My concern so far is that it seems like there’s no way to ‘cut’ or shorten hair with this system.
'nezumi
I guess you are trying to win the prize for the most condescending and patronizing member of this forum. Well done… I think you’ve succeeded with your rant.
I suppose youre out of arguments in hair case then. Thats ok.
Jeez, this is starting to read like the World of Warcraft forums… 'Nuff said?
Koshey,
From the video, and yet another guess… I think a good way get different lengths with the fibres is to break the model into sections based on length. For instance; Mask off the dogs muzzle and feet and create short hair for that section. Then create longer hair for the legs and even longer hair for the body and tail and then blend them together by pushing the fibres into the mesh around the edge of the section. I think that makes sense.
Chill guys! I’m sure we all do this, be it pro or hobbyist, for the same reason. Because we enjoy it.
MX
Looks great and can’t wait to try it before I post an opinion… Don’t suppose we could make the preview videos IPad compatible ? Would save me turning on the Pc. :). Fully expect o get agro for this comment but hey.
Never been there or played the game, but I’m forum-wise and smart enough to know when it’s worth putting someone on ignore list should they step over the line with me. Having opposing opinions and highlighting weakness in areas of a program are those which drives development and improves it just as much as new idea’s, it’s unfortunate that some are unable to see that as fundamentally it improves these applications for everyone. Blowing smoke up Pixologic lalala and saying everything is great is all well and good but it doesn’t provide anything of substance where as negative feedback does and makes developers look again at features they may have missed.
I totally get what Scott is saying, and I don’t think he was sh**ing on Zbrush or its users or fan base. His point is valid and i think the backlash is a tad strident. The problem with reading a comment is often due to the fact that you are reading it and not hearing it from the horses mouth. It is impossible to know the tone the writer is expressing, and that matters a great deal. We, the readers, are left to assign a tonal intent to what we are reading and this is too often colored by our own emotional reaction and thusly can get our collective noses bent out of shape because we interpret the comment as a slight.
I have been a professional sculptor in the entertainment industry for most of my 48 years. Modeling, carving, molding and casting, all of the ins and outs of the craft. A workplace injury suffered in 2005 pretty much put the brakes on my career. While I was convalescing (unable to walk for 9 months) I poured my heart and soul into becoming a digital sculptor/modeler. First at home, totally blotto on narcotics, groping in the dark learning zbrush and Maya on my own until I was able to attend classes. I was fortunate enough to be taught by two gifted artists, Mark DeDecker and Zack Petroc. The main realization was that sculpting is sculpting no matter the medium. Each medium demands specialized tools, and digital sculpting is no different.
Zbrush was a natural extension of my sculpting process. The only demands were learning the interface and finding the right brush to mimic the tools I used to use for traditional sculpture. Other than that, the process from my mind to my hand was/is exactly the same. Different medium, different tools. Zbrush is my main app. It is an awesome ans compelling piece of work, and still a work in progress. It doesn’t yet provide me with all of the tools I need to achieve a desired result, and that is ok.
I use other apps to fill in the blanks. Maya, Rhino (yes Rhino, it is a great app and can be plugged into a Zbrush pipeline for 3D printing) Each app has its strengths and weaknesses.
My rambling point is Pixologic is still evolving the software to make it a more useful toolbox. All of the plugins are great, but not perfect. I for one applaud the fact that Pixo isn’t just aping other software in an attempt to address the weaknesses in it’s software. UV Master is novel in it’s design. Flawed? Yes, but no more or less than say UVLayout, which I use for the most part, if I am working in a game or film pipeline. If I am working on a design for an Illustration the UVs don’t matter as much and UV Master is more than adequate to meet my ends. As to this particular update and tool, I think it is a great first step in an unending process. I hope it works and helps me achieve the visions in my head. I am sure it will be lacking in one way or another. Can any of my fellow forum addicts truly say that any of the software we use is the living end? We all congregate here because this particular software is an important part of out creative endeavors, professional or hobbyist is of no matter.
The common bond is expressing a desire to create, and those of us creative types that create organic designs have found Zbrush to fit that need and provide the tools we need to achieve the end result, or a great tool to feed a pipeline in a professional setting. It all comes down to Legos or clay. Traditional 3D software is great if you were the type of kid who chose Legos over clay. Hard surfaces are more easily achieved in a program like Maya or Modo. Organic shapes are possible, but the approach is still a process of building that shape rather than modeling that shape. Zbrush is the godsend to those of us who chose clay over legos or Tinkertoys. It meshes with the way a modeler/carver’s mind works and is expressed through the hand. As a professional sculptor I have created many pieces that were hard surfaces. Some achieved via fabrication, others via carving foam or scraping clay. The method was less important than the end result and the speed. My approach was always that of a clay kid, and the end result was achieved and that was/is all the employer cared about.
