just thought i would add my 2 cents…
Zbrush has to be careful here i think… i mean i see ALOT of the digital art nowadays looking like its been made in ZB and there lies the problem…
a monster in a scifi movie , a old building in a video game etc… its all starting to look the same…
Perhaps you need new artists not new Software! 
Yeah, I am not sure where your concern lies, with the subject matter or the generalized look that a piece done via Zbrush. Most people earning a living with this software are either in the game world, or the creature world, which explains why most of the work on this forum is yet another hellboy bust, or yet another Superman, or Hulk. People are advertising for work. They are showing (I hope) their ability as a craftsman, and not necessarily as an artist. There is a huge difference. There is a lot of work on this site, and others, that are absolutely art. All good artists are craftsmen, but not all good craftsmen are good artists. I know a superb craftsman that can copy any human face with uncanny perfection, in any scale or medium, yet he has no concept of composing a scene or designing something from scratch. It just isn’t in him. He can copy anything though, just can’t create anything of his own design.
Back to the thread, I really hope that this new tool can really be pushed to go beyond hair. The final part of the video with the foliage has really got me excited. Yet another thing I hopefully won’t have to do in Photoshop. The more I can stay inside of Zbrush the better…For me…as an illustrator…not in a production pipeline…but as an artist…see I brought it full circle. Soon, many will mourn the many pastoral landscapes that are too Zbrushy…round and round.
Thank you Pixologic!!!
I intend to go ape**** with this!
Fiber is one of my favorite things in ZBrush (along with almost everything else) and its one of the first things that seriously got me going in it.
This is going to be very very very fun!
(Aurick, I might even finish Cookie Monster and then haunt you with him in everything I make!)
Every single time you guys release something I have to go to the wall slam my head onto the concrete! Un-***-believable. Do you guys sleep time to time when working on quantum leaps this big? Santa Claus could have a car crash for all I care - you guys are here!!! 
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Can we see the head sculpt created by ZBrush artist Majid Esmaeili, used in “Ready, Set, Render! Part2” with hair, please? Please?
Ok, normally I’m skeptical of zbrush’s new “fancy” features, but this looks pretty cool - I’m especially interested in that plant created at the end. Hair growing off of hair is something I’ve been looking for and unable to find anywhere else.
great, hair in zbrush…super useful. why programmers at pixologic, not spend your time making zbrush 64bit, a real 3d camera, better topology tools? hair??? hair???
@MyPeople - I feel your pain and generally agree with. I would also rather see them put their efforts in the kind of direction you’re suggesting. FYI - I know that pixologic is developing a 64bit version of Zbrush. I believe it is scheduled to be released with V5.
I’ve started a wishlist thread for v5 that I’d like to invite you to contribute to. I haven’t been keeping it super up to date lately, but plan to get back to updating the “master” list with everyone’s suggestions. Go to page 4 for the most recent master list. It’s located at:
From a competitive standpoint, adding at least one new feature makes sense. The competing apps out there, one in particular which I just purchased, are improving by leaps and bounds. It’s less expensive, easier to fit into a pipeline, does nearly everything ZB can plus a few things it can’t, gives artists what a lot of them have been wishing for, and can now be found in more than a few studios. This is where being contrary for the sake of being contrary can hurt Pixologic if they’re not careful. As popular as they are, the market is fickle and the winds of fortune can change literally overnight, as do standards from time to time.
I too remember when nobody took ZB seriously, and the most common word tossed around back then was indeed “toy”. Version 2.0 changed all that, primarily because Pixologic decided to make it more useful and pipeline friendly. My impression of ZB today is that they’re trying to go back to their roots, when ZB was merely a standalone painting program for illustrative use. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but it does show how they are trying to balance the needs of two different types of user. The problem with walking a tight rope is that it’s possible to tilt too much to one side or the other, or fall of the rope completely (heaven forbid), and this is only going to become more challenging in the years ahead as competition heats up.
There was a minor bug with the new noise maker option that needed fixing, and I’m betting this is where FiberMesh came into the picture. Might as well if you’re already tweaking that bit of code. Someone else said this new feature looks as if it’s just a more advanced version of noise, and from watching the video I’m inclined to agree. I have no doubt hair will be just like any other polymesh. You’ll be able to experiment with different styles, append it as a subtool, save it for use on other sculptures, create insert brushes with it, and so on. Since ZB can’t generate vector displacement maps, exporting FiberMesh generated hair will probably be the same as with any other dense polymesh. Decimation will be a necessity, and someone already posted a picture to that effect. I suppose normal maps and displacement maps might be possible, but only if the hair isn’t too long and doesn’t curve.
FiberMesh is clearly not a hair simulator like in most other 3D apps. It’s simply a quick and easy way to add hair/fur/vegetation, great for those who use ZB for illustrative purposes and conceptual design. I don’t think anyone will argue that even if it doesn’t end up being very useful in an animation pipeline, ZB still needs this ability and has for a long time now. Personally I think it’s great that it’s finally been added and can’t wait to see what others do with it. The one thing I’ve been left wondering about is the polymesh of a fruit, which replaces those flat, square, FiberMesh generated stand-ins at the end. It looks as if some kind of instancing is going on, but since the video skips over the details of how it was done, it’s hard to say for sure.
