ZBrushCentral

a little thought about a possible feature for zbrush

I was checking the joe alter site , because they were talking about a new lbrush for maya that was going beta … lbrush is a multi resolution sculpting like zbrush , integrated in max or maya … lbrush can support multi millions polygons meshes at multi resolution … so that’s impressive considering maya and max viewports ^^ now … lbrush is no zbrush when it comes to sculpting , and I don’t plan to switch any time … but … something caught my attention … I’ve been thinking for a while of a bridge to convert sculpting layers or something along those lines … linking morphs to a rig … like to moprh the face or shape muscles when they bulge at angles , modify wrinkles or veins … all that with a single click export … ( OK maybe not a single click , but as few as you can ) … and lbrush can do just that …

see for yourself

lbrush video

you can link the sculpture to the rig to morph the model according to the skeleton pose … sculpting that directly converts to animation …

so … could we make a bridge that either convert it directly into morph that can easily linked to a rig … or even a bridge to make it usable in lbrush ?

zbrush is still far ahead in term of pure sculpting , but having it tied to animation the way lbrush is would be mighty sweet … it would make my life complete and all

the way I it … you would simply assign a sculpt as a morph to a bone … and specify a movement range to the bone that would define how the morph applies … like … at this angle … the morph of the biceps bulge is at 100 %

I’m not a coder or anything … just wondering if such a tool could be done … it may revolutionize rigging and skinning …

( I’m a dreamer … )

so this idea is so stupid that no one will even consider it ? … well maybe … can’t blame someone for dreaming of a smoother creative process …I guess that whole idea was lame …

Blendshapes! :smiley:

yeah … like … having sculpt layers being rendering as morph targets in max or blendshapes in maya … with a click , selected layers would turn into morph targets and morph maps in max … what we do with it is our concern … but then having zsphere turned into bone and sknning … after that we could just link it as we wish … all with a minimal clicks setup

I know … it’s ridiculous to think about it … still … it’s stuck somewhere in the back of my mind … actually if pixo was on it , I’m sure he could come with something even more refined and creative … ( I mean … lots of features in zbrush surprised me by taking a different approach to a given problem ) … so , full rigging in zbrush is kinda my dream …

by the by , the features already present in zbrush are great ( love noise and spotlight ) but we still need to export for proper animation and rendering so , if it could be as easy and painless as possible …

PS : it seems mudbox can import rigged models … not trying to compare , zbrush is more innovative and all but … the lbrush type of morph + rigging from zpshere = total utter joy …