ZBrushCentral

Advice for a complete newbie

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all, I am looking to get into 3D sculpting, purely for my own interest, but am totally new to the whole scene and would like a little advice please. Zbrush and Mudbox seem to be the applications of choice for a lot of 3D artists but before I blow a bundle on anything I want to see how I get on with using my pc to produce artwork and models.

To this end I have Sculptris installed on my pc and am ready to start giving it a go. I am guessing that trying to produce great 3d models with a mouse is probably difficult at best. I have an Aiptek A4 tablet that I am hoping will do the job. If anyone can give me some advice on getting started, desirable hardware and appropriate software to progress to after Sculptris I would be most grateful.

I am currently running on Win7 pro with an i7 950 processor, 24GB DDR3 RAM and an nVidia GTX560Ti graphics card so the rig shouldn’t encounter any running issues. Will the graphics tablet suffice or should I be looking for something else?

Cheers.

#2

Don’t know this tablet specifically. The main thing you want is that the tablet has pressure sensitivity. If it does, you should be ok.

apart from that, I would get demo/trial versions of both apps and try them out. Look up some basic tutorials on line or in youtube and work on them. Don’t know anything about Mudboxk, but Zbrush seems to be more of an industry standard although if you ask on a genearl 3D forum you’ll start a battle :slight_smile:

Good luck and post your work to get pointers.

#3

In zBrush you can also change the way the tablet pressure is interpreted (pic related). I’ve used tablets with both 512 and 2048 levels of sensitivity, and you won’t really be hindered by using a tablet without all the bells and whistles. The big plus side is that a LOT of people use wacom, and if you ever run into a problem, like loosing pressure sensitivity completely, somebody has likely dealt with this problem before, and can hopefully offer a quick solution. :slight_smile:

Sen2.JPG

#4

That’s interesting. Never looked into that. Some insight into what differences it makes would be great.

#5

Thanks for the info guys. Which Wacom tablet would you suggest for a beginner…should I look at an A4 or A3 size tablet? The Intuos range is probably the way to go.

#6

Yeah the Intuos is a good tablet. I would get the medium or large. The small one is a little small and the extra large is too much money, if you go that size you might as well get a Cintiq.

#7

Thanks for that mate…I think the large will be best…I have managed to find the Intuos5 Pen + Touch on Amazon for £340…can’t really grumble at that price, plus you get freebie software too :smiley: Even if I turn out to be completely hopeless at 3D modelling I will still have a good tablet for use with my art packages.