridiculous maybe very soon retopologizing will either become automatic or irrelevant all together ...just like maybe (not sure yet) UVS days are numbered since Ptex appeared...

A film Pipeline is usually a highly specialized pipeline with specialized artists...when it comes to modeling and shape we should point at our real "ancestors" in this industry and those are the physical model makers like in Weta workshop or the ILM workshop...those who made us dream with their sculptures and spaceship models did have many construction constraints but also some advantages...believe me that no traditional sculptor will ever understand why on earth you will have to model everything out of quads...a perfect all quad grid is the computer equivalent of a chicken wire...ask then a traditional creature sculptor to get rid of his additive and sustractive clay workflow and force him to create using pliers and folding a chicken wire and see what he can come with....also a real life sculptor does not have to guess, cheat or simulate light to judge the detailing or shape of his creation so any step in the direction of instant shape feedback is also welcome

total freedom of sculpting any shape is the main goal of a modeling package IMHO... concave, convex adding or substracting ...until this is not entirely solved there will be room for improvement.


Pixologic s trademark is not the brushes the UI or teh ammount of tools...the single most important approach has always been to desobey production and try things in a different way, thinking out of the box and that is the most invaluable thing even if sometimes is not perfect and a bit of a hit and miss.

I support them in their company philosophy and design and teh same goes for products like 3dcoat that despite their very humble beginnings are the ones who has more vision than the big developpers today...they are more dynamic and responsive .

lets try to think outside of the chicken wireframe please...

if you have worked in the industry for long enough you would have notice how uneven the developpment of industry tools are...this is totally due to human decisions of what should or what shouldnt be the standrad or the workflow...this discussion reflects the same problem...

there are many examples of this...for example Renderman was very optimized for Nurbs forcing many artists and pipelines to stick with them and this leading to huge ammounts of work that did not improve the final output until Pixar decided to emphasize Subdiv surfaces...and they became the norm when in fact other soft had subdivs already but were ignored because not labelled "industry standard"...there are tons of examples like that of arbitrary development in your favorite tools that explain that Maya for instance still dont have symmetry working for everytool when i was able to do this in LW 10 years ago....was the technology not there or more likely someone decide to invest time in some other feature?

its a healthy debate...you push for better retopo, i push for more modeling tools first...ideally we will have both yay!

[SpaceMan]

Pixologic s trademark is not the brushes the UI or teh ammount of tools...the single most important approach has always been to desobey production and try things in a different way, thinking out of the box and that is the most invaluable thing even if sometimes is not perfect and a bit of a hit and miss.Sense ver .95 at least;)

[michalis]

@gasoil
You're out of what we're trying to discuss here, I'm afraid so.
And this "is after all a thing that can be solved by hiring a Junior artist" makes me believe that you're trolling in a most offensive way. We're trying to be artists here, sir, not bosses or money dreamers. A humble great, traditional sculptor knows his tools, loves his armatures, things like these if you know what I mean. A fast retopo is a great tool for a digital sculptor. Retopo for animation is another matter.
So people is asking, waiting, for a decent retopo solution. Pixologic is ready to upload the new sculptris as well. You all probably know and waiting for this...
Meanwhile...
A nice render engine is always welcome. So lets see if BPR is one decent such app. It doesn't look so great though. Hdri lighting? I can't see this. Can you? Reflections only?
You can't set up a simple scene (2-3 figures) with this perspective camera. Better avoid a simple ground plate... But we'll have some great fun with this... Why not?

[Nancyan]

Wow. I'd hate to see this thread go in an uncivil direction. Although I come from an entirely different perspective when it comes to Zbrush, I believe gasoil has a right to his opinion and I don't believe there is anything that resembles "trolling" in his post. In fact it's enlightening. He/she obviously took some time to compose it and I respect that.

As far as his comment on junior sculptors - didn't great sculptors/artists take on apprentices to grind their pigments and prepare their canvases, etc. :confused: Today perhaps they retopologize models for those who's artistic talents and time are better spent making art.

Zbrush is a jack-of-many-trades kind of product, so we all want to push it in a direction that suits our own needs best. I have opinions about the direction I'd like to see Zbrush go, but realistically I can not see the bigger picture, industry competition, the amount of resources needed to take it in any one direction, and the payoff in relation to the time it takes to implement features that might soon be obsolete. Often the fact that another program already fulfills the need is enough reason to NOT implement the feature, since the market may just not be large enough to make the effort profitable.

(Again, I stand by my hope that Pixologic gives some us reassurance that they will fix what did once work in Zbrush and is now broken.)

[Cryrid]

lets try to think outside of the chicken wireframe please

Look, we're fully aware zbrush is used by a wide number of artists for a number of different reasons, but did you ever stop to think that we're putting in requests for what we'd like to see based on our own uses before writing a novel insisting we don't know what we're talking about? You may dream of a future where one day good topology and textures are no longer needed and we're free to do whatever we want with virtual clay, but that's not the current reality many of us live in (and I'm guessing will still have to put up with for another 5-10 years at the very least). All the walls of text in the world aren't going to change that, and hiring junior artists or purchasing other sculpting applications instead of zbrush isn't a good option for those of us whose wallets are not padded with cash (the suggestion even seems counteractive given a forum like this exists in part so that we can help suggest things we would like to see in the program).

[Half Life]

This is not a feature request thread -- it has been completely hijacked... so no, his "wall of text" is just as appropriate as anything else in here that isn't talking about the new rendering features.

The gross sense of over-entitlement that pervades the online culture always shocks me -- in the real world the only choice you get is to buy another product, and the only voice you get is how you spend your money.

[gasoil]

Cryrid

as i already said i totally get your feature request, i said it is a good thing never said the opposite...there are 24 hours in a day and any dev team has priorities... to you is that, to me is other things im not invalidating yours im just expressing mine and also paying tribute to a team that is focused on trying to bring new things that nobody thought about because too busy reproducing the same processess over and over again please respect that.

Michalis

that is a new one...you just introduced a new iteration in an already long process...topo for sculpting...i guess u are talking about retopo to avoid stretching of polys because they are unevenly placed or not enough...well this is due to the surface nature of the tool...tesselation on the fly (like sculptris) or Voxels (like the process that happens in the BG when u use Remesh) eleminate this all together...tw NOTE that Remesh is a one bottom Retopo solution that is not ideal in "edge flow" for animation of realtime playback purposes but solves many strectching problems already so there you go this techs are available and downloadable right now...no need to do it anymore yay!

the poetic view of a traditional sculptor loving his armatures to justify all this is a cute one and a severe symptom of "stockholm syndrom" when you end up falling in love with the guys that kidnapped you and equals to me saying how much a painter loves the smell of paint in his atelier until he is diagnosed with lung cancer...emotional, true yet irrelevant in the end sorry...the same syndrom was prevalent in the industry when TDS were backing up the use of painful Nurbs patches because Nurbs are and i quote them "more accurate" there is a word for that in psychology when you find the right arguments to justify your own pain and its called "rationalizing".

if you love retopologizing (or rationalizing for that matter) please go ahead and have fun...personally i hate it after having to do it for so so many years...so the bottom line is i def would love some auto retopo tool...wait even better i def would love there was no need for it altogether some day and i still need some modleing tools that are the core of the modleing process instead and are missing.

Nancyan

you totally nailed it and with less words thanks...i was just backing up my views with specific techs and workflows of the past as examples...you are totally right.

for those that got bored half way in conclusion i support better retopo tools or even better no need for those in the first place.

peace

Please dont take this things as Trolling...im just trying to go to the core of the problem and humbly give my feedback on past present and eventual future so that we make a bold statements rather than shy baby steps...this is how Pixo surprised everyone and i hope will still do.Backing up things with "politically correct" or emotional response is not helping...Junior artists are a reality of the industry not my personal invention and there is no clear definition of what that is but between us i will say that a Junior can easily skip the junior step by concentrationg on producing amazing shapes and designs while the opposite is not true...ive never seen an amazing "topology artist" land a lead position ever.Again topology is a necessary evil and anything that will ease that pain welcome.