I just think it is important to remember that we are all here together with a common desire to better ourselves as artists. Some of us depend on other software to achieve certain things which have more to do with technical requirements than artistic ones. Scott swims in the C4D ocean, and the way it creates hair is dynamic and much easier than Zbrush in it’s current state. This new tool is not a way to mimic the way C4D handles hair, nor a way to create animation ready assets. It looks to be a way to create hair and fur inside of Zbrush for design purposes. Amen to that.
Scott is free to try it out and use it or not use it like the rest of us. Like I said at the beginning of this tome, Zbrush is not the be all and end all for creating 3D designs. Not yet anyway, though it appears to me that the entire pixo family is invested in the desire for Zbrush to be the entire toolbox. Some day. Zbrush is a dizzying delight for creating. It remains a work in progress like us all.
Peace and a happy 2012 what ever it brings.
Derek Pendleton/Carver
A few things;
-
Can it update if the pose is changed? via using zspheres or curve/stroke parameters?
-
Does it convert to dynamesh nicely?, without a million holes?
-
Do you have any examples of good looking hair/fur? the preview examples make it look too crazy to control and none of them look final or finished.
-
I would like to see a way to convert this new hair/fur mesh to zspheres with LOD
I think it would be a great way to start adding hair/fur then convert to dynamesh to further refine. There isn’t a need to compare it to other apps, simply because it really is just a design/concept tool because it gives you a template/guide to work from (mesh to export), where as other new features don’t give you the ability to ‘extract’ meaningful data.
An updated retopo tool is needed especially with new mesh tools being added to the tool set.
looking forward to actually playing around with these new features.
Scott, I totally agree with your reply to my post. We Zbrush users need to give feedback on new and old features in order for the development gods to make a better end product. Having said that, I would add that getting into a virtual sniping match in the forums won’t produce anything of any value. I won’t get into who said what first, but in my opinion (for what it’s worth) getting a major new feature in Zbrush can’t be anything but good! We all can provide feedback on the usability of the new feature and the devs can work on it to improve the functionality even more based on the needs of the user.
Thanks, I’m still in the process of re-building a new blog, educational video resource for a range of apps for both in the graphics and music production fields as music (with Propellerheads Reason) is another passion of mine and possibly more naturally gifted/drawn to than 3D graphics but it depends really where my mind set is. ZBrush was a new addition to add to Cinema 4D earlier this year to extend it’s modeling functionality further and give me new creative idea’s, assets for C4D and knowledge but with continual bugs in the area’s I use in the app such as the deformation tools, it’s pretty annoying and unpredictable at best even on a modest Intel I7 920 system with 6 gigs of ram.
I’ll hopefully be able to utilise Zbrush more when I have the stability and I’ll be posting more of my own work here http://intrancersonicuz.blogspot.com/ also.
Thats so rad, thank pixologic!
I have been fortunate enough to work in the video game industry for over 15 years. I was also the person to bring ZBrush into our studio so that we could complete Captain America for the PS3 and 360.
Without a doubt ZBrush is the greatest 3D software solution ever to grace the film, prototype and video game industry.
I am blown away with Pixologic’s push to always innovate and provide innovate solutions.
Yes, the interface can seem daunting and new features often seem to be layered hidden within existing menus but once you learn how to navigate effectively and practice with the brushes the results are outstanding.
I strongly believe that ZBrush is the only piece of 3D Software that lets an artist work like a true artist. Maya, Max and other solutions are requiring artists to be too technically inclined and are sapping the creative juices out of all of us.
Hip, Hip, Hurray to Pixologic.
I love this company. Please do not sell out to Autodesk, EVER!
The hair solution looks like fun. I only hope there is an effective way to cut, trim and lengthen particular areas.
Happy New Year everyone.
I sold my Mac license last year but for sure I will be buying a personal PC license this year.
Happy new Year!
I havent read every single post of what now sounds like a heated argument…i think this tool is very welcome regardless of how it is used…what many artists fail to see (and foresee) is that every single tool in the “traditional” pipeline came from a lot of experimentation and implementation of ideas from very different scientific and artistic backgrounds.This resulted in a very rich yet sometimes inconsistent pipelines that naturally abandoned some technologies to the advantage of others sometimes even just based on political choices and industrial choices that good or bad needed to be taken at the time…
All this to say that there is not such thing as the way things should be done or the way a “professional pipeline” works…im my many years of studio work i have often seen the laws of yesteryear being ignored some years later and some tools dissapear to later reappear.I have even seen tools for good or for bad been used out of their intended context.
