I’d say that we have to wait for Siggraph for an annoucement. With the coming update, I hope that I can do all my sculpting work inside of ZBrush - It definitely looks great, now we have to wait and see.
I honestly hope it’s not coming before I have a real handle on the current version. I’m confused enough without new features 8-).
LN
when when
when when
when when
when when???
:lol:
I’m rather enjoying the lifetime learning curve…Pile on the new features!
Considering that it MUST be a 64Bit app, a lot of work has to be spend. I am sure it will knock our socks off.
LN
Why MUST it be a 64-bit app? Only a few exist now as it is. I don’t think there is any rush to 64-bit for ZB. I’m not sure, but I don’t believe there is any 64-bit support under Windows. So the Mac, and the G5 would be the only thing running it immediately. “Unless I have this wrong” there is no need to break the 4GB memory constraint of classic 32-bit processors within the application, using a 64-bit G5, or a 48-bit AMD (truth hurts :lol: ) processor alone will break the barrier using a 32-bit app, but I don’t see that a pure 64-bit app as an immediate must for the continued success of ZBrush at this point.
Hey weirdpal! Will you be going for tiger and core image? I sure as hell will be! HA!
Here is why I think it ‘must’ be a 64 Bit app.
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Cg is cutting edge or crap from yesterday. You have an edge, or the competition will give their edge to your throat. For free and any time you ask for it. At the least you have to stick with the mainstream.
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Windows 64Bit is out as Beta and works. The full version is around the corner.
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Dual Core is here. The dual core cpu’s are fast enough to deal with the HUGE memory amount we WILL buy very soon. No machine below 4-8GB.
Intel dual core is here
AMD dual core is here
G5 dual core is here but not available and 100% kink free… But when , Intel&AMD will have more than competition as unix beats windows any time. However, it will be priceyyyyy
(woaaaaaaaaaaa Duo dual core 3GHz G5… .slobber…I’ll sell my Bike for that…) -
ATI and the other guy’s:D have announced/delivered high end cards which can be stacked (tile rednering of the screen on two diffrent cards thus nearly doubling frame rates). Can’t run them really under the current windows which is… don’t even want’t to start…
So the next generation of modeling tools (XSI 64Bit eg. which I had the pleasure to stare at recently) WILL enable us to create scenes like Meats Robot as real 3d not 2.5 d scenes. And the WILL is relative. It’s there, it works, it’s just not sold right now, we can;t have it…sighhhhhh. I saw a head model which was subdivided (just for laughs) to 28Million poly’s and still was editable and deformable in real time. SCARY. Another scene showed more then 700 humanoid models (independent, no instances) each with it’s own rigging, sceleton,texture, animation etc. fully workable.
All there, right around the next curve. Who do you think will have interest in a ‘little’ organic detail modeler when the next move of the big packages is towards 64 bit driven poly madness.
64Bit Zbrush imho will be a serious contender in the tool arena. An enhanced version based on the current memory model will only benefit picologic for another few month. Then 64Bit will hit the fan BIG time.
As visionary as everything is around Zbrush…I simply estimate that it will be a 64Bit version. At least the core will be more than ready to switch.
NO new PC, except maybe in the in the end consumer field (and maybe not even there), will be of current architecture. Every business will HAVE to go 64 bit or your next software upgrade/maintenance contract will reguire it anyways.
Just my 2Cents
LemonNado
DataCenter Designer
PS:The last gig in 4GB PC is not really available, the first gig is eaten up quickly by the OS, the rest are 2GB which are divided and fragmented up between your app and the other debris which is running. On a PC you simply can;t get more than 2GB for an app and even that is really really hard to actually see… G5 and OSX is a different story. But I lack a few apps on the MAc and thus have to do most of my work on the ‘hate-love’ PC. 64Bit dual core is the salvation. The adress room of the 64Bit CPU’s is large enough for my app’s AND windows 8-). Finaly… after so many years:D.
The number of 64 bit workstations in use right now are not even a fraction of a percentage of the amount of 32 bit ones. If the next Zbrush update were 64 bits only it might sell a few 64 bit machines, but not enough. If pixologic does release a 64 bit version of Zbrush you can be sure the 32 bit version will have feature parity and not be dropped anytime soon.
Just an aside for those of us who have the joy of running Z2 on Mac systems, The only 64 bit applications that can be developed for Tiger ATM must be run as background processes. See:
http://www.blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=6071
Then again Zbrush is multi-threaded, so depending on how it is programmed it might take some sort of advantage of the 64 bit frameworks availible in Tiger.