@ Bas Mazur: Comparing apples and bananas? That’s a pretty good analogy, and as you said they taste different. That doesn’t mean they can’t work together synergistically though. Sometimes the result is harmonious, sometimes it’s not. What happens when you have pineapple, strawberries, bananas, chocolate, and vanilla ice cream? You have a fantastic pipeline for animation lol! Which would you prefer to add to that, whip cream or a brick of limburger cheese? :lol:
ZB5 will be 64bits. No idea why same whining again…
Maybe Pixologic should make two versions of 4R2b. One with just the bugfixes, and one with FibreMesh included. That way all the whiners can download the version without FibreMesh and get what they want… Doh!
Curious, what is this software?
@Zeddicus, you are right about those pipelines. Mixed fruits can taste well 
If those ‘professionals’ buy the right pipes (professionals can I think), I’m sure they can make the right pipeline. :rolleyes:
@-Zeddicus very true…
Maya seems to be doing this…every new release keep adding more and more “tools” and ignoring previous bugs… i hope ZB doesnt fall into this cycle…
This looks fantastic. Will the mesh created by the fiber mesh be able to be 3D printed?
oh my god… what a wonderful idea!!!
@ Zeddicus
of course there will be better tools or better ideas than Zbrush (i hope so) and this is both healthy and exciting and a benefit for artists, the industry and evrybody else as it will push innovation forward.
If Pixo took such an indisputed lead in the field of sculpting and modeling (and other aspects as well) is mainly because of that go get it attitude, outside of the box thinking and innovation driven policy.
No one of course ,Pixo included, has the monopoly of good ideas and in fact many of todays Pixos paradigms are more or less based on revamped old concepts or plain optimization of existing codes.
This said i am being more curious than a fanboy here and as far as i am concerned id like to know what is that miracle tool you are mentioning? Here at the studio if it is Mudbox you are mentioning for example i would say that after an initial deployment of Mudbox mainly in surfacing, we are taking a step back and realizing that only a few features are really superior and do not justify the full use of Mudbox anymore…some Zbrush features are unique indeed (dynamesh and everything with a voxel engine in the BG for example ) and so is polypainting and other mat baking techniques also used by some surfacing artists.
In the concept phase and in the modeling phase Zbrush is omnipresent and no Mudbox in sight…You have to count more seats between Concept artist, modelers and art directors than surfacing department and definetely there are much many man/hours spent in concept, sculpting and production modeling than in displacemnet detailing for instance. Also surfacing time is dispatched into Uvlayout,Photoshop and some Mudbox/Zbrush with now Mari canibalizing some of the Mudbox Pixel time as well.Note as well that just like retopo and UV unfolding, displacemnet extraction does not require specifically Mudbox or Zbrush and can be done in a third party utility like lets say Cyslice.
And this is the point…you can eventually retopo in something else, paint in photoshop or Uv in Uvlayout…you could extract maps using XForm or Cyslice but the core features of Zbrush (dynamesh etc) are posiible ONLY in Zbrush (or maybe a handful of other softs like 3dc oat etc)…In conclusion if you want to deliver an innovative product you do not start by redoing what others can and put yourself in dircet competition with a lot of the same.You start with brand new never seen before **** and steal the limelight…after that if there is some extra time maybe you can give a few goodies to keep everybody happy.
When it comes to a new approach and some unique features Zbrush is among the best with maybe 3Dcoat which is quite impressive in terms of available tools and we do use it for some retopo and voxels modeling even if after Dynamesh we sort of feel less the need for that…still Zbrush feels a bit more responsive and faster in any machine compared to 3dcoat…as a modeler/sculptor i really like both and i personally think that a full Pixo flavored Voxel engine for Z5 will be a mind blowing addition (after all everything is there for this to happen except 64 bits for heavy realtime voxel handling)
In the 11 Years that i have been in the industry i have seen the most spectacular innovation coming from outsiders rather than big developpers…i have to admit as well that eventhough i work in the film industry which is generally considered as a benchmark, that teh most impressive improvments in both techniques and workflow came from the gaming industry to the point that today they are probably leading the way rather than the other way around…I cant recall apart from some occasional tool here and there any major package breaking new ground and probably the more market base they had the less effort they will do and this is how proportionally Lightwave and Modo for example (whose developpment team was a former Lightwave dev team) proposed the more advance tools among the 3d generalist tools and in my opinion this is because the less market you have the more motivated you are to develop something new and the opposite is also true.It is also true for some interesting smaller dev teams like Vue D esprit or opensource projects like blender…there are some neat solutions in there too not to mention a one man project like Sculptris for instance.
But this will be true only just for sometime and there is already some exciting things happening…The big guys are waking up and delivering some very interesting tools like Photofly for Autodesk and other big corporation that are ready for a big comeback!
All in all its a win win situation for us so we all should be very excited except for the fanboys that seem to be only excited if “their” software is better than the “others”.
I like it. You wonderful!!