“I don’t know about any R7 features, and doubt any testers would be allowed to answer questions.”
I don’t see why not. It’s not like it’s a secret function or anything.
“However, as to varying the edge weight in the present version, in the Tool > Geometry> Crease menu”
I’m not a big fan of roundabout ways of doing things. If a tool can do something straight forward then it should be able to just do it. Having a brush vary the softness of creases would be an immense benefit to artists.
“Since ZB has traditionally not been a tool that was concerned with the construction of deliberate geometry, the detail from crisp edges needs to be captured in a normal or displacement map like any other fine detail for rendering in external programs.”
And yet it it somehow edges towards the deliberate geometry route bit by bit to cover the needs of the users. Still, to be able to freeze the creases to geometry would be highly beneficial to modelers. It would not be impossible to implement such a function. I use Lightwave and there is an edge weighting option but it is buggy. The two major flaws with it are the bad polygon shading you get when you ‘sharpen’ polygon edges and you don’t get the weighted edges when you freeze the mesh with weighted edges. All frozen geometry has uniform subdivision which defeats the purpose of weighted edges if you plan use the frozen geometry as subdivision surfaces/nurbs.
“If that changes in the new version with the expanded modeling tools on display in the preview vids, then I imagine the same crease export problems and typical solutions for any modeler that rely on OBJ export would be available. Some programs can import polygroups as creasing groups, and if not, having polygroups assigned along crease borders can make assigning new creasing groups in the external program much easier.”
Lightwave doesn’t have creasing options, just edge weighting which, like mentioned, is buggy. Since I want to use the meshes in other programs that also do not have crease functions, not being able to freeze the creases has drawbacks.
“And there is always the tried and true method of simply modeling your hard edges in with geometry, the universal language of any subdivision modeler.”
I usually do this but the problem is that fiddling with the edge geometry affects the smoothness of the mesh object. If I make major changes to the mesh then I have to adjust the the edge loops for those crisp edges which can be a tedious chore depending on the mesh.
“Beyond that, I suggest you wait and see like everyone else. Then, if you have a feature request, submit it to Pixologic directly. Any feature requests are wasted on this board, likely to be missed by the people in the position to consider them. Further discussion of theoretical features here on the Q&T board would be fruitless.”
Hah! I’ve made a few feature requests directly to pixologic only to be ignored. These were good feature ideas, too, ones that would have made the zbrush experience much more pleasant for users. My last request however did get a positive reply but whether it gets added to the new version or not remains to be seen.
Yeah, I know that it’s pointless to make requests here but it was more of like “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” and not an actual request. Again, from my experience with feature requests made to pixologic I would only get ignored. My last feature request was just a fluke and I doubt it will make it to the new version anyway no matter how good it is.