Anti Zbrush

[Kerwin]

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).

I concur 100% with that sentiment. Artistic experience and vision are critical. My comments are more to the practice of using ZB in a production environment, and it’s better to learn good habits early (just as in traditional arts like sculpting and painting) than to unlearn bad habits later.

I can’t speak for how Blizzard hires their folks (I only have one colleague there and he’s a character artist who works strictly in 2D mediums right now.) I just know that if you come to us with only ZB on resume (versus Maya, 3DMax, Softimage, or even Lightwave) you’re not going to have an easy time of against resumes that show a diversity of packages.

Speaking purely for myself when I hire a character designer (which is rare) I look for traditional artistic talent, vision, and a mastery of some tools in their field (not all by any means, but at least some.) Most of the best designers in projects I was associated with, had significant skill in traditional media, a phenomenal grasp of human and animal anatomy, and extensive willingness to put in long hours and work ridiculously hard. I have never seen anything to indicate to me that mastery of any single package or tool is requisite for success.

-K

[Crusoe_the_Painter]

Compared to the retopo tools in 3D-Coat 2.10 or crashy topogun, the retopo tools in Zbrush are like trying to carve the statue of david using a jackhammer. Clunky and unfriendly. They are servicable, but not much else can be said.

[system]

No man affluent in blender complains of its interface, as there is no man affluent in Zbrush complains of its interface.

Funny someone here would mention that. A lot of my classmates got on me about using blender a lot, largely because the interface seemed “weird.”

For me it was the most straight forward concept to grasp and even if it wasn’t that would not change the fact that it’s still a powerful tool for doing all sorts of things.

Gotta get on that ZB though. It’s super sexy.

[system]

Coming from a Highly traditional art background for 15-20 years, I immediately ( first 30 seconds) realized what an incredible program Zbrush was.

It is exactly what it was intended to be, and vastly superior to any other modeling program. (I own Maya and Max and Mudbox but now rarely use them thanks to Zbrush)

What more is there to say?

Dont bother trying to convince, just move ahead with speed in what works BEST.

[Disco_Stu]

Kerwin-
Í know this is uber bump but adaptive skin with retopology mostly works.
On places like fingers however it demands enough polys to work.
A finger built out of 4 sides is indeed impossible in zbrushs retopo.
As soon as you pull another line of edges up the side it works

[Kerwin]

Man this is an old thread! But you are indeed right, Stu. If you cage with more than 4 sides, ZB’s adaptive skin generator does not get confused as often. It plays havok with Zsphere generated and traditional box level 1 models that tend to cage cylinders with four sides, but adding sides is indeed a reasonable workaround if your topo will tolerate. What I’ve been personally doing is adding a “slice” laterally through the a modeled hand, which essentially divides all the palms and fingers into top and bottom halves. Since the source was a classic box model, each finger has six sides now: top, bottom, left-top, left-bottom, right-top, right-bottom. It really only adds one ring of topology to the hand so it isn’t that wasteful geometry wise. Not my favorite solution, mind you, but it does work. Hopefully ZB4 will have a little smarter topo generator that can “remember” the zsphere source even after the adaptive skin is generated so that it can more clearly keep straight insides and outsides without adding geomentry.

The moral of the lesson: when approaching ZB’s adaptive skin generator, especially in re-topo mode, always ensure that enclosed spaces are described by five or more sides. Four sides on branching objects will be problematic.

-K

[neurogenesis]

The interface argument is tiresome, and usually the mark of someone who hasn’t spent more than a couple hours trying to learn the program. People who have spent a reasonable amount of time in Zbrush don’t go back to not using it. It’s just not done.

I have learned its quirks, but I can’t see thinking that it does everything the best way…it doesn’t. It should be changed, and there’s more to it than just preference. Many things are ridiculously awkward, and it seems the people complaining the least are the ones who don’t have to worry about them as much. I also wonder how much is just not wanting to dump investment of time spent learning zbrush. I know I have sunk months into just learning the program, not so much even making anything. But that said I still think it’s the best option for many things today or I’d not be here.

---

As for converting people, you can lead a horse to water and all that. There’s no doubt that making things poly by poly in max/modo etc. is a waste of time and becoming ever more a waste of time the higher poly counts go. Doing modeling to picture references is still the norm but I can’t see much doubt it stifles creativity, but as tools advance people won’t be needed as much just to put down what the concept guys came up with because the concept guys will be making sculpted meshes to start with. Your friend might wake up one day and see that not having anything but a poly modeler won’t cut it - I am surprised he has not already, really.

As poly counts go up and up it will matter less and less to have that exact poly placement (and zbrush can project the mesh anyway so it’s a silly argument), and using zbrush doesn’t mean deciding you will have bad geometry as we all know.

Most people who go on about poly modeling for characters turn out to either edit base meshes to start (and yet often still consider themselves gurus) or else if you look real close they really don’t have the greatest geometry anyway.

[spaceboy412]

kerwin/stu, about the 4 sided finger issue. the way i avoid adding any extra loops is to simply cap off the fingers at the hand, then once my skin is made i just extrude out a edgeloop and use projectall with just the hands visible and it works fine.

[Disco_Stu]

thanks for the tip will try it out.

Personally i think square fingers are a little to low poly for
a high res character made in zbrush so i didnt have the flipping issue in
a while.

Normaly i tend to start retopo at the hands so i dont get problems with
the transition arm to hand.

Only a few months to go and then im guessing we will have
a much more powerfull retopo workflow.
Ive already dreamt a little about what would be possible in theory.

Maybe something as a half automated retopo tool.
Just dragging a few spline like shapes along the arm and zbrush does the
rest.
That would be pretty kick ass.
A few sliders controlling the mesh density you want and the ammount of
space between the high and low.
Maybe optimised settings for bringing the low into xnormal and such.

After the automised parts one would of course be able to edit the retopo
mesh as he likes.

Man that would be a nice retopo workflow

[Kerwin]

Square boxes as a proxy for tubes of all kinds (fingers, thighs, forearms, etc.) are very common in animation. The high res models and even the render-res models have many more faces, but we often start with an uber-low-res boxy model when animating to give much more real-time feedback (especially since fingers in Game animation are often “frozen” to the task at hand.) When I used to box model (e.g. MetaNURBS, HyperNURBS, etc.) I usually used 8 sides to cage my SDS surface. Zspheres, on the other hand, tend to create 4-sided cages at Level 1 so ideally, ZB’s retopo tools should honor the model originally created by its own tool, Zsphere.

[Disco_Stu]

true