[crumbaker]

This is not a feature request thread -- it has been completely hijacked... so no, his "wall of text" is just as appropriate as anything else in here that isn't talking about the new rendering features.

The gross sense of over-entitlement that pervades the online culture always shocks me -- in the real world the only choice you get is to buy another product, and the only voice you get is how you spend your money.the squeaky wheel gets the grease, if people wouldn't complain then changes wouldn't be made around those complaints. Complaining is hopefully going to make this software go in the direction that benefits the vast majority of us.

Also I don't believe my sense of entitlement is unwarranted. I spent a lot of money on this program, just because autodesk is the devil, bent on having a monopoly on this industry, doesn't mean that companies that don't follow that mold should go unchecked.

I think pixologic is an amazing company with great intentions, but I want some useful retopo tools, and me saying that and others saying that might just give them the hint to go along and focus on that path.

[Ace-Angel]

I'll sound like a bloody arse for saying this but I'll do it anyway.

FIX THE BUGS!

That is all...

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Can we have a feature that makes clients pay for your work within 30 days?

[michalis]

gasoil, and other friends, please relax, I don't need an apprentice after so many years in sculpting and painting. I'm not like this. People is asking for something better than remesh. You can't remesh a hand or thigh-hip area (lol). Or even a mouth slightly opened. Topology of remesh tool isn't decent at all.
3dcoat and sculptris are great tools, the first one the best in auto-topology. A 3 min retopology using some loop guides is all I'm asking. And I use it as many times I like. Because:
I can feel free, do all sculpting using voxels or dynamic tessellation (sc) but I have to build my cage after. I prefer to build the cage first and find a way to freedom after LOL.

But I was talking about this thread... right here. What's happening with this?
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=96408

And, yes, gasoil, you're trolling a bit when asking for apprentices instead of asking for a better application. This wont help you to be a better artist. You misunderstood what I said about traditional tools as well. Predictable.

[tomaszlanski]

love it already , specially--- free to all registered users :)

[gasoil]

Michalis ,

i have nothing against re topology (i said this many times but you seem to try to find an angle at any cost here)

why dont you spend some research time instead and see that the title "Junior Artist" is advertised in many major studios...are they Trolls? did i called them trolls when they hired me?

and guess what, and i hope you are seating here because there is even worse! there is "work experience" OMG! unpaid work! i am just waiting for you to reply and say that i am asking for slaves...come on....

You win...i really hope now that Pixo does a better job at retopo so you can move on from that in fact just to keep your hopes high remember that this is sneak peak 1 and that means that this features are the least spectacular probably.

i personally hope that if they do improve retopo , they also do much more than that though..does this sound better? i dont want to hurt your feelings really it breaks my heart... where is this world going when we have to call fat people "big boned" or a world where i cannot talk about the reality of production TODAY with Junior artists in production? talking about that doesnt make me a troll sorry but if you wish to call me a troll please go ahead be my guest.

Maybe i should come with a PC term for that what about "financially challenged artists"


i dont know in wich world you are living my friend but i am either a Troll or you simply need to man up a little and take reality as is not as you wish it was.

peace out

[michalis]

Can we have a feature that makes clients pay for your work within 30 days?
+1
or... pay anyway :lol:

i dont know in wich world you are living my friend
in this world, unfortunately :)

[Dragon]

Can we have a feature that makes clients pay for your work within 30 days?Funny statement-:D but true. I don't know why 'most' (not all, but most) clients have always looked at artists as unprofessional workers (not career minded). We are all career minded. We hone our craft through years of schooling, practice and continued education in the field. Just like a lawyer or doctor etc would do. They are professionals. Were no different. We have a particular skill set that their cousin 'bobby Joe' just can't pick up and start doing on the fly-;). We demand RESPECT darn it!:confused:

Professional:
–adjective
1. following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.

2. of, pertaining to, or connected with a profession (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/profession): professional studies.

3. appropriate to a profession (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/profession): professional objectivity.

[slashpot]

Sheesh! Why does everything turn into a fight round here lately? You people really need to understand that typed words can't contain tone or inflexion, so sarcasm and irony are difficult. Try to assume that the words you're reading are meant in the nicest possible way!

Lets face it, if you're here you have a lot in common!

Every user will want their concerns addressed in any update, but unless you want that update sometime after Xmas 2017 you gotta understand that only so much can be done at one time, obviously Pixo wants to make it the best, cheapest, easiest to use app out there, and have it done by next thursday, but guess what!?
:p

[Nemoid]

Hi Nemoid,

yes i agree with you...not saying it wouldnt be nice to have better retopology but just saying that universal and artist friendly shape creation of any sort without constraint is not yet solved today although we are quite close now...and this is why i rather see Pixo perfecting the tool rather than going in too many directions...



Hi Gasoil Thanks for your long reply ! Much info there...

Well voxel technology is there, but sculpting in ZBrush was conceived around polygons concept, so is Mudbox.
The only cheap app right now i see implementing voxels and other artists oriented tools is 3D Coat.

The problem IMHO is that Voxel are still a resource hog, in facts even 3D Coat is still slow compared to the awesomeness of sculpting in ZBrush right now. In the future maybe developer will reach to optimize it till a very efficient level, but right now it is not.

I perfectly know that polygons is old technology, but as i said: at the end of the day, still 3D traditional apps like Maya, XSI, Houdini, Lightwave, C4D and more use polygons to produce animations in their environment. They also have polygon modelling tools. Now this still is old technology coming from the '70 ies if not before, but still we have it in 2011. So, for modelling purposes we can obtain results in different ways: Subpatch /polygons, nurbs, or even Voxels, but at the end for VFX, polygons with optimized meshes is what counts the most still now, and in some degree even NURBS are still there, as you explained so well.

So what ? we could use Voxels , but still there's the need to end with polygons/subpatch at least, at the end of the day, to export those in Maya or whatever app and rig/animate/render...

If in the future even traditional 3D apps (I call them traditional just because they use old technology as a base) will be able to animate Voxel or similar technologies, well we'll see a real revolution. As it is now, ZBrush is still a companion app for those traditional ones, and even if its based on polygons it gives many possibilities to artists to create better.

Finally i'd say this,: the best tool is the artists himself.

[phrenzy84]

I totally agree with you nemoid.

Pixologic is a smart bunch of people, i wish they just enable us to be able to paint within pixel space. Topology tools and animation previews is nice but for me the best topology tool out there is super cheap, dedicated and very capable. (Topogun).

But if we can sculpt in 3d with an enormous amounts of detail and have various options for how it will be represented in package xyz it would just make sense that having the same ability to texture in such a way, with a lot flexibility.

Thing is i would stop asking if they think they cannot implement it because of the way rendering working within zbrush, but i doubt they would ever say it is impossible to do, or implementing it would greatly affect the entire package. But i would prefer them to say, so i could stop expecting it, since texturing your model is something just as important as modelling and with spotlight, zapplink, goZ I they know this.

Maybe a ptex painting system might the way for us. If so, i welcome it, subdividing textels instead of polygons is sure to have a lower overhead and then you can convert/export the maps as ptex files or your prefered 2d format. Again, i dont know if such a thing is possible.

[banjaxedmdt]

Finally i'd say this,: the best tool is the artists himself.Very true. I can think of some artists that are most definitely tools.

