ZBrushCentral

3DCoat or ZB?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi everyone, I’m new to the forums here, and I need help!

I’ve already rooted out Mudbox… (blech…) So…

After using the demo of ZB extensively for almost the full allotted time and also using 3DCoat for a few days. I’ve got to say that 3DCoat is my top choice right now. I’ve compared all the features that I would be using in my pipeline, and the ease of use for each of them.

What I’m wondering, is can anyone show or tell me why I should go with ZB over 3DCoat? Is there something I’m missing?

One of the biggest setbacks with ZB, is that there is no low polypainting. Texture painting requires a really high poly count to get “decent” results, of course there is Zapplink, but, that doesn’t seem to work most of the time from what I’ve heard from other users. On the other hand, 3DCoat v3 (which is due to release Q1 2009) has this feature no problem, in fact, not only can you paint directly on the mesh like ZB, but you can also paint directly in the UV window.

Also, comparing the retopology tools, 3DCoat has the upper hand there as well. Another thing I’m enjoying so far using the demo, is the voxel sculpting.

That all said, someone please tell me what ZB has over 3DCoat? I need help, thanks!!

#2

I’m curious why the PolyPaint requirement for high polygon counts is a limitation? The concept behind PolyPaint is that each point you’re painting corresponds to a pixel on the texture. That means that a 1K texture is equal to about a 1 million poly model. A 2K texture is a 3-4 million poly model and a 4K texture is about 10-12 million. (Most mapping has a lot of empty space.)

ZBrush can easily handle these polygon counts on most systems. Especially the 1K and 2K texture equivalents.

So with ZBrush you can paint your model at any time during the creative process, even before mapping has been assigned. You can even change mapping without losing any work that you’ve done painting. When done, you simply transfer the paint to a standard texture and export that. You don’t need to take the high poly model into your other app.

So how does any of this end up being a limitation for you? It should be providing several advantages over traditional texturing methods.

#3

Millions of polygons and blazing high end performance on lenient system specs, for one?

Zbrush is primarily a sculpting app, at which it sets the standard, that also happens to do a surprising number of other things, like texture painting, illustration, and rendering pretty decently.

If your primary need is texture painting, there are applications that specialize in that, or otherwise offer more options. People rarely pick up ZBrush for primarily that reason, but they use it because it can do very well in that area, as well as all the other things its brilliant at.

Frankly though, if the power ZB offer in its specialty areas is not apparent to you , its probably not something thats going to be important to you, and not something you need.

(and FYI, you can paint any sized texture on a low rez mesh with even better results than polypainting, you just have to use the legacy projection master function, which is not as direct , interactive and intuitive as you might like. The reason you use polypainting, is because its more interactive, and embeds color information directly into the mesh independant of UVs or texture…which you can then transfer to any new UV layout or texture.)

#4

I have both and have used both quite a bit, but prefer ZB. The main thing for me is sculpting speed. 3D-coat is a little laggy still. The variety and refinement of ZB’s toolset is a big plus for me. I have found Zbrush to be a bit more robust for doing real work and high polygon levels than 3D-Coat, which will very promising shows its immaturity as a product.

Sooo . . . if feature count were my only criteria, then 3Dcoat, Silo or Modo might be the way to go . . . however, for robust sculpting at high polygons, with refined features like lazy-mouse, extensive brush and alpha customization, and a decent texturing/painting solution, I’d have to give the edge to ZB for its superior speed.

If I was looking for a pure painting solution, I might give Bodypaint (Maxon’s product) the nod, as it has a pretty extensive paint set for photoshop-like painting of models. (I’ve used Bodypaint quite a bit for detailing simple, already sculpted models, but with ZB3 I’ve found I use BP less and less.)

At the end of the day, it will come down to your skill as an artist, and I find for my work that ZB is the best going for detailed sculpting work.

3D-Coat is coming along nicely, but I’ll have to see how that volumetric sculpting works against real-world, high detail models.

-K

#5

3dc’s Voxel sculpting is much easier to get into and does not have the learning curve that zbrush has. You can get some pretty nice results with voxel sculpting and it is fun to use if you are just sketching. It’s very flexible in terms of being able to just add details on anywhere. Big problem is it’s speed. One your object gets to a certain resolution your ability to make changes to the obj become severely impaired. There isn’t even a way for the user to optimize the speed of voxel sculpting. I’ve tried it and I like it. But I’m unsure of it’s expandibility. I’ve tried it on an 8 core quadro fx 5600 8 gigs of ram, and after a while, sculpting becomes impractical. It has some serious speed issues that need to be overcome.

#6

This thread has been merged with the commercial applications thread.