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One small addition by Pixologic, one giant leap for Zbrushing kind

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#1

Hello everyone

I had an idea last night (im sure im not the only one to think this) but i thought that perhaps starting a thread with that idea would let the community talk about it, and hopefully the good people at Pixologic would take notice and implement this in a new update or version.

So here it is:

There are so many posts on ZBC (on all over the net infact) from people trying to get a good pipeline between Zbrush and Max, more for the rendering purposes in Max than anything else. I think that if Pixologic introduced a lighting system into Zbrush similar to the one in max (with omni lights, spots etc) basically lights you could physically add into the scene and adjust, far more people would use Zbrush for final renderings instead of taking it into another app. I definitely would. I have been struggling with the limitations the lighting system in Zbrush imposes on you, as there is not a great deal of control in it, which means the renders ultimately suffer a little bit.

So please Pixologic, please, add in a proper lighting system :slight_smile:

Anyone agree with me?

#2

I just hope one day Mental ray will be the part of Zbrush.

#3

Sorry but this is just nonsense. If you want a lighting system like max, why not using max? O_o Also I don’t think lighting in Zbrush has anything remotely close to max, so basically they would have to license Mental Ray for every Zbrush license and therefore make it more expensive…

But yea dreaming is free. I also would like to have subdivision surface in Zbrush so I don’t have to use any other software, and also animation in Zbrush would be cool.

:rolleyes:

#4

@ DDS
sorry mate, didnt mean to offend you. but there are a number of reasons i suggested this:

  1. i dont know how to use Max yet
  2. not everyone has the cash to buy the license for max as well as zbrush
  3. i dont think they would have to license mental ray at all, they could simply impliment a system similar to it (they already have a lighting system, so using those algorithms, im sure it wouldnt be to difficult to adapt it slightly to allow more control over the lighting)
  4. it was merely an idea to try and implement something into zbrush to help out an already great program.
#5

Whilst of course dreaming should always be encoraged its worth pointing out that zbrush works very, very well because it makes no pretence to do anything other than sculpting. The more areas you try and move into the more you weaken the core product thus ending up with nothing more than another “do it all but none of it exceptionally well” program which we are already flooded with. Personally id prefer to use a different program for each stage of the process if the software allowed me to get exactly what i want during each stage.

Of course this leads to greater cost and i can see how u may not be able to afford licenses for everything, but unfortunatley this is an expensive game and if pixologic were to add max level rendering the price of zbrush would only go up as well which would eventually put it out of your reach anyway.

#6

yeah Illumicmatt you make a good point ill admit it. i think this is stemming from my frustration at figuring out how to get my high res sculpts into max to render them out nicely…

perhaps im wrong about all of this, in which case i apologise, but it was just a thought :slight_smile:

#7

Hi guys ,I think if you consider that every version of zbrush has been amazing ,always progressive ,then that is the best lighting system they can provide at this time and sure the next upgrade is going to have radical new features and maybe a better lighting system;)

#8

I totally understand the OP’s concerns. The trouble with other programs is that they can’t handle ZBrush’s poly counts. This means we’re forced to use displacement maps which can often be very difficult to setup. and sometimes there are major compatibility issues between ZBrush and other programs.

ZBrush is not just a sculpting program and never has been. ZBrush’s roots lie in the 2.5D painting. I always saw ZBrush as a weird painting program with modeling and sculpting features added. But over time the program has slowly transformed into a full blown modeling program.

So yes, I would love to see an improved renderer in ZBrush. Especially with improved texture baking features too.

I can sympathize with the animators in this thread. They will always have the need to take their models into other programs. But for a lot of us, we don’t have that need and it’s a lot of unncessary time and money spent to be leaving ZBrush just for the sake of a single render or a few baked textures.

#9

Just give me ‘layers’ and the ability to blend materials, and use spec/emissive/etc maps, and I’ll be happy.

The current material system is too limited, and a pain to use, having to ensure the materials are in the right slots when you reload a model. Even with helpful plugins, it is still hacky.

One thing blender gets right, it saves everything used in a project into the blend file. If Ztools and Zdocuments could save materials/slots/etc as well, that would be awesome.

#10

The ability to have better lighting/shadows/reflections/transparency have always been my main issues with ZBrush. That being said, it was my first ever graphics package and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

As my good friend Anon pointed out to me, however, a large part of the problem stems from the fact that ZBrush is Pixol based, and items in the scene don’t necessarily correlate with each other the way they do in a program like Max. In other words, an object behind another object is not always placed the way it is in a program with real word perspective and scene capabilities. In this way, it makes it difficult to properly calculate lighting (or reflections, etc) for a scene. In order to do that properly, we would have to have some orthographic control over the objects in our scenes. To me, that would be my biggest wish. In itself, ZBrush’s lighting is not half bad - when applied to a solitary object. I think with the ability to set up a scene properly, the lighting might actually be sufficient.

Of course, being able to place lights in the scene itself, as suggested, would still be the ideal setup. Anyway, just my 2 cents (can I have my change?).

#11

Yeah, I’d like Zbrush to evolve into the foremost polygon/SubD polygon modeling software in teh world. It’s so close, it wouldn’t take much to put it there.