[ministerart@hotmail.co.uk]

Hey Zbrushers...lets just wait to see what we get..and with regards to retopology in zbrush...Im pretty sure the appointment of Dr "whatchamacallit" with sculptris will deliver something special.

Use Zbrush for what it is...a complete delight. :tu:

[Nemoid]

I totally agree with you nemoid.

Pixologic is a smart bunch of people, i wish they just enable us to be able to paint within pixel space. Topology tools and animation previews is nice but for me the best topology tool out there is super cheap, dedicated and very capable. (Topogun).

But if we can sculpt in 3d with an enormous amounts of detail and have various options for how it will be represented in package xyz it would just make sense that having the same ability to texture in such a way, with a lot flexibility.

Thing is i would stop asking if they think they cannot implement it because of the way rendering working within zbrush, but i doubt they would ever say it is impossible to do, or implementing it would greatly affect the entire package. But i would prefer them to say, so i could stop expecting it, since texturing your model is something just as important as modelling and with spotlight, zapplink, goZ I they know this.

Maybe a ptex painting system might the way for us. If so, i welcome it, subdividing textels instead of polygons is sure to have a lower overhead and then you can convert/export the maps as ptex files or your prefered 2d format. Again, i dont know if such a thing is possible.


What i think is :
Actually , together with voxel technology, painting on texture within pixel space directly is quite a resource hog, and doesn't free us from UVs, while, it seems to me that Pixologic wants ZB to work well on cheaper/older machines and be efficient enough however.

This could be also an excuse, but what could be also true and i happen to think seeing the way Pixologic implemented painting is ZBrush couldn't be able to support painting within pixel space without some kinda rework of its painting engine.

I dunno if i am right, btw, but that's what i think in this moment.

From my little understanding, after all, ZB behaves somewhat in this way :

first you sculpt THEN you export maps.
first you paint, THEN you export textures... and so on.

Its clear that in some way , the trick is to skip realtime writing on file, freeing resources of your machine thus not being a totally resource hog .
Problems in fact can present at exporting time , if you're into an old machine.

[phrenzy84]

Yeah thats what i fear.

I hope this doesn't rule out working in texel space although that sounds like a hybrid of the pixel/uv space but subdivided. :(

Im not looking to purchase something like Bodypaint (since it comes with Cinema 4d and will have no plans on using it), Mari (because of the requirements) or even Mudbox just because i own a zbrush :).

One can hope though.

[gasoil]

Hey Nemoid :lol:

I agree with you but this said you dont drive looking at your bonnet but way ahead in teh dsitance...in fact voxel technology is already in Zbrush behind de scenes when u use remesh or shadow box...many artists including myself btw were taken by surprise by this sort of developpemnet and it was a damn good surprise .

The truth is that there is no clear definition of what is traditional and even among major studios there are severe differences even if i agree that at this point at least Polygons are still used MOSTLY in production

As a reminder the modeling paradigm doesnt stops at Polys plus Catmull clark subdivs BTW... any one that has worked in the industry for more than 10 years will know that ...there are other paradigms for shape creation that if you need to inject in a poly pipeline can still be very efficient ways of shape creation.(just as Zspehres is not something that u inject in your poly pipeline but a very efficient way of creating shapes from scartch then retopo if needed)

To mention a few you have Parametric, Solid, Voxel,Nurbs, Bezier patches T-Splines and when it comes to subdiv i can think of at least more schemes that are available since a very long time and some of them are totally free like DooSabin, Butterfly, loop or Bezier Subdivs.

some of this paradigms are not only Not a minority but in fact a MAJORITY since modeling for the film industry is by far the smallest part of the market

In this context there is no ressources hog or anything like that i am afraid but more of a specific workflow determined by a particular direction that some developpers took at some point you can see this illustrated today even with Autodesk when they release a version of Iray for Max but not for Maya...there are developpment erasons, marketing reasons and conflict of interest reasons and has little to do with teh availability of the techonology...in fact saying thsi is exactly what this guys expect you to think so that instead of asking for some advanced feature you just remain quiet and buy their software as is.

without going into CG class history this explains why Renderman was not so optimized for raytracing while others developpers did emphasize that aspect years ago...there are many tools available but only a handful make it to production not because of how good they are but sometimes because of how boring yet solid, familiar and predictable they are wich is at the end of the day an asset in very heavy long productions...


the reason to this is that R and D is very costly and similar to a freight Train...slow, heavy but powerful yet not easy to stop...this expalins how some major houses stopped using Nurbs only a few years ago despite the fact that it was not a machine ressources hog but much worse a human ressources hog.individual artists or smaller companies do not have neither the pro nor the con of a heavy pipeline and should be more adventurous and progressive in their approach so that eventually indirectly they feed heavier industries with better toosll and workflows.

And thsi si where teh paradox lives...lots of artists look major studios for guidance and ressources while Studios need young guns and fresh blood to make things move.

The healthy approach of Pixo when they started was to not be attached to any old technology and be free to experiment and start from a blank canvas without worrying about how you will interface with production ...it is only human for people that want to join an existing pipeline to be impressed and scared about not conforming and this is the Cg equivalent of peer pressure...the good news is that you are also free to make an educated choice rather than just carry the gossip as unfortunatley too many artists do until someone decides to kick the hornest nest for them like Pixo, 3dcoat or other innovative companies or any of the real smart guys developpng tools.

i personally never thought of voxels as a high frequency detailer tool (if it was possible it would be great though) we do use 3dcoat in production since not so long and i can tell you that for certain tasks it has proved to be a unique in his kind unmatched tool ...slicing, booleans, cuts and merges are something impossible in any other non voxel based app and it is fast enough and stable enough.As a funny anecdote there was a very human and predictable resistance to change that was never based on rational approaches but rather childish comments like the color of the interface or the personal religious beliefs of the developper...

this said i agree that Zbrush is very performant and i dont know how to obtain similar tools as the ones i just described...but it will be more impressive than better retopology alone.

i am convinced that we need more "smaller" specialized tools in the industry rather than less generalistic tools in this context it is always interesting to see how other industries solve ceratin shape creation problems and either copy them or be inspired by them.

[michalis]

first you sculpt THEN you export maps.
first you paint, THEN you export textures... and so on.

You forgot the topology+UV problem.
First you sculpt the base then you retopo, then its the right time to sculpt details. Else, you'll find yourself fixing all the lost details after reprojecting.
Same for painting,
But there's a limitation, you can't paint or sculpt details on stretched faces, so, have it in mind when retopo.
Its all we have in zb and its more than enough for me.
But more sculptris is coming soon, let me see what you all can do without a fast autoretopology tool. Because sculptris becomes a real artistic tool now. BTW 3dcoat crew are trying to implement "unlimited clay" (dynamic tessellation) right now. I already tried this kind of workflow using sculptris+3dc+zb. Its the only way to have a real powerful sculpting tool.

[Nemoid]

@Gasoil thanks for your long explaination. we surely need better artistic tools. If it was for me, i'd just rig and animate and render within Zbrush or similar innovative apps. Even less technical but more artist oriented ones for sure. That's what i feel its needed int he future.

@Michalis. you have to retopo if you start from scratch in ZB, btw.

However mine was more a technical consideration about how ZBrush works, in the sense Zbrush uses this method of skipping real time writing on file, while in other apps like for example Modo you are actually painting in flat 2D in your texture map, while the app projects in realtime the result onto your 3d model. this ends up being more resource heavy on your machine, than the ZBrush method.

[Ace-Angel]

The less times you export a model, the less chances something will screw up. Sorry, but that's the truth, reason why they tried FBX and now are trying to get GOZ type function in Autodesk products.

