ZBrushCentral

Beginner questions about Zbrush

Im looking into learning more about Zbrush. I work in the game industry, but not in the art department. This is something Im looking to change. We use Maya and Zbrush. Usually when even I hear about Zbrush, its paired with another program.

What I want to know is, could Z brush be used solely for modeling in gaming or would it be wise to just learn Zbrush to model and import later into other programs?

Its obvious im new to this, so I am not entirely sure what Zbrush’s strengths are. I understand the sculpting aspect of the software, but if anyone could really explain to me what strengths it has as a single package and a a package paired with something else. And would it be normal to say there are many many artists out there who just use Zbrush for all of their work and no other 3d packages?

Zbrush is not the end all be all…at least for games.
Zbrush doesn’t give you access to specific UV layouts that are required for games.
Zbrush doesn’t bake across multiple meshes.
Zbrush can’t do 4 sided extrusions during the retopo process.
Zbrush can’t animate in a fashion that game engines can understand.