10 Reasons why Zbrush is better than Mudbox for a Game Artist

[maxgamer]

Here are my ten reasons why Zbrush is better than Mudbox for Video Game Artists.

1. The ability to transpose your model in order to create multiple versions of your sculpt to achieve different appearances of clothing folds. This is very useful for normal map blending in your game shader.

2. Dropping to 2.5D mode in order to create tiling sculpts that can either be used as Normal Maps or Stencils inside of Zbrush. Very handy for environment artists.

3. ZApplink

4. Start with ZSpheres to quickly mock-in designs for quick iterations on sculpts rather than having to work in a 3D App first to import a base mesh

5. Retoplogy Tools for quickly constructing a new game mesh based on the sculpt.

6. Quick renders and turntables for sign-off purposes with Art Director.

7. The ability to record tutorials within ZBrush to help train other artists. No need to use a program like Camtasia.

8. More brush options for sculpting.

9. Polygroups and SubTools to help keep sculpt organized.

10. Great community support (ZBrush Central)

[invertedNormal]

11. No increasing monopoly on market or lack of innovations

[cavedan]

Very interesting. I'ma Game Artist and I'm comparing the two for environment level creation. So far, I see ZBrush as the more powerful app - at least from a feature point of view - maybe worflow too. But not interface. My co-workers prefer Mudbox's interface over ZBrush by a majority. I'm a newbie to ZBrush who recently got over the learning curve after a couple weeks.
I will be checking out Mudbox very soon.
Your points can be convincing - I am still learning.
I hope to use ZBrush first as a painting tool. I wish you could save out the spec maps and save the image file as a photoshop file with the proper layers.
I basically bring my mesh into ZBrush, from Maya, paint it and sculpt it, export the normal and color maps, export the hi-res mesh for rendering in Maya an ambient occlusion map that I can apply to the color map in photoshop.
I also want to explore basic terrain building from a basic mesh form that is created first in Maya. ZSpheres looks very powerful. Lots to learn!

[maxgamer]

If you are doing environment work instead of using ZSpheres as a start try using the Terrain 3D Primative and adjust the profile curves. This is a great way to start with cliff faces and things like that.

Make sure you get comfortable with creating custom alphas. They are the key to great environment work.

Try experimenting with doing the tiling feature in 2.5d mode in ZBrush and layering in ztool elements.

We have looked at both Mudbox and Zbrush extensively at our studio and Zbrush has so much more to offer. Granted, the texture painting tools in the current release of Mudbox are much better than ZBrush but there are high hopes for ZBrush 3.5 in this area.

[cavedan]

Will do.
What do you mean by profile curves?

[maxgamer]

After dragging a Terrain3d into the viewport, before converting it to a polymesh3d, open up the initialize panel in the Tool Menu.

You can then press on the VProfile and HProfile and add points to adjust the primitive.

After you are happy with the general shape press the Make Polymesh3D button and begin sculpting.

[cavedan]

Oh, is the terrain3d mesh a primitive in Zbrush, or is it made in Maya?

Sorry, if I misunderstood.

[maxgamer]

Terrain3d is a ZBrush primative

[splodge]

For game development ZBrush is a complete solution. It would be nice if it had a better baking features though. Although these days lighting in game engines is becoming quite powerful and so texture baking isn't quite as important as it used to be.

Having said that, I don't think Mudbox is even trying to be a complete solution, so it's probably not fair to compare the two when talking about complete packages.

[zeke3d]

zbrush has saved and made possible most of the project I have worked on since 2006. the turnaround time is amazing and the process fun, which makes you want to take things to the next level, as far as complaints they are far and few between and its still miles ahead of alot of the more bloated 3d and 2d creative packages. heck why cant PS get a lazy mouse? I would be able to concept alot tighter, and you know they have the resources to make it happen, why not? oh its cause they got the market cornered.

[fleety]

zeke3d, I couldn't agree more. If you are just a modeler pushing points around, either program is more than capable. Personally the reason I refused to learn to use Mudbox because I had had such a painful journey learning Zbrush 2.0 (interface mainly). I didn't want to throw all that effort away. I am glad I kept with it though. Zbrush is like learning to Snowboard, hard to learn (expect to take a few knocks), but once you master it, SO worth it.

[rimasson]

I think that Mud will be a fantastic app in a couple of years/releases when

- Autodesk will get rid of all the bugs
- Mud will run on a mid-range Pc (selection is buggy as hell with my quadro FX 1500)
- AD will add a paint engine able to compete with bodypaint or 3d coat and more tools.

[spaz8]

Agreed, mudbox is still in its infancy.. give it 3 yrs.. I think they are certainly going after studios though, not the hobbyist. The SDK and CGFX support "should" be attractive to some developers. But as of today zbrush is definitely more of a swiss army knife with several ways to achieve the desired result.

[zbaked]

Nahh

Autodesk has just done a bad job on communicating what m2009 can do.

Seen this?
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/19477/

I cant do this in Z yet. Posing is cool in Zbrush but if your day job is 90% sculpting and painting textures than Mudbox is a great choice. Though I know everyone here will flame me for saying so :)

[slocik]

rimasson, wait, what ? Mudbox is buggy ? Did you start using zbrush like today ? Its the most buggy softewere i have ever worked on, i hate it ... Yeah but its still better than mudbox ...

[rimasson]

One more thing :
The power of Mudbox is closely linked to your hardware spacs.
I've got a Quadro FX 1500 in my workstation.

Mud stores all the textures in the Graphic card mem, so i can't paint only on 1-2 4K color maps at the same time.

With bodypaint, i can paint with ease on 4 8k color maps AND on 4 4k bumps maps at the same time.
....

slocik (member.php?u=47655) : Zbrush runs fine on my workstation. There are a couple of known bugs, so i can avoid them easily

[testure]

Did you start using zbrush like today ?hahahaa.. considering his 'birth (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/rimasson/contre/3d/pages/birth.htm)' image is used in almost every zbrush advertisement I doubt it :P

but yeah, in the Mudbox 2 (ahem, 2009) beta there were a lot of outstanding issues that never got fixed. Toward the end of the beta cycle we were posting things like "So is X ever going to get fixed or turned back on" and they would say "We want to include this or fix that, but it won't make it by the release". I know a lot of us were caught off guard when they said "this is the last beta release, next version is retail".

Most of ZBrush's bugs have workarounds, many of mudbox's do not. Ultimately a lot of artists I know use both, simply because one can do some things well while the other cannot. It's inconvenient, but that is life at the moment :)