[gasoil]

its healthy to keep devs on their toes... i dont trust that much big devs because they tend to say "well this is not how you are supposed to do it" we are the clients remember and the big devs have been caught many times trashing small tools by labelling them "no industry standard, toy or not production ready"just to come back several versions later doing exactly the same wich is proof that some of those standards are just there until they have enough time to figure it out or buy the tool from someone else.Basically theya re buying time.

You see this everyday in every industry and makes me very angry because money should go to the most motivated and innovative approach not to the company that barks louder (marketing)

but this requires educated choices hence my long posts on some CG history and contexts.

i havent seen any major modeling R and D in production in fact i have seen none...so it is important to push for external R and D in this field. I Cant believe how much every aspect of Computer science has evolved in the past years yet the CG Pipeline remains quite the same if it wasnt for tools like Zbrush , Sculptirs or 3dcoat...i wonder how much better tools can also be developped in other CG fields.

funny to see how some artists have a mental block with this...soemone mentioned that Voxels might ne used in 5 to 10 years ...wrong ...we are using it as we speak...it might be small percentage of modeling tasks just as a few years ago Zbrush was much less present in our workflow and now it is a pivot part of it.

[Ace-Angel]

If Sculptris had the basic brushes from ZBrush with it and was more stable, I wouldn't even need to use ZBrush anymore...

[Elizabeth_I]

WOW!!! It's terrific!

[Nemoid]

its healthy to keep devs on their toes... i dont trust that much big devs because they tend to say "well this is not how you are supposed to do it" we are the clients remember and the big devs have been caught many times trashing small tools by labelling them "no industry standard, toy or not production ready"just to come back several versions later doing exactly the same wich is proof that some of those standards are just there until they have enough time to figure it out or buy the tool from someone else.Basically theya re buying time.

You see this everyday in every industry and makes me very angry because money should go to the most motivated and innovative approach not to the company that barks louder (marketing)

but this requires educated choices hence my long posts on some CG history and contexts.

i havent seen any major modeling R and D in production in fact i have seen none...so it is important to push for external R and D in this field. I Cant believe how much every aspect of Computer science has evolved in the past years yet the CG Pipeline remains quite the same if it wasnt for tools like Zbrush , Sculptirs or 3dcoat...i wonder how much better tools can also be developped in other CG fields.

funny to see how some artists have a mental block with this...soemone mentioned that Voxels might ne used in 5 to 10 years ...wrong ...we are using it as we speak...it might be small percentage of modeling tasks just as a few years ago Zbrush was much less present in our workflow and now it is a pivot part of it.

U right unfortunately CG apps are also a market. and so it happened a bit like VHS and Betamax. VHS was the crappiest standard, yet it had success and became the most diffused one.
Actually what we now call standards are tools which simply had more success. New technologies which are in development now could not have the same success and get diffused and so be further developed and became standards as well.
That's why someone says that well'use things like voxels in the future rather than now (even if you're right: we're using tose now in a certain extent).

[Phrost]

i kno this alreayd been asked somewhere probably but its hard 2 find..

anyway, does anyone know wen z4 r2 will come out? or have a guess? lol

[G_I_B_B_O_N]

U right unfortunately CG apps are also a market. and so it happened a bit like VHS and Betamax. VHS was the crappiest standard, yet it had success and became the most diffused one.
Actually what we now call standards are tools which simply had more success. New technologies which are in development now could not have the same success and get diffused and so be further developed and became standards as well.
That'swhy someone says that well'use things like voxels in the future rather than now (even if you're right: we're using tose now in a certain extent).You and gasoil definitely make a good point and if development of new features was the only worry I would probably agree with you guys. There's just some things I feel should be top priority to make zbrush more enjoyable to use like an overhaul of the interface which is more organized and requires less steps to get basic tasks done. Layers, which are critical need to be less finicky. I would really love a less restrictive file structure as I will never be organizing everything inside zbrush's native folders. Autosave would also be a nice option as zbrush can be unstable at times.

I don't want to just bark out requests, I just find zbrush to be a pleasure to use while I'm actually sculpting and unnecessarily tedious when I'm doing anything else inside the interface.

This is also not in pixologic's best interest to bring on new users as I've seen many students in my school get really frustrated learning zbrush and trying to remember all the crazy keyboard and dragging combinations and such.

I don't wanna compare brands, but I have seen people with limited experience in zbrush pick up mudbox in a day and fall in love with the fact that they can spend more time actually working and less time wrestling with a clunky interface.

[gasoil]

yep well its a vicious circle...if no one makes a move things remain the same and in this aspect while technologies are developped here and there it is ultimately up to the Artists to push it and diffuse it.

Also when Disney decided to dev Ptex , a UVless system , i guess they didnt say "wait a minute it is impossible to do texture without UVS!

by definition you dont create the future with ideas from the past this is were we can, while asking for improvement to our workflows also do a bit of homework and point out at either existing ideas or production bottlenecks for Pixo or others to figure out solutions.

Pixo s take on problems has been very refreshing but to me modeling wise not yet finished again i would love just to have a way to erase geometry call it tesselation on the fly, voxels or something else i dont really care but teh bottom line is that i cant yet feel a total freedom without that sort of function and its a shame that despite the undos , symmetry and high frequency detailing and other sophistiacted high end tools we are still missing a basic function that i can achieve with a simple pencil and an eraser...this again due mainly to the mesh base nature of the software.
While some people are legitimately frustrated for not having good retopotools (that ultimately can be solved in other very cheap softs) imagine how frustrating it can be to not be able to erase and for this simple function there is nothing except at this point to a certain extent Voxels or Shadowbox.

again modeling is about shape creation not only about "create a cool looking troll with lots of detail" creation...look around you and you will see many many shapes based on substracting, carving or scooping out volume ...it was also teh main sculpting technique used 2000 years ago in rome to carve out shapes out of marble... we cannot for the sake of logics be partial and say that sculptors love their armatures and clay (and Zbrush is very good at this) and not mention substarctive sculpture in teh same logic.
While there are ways to do this differently for certain things there are others right now that are impossible in Zbrush.

[G_I_B_B_O_N]

look around you and you will see many many shapes based on substracting, carving or scooping out volumeI totally agree with this. Subtraction is extremely important in sculpture and as of now not so easy in zbrush. I'm personally not a huge fan of the clipping brush workflow. I'm really impressed with how well booleans work in 3d coat and would love that functionality to be added to Z. Obviously voxels and polys are 2 different beasts, but maybe dynamic tessellation may be the answer.

As I have little experience with dynamic tessellation, I wonder if anyone can confirm or deny that there is no ability to retain subdivision levels. I really like the ability in Z to reproportion at a lower subD w/out effecting my details at my highest. I would be really disappointed if we got tessellation and lost this ability.

[Nemoid]

with dynamic tessellation in sculptris for now you can subdivide the mesh or reduce it, but you cannot go easily back and forth like it happens now in ZBrush. The great thing is you can add geometry on the fly (and its done into a very nice way) so the real benefit is you reach to create from scratch complex organic shapes you should do with zspheres/zsketch in Zbrush. the process is funnier, faster and more productive IMHO, especially for maquettes.
BTW since the mesh is made out of triangles you will end up having to retopologize it, or obtain a quad mesh in some way and maybe import it in Zbrush if you want high frequency detail using displacements or normal maps and not bump map.
BTW dynamic tesselation is awesome. But Voxels would be actually gorgeous. ;)

[lordsithsp]

Very interesting updates like always :tu:

[SAMS3D]

Totally no other words, awesome.

[michalis]

BTW dynamic tesselation is awesome. But Voxels would be actually gorgeous.

