Since zbrush 3.5 r3 supports hard surface and people can now make mechanical and other stuff such as a car, do you think maya and 3dmax are still a must for modeling…?
They have never been a must for modeling. You can do pretty much anything in Zbrush, and the best way to do hard surface modeling in ZB is with topology and creasing, which it could do long before it got planar, trim, and polish brushes.
But there are some things a traditional modeliing app is going to be much better suited for, and people like using tools suited to the job at hand. Just because you can technically eat steak with a spoon, does that mean a knife and fork are no longer needed?
I am still having trouble with eyelids so I go into maya and do it there. I started doing them since 3.1, but for some reason the poly flow feels funny to me in R3. So I am going back to the old ways. I always thought that if you want to animate your model all you would use is the standard brush?
I suspect not, you can use blender, which is a free 3d modelling prog. of course they do other things which we cant do in zbrush, but if you want to rig or animate thats a different ball game all together anyway.
having said that, you cant edit a mesh easily i.e fix a hole in z brush
steve