The main attitude that a creative person should have IMHO is to be openminded and think out of the box…i have read many posts in the past here regarding the way Zbrush should behave just to be blown away by an approach we didnt even see coming.
A simple example of this is (and im not the only one that was pointing this out at the time) the concept of resolution and topology free sculpting…back then, not so long ago, many heated reaplies saying that what we needed was a retopotool rather than this were totally missing the point.
Even if we are not developpers and since we artists are the end users of these tools we should invest a certain ammount of our time researching and testing tools with radically different approaches to our routine tools in the name of diversity and to stay on top of our games…surely our jobs dont stop at doing what we are told by unless you want to paint yourself on a corner…this can be the choice of some but not mine…stay sharp!
Without being a software engineer it will only take the educated artist a bit of research to realize that mesh free scultpting for example existed already for many many years (just like many other shape creation paradigms that are often overlooked btw) yet many artist were focused on the small things…its a serious case of “when the wise man points at the sun the idiot stares at the finger” situation.
I personally dont use hair tools that much and i probably would make a better use of retopotools any day yet i still welcome this addition because this tool might lead to something even more exciting later, where a retopotool will be more of what i can already do in lots of other sofware already and all in all not very exciting at all from a creative point of view.
Zbrush is a unique tool because Pixo tries to be more experimental and by doing this puts most of its developpment ressources in making a more constraints free tool.They are not the only company with this approach but they definetely deserve some attention for this attitude and hope this will be their core difference for many years to come.
it wouldnt make any sort of sense to start developpment of the next version of Zbrush thinking of what pipelines of today (most of them based on 20 years old paradigms and workflows) need but rather show the way of the future.These are interesting times for visual artists because of major breakthroughs in several fields of visual arts from image capture systems (new photography paradigms etc) to post production and FX tools.
Leaving behind a tool like retopology, which is btw a very low tech thing to develop since a retopo tool is no more than a polymodelling toolset with some snapping constraints, is IMHO a choice and a necessity to free ressources and hit where it really counts…being able to develop the awesome tool that Zbrush is today.
You dont make the future with ideas of the past…
(which is actually a bit extreme since there is nothing wrong about revisiting some old ideas in a new context)
Gasoil,
Here here! Well said. One never knows when yesterday’s mistake will become tomorrow’s miracle. Yes, it is important to keep one’s eyes open and an ear to the ground. Always wanting and needing to learn more is the only way to exceed your own expectations.
My apologies for trolling “Scott M C4D”. I was just letting off steam and didn’t really except a reaction. Posting, after drinking with the in-laws, never helps anyone. I hope this better expresses my thoughts on the subject:
For many years I’ve developed custom solutions for a large business software vendor. The biggest strengths of this software is that is spans many industries and it is extremely malleable, meaning there is “X” ways to do the same thing. In my opinion, these are some of the greatest strengths of Zbrush as well. Since the uses of ZBrush are so diverse, the “These features are cute, but what about my needs” posts have always irritated me. Every release announcement, you can count on a couple of these posts. Perhaps it is petty of me, maybe I am a “Fanboy” after all, but it is hard not to defend the best software investment I’ve ever made.
I know my art still sucks. I’ve never understood Pixologic’s business model. I haven’t even had time to try out the latest release, but the “possibility” always draws me to ZBrushCentral. Since I am not a professional, maybe I am naïve, but it seems to me that Pixologic is doing something innovative, special and a bit rebellious. That is enough for me.
Did anyone mention L-system Yet? Oh JOY! I have no doubts that TopoMaster or whatever it will be call will eventually show up. But WOW this has been a long time coming.
I thought it was just a real-time fur shader until I saw the plants! This looks like a Maya paint effect system without the huge interface.
Oh man I can’t wait to unleash this on my my New Rig with SSDs!
Sheesh, he hardly sounded as if he was boasting. He was obviously trying to defend himself against a rather aggressive, not to mention condescending, Zbrush fan and it’s hard to blame him for that. Differing opinions are great and everyone is entitled to theirs, exactly as it should be. Do we really need all that negative attitude behind it though? FiberMesh will be useful for some artists, and not so much for others. That is an undeniable fact. Whether one is happy with the status quo or not, Pixologic will always do what Pixologic wants to do, ultimately making all arguments pointless in the end. :rolleyes:
Guys, Scott M C4D is just voicing his opinion just like everybody here does, the least thing you can do is respect it.
How useful the fibermesh will be will be clear after using it…the cool thing is that pixologic is giving it again to the artists for exactly nothing.
Cheer up 
IMPRESSIVE!!! Happy New Year to everyone and thanks to the Pixologic team 