3dc team are ready to implement dynamic tessellation as well. Do you know why? Being a zb and 3dcoat user I have some ideas on this.
Scusptris is a quite deferent approach, it doesn't need multi res as it can do it in parts of the mesh. ZB is basically a displacement editor. The best around IMO. These apps are ready to run as one, a good auto retopo method is missing though. And certainly not a young apprentice to do this humble and important job. :lol:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showpost.php?p=829349&postcount=74

[A.Baroody]

Are the paint layers and layers fixed?

[Bas Mazur]

Waiting for #2, #3, #4 and #5 :tu:

[puzzle3d]

I can hardly wait.

[dysamoria]

meh. yet more features i don't need nearly as much as an utterly re-built user experience and bug fixes.

Today's experience checking out status of three 3D tools i own:

i visit NewTek... meh... still nothing accomplished for existing Lightwave users screwed on Mac platform. User base actually rather irritated about general failure to manage the product, but no one cares.

i visit DAZ3D... meh... still nothing accomplished for existing Carrara users screwed on Mac platform. User base finally starting to become irritated about general eternal brokenness of product, but no one cares.

i visit pixologic... meh... repeat chorus... User base ... cares about nothing i care about because they all love the product to death just as is while the few dissenting voices are marginalized and yelled at. Users still kissing Pixo's feet for ... meh.

It's cool that Pixologic provides these version updates for free. It's actually quite impressive how many "major" revisions have been free to existing users. Thing is, i don't like the tool, fundamentally, as it was, as it currently is. i cannot, in fact, get used to it. i've tried all the documents, tutorials, videos... It's not worth it to me any more either. Just a waste of money. Apparently it's not going to change any time soon because the long indoctrinated users can't see that anything is wrong.

The day that the user experience gets re-engineered to be self-evident (intuitive to users of the last decade worth of industry-standard GUI concepts in most other graphics tools), which is the ONLY "new feature" i actually WANT, that's when Pixologic will charge me for the upgrade. See, i don't want ZBrush for rendering. i don't want to animate anything anywhere. i want ZBrush to be a modeling tool with painting features. You know, the main point of the tool (which used to be 2D painting, but that was abandoned, yet it's still DESIGNED as a 2D app with clunky workarounds to make it a 3D app)...

i am actually quite pleased with the totally free Sculptris product, because that is designed as... a modeling tool from the ground-up. What a crazy idea. Pixologic gave us a slightly prettied Alpha to play with, thank you. What next? Anything? Ever? i'm using a WINE-ified version on Mac, with half broken GUI... and i STILL prefer it to ZBrush.

i'll come back & look again in another month or three...

[Half Life]

You may not realize it but every single aspect of ZBrush's interface can be customized to exactly what you need -- which combined with a custom Zscript would yield a user experience tailored for your tastes/needs.

I agree the base interface is pretty obnoxious but that is because they are trying to keep everything available for any possible workflow (including ones you don't use)... but there is nothing keeping you from remaking it in your image.

A great example of a custom interface/user experience is the Paintstop plugin -- all the power of ZBrush is behind the scenes and you can only see what you need to see for that particular task.

[michalis]

@dysamoria...
sculptris, the artists best friend! Behavior of sculpting tools is better or similar to zb. And being a macuser as well, wait, a few more days. Thats all.
These are great gifts from pixologic. Pixo respects and serves art more than any other software company I know. Isn't it?

[dysamoria]

re: Half Life's response:
It's beyond both my willingness and my ability to do that amount of customization. On top of that, customizing the interface at all makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to use reference materials like documentation and tutorials.

More importantly, it's not just the GUI look that's problematic. It's the overall behavior of the entire product. THAT, i believe, is not customizable. It serves no purpose for me to detail the issues because it's not going to change anything and will waste my time (and yours!). Pixologic has, by now, been told by at least a hundred people, in depth, exactly how "wrong" their tool is in its user experience... and they show ZERO sign of ever accepting said "opinions."

i AM impressed, to no end, at the incredible(!) work that users have coaxed out of ZBrush (especially people who admit to having originally hated ZBrush's design, because i'm not able to "get over it" like they did). i'm envious... but... i've come to terms with the fact that ZBrush is, in no uncertain terms, not at all for me and probably never will be. The best 3D tool for me would be a "best of" from a bunch of products because NONE of the 3D tools i've used are consistently in the realm of "real world" application (ie: DOF and camera stuff in Modo makes more sense than elsewhere because it's based on real camera stuff and functions more sensibly than in, say Lightwave, but the shader tree in Modo is utter fricking geektastic madness and has ZERO real-world point of reference). Etc.

Admittedly, i really ought to never come back to this website again... but... you know... i DID BUY ZBrush. i should not have done so. That's $500 less debt i could have now...

[gasoil]

Dysamoria,:)

while your points are very valid im sure that you are overreacting a tiny bit....it will be easy to say that you can do without Zbrush but problems aside and imperfection aside at this point in time there is no equivalent to this tool elsewhere so the Pros definetely outweights the Cons easily no matter how many improvements needs to be done and this is because of the very specific unique toolset (wich is the meat in Zbrush)..of course if you make no use of that particular toolset then your frustration is understandable and being able to do without more likely.

While Maya , LW, Max or XSI have some strengths and weaknesses that balances out and none of these have any groundbreaking new approaches (havent tried Core though yet) Zbrush is not as Michalis said just a realtime 3d displacemnet viewer...that is more the definition of Mudbox wich is production centric in the terms of what production is TODAY...Zbrush is much more than just that and way ahead of this offering unique never seen before tools like shadowbox or Zsketch or 2.5 D illustration tools etc...the truth is that there is no equivalent of those anywhere else.If you judge Zbrush based only in what "traditional" tool are meant to deliver you will legitametely be constantly disapointed as much as someone that buys a Ferrari and doesnt understand why there are only two seats and it is crap for buying groceries as the trunk is ridiculously small... again all your points valid for sure but maybe its not the ideal tool for your workflow?

In the other hand i do see a logic and consistency and It does make sense that Pixo investigates/incorporates technologies like the one offered by Sculptris as it is also a fresh take on how to create shapes...of course a lot of artists wouldnt have really had the vision if before releasing sculptirs they would have been told it was going to tesselate in triangles on the fly (believe me a lot of people will have screamed in horror) but i guess that any progress is welcome by some with fear and anxiety and by some others with a more confident and positive approach or at least with a wait and see attitude.

like any other industry i believe that it is about finding your market and your target...in that respect pushing for a different take on the same problem or delivering new tools regardless of what is meant to be "traditional" is the trademark of Pixo with some success and some failures in the process...but it is definetely a reflection of the personality of that company and probably its core developpers as artists and business people.

there is so so so much of the same in this industry that if i need to feel "safe" in an environment that has the same shade of gray for GUI or the same MMB navigation and where the arrow icon always means "select" to feel at home, that a tutorial made with a different menu in a different place will make me anxious and stop me from learning well then again is like going for Ferrari when it sounds more like you need a Fiat Punto.

When you are leading the way you have to be ready to get your hands dirty and be a bit more experimental and show the way IMHO.You will be critcized and if you fail you will be pointed at in mockery but if you succeed you will be alone in the summit this is what already happened to Zbrush when it switched from "useless toy" in version 1 to Asset creation Pivot toolset in version 2 or 3.

[MealeaYing]

If Sculptris had the basic brushes from ZBrush with it and was more stable, I wouldn't even need to use ZBrush anymore...If it could make us breakfast in bed we would all get fat.

GRIN!

