As I’ve shown each new artist at my studio how to use zbrush in our pipeline, there are these familiar points of confusion to get through, as they all get stumped by the same things that I did:
“I can’t make it do this thing that should be obvious…”
“Oh, yeah, that. No, you have to do this bizarre roundabout process to do what you want”
…
“What am I doing wrong here?”
“Oh, that… no you’re not doing anything wrong, it’s just broken. I think it’s been broken forever.”
…
“Why does the screen have a set resolution? Isn’t this a modeling program?”
“Yeah, it’s a really good modeling program, but it want’s to be an illustration program for some reason. So, click Edit as soon as you load the model.”
Sound familiar?
My sense it that Zbrush is made by a bunch of really smart, creative people, who, for some reason, simply don’t have much interest in the kind of focus that you would expect from a high profile piece of software. They aren’t aiming at a single target like, “make an indispensable high poly sculpting and texturing tool.” Even though this is clearly what almost everyone is using this program for. Just look up at the top row gallery… High poly textured sculpts.
Why isn’t it important to Pixologic to try and improve the things that everyone uses all the time? I don’t need to draw in Zbrush, I know how to use Photoshop. It won’t ever really be a final-pass renderer, because for a final scene render, you need to be able to compose objects in a 3d set, and zbrush doesn’t have one. It is middleware. It’s ok for it to be middleware.
The Remesh tool is amazing… groundbreaking. The same can be said for dozens of improvements to Zbrush. And yet… why won’t they fix what’s broken? Give us poly modeling, give us a uv editor, give us layered polypaint, give us better retopology tools. Skip the animation, the drawing, the lightbox, these things are not it’s core competency. Is anyone making a living painting on the canvas with 2 1/2D brushes? I’m guessing not many. We are using Zbrush to make digital sculptures, which are then exported somewhere else.
Please add functionality to this core feature set. Fix what’s broken, awkward or buried. Don’t heap on random functionality that only hobbyist will be interested in.
I’m going to keep using Zbrush because it’s amazing. I only wish it was rational too.
Sincerely,
Richard Smith
PS. No doubt you will want to call me a whiner. Save your breath, I already know.