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#21

ZB’s interface has lots of optimizations for users with stylus’s that other 3D apps tend to ignore. For example, you can spin your model without pressing a key. You don’t need a middle mouse button unlike many other default interfaces. After logging thousands of hours with ZB’s interface, I can say it’s pretty efficient for the stylus user. I only have a couple of customizations to my interface (a couple of buttons and a plugin to make my Wacom touchstrips useful) which I spent less than ten minutes on. What I like is ZB doesn’t demand a mouse or tons of keyboard interaction (which is very distracting when sculpting.) Only a few buttons (on the tablet) and a stylus and its good to go. I find Modo, Maya, Silo, C4D all are very mouse oriented and require either a lot of customization or mouse/stylus switch-off.

I find that most of the negative comments come from those who aren’t prepared/willing to learn the efficiencies of the stylus-based interface. I’ll concede that ZB’s interface at times feel’s like someone designed a strange interface for the heck of it, but often, once you understand the underlying logic of the feature, the additional complexity or oddness makes sense.

Emulating another applications interface (and giving up the additional power in ZB) would probably be a mistake. Where I think ZB messes up is in poor docs, poor and incomplete context help, and not enough newbie startup info that gets people up and running quickly.

(Not to mention the buggy and incomplete product thing which drives everyone batsh#t a lot of the time. :smiley: )

-K

#22

hey ped i guarantee you if you look at the people who makes these silly comments portfolios your answers will become clear.

#23

who is ped?
my biggest hurdle with Zbrush is mostly the camera and the Zspheres.
i did a video footage of me fighting the Zspheres, and it went for about 12 minutes, to make a simple 4-legged creature thingy, a similar thing took me less than 1 minute to create in 3ds max

#24

Ped started the thread. I can create a quadruped in zspheres in 1 or 2 minutes. I can also create one in Modo, C4D, Hash A:M, and about another dozen in a couple of minutes. The value of ZB isn’t determined but what a knowledgeable user can accomplish in a few minutes or even what a tyro might accomplish–it’s about what a sculptor can do in a few hours versus many times more hours in other packages. Sculpt for sculpt, I can accomplish in ZB in 10 hours what would take me 20-30 in Modo or C4D. (Yes, I timed myself at one point–and I was far more familiar with C4D’s interface and Modo’s Lightwave-like interface.)

I won’t deny that Zbrush’s learning curve is steep, and moreover the interface design does little to make it less steep. However, the value is not in accomplishing “quick hits” anymore than someone coming from Photoshop and learning 3D for the first time can evaluate the value of Maya in few hours.

Most of my private students master ZB’s camera controls in less than half an hour (as unnatural as the controls may seem at first.) I teach zspheres only as the way to get a basic lump of clay in approximately the right shape for beginners. Detailed work in zspheres requires considerable practice at estimating adaptive skins, and for many new users, basic box modeling with Subdivision surfaces (such as offered by Max, Modo, Silo, and Maya) is actually a quicker route to a detailed mesh.

If I was picking what area to do next (after fixing bugs and getting their quickstart act together.) I would recommend to the pixologic team that the complement their system with better box-modelling tools. The simple edge-loop and move tools are a little light and some basic tools polygon-by-polygon editing would be a big help (like the ability to fill a polygon whole, select a ring of polys quickly, overlapping selection sets, etc.)

-K

#25

you nailed it Kerwin… that’s exactly why I don’t get the complaints about ZBrush’s interface

when I can lean back in my chair with my tablet and only reach forward to my keyboard once every few minutes, that’s a great interface in my opinion

the set-up is really simple… the 4 buttons on the left side of my Intuous go to Alt, Shift, Ctrl, and Ctrl+Shift… the touch strip is bound to [] for quick brush sizing… one button on my stylus for Undo, the other for Redo… and the right side of my tablet for controlling Winamp :D… if ZBrush supported the Intuous airbrush wheel, I would have control of my brush’s focal area as well

Now I admit that there are a few processes in ZBrush that are really strange to figure out, such as the set-up process for re-topology… but in those cases you just need to take some time to look up the steps online and afterwards it should never be a problem again

and the unexpected beauty of processes like those is there is so much space within them for experimentation… for example… ZSphere rigs are not an officially supported feature of ZBrush (yet?), but users who dared to think “there must be a reason for all these extra steps and buttons that don’t make sense” went ahead and played with things and figured it out

#26

well, mudbox works fine with a pen too, and in addition you have the shortcut for brush size and strength.

#27

ZB has short cut buttons for size and you can assign what keys you wish. There is an even more flexible script (readily available on this forum) if you want to adjust with touchstrips and have some control of the response speed.
A simple press of the spacebar puts most important controls under my pentip in a flash and i can jump my brush size without imitating a woodpecker on the keys. The “S”, “O”, “I” and “U” keys are also right there if you don’t like the spacebar combo.