[MealeaYing]

As far as the argument/discussion about Sculptris vs. Zbrush goes i would have to say that they are two totally different things.
I got Sculptris one lovely morning and by the end of the day i was 100% hooked, I still am, but I was in fact so hooked I went and bought Zbrush, at first i wondered if I had made a hideous mistake, that much money if not trivial to me and Zbrush is not something you learn in a day.
I did not make a mistake, I love both programs and use them together a lot.
Sculptris is not Zbrush, Sculptris is Sculptris and I recommend it to everyone, Zbrush is not Sculptris, its not intended to be and its not even aimed at the same group of people I dont think, but the fact is that despite a steeper learning curve (and for me it is still a cliff) its one of the most fantastic things I have ever used.
So:
I love both, Sculptris is more... well, warm and fuzzy to me but that is just me, Zbrush is like a strict but excellent teacher "Do this and this and this and you get these, but not those, and here is why" where as Sculptris is like a cheerful anarchist "Go nuts! Do what ever you want!"
So, Since Alpha 6 is about to pop out of Doctor Peters amazingly large mind, and the people at Pixologic are smart enough to see to it that he gets paid for being a flippin genius, why not cheer up and get ready for some cool new stuff?

I betcha a heap of stuff its going to be awesome.


Cheers!
Mealea

[zbsolomon]

The new lighting and Shading is awesome, BUT don't just limit it for Still-image creators BUT think ahead of time for more.

Dear Pixolator,

Rendering looks awesome and I am sure with mulitple passes we can make this set of feature a "GREAT" Look development tool. Rendering Billion Polygons in lightning speed for a single image....no..no.. what an underused feature... buckle your seat belts...and let us fly.
If you could include the following "little" things it would create big game changer in Animation, visualFx and compositing.

1-Match Camera animation (Import and Export Camera data to and from Maya or Nuke).
2-Match Direction, Spot and Point light parameters of Maya and Nuke
3-Aside from current great passes include passes like Point pass and Motion Vector pass which maps Space/Time changes which lets us do deep compositing and post motion blur.

Voila! With above simple additions I can suddenly able to bring in the new "Animated" render layers of Billion Polygon sculpted models without worrying about Topology, UV mapping into my scenes and composite in Nuke.

Let us remember this popular math:
20% of features make the 80% of the difference.

Above are such features that would lead users to ZBrush MORE than Mari or future Katana. I am sure implementing such Rendering feature that would help FX animators and Compositors coming to zBrush would make zBrush the leader in Rendering from "production stand point" like how zBrush did in the Modeling standpoint way back.

Hope to see these vital features in light.

Bye bye Mudbox...Bye Bye Mari...Bye Bye Katana...

I am sure Pixologic listens. Thanks for your time and effort.

zBsolomon.

[dysamoria]

MealeaYing:
You stated that a new version of Sculptris will be available soon... i wasn't aware of this. i went to the forum and didn't see anything much (i admit i didn't look very hard). Can you point me to where you heard about this news?

Gasoil:
As for Ferrari, etc... i don't like car analogies for software. i don't think they're really valid for multitude of fundamental reasons. but, for argument sake... If i were to use your analogy, i'd say that buying a Ferrari, i would expect luxury, not great discomfort! ZBrush is agonizing to me! :lol: i wouldn't buy a Ferrari because it's impractical for daily use... etcetera. ;)

[MealeaYing]

@ Dysamoria:

Oh my god... its from July of 2010......
Im going to have a meltdown..
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=96408&page=5&pp=15
Second to last post on that page....

crap crap crap....... thats almost a year ago....

where did I stash that vodka?

[dysamoria]

Oh my god... its from July of 2010...... Im going to have a meltdown..[...] crap crap crap....... thats almost a year ago....
where did I stash that vodka?
heh heh heh... thanks, though :lol:

[aurick]

@ Dysamoria:

Oh my god... its from July of 2010......
Im going to have a meltdown..
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=96408&page=5&pp=15
Second to last post on that page....

crap crap crap....... thats almost a year ago....

where did I stash that vodka?July 2010 was the date DrPetter joined ZBC. The post itself is only four days old. :)

[dysamoria]

thanks Aurick! i had not seen those posts when i went looking. Good news indeed!

[MealeaYing]

wait... what?

so....

ITS TRUE??????

ok.....

wait....
um....

Ok Aurick you saying I was right the first time and that Alpha 6 is in fact about to be released?!?!?!?!
If this were IRC I would type this:
/me grabs you by the shoulders and screams "Speak to me!!!!!"
But its not.

ZBC is an emotional roller coaster at the moment, Im going to spike my vodka with booze.


Dysamoria..... I haven't the faintest idea whats going on, I hereby discredit my self and shut the hell up.

I want GoZ to link Zbrush and Alpha 6 or..... more....

my god I am a greedy little thing

[dysamoria]

wait... what? [...] ZBC is an emotional roller coaster at the moment, Im going to spike my vodka with booze. [...] Dysamoria..... I haven't the faintest idea whats going on, I hereby discredit my self and shut the hell up.[...] my god I am a greedy little thing
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Hey, no problem, i have no credibility either, from what i've been told ;) As for greedy... heh, we all want what works best for us :D (and yeah, i guess i'm greedy, too... i'd love to actually get work done with 3D tools based on what they advertise is possible, not based on the reality of how much you must fight your instincts to adapt to insane tools :confused: ). i guess i should spike my booze too...

[Cyraph]

Hello everyone I'm new to the forums here and quite late to this thread, I haven't read the whole thing yet so I'm unsure if the following simple fixes/features have been brought up but I guess this is the place and so they should be mentioned.

Contrary to what some people may think about the "usefulness" of HD geometry, you can export out HD normals & displacement from subD level 1 with the multi-map exporter, and the maps do indeed retain that fine HD geometry with no seams or render issues. BUT, correct me if I'm wrong, if you try to export out from SubD level 5 or so (say, the top regular level with about 4M polys) with the multi-map exp, you get the exact same normal/disp maps that you would from a level 1 export!

I know that in the online documentation it says that if the slider is greater than or equal to the highest subD, it'll go to 1, so in other words it doesn't consider HD geo subdivisions the same as regular ones. Technically they're not, but I wish it did. You may say, well just sculpt one level higher with the normal Ztool- say 16M, but if you do that, regardless of your system specs, it's just enough to crash ZBrush on export if you check something barely more memory intensive like "adaptive."

However, select a UV patch/polygroup and go into HD mode, crease, clone it, transfer your UVs, export from level 5 and there you have it- normals or a displacement that perfectly represent your sculpt from 4M onto whatever your HD geometry sculpt is. The new disp map is for texture purposes only so I can channel mask and modulate the color through sort of a cavity look in Mari, and the new normals so that, added with displacement up to 4M- can represent whatever sculpted details I want onward when I render in Maya & Mental Ray.

The problem is that this work around creates those infamous seams from the need to dissect your model to get these extra but what I feel are necessary maps, and while relatively easy to clean up in painting software like Mari or Mudbox, the task becomes far more tedious when you're working on a model that's 256M HD polys (4M regular ZTool + 64M HD sculpt, + 1more HD SubD for smoothing on normals export) and has it spread out in over 50 UV tiles. While I get almost pixel for pixel detail on even 4k output, I have to then repaint over all those normals and edges of the mid displacement. It's not difficult, but would be just so much easier if that "SubD level to export" slider worked (with HD geo on the model) without needing to break up the model into separate Subtools by UV patch. I'm doing a personal project for animation with a close up/for demo reel purposes, and I'd really like that "scalability" as part of the tool set.