Heres hoping we will see the release of the update soon, I already went out and purchased Silo just for its topology brush because I couldnt wait any longer! If the Mac version dosn’t come out at the same time as the PC version I will also probably have to purchase a second Z license, for my PC, as well. It was in fact the ‘preview’ of the new release that convinced me to finally buy Zbrush…
C’mon pixolator, don’t let us Mac users down!
Cheers,
Xarf
The main reason for running 64 bit applications on a 64bit OS is to increase memory addressing maximums.
By doing so, you also inherently increase all the 32 bit registers in the program to 64 bit and hence increase memory overheads caused by the app itself.
Out of interest, how often do you run into the 32-bit 2Gb memory limit? I In fact, how many users actually run workstations with 2Gb or more of physical ram? It is my impression that few users on this forum run machines with 2Gb or more, and that the majority seem to be using around 1Gb…
I have 4 machines here, and only 1 has 2Gb…the rest have less, and I run many apps that are far less optimised than ZBrush with few if any memory limit problems.
64 bit is not a bad thing, but please don’t assume that just because it is the latest thing on the market that you simply HAVE to have it…it does not represent a “competetive edge” in the way that Lemonnado makes out…
SLI (the two graphics card option mentioned) is already available and works under 32 bit OS’s…you don’t require 64 bit OS to get them to work.
Having access to large amounts of memory will indeed allow you to create and render mutli-million poly “meats-esque” scenes in apps like Lightwave and XSI when they are widely available in 64 bit versions. They will still take a proportionally long time to render though. If, like me, you come from a low resource background (3D on 4Mb Amigas with 30MHz processors) then you will have learnt that optimising your workflow for the resources you have is the way to go, rather than maxxing out the available resources just because you can. Multipass rendering of lower poly scenes is often a more efficient workflow option.
In fact, the main reason why big Production studios would be most interested in 64 bit builds of Max/Maya/Lw/XSI would be to allow them to use in excess of 2Gb of texture maps in the form of images…you need many more polygons than are renderable to push one of the above programs over 2Gb usage. It’s the textures that suck the most memory in production work, or does everyone use multi-billion poly untextured models these days?
Subdivided models with 28million polys are not the norm for any realworld work…just because you CAN doesn’t mean to say that you would WANT to, or NEED to 
I am simply grateful for the awesome toolset provided already in ZBrush, and look forward to the range of extras offered in glimpses of the next version. Every day I see amazing work on this forum done with ZBrush, and rarely see complaints about how limiting the 32 bit architecture is proving.
Until 64 bit workstations & OS’s are the norm and have stabilised (Windows 64 bit “working now” is not good enough for me - they have not entirely instilled coinfidence in me with their rprevious Gold code OS releases…Win NT, 2K & XP all required SPs before being truly stable…if they are even that now!), and 64 bit apps are available along with 64 drivers for ALL relevant hardware, then quite frankly, moving to 64 bit should not be a priority IMHO…you are simply asking for trouble unless you are one of the lucky people who a) doesn’t pay for their own hardware or software; b) desn’t troubleshoot problems themselves; and c) can dedicate a machine to one or two apps exclusively.
Just a contradictory personal opinion…Just my 2c if you like, to go with (or against) Lemmonado’s
Regards
Adam
I could see version 3.0 as maybe being 64 bit. As far as this upgrade is concerned… I highly doubt it. It would be nice for an update…kinda been awhile.
I have always used macs and I have to say that as a mac user I have found the smug superiority of pc users, who have been dominant in the market, irritating. The truth is Microsoft has always been behind and from what I have heard Tiger has made jumps that Microsoft has so far not even considered putting into Longhorn which is still two years away. I am very glad to see that year by year the more stable and dependable (and yes even attractive) mac is gaining market share. So often the poorer product becomes dominant (like VHS over BETA). 64 bit is useful and so is Tiger’s core image which allows software to take a lot of the work off of the processors and put it into the graphics card. This has got to help with render times (not a real issue in Zbrush of course!). I am looking forward to it.
32 bit apps still benefit from the advances in the G5 and in OS X, but programs streamlined to take advantage of 64bit are going to dominate the market in the next couple of years. Many of these programs should still work on 32bit (just not as well!). I do agree with streamlining workflow though. With such amazing equipment and software available, by economically setting up textures and polygons (thank you zbrush for fantastic displacement capabilities!), etc., we can now fly through work that would have taken forever only 5 years ago!
Nothing you wrote contradicts my statements.
I’d rather say that your truly professional opinion underlines, extends, and compliments my thoughts.
I fully agree regarding the texture size. As polygon counts will increase the texture sizes will definitely NOT become smaller either. Changes to higher resolutiion in broadcast standards will push everybody to render in higher resolution and tempt everybody to use more detail.
Excessive use of the possible polygon counts will not be the norm but available. Resources then available enable the use of particle concepts which have been impossible to be implemented right now (like ‘real’ fog). A head with 28Million polys is complete nonsense and just a proof of concept at this stage. However, an impressive one.
Regarding memory consumption, word length, and adress bus width I am not fully sharing your opinion. But that’s maybe a discussion worth in a tech forum.
Where I fully agree is your opinion regarding the ‘native’ requirement of ZB regarding 64Bit architecture. The main reason I estimate that is must be 64bit is that the app’s it compliments so nicely right now will demand it.
Regardless how it will turn out in the end.
I WANT IT AS BAD AS EVERYONE :D:D:D:D
LemonNado
Whoa. When did this thread become a venue for intelligent debate?
It seems to me that simply increasing ZBrush’s resolution limit would justify everything. Whether creating a poster-sized illustration natively, or exporting characters for animation, we see users every day who would benefit.
I mean, I don’t think anyone cares to rig and animate models of the complexity we’re describing. But, exporting displacement maps is another story. Forget rendering; just building a seamless character with as much detail on the fingers as you’ve put into the face… The change would be revolutionary. Meanwhile, your rendering platform of choice is indeed going to require a lot more RAM to handle the texture requirements of higher resolution 16 bit (or higher?) displacement maps on every object.
Whatever. I don’t think that’s in the cards for this version, but I’ve been wrong before. i’m just hoping we’ll know more after Siggraph. (booth #1411)
NLightUK -
Thank you for your very detailed and illuminating post. 
Ryan
When is this Free update to be released
No estimates have been made available as yet for when these features will be released. Pixologic’s policy is to not make estimates, and only give a date when it is firm.
So the best answer would be, “when it’s ready.”
When more information is made available, though, ZBC members will see it first!
I can not really contribute to the discussions about zbrush being on a 64 bit system, probably happen, but there will need to be a 32 bit version, otherwise, it won’t go down very well, not everyone can upgrade to a new workstation at the click of a finger
On another note, the next zbrush will be really neat, but I am not dying in anticipation, zbrush 2 is fantastic and keeps me going.
I really like zbrush for the 2.5d feature, and that’s something that won’t allow for animation.
2.5 can’t be animated like 3d, it won’t happen, and besides, if zbrush does go along the animation route, it will start competing with 3d heavyweight packages such as Maya and 3ds max, and I like zbrush because it’s different.
I like the way you can make scenes that can’t be achieved with Maya or max, but a few new 2.5d tools would be very nice
Maybe a tool that can make really neat 2,5d fog and cloud effects, to add atmosphere to scenes, and maybe some cool light to (paint light onto objects, for great artistic light control)
I can’t see an evolutionary step towards a new way of animation coming from zbrush. By maybe tools that take the idea of 2.5d to the next level.
I have not heard of much talk though that hints towards new 2.d tools, but the 2.5d makes zbrush great (yes the modelling as well, but half of brush’s greatness comes from 2.5d), and its seems its being neglected
These are just my views, anyways, the next realises should be really neat,
Cya
Joe Goss
I don’t believe ZBrush is heading in that direction either, but I have to say, your statements show a considerable lack of vision.
Imagine the power a program like After Effects or Combustion could give you it were compositing pixols rather than flat 2D spaces.
Imagine 3D animation software where compositing is taken for granted – every object is on it’s own layer, and the currently selected one can be edited and keyframed. Everything else is fully rendered into the background, taking next to no system resources.
2.5D doesn’t lend itself to animation? That’s crazy. It’d be a dream to work with!
It’s not that big a jump from the current version. Like I said, put every object on it’s own layer. Set a multimarker for each one. Script a button to update the current multimarker, switch layers, clear the canvas for that layer, and redraw it’s object into an editable state. In an animated version, this would clear the pixols from every frame on that layer and restore all of your keyframes along with the mesh and it’s materials. The mechanisms to do this aren’t hard to imagine.
Remember, ZBrush’s unique hybrid philosophy brings the power of 3D to traditional illustrators in a form they can fly with. Why shouldn’t it do the same for traditional animators?