ZBrushCentral

Mins away from buying Zbrush BUT...

…i didn’t see a few answers to some simple questions i thought i would ask here before i made a mistake on letting go of $800, which is a lot of money ‘for me’ (i’m blue collar and don’t make much). Could someone tell me about the purchasing transaction? Does Pixologic send you a serial via email immediately after the purchase? Are there any kind of ‘hidden usage fees’ (like Magix, whereby if you activate one of their ‘download versions’ over 3 times you have to literally call up support on the phone and maybe even pay a fee for reactivating too many times?), etc, etc, or anything i don’t know about that everyone here knows is ‘common knowledge’ regarding the purchase (this is my first ‘non-demo’ purchase).

I did read there’s a 30 day return policy with a 5% deactivation fee (or something like that). I can’t afford to throw away $40 just because ‘it didn’t work’ on my system - like some users (or even many from what i’ve read) on the Autodesk forums are experiencing. And lastly, do you ‘own’ ZBrush once you buy it (i.e. will it always install and run, like 3 to 4 yrs later, if you uninstall it now and decide to reinstall and use it again at a much later date?). Sorry for being so nit-picky and a ‘perfectionist’, but this is a big move for me. Many thanks for any answers to any of these (paranoid) questions!!

Also, if i make everything in ZB, will the app ‘put everything together well’ so whatever i export will load correctly in either Blender or Maya (since i’ll probably rent Maya just to animate in)?

Since i’ll probably be heading to the store after i get a few answers, i also want to say hello to everyone and it’s great to be part of the ZB gang! :+1:

Tim
Specs: i7 Quad, 24GB, GeForce GTX 660, Intuos 4

You should be up and running in minutes with web activation. Happy camper here for 3 years :slight_smile:

Web activation? You mean there’s no dialog window within the app itself to type in the serial? You activate it with the serial they send you within your browser, at there site? If so, that’s pretty cool i suppose. I wonder if their site went down for a few days or if you couldn’t get on the net for whatever reason, if ZB would still run? Does the serial they send you get copied back to your registry after you install ZB so it’s ‘self contained’ and YOU’RE in control?

3 years huh?! That’s comforting. Hey thanks Doug!

Yeah you own zbrush once you buy it. Yes you can install it years later and it will still run and my experience has been you will get excellent support from pixologic regardless of how long ago the purchase. I own zbrush for 11 years now and have had amazing service all that time.

You can activate zbrush on and and offline but you need to contact pixologic for an activation code I think.

I dont know about the money back thing but you would have to have a very strange computer for zbrush not to work on it. You might have a problem in the future if zbrush switches to 64bit exclusively.

Zbrush does not do everything. You can rig and animate in it but its not intended for animation that is required by film or games. Zbrush is incredible at making and texturing assets and also very good at communicating with most 3d software that is commonly used in tandem with it.

Id say zbrush is cheap compared to what you get from it, but I cant see into your wallet.
Good Luck

Sounds good to me. I didn’t know it has a rigging system. Are you referring to one that is retained once you import it to say Blender for example or is it just a rig that’s only used as a ‘turntable’ effect? Thanks for the help too Kanga.

Rigs can be used to pose the model. ZSphere armatures which you can quickly create a shape with, then create a skin work well as a starting point. http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/modeling-basics/creating-meshes/zspheres/basic-humanoid/ Then under rigging you can bind the skin to that armature to pose it. There are other methods.

Oh i see. Thanks for the help Doug!! Since i’m not employed or doing freelance to audition my work, i’ll just skip that feature of ZB and buy/rent Maya later on for animation. God i wish AD and Lux didn’t change so much for rental.

Please let me re-ask one last and HUGH question: If Pixo’s site went down for whatever reason, i would still be able to run ZBrush, correct? I mean, since their activation system is web based, that doesn’t mean it’s like Steam’s system, whereby you have to be online to run the app, right? I can still run ZBrush if i’m not online, right? Much much thanks everyone, THEN i’m headed to the store :cool:.

Thanks again…
Tim

It’s not like an interactive web based world you have to be logged onto. Once activated you can chop up the internet cable if you want to. :wink:

LOL, that’s what i thought, just wanted to make sure though since they have no demo. Ok, here goes, off to the store. Thanks Doug…

Tim