Also, while HD geometry is really great, what about the overall RAM limitations for regular sculpts anyway? I have a 64bit machine with 16GB of RAM, but none of that matters. Go above a certain limit without using HD geo, say 12 million polys, and while you can sculpt, it will fail on export if you chose to process adaptive rays, which is just enough to push it over the limit from what I've experienced. I think that ZBrush should REALLY go 64bit, the kind like Mudbox (and almost any modern app I can think of) has, where you can test sculpt a model that has say, 64 million real polys, and do so comfortably even though you're using 9GB of RAM- which limits the need to even invoke HD geo or it's funkiness in the first place, which then would eliminate any time consuming hacks or work-arounds that I'm having to do right now for my extra maps.

It's amazing how much just a true 64bit upgrade would do for ZBrush. Like most, I chose ZBrush for the intuitive natural feel when sculpting that's hard to compare to other packages, but it really needs that basic but FULL 64bit upgrade to enable and satisfy those who wish to go as far as they want, without hassle or a software limit regardless of local hardware.

Also, mentioned earlier, ZBrush really needs vector displacement- much more than PTex at this time. It's unfortunate but appears that Mudbox has heard all these calls and has been VERY agressive, especially with the 2012 version, and is quickly becoming the new Vray of sculpting/texture painting for true generalist use. It would also be nice to bring back the options for UDIM naming conventions on exported maps that Mari & Mudbox are using. Anyway sorry to all for the rant on my first post here, I absolutely love ZBrush & Pixologic, but I really wish the developers would look into these things if they haven't so already!

In short, make Z truly 64 bit, and if possible make that slider in the multi-map exporter count HD geo subdivisions like regular ones please. These are little things that can go a long way!

[It's Alive!]

We got a lot of new users with low post counts talking mean in this thread. It makes me sad.

It's not the tool, It's the artist! (Zbrush is one hell of a tool!)

It would be nice to have a topology editor that's a 50/50 mix of Wrapit and Topogun. Both programs are great, but they are by no means perfect. What if my mesh has some good topology in certain areas- Why do I have to redo the whole mesh all over again, why not mask off the areas that are bad while keeping the good zones alive as an editable start point.

My opinion on Sculptris. It's cool but I don't need it if my low poly base mesh came into Zbrush with a correct topology flow. Sculptris would mess up that models topology. If Zbrush included it as a on/off feature. I'd be down. 99.9 percent of the time it's unneeded for the way I work.

My opinion on Voxels: Most of my meshes are morph difference shelled objects. I don't think Voxels do this well. Voxels eat a lot of memory. You still have to redo the topology on them near the end in order to export them as a polygon object for use in other 3d programs and rapid prototype printing.

My wish list is getting shorter with each new Zbrush update.

I would like a hair and fur app, but it's not a priority.

I would love a camera lens distortion app like the one I requested in ZB4 wish list.

Above all else I really want a new topology tool that does everything Wrapit does with some of the features Topogun has.

As others have said Topogun and Wrapit are great workarounds.

[Ace-Angel]

We got a lot of new users with low post counts talking mean in this thread. It makes me sad.

It's not the tool, It's the artist! (Zbrush is one hell of a tool!)

It would be nice to have a topology editor that's a 50/50 mix of Wrapit and Topogun. Both programs are great, but they are by no means perfect. What if my mesh has some good topology in certain areas- Why do I have to redo the whole mesh all over again, why not mask off the areas that are bad while keeping the good zones alive as an editable start point.

My opinion on Sculptris. It's cool but I don't need it if my low poly base mesh came into Zbrush with a correct topology flow. Sculptris would mess up that models topology. If Zbrush included it as a on/off feature. I'd be down. 99.9 percent of the time it's unneeded for the way I work.

My opinion on Voxels: Most of my meshes are morph difference shelled objects. I don't think Voxels do this well. Voxels eat a lot of memory. You still have to redo the topology on them near the end in order to export them as a polygon object for use in other 3d programs and rapid prototype printing.

My wish list is getting shorter with each new Zbrush update.

I would like a hair and fur app, but it's not a priority.

I would love a camera lens distortion app like the one I requested in ZB4 wish list.

Above all else I really want a new topology tool that does everything Wrapit does with some of the features Topogun has.

As others have said Topogun and Wrapit are great workarounds.If you're judging people pending how many posts they have, then you sir, are truly an elitist, I knew and used ZB since version 2.0, just because I waited only a few month back to make an account doesn't make anything I say have less value then someone who has 2,000 posts.

[ochabrand]

I use the layer in daily produtction, but those bugs really annoying. To be honest I do not think that the majority of the user base is interested in BPR, animation, etc. I'm pretty sure they want production ready toolset.

I love ZBrush, that's why I'm so cared about the future development.

you said it...

zbrush is still the best sculpting program (brushes) but if they don't take their competition seriously, mudbox will be a far better solution for proffesionals real soon.

[nDman]

you said it...

zbrush is still the best sculpting program (brushes) but if they don't take their competition seriously, mudbox will be a far better solution for proffesionals real soon.

The must funny joke i ever heard.

i'm using Autodesk's softwares from 11 years ago and i hate their way to update their softwares. They have killed my favorite compositing software the Combustion and replaced it by pitty one the Composite. Currently i'm started to use Fusion 6. The 3ds max, in every new release became slower, biger than that must be and with more bugs. Even that maya i know in 2012 release have many bugs and users of it are angry about it. The mudbox 2012 is full of bugs and they will release Hotfix for it.
I'm thinking now to change my base 3d software, and the Houdini is the only one out of autodesk's hands.
I don't think the mudbox can be good as Zbrush.

[gasoil]

seriously now....judging someone by the number of posts.... maybe the less posts the most likely busy in production you are? i have 20 something posts in 7 years maybe because i tend to speak up only when something is really happening instead of using this forums as a social presence...

We had a demo of Mudbox 2012 the other day at the studio...look is not a bad product but seriously it feels more like a complement to Zbrush than a serious replacemnet to me...i personally use Zbrush mostly for concept modeling wich is just as important as "production" modeling if not more...it is concept that saves so much time down the pipeline and it is concept again that puts the bread in your table at the end of the day...MUdbox has very limited capabilities when it comes to shape creation wich is the core of well...modeling....duh!

Vector displacemnt looks sweet and indeed a nice feature ...this said there are still shape creation tools that need to be implemented and improved that vector displacemnet can definetely not solve...and yes btw you can vector displace things on a mesh but in order to do this you have to ...well model the vector displacemnet source and this cannot always be done in Mudbox....duh!

Now Autodesk new releases ,as nDman, said are far from being great and really all this feels more like rants before even trying the announced features.

Mudbox is certainly more production friendly as in "Maya-Renderman" production ready....this industry is unfortunately too polluted by name dropping and wannabies that as soon as they read Pixar in a thread or Maya in a sentence they start weting their pants.

This are only tools and there are many features missing in this tools and in production many artists with different Backgrounds pest all day about how using this or that tool they could get the job done much faster.

Zbrush is not designed around any particular pipeline wich makes it both more innovative and more difficult to please everybody at the same time...it is definetely a tool that requires a bit more handling and experimentation and everyday i realize how there are some features that i never used before and that some artists dont even thought it was possible to do...

obviously if you are going to be scared by the idea of learning a new navigation as some in this thread mention then really i feel sorry for you because trying to work in a production environment where by definition we need to come with a problem solving attitude this anxiety is not going to play well.

definetely Zbrush could use many improvements....never said the opposite but if you guys think that the grass is greener on the other side think twice...

Autodesk obsession with realeasing a version 2012 when we are not even mid 2011 is really looking like Apple policy of realesing a new Iphone no matter what every year ...and the rest is history...this products seem much more based on emotional value, hysteria, fan based propaganda as rationalization as the ridiculous line up of Iphone junkies waiting hours to buy a WHITE Iphone 4....come on now it is just a Phone and ahem just white!!! seriously it is pretty obvious that you have to be very bored, unemployed and hysterical to line up for something like that...i really draw the line there and i wonder how many guys need to post less and create more maybe....