Agreed that Mudbox works with tablets better than most, but there are other threads that discuss the virtues of one versus the other. No need to recount them here.

#28

hmm. the woodpecker comment, are you thinking about photoshop? hehe.
i’ve been pondering on using Zbrush for painting dirt and such on unwrapped 3d models.
how do i go about doing that?

#29

Hmmm . . . Polypainting and cavity masking would be my normal way. I’d then use Col > Texture to save my as a texture of 2048 x 2048 for higher res stuff (I think the current texture limit is 8192–I’ve used 4096 before . . .) and 512 x 512 for smaller background things. Be sure to turn your intensity way down for painting dirt and use a spray stroke which will give an airbrush effect.

-K

#30

yeah. the problem i’ve had with other 3d paint apps and non-photoshop apps in general is that when i turn everything way down, i still manage to get big ugly blotches at pressure levels close to 3-4%

#31

Depending on the rendering platform, you might look into a “dirt shader” which would tend to give you something more calculated. Not as controlled as a map. You might also try fiddling with your pen’s response curve in the control panel for it. I find that my Wacom’s a little to sensitive for my liking. (I also use a stylus with a springloaded nib on my Wacoms for delicate work, rather than hard plastic one that usually loaded.)

-K

#32

Open Zbrush, Load a polysphere, get anything you want out of it.
That’s Zbrush, quit fighting.

(Just be careful with the T key) :lol:

#33

That’s a pretty unrealistic approach to getting models in a production environment. For games and animation (my field), geometry counts. While starting with a sphere is a common starting point, evening out topology is important even in ZB so that uniform detail can be applied. Exportation of maps, adding visual indication of weathering (or dirt), etc. are all part of the process of building production ready models in any industry I’ve been involved with.

Advise like “just sculpt a polysphere” is a pretty unsophisticated and incomplete approach, moreover ignores why ZB supports poly painting, topology, etc.

-K

#34

I dont know what all this fight is about, they start yelling cuz zbrush is a really hard to leran app, and then they change to “zbrush is uslees for production”

Well… i think that you forget that Zbrush, game industry and all that stuff is something fun, even when you have a deadline, Zbrush offers the capacity of sculpting really quickly (giving you more time for the funny part), making a model out of zspheres, re-topologizing to taste, and uv-mapping in an external app.

Then all the textures are exported in your favourite format.

Before meeting Zbrush, I used to spend two or three days hand-painting textures in photoshop, making quick render tests for the seams and creating normal maps was a nightmare!, With zbrush is as fast as it gets: Create your model as you want it, with NO CREATIVE LIMITATIONS :eek:

Then with retopo, get your desired poly count, and re-project the geometry. UV unwrap in maya, and import the uV set in zbrush. Poject all textures and in less than 12 hours you can have a (moreless) production quality character.

I’d like to ask you to think about the making of Davy Jones, without using Zbrush, and then tell me what you think.
I’d like to ask yoy to think about Gears of War, without using Zbrush, and then make comments.

Maybe I’m just too stupid, or maybe I have a easy way to see life.

Take a piece of clay, (the polysphere) and let your creativity flow.

#35

Making a model out of zspheres is not starting with a poly sphere. I think you need to spend a little more time with Zbrushs Retopology and projection tools before making pronouncements about their pipeline worthiness.

As or your examples, most of the models you cite (GoW and PoC) were NOT started with spherical lump or even zspheres. Your comments betray a lack of understanding of how pipelines work, how projects get done. The industry is FUN, but it is not a “let your creativity flow and do what you want business” except maybe at the very top in some of the production design departments, and even then there are considerable limitations of what the producer and director want and when they want it.

Your post smacks of an outsider’s fantasy of what actually goes on in a genuine pipeline environment of any substantial industry production.

Zbrush (especially ZB2 for PoC) seemed to be used primarily as a detailing technology to be taken back into rendering in other systems. I don’t think the original model or it’s base mesh was 100% ZB. (I wasn’t associated with that production, so I honestly don’t know for sure except for some the product art a colleague showed me.) Certainly comments from Geoff (ILM) and Sze (Blur) have lead me to believe that they start with a mesh modeled outside of ZB. (I think there is even of youtube out there somewhere of Sze’s process where she imports a head from Maya(?) as her starting point.)

-K

#36

the re-topo tools are arguably the most difficult ZBrush feature to learn, and they can be kind of clumsy and perhaps a bit unreliable… but after some practice, it’s really easy to adapt to their limitations and create whatever geometry you need on any model while avoiding any crashes & difficulties…

I don’t have a lot of traditional box modeling experience… I’ve done it… but in all my ZB3 projects (which I admit have all been personal), I’ve found it easiest to start from ZSpheres or a primitive, sculpt, re-topo, then sculpt and detail… this way I’m completely unconstrained in working out the forms in my concept and adjusting whatever I need to before my geometry and such is set in stone… and then I can build my geometry around my concept instead of constraining my concept to a pre-built geometry that I was forced to build before being able to get a real look at and feel for what I’m making

#37

Building for production pipes, A.K.A. for steady employment, a modeler really needs to break down and learn how to build a proper base mesh in a real modeling app. If you are ok with staying in hobbyville then Zsphere/re-topo away!
Zpheres are real fun and niffty, and seem to get some interesting and useful things done, but what they really are used for is to jump right into koolio zbrushing and sculpting asap. If the clock is ticking and a modeler has to stop everything and build a re-topo mesh when the mesh should have been build properly the first time, well, your supervisor will eventually start looking at the clock and start looking at more Demo Reels.
There will always exceptions, but I tell my students to focus on good modeling and mesh construction first and the details will fall into place later.

Oh yeah, and if you want proper(aka useful pipeline ready) UVs, guess what, you need use a proper modeling app to do it.

#38

Unfortunately, In ZB 3.12 our tests have shown conclusively that the adaptive skin generator doesn’t always build adaptive skins that conform to the topology. We frequently get inversions and twists in the skin which ZBrush technical support somewhat acknowledges as a “limitation” or “bug.” Regrettably, I cannot in good faith recommend to anyone to spend a couple hours building a new topology only to find the adaptive skin generator won’t deal with some forms of branching geometry. The only “fix” for this limitation is to build the base mesh in another package, load it, and reproject the sculpt onto the corrected base mesh. Not only is this time consuming, but the topoplogy projectors in ZB (whether Zsphere method or Subtool method) require significant "clean up. In an animation pipeline (I’ve been lead TD in six) we’ve mostly had to start with a relatively good base mesh, and then build detail onto that (avoiding retopo and reprojection.)

The arbitrary method is do-able (and we have proprietary tools similar to TopoGun to assist with that) but is less than ideal. It would be foolish of me to recommend to those ambitious to work in the animation or games industry to believe that you’ll get by on your ZB skills alone, and that just start with a lump and “be creative” will get you very far.

I feel some posters are disingenuous here commenting on things like Pirates or GoW without really understanding the actual approach used. Moreover, ZB is not the be-all and end-all. Despite the negative comments by some ZB users, Mudbox, Modo, and Silo are all tools that people are using today and ZB’s bugs and compatibilities are turning off people who actually need to produce work in a large, environment.

Zb is, IMHO, the best sculpting tool available right now (regardless of platform.) However, it needs to be approached like any powerful tool, with and understand of it’s limitations be used successfully. Some of its limitations (especially on the Mac platform) are so severe, that it is close to unusable in a production environment unless it is approached with extreme caution (with means not depending on its Retopo tools to get a workable mesh.)

Many smaller shops can’t just throw around another three or four hours of time per model (sometimes even worse) to retopo and reproject and cleanup because the character artist didn’t feel like starting with a proper base mesh.

-K

#39

QFA. Much less long-winded that my answer. :smiley:

-K

#40

Afraid to tell my name??

I’m not telling you that Zbrush is THE way… I started learning in a standard 3d app ( maya ), like almost anyone here and I am concious about the pipeline in the poc or gow or even the mexican agencies (Anima Estudios, Alux CG, Media Edutainment, to say some), i’m really a fan of cg industry.

I know that davy jones wasn’t born made out of pixols, as I know that they used Imocap for the rigging (made in maya) but even ILM has said that making him would be impossible without Zbrush.

Kerwin… Before leaving this war zone, I just want to apologize of my stupid way of looking at those things, i know that I’m just a noob, (4 months of zbrush use, 1 year of maya), and I know my limitations, I really thought that this forums were something valuable for the starters.

This battle of Zbrush vs All apps is so stupid like figthing about Photosop being able to make a movie (or those from Vista+Linux+Mac)

:small_orange_diamond:I think, that regardless the pipeline used, the ability/talent of an artist is the most important thing in cg industry (gosh- we had to model 4 months with clay before getting into a pc), and the anatomical knowledge (in the biological case) or mechanical one is invaluable, regardless the 3d app that you use( for example, Blizzard entretainment in the Job postings say “Maya or any similar 3d package”), as it is the topological knowledge (you can’t retopo something in zbrush If you dont know how it should be modeled).

ahi la vemos valedores… partanse la madre pero sin mi :laughing: