ZBrushCentral

I'm almost ready to buy - Need some opinions on how ZB can help me

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi folks! I just need some help, the final push to buying ZBrush for myself and making American Express really happy next month. Bear with me, my question is at the bottom.

I got a chance to play around with ZBrush 3 using a Wacom tablet recently for about an hour. I have been studying and using a variety of 3D software for the past three months as a hobbiest. I own a tablet, but it is ill-suited to most 3D applications (I have a 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator PE on order :stuck_out_tongue: ). From the get go, ZBrush seems to be very organic in its artistic approach, and I love drawing with my Wacom at home ā€“ but I am a software/network security engineer, not an artist!

Right off the bat I jumped into the application and had a lot of fun. ZBrushā€™s approach is perfect for those of you with amazing skills in sculpting and hand drawing. In contrast, my engineering brain is wired to naturally accept 3D coordinate space and geometric objects (maybe it was AutoCad back in highschool in 1991?) So rendering, for me, is more fun when done against a background image, plotting vectors and lines and faces.

The first two things I made when learning Blender were a stapler (taken from a photo I took) and a pencil (my imagination and an 8-sided cylinder). The second was a space fighter craft.

I have recently also purchased Poser and Bryce. My question is, is it possible to use ZBrush successfully to create geometric-like, symetrical objects with clean lines and shap edges? Maybe itā€™s silly to ask, but working in ZBrush is soā€¦ squishy. I can see making clothes for Poser meshes, but ZBrush help me with things like buildings, furniture, etc? How do I know when to use Blender (my choice over any of the commercial apps for various reasons) and when to use ZBrush?

Thank you all for your time and opinions!

Derek

#2

It is possible to do just about anything in Zbrush, but if you are comfortable with Blender, I would stick with Blender. While you certainly can model buildings and furniture in Zbrush it will be much easier and faster and more accurate in Blender. But Zbrush would be useful for painting textures on your buildings. :slight_smile:

#3

Zbrush is capable of doing hard surface modelingā€¦ there have been a couple people on this forum whoā€™ve shown that with practice and experimentation, it can even be practical

but as long as youā€™re already good at those things in blender, then itā€™s probably more practical to continue working with blender

what ZBrush can do for you is amazing and easy high-res details and texturesā€¦ and I cant imagine never wanting an organic model for one of your images or animations

#4

This is good feedback. I love the idea of painting and texturing in 3D space without having to unwrap the UV coordinate map and paint on that (though Blender 1.44 actually has a pretty usable UV mapping interface).

I read that ZBrush interfaces with photoshop to do texture painting. Is there an interface with Gimp? Does ZBrush interface with Photoshop Elements or Corel Painter Essentials (I own both via my Wacom tablet bundle)? Does ZBrush require these applications to do texture painting?

I also want to customize my Poser avatars with clothing and objects. While Iā€™m capable of geometrics in a 3D app, getting clothing to flow just right would seem easier if I could justā€¦ draw it, and stick it to the characters, and fit it properly. None of my tools so far have been over $250, so justifying ZBrush would be a major step up.

I suppose out of all the tools that cost several hundreds of dollars, Zbrush is really a niche on its own, and other apps just canā€™t do what it does.

#5

ZBrush is more bang for the buck than any other graphics application Iā€™ve seen, in my opinionā€¦ it serves an extremely wide range of purposes, it does many things that no other software does, pixologic is receptive with their community, and theyā€™re building a reputation for free upgradesā€¦ those who owned ZB2 got ZB3 for freeā€¦ I think ZBrush and my Intuous 3 together have been the best spent money in my life

plus itā€™s still much cheaper than most other graphics software in its league such as max/maya/photoshop/etcā€¦ so thatā€™s my opinion as far as priceā€¦ but it really depends on how much the software will do for you and how serious you are about your artwork

if youā€™re wanting to do clothes with characters, check out mesh extractionā€¦ you can draw a mask on your character, extract, and a seperate mesh is extracted from your character as a subtool which conforms to the mask you drew and the shape of your characterā€¦ you can then add wrinkles and details to make it clothing and fairly easily re-incorporate the geometry into your character mesh

alsoā€¦ I dont know about the new ZAppLinkā€¦ but Iā€™m pretty sure the old one could work with any graphics app that supported .psd filesā€¦ so Corel Painter was an optionā€¦ Iā€™m not sure about GIMP, but I think soā€¦ but again, thatā€™s the old ZappLink for ZB2ā€¦ I dont know about the new one

I feel itā€™s also worth mentioning that Iā€™ve found nothing else in digital art which feels as awesome as the ability to paint geometric detail like ZBrush canā€¦ to literally spraypaint things like skin pores with real geometry on your model is unique and wonderful and extremely useful

#6

Thanks for the feedback! ZBrush is on my list of software to purchase. Iā€™m going to wait until next month simply because Iā€™ve just recently dumped close to $500 on software already (not to mention the hordes of books I seem to accumulate). But I canā€™t wait to jump into ZBrush.

Another app Iā€™ve been having a complete BLAST with using my Intuos3 is called ArtRage. Itā€™s only $25, extremely versatile and fun, and works just like painting on a canvas with all the real-world tools - you can even sprinkle glitter on your drawing. As far as tablet apps go, thereā€™s not many that make it as fun as ZBrush and ArtRage. Both of these apps have really nailed the real-world feel of art.

#7

For your purposes Iā€™d say that zbrushes best features would be its 3d painting, and taking your already pre-existing hard surface models and giving them depth and wear (:ex: Broken chunks out of cement walls), then using the extra details as displacement maps and and overlays/guidlines for durring the texturing process.

#8

yeah,

not every software or modeling paradigm is suited to all tasks.

is it POSSIBLE to build a stapler in zbrush? certainly.

is it the best way to do it? probably not.

since youā€™re the thinky type, the major non-manufacturing/cad related modeling paradigms are:

  • nurbs
  • polys
  • subdivision surfaces
  • sculpting

(blender can do all of the above but does nurbs very poorly and lacks all the things that make nurbs worth using)

each has DISTINCT ADVANTAGES and strengths and each has very real weaknesses. for instance, if you needed to carve a rounded trench into a sphere, NURBS would definitely be the way to goā€¦ but nowadays, a creature would not be an ideal fit for nurbs. and nurbs tend to be the most tedious to work with, needs more planning and overall tends to be rather left brain in terms of procedure (i think youā€™d like itā€¦ i tend to like it myself but sometimes iā€™m in too much of a hurry to be able to afford to play here).

(google the different techniques for more info)

sculpting in zbrush of course utilizes polys and subdivision surfaces but i list it as a separate paradigm because it is distinct from ā€œtraditionalā€ subdivision surface and poly modeling.

and it has become a fav and is usable at all really because of the advent of the concept of ENCODING the extreme amount of detail achievable through sculpting into a simplified mesh by means of a DIFFERENCE MAP (displacement map and/or normal map and/or bump map).

-sculpt extremely dense mesh
-encode the detail onto a simplified mesh through a difference map
-animate(etc.) simplified mesh and then reclaim the detail of difference map at render time.

in movies, this technique hit the big time with LOTR1 where the difference map was projected onto NURBS characters from detailed poly meshes.

in games, this technique hit the big time with DOOM3 and FAR CRYā€¦ in this case, to accommodate the real time render engine, the difference map being used was a normal map.

oddly enough, all this happened right around the same time and really resulted in an explosion of awareness for this technique.

so zbrush for something like a modern plastic spray bottle? possible certainly but not the best way to go.

having said all that, i CANā€™T IMAGINE that you will regret purchasing zb. zb is basically BEST IN CLASS and considering that, pretty affordable - especially considering what has been a ludicrously generous upgrade policy. it will definitely come in handy in sculpting clothing and adding subtle natural foldsā€¦ and i dunno, if youā€™re as enthusiastic about cg as you sound, youā€™ll probably take pretty quick to sculpting stuff for pleasure. check out the galleries!

not to mention that you can indeed paint on your models in 3d without the need for photoshop.

also, there are certain kinds of high frequency architectural detail that would be difficult to achieve using other methodologiesā€¦ will post a link.

anyhoo, thereā€™s some bg info. do some research. look at the zb docs available from the pixologic front page (under support) and good luck on your decision.

jin

#9

http://sebleg.free.fr/

sebastien has the most unbelievable stuffā€¦ he does things in zb like guns and stuff that are unbelievable.

also, check out his architectural sectionā€¦ you would be hard pressed to create detail like that using another methodology.

jin

#10

I have recently also purchased Poser and Bryce. My question is, is it possible to use ZBrush successfully to create geometric-like, symetrical objects with clean lines and shap edges? Maybe itā€™s silly to ask, but working in ZBrush is soā€¦ squishy. I can see making clothes for Poser meshes, but ZBrush help me with things like buildings, furniture, etc? How do I know when to use Blender (my choice over any of the commercial apps for various reasons) and when to use ZBrush?

This should make it easy for you :smiley:

Just buy Zbrush, and when you want to model non-organic things use on of thease great applications:

Wings 3D
http://www.wings3d.com/

Blender 3D
http://www.blender.org/

I suggest learning blender so you can animate your stuff easy.
They will soon have Tangent space normal maps working, so bye the time you learn all the good stufff , it should be ready for you.
Blender has one of the best UV mappping utilitys !

Have fun!

#11

I have recently also purchased Poser and Bryce. My question is, is it possible to use ZBrush successfully to create geometric-like, symetrical objects with clean lines and shap edges? Maybe itā€™s silly to ask, but working in ZBrush is soā€¦ squishy. I can see making clothes for Poser meshes, but ZBrush help me with things like buildings, furniture, etc? How do I know when to use Blender (my choice over any of the commercial apps for various reasons) and when to use ZBrush?
This should make it easy for you :smiley:

Just buy Zbrush, and when you want to model non-organic things use on of thease great applications:

Wings 3D
http://www.wings3d.com/

Blender 3D
http://www.blender.org/

I suggest learning more about blender so you can animate your stuff easy.
They will soon have Tangent space normal maps working, so bye the time you learn all the good stufff , it should be ready for you.
Blender has one of the best UV mappping utilitys !

Have fun!