@ ITS ALIVE...not true...turning voxels into Polygons is one press of a button...it will be a trinagulated mesh or quadrangulated auto depending on your options...this mesh wont be deformation friendly but will be as long as you comply with 3d printing constraints 3d printing ready and definetely render ready ...so its absoluately not true at all...plus as you might now if you really are in need of a specific edgeflow 3dcoat has an awesome retoplogy tool that allows u to bake Voxels to polygons in a pecific way as well.

Triangulated meshes are not the exception in fact they are the norm as every single Nurbs Solid or parametric modeler out there used probably to design and create the Keyboard you are using or the car you are driving will spit out a triangulated mesh....renders can be done of this without any problem and will even render faster as many triangulated meshes are way more optimum than a quadrangulated mesh were edge flow even in areas that do not need detail.The idea of triangulation on the fly as in Sculptis is indeed the most efficient and elegant solution for mesh creation as far as a polygonal approach goes.

[mastone]

I have posted a reply on page 6 and read some replies that seemed to be a response to ( parts of) my post ( could be wrong of course ;).

I see that there are a lot of people who are very happy with the new stuff that is announced, which is fine of course.
I am not unmoved by the " different approach" Pixologic is maintaining throughout the years, but I think it is a bit unfair to say of people who are not wholly positive about everything and suggest changes to a more industry common sense, that they are newbees, lazy, ignorant and what not.

I for one have never said ( or at least not meant to), that they should copy an interface of an existing package and paste it onto Zbrush, I merely suggested that they conform the interface a bit, getting it a bit organized and logical.


I realize that not everyone uses Zbrush in a larger pipeline and mainly stay in ZBrush, but for people who are using it in a pipeline, I think that the layering system needs a boost ( sculpt/paint layers, being able to paint specular/transparency channels and so on).
And sure there a lot more "markets" than Games or Films,which are relatively small to other marketgroups, but this small percentage influences the rest very profoundly, a lot of people wanted to learn and use Maya because it was used in filmwork, for instance, a piece of compositing software called Nuke is being used more and more each day because it's production proven ( and the fact that Shake was discontinued ;) ).

The border between Games and Films is slowly fading as well ( Film wants more efficient workflows and because of technological advancement game engines and PC's and consoles can handle more and more each day).

Also saying that Mudbox doesn't even come close to Zbrush is in my opinion complete rubbish, utter nonsense even.
They both have their strengths and weaknesses and excel on different area's, but please don't make the mistake of underestimating other packages like Mudbox ( or MARI, modo or any other sculpting/modeling app that is out there), because even if Zbrush is the better tool, it doesn't have to mean they will end on top( Back in the "old" days there was a "little" package called Softimage XSI, which was better than Max and Maya overall, but is now only used by a few):
Mudbox is easier to step in to, it is a part of the Autodesk suites, which have educational versions, which are even cheaper than an EDU version of ZBrush, which could mean that ( in the future) a lot more students will be learning to work with Mudbox than with Zbrush, which leads to a bigger adoptation in pipelines all over the world.

Another thing is the fact that pixologic doesn't charge for their upgrades and Autodesk get's "flamed" for doing the opposite.
Although I find the new 2012 releases of Autodesk rather weak and feel that they care more about revenue and shareholders than their customers, I think Pixologic is a bit too nice for their customers and hope they realize that there will come a time when the growth of new customers will decline or seize and if they keep their model of free upgrades they will lose by default to their competitors.
I am not saying that they should introduce maintenance, merely that people should be paying an amount ( even if it is a small one) of money for a full release ( ie Zbrush 3/4/5/6) to ensure the existence of pixologic and the development of Zbrush.

[gasoil]

@ Mastone,

i think Mudbox is a great tool i dont think it is bad at all just think that his strenght is also his weakness since it relies heavily in what is done before and what will happen next...since Zbrush wasnt built around any particualr pipeline well it is the exact opposite.Modo is a fantastic modeler and a beautifully fast render too...i love it.

Again it will be naive to think that what will end up "on top" is a proof of quality or "standard". We cant be so stupid to fall in what basically is a marketing line...There are many many ways to skin a cat.It is also a bit of a shame to be waiting for what the big guys say about a toll before using it.

Keep in mind that the Polygon-CatmullClark subdiv is a workflow based on a technology that is now 32 years old....i am sure that you agree that is very hard to believe that neither the limitation nor the benefits of this technology hasnt been improved since! well the truth is that there has been parallel developpments and some tools were still kept as standard not necessarily because they were the most adavnced but in fact because they were the most reliable and boringly stable wich is an asset in production.

32 years man...there is probably nothing else around you that has survived that long...form phone technology to cars...i dont think it is bad to at least have a go at new paradigms like Voxels or whatever else is out there.

Film Pipelines are very often old and clunky...they are efficient due to their monolithic simplicity and easy brute force handling of data...this is also why implementing new technologies in those pipelines is tricky and expensive and that most of the time we adopt a "wait and see" approach to implementing new tools...

This is what explains why it took so so so long to Pixar to implement GI solutions and raytracing...first remember that Pixars pixel output is not that realistic despite what people think and many of their frames dont rely heavily in refraction or reflections or things like that...tehrefore they didnt urgently need the implementation of those algos....the fact that a company doesnt see the use for that particular workflow or algo IS NOT a guarantee that everything they say or use should be considered like gospel or made a "Standard".

To give you an example of very different ways to approach a problem i will mention a special Effect that i saw again the other day and that is probably one of the most spectacular to date even if it was mas now more than 12 years ago...the scene where Ed Norton shoots himself in the mouth in full Frame and slow motion...there is everything in that shot from a realistical digital double head of a lead Actor in full closeup and slomo plus realistic shading and hair etc...as far as can remember this was made by BUF compagnie without relying on subdivs nor UV mapping and was rendered on Mental Ray....

So the use of the word "standard" or "production ready" should be taken with a lot of care because it is a very fragile concept.

[Half Life]

For what it is worth I agree with you completely -- 3D for too long has been stagnant... I refer to it as the "tyrannical reign of the polygon".

Personally I see for the future more and more developments moving towards much stronger particles and simulation softwares and less and less resources directed towards polygons and brute force animation... but the tyrannical reign of the polygon is strong and it will take some time to crumble under it's own decayed weight.

That said I think the next big innovations will come from outside -- all the current big players are too invested in what they already have going to make that big leap. In the meantime we all have to suffer with the limitations that exist today.

[ZJuan]

Aurick, any hope of Zbrush 64 bits in the near future?

[Ace-Angel]

There is nothing wrong with 'polygons' considering that a 'model' needs to be triangulated in the memory cache inorder to rendered.

If you're speaking about limitations of sculpting in realtime as actual life clay, I agree, if you're talking for everything from Renders to games to movies, then no, sorry, read up some theory and try again, and you'll see why tessellate is the answer for the next while.

[Half Life]

Actually you can voxelize before render too -- particles voxelized on the fly (or similar) is what I was speaking of.

Best,
Jason.

[michalis]

In the meantime we all have to suffer with the limitations that exist today.

Well, I can live with these polygons but
I mostly agree :tu:

[MealeaYing]

I'm still excited about the upgrade and have nothing to gripe about.... oh wait, I do have a gripe, I out of coffee, I think I will make some more.

GRIN!


PS, One question: If I run voxels through my coffee grinder will I'm get particles?

[michalis]

PS, One question: If I run voxels through my coffee grinder will I'm get particles?

I suppose so, though today 3dcoat uploaded a new beta, featuring dynamic tessellation over voxels! What you'll get from the coffee grinder, I'm not sure. :lol: