Hi. I’ve been spend a lot of time learning, trying, investigating, and finding different workflows for work with Zbrush. I’d like give us my feedback, tell you the bugs I discovered, talk about Zbrush philosophy, and ultimately, express, maybe a different point of view from your customers (well, subjective, but I hope not much). This gonna be large, but I hope it will be interesting too.
I hope have posted this in the right place. In really, is so extensible that it could be splitted in several post, but I don’t want do that, so I prefer split the post in paragraphs, so, if someone want talk about a paragraph, write the paragraph number first, ok?. Sorry about my english, and here we go:
1) Philosophy
How was designed Zbrush?. I guess it was design like an advanced Photoshop and slowly it becomes to be a great stand alone generic plug-in for every soft3D in the market.
This appears to be a negligible question, but the truth is that this issue is redundant later.
Why I think so?. Well, interface (please, this is not any kind of attack to Pixologic team) is clearly like an modern 2d software. We got a advanced canvas (2,5D), brushes, colors, materials (great!), when can modify the pixols, but not reedit the entire object once it has been dropped in it (Yes, we got markers for this question), we can retouch saturation, blur, smears it, etc…, and besides all this, Zbrush claims its 3d softwares independence with the Zspheres, Transpose Master and Poser Scaler tools.
This mean for Zbrush customers coming from 2D pixels editing world (Photoshop, Gimp…) see in Zbrush a world with endless possibilities, they surely should feel really “frees”.
For the other side, customers who came from 3D world, like me, the first impression usually (at least mine), It was like if I was embedded the head in a window (canvas), and my hands should manipulate my object like a rubik’s cube. I wanna say that before buy Zbrush I saw Mudbox, where you can move in freely 3D, and despite this, I chose Zbrush because this is not the only thing that counts, at least, for me. I don’t try to harm anybody with this, remember this is only my feedback, please. Currently I am very comfortable with Zbrush interface, but you (Pixologic), perhaps should do a survey about this feeling.
So, the question is, what percentage of customers fly in a 2,5D canvas and what embed his/her head in a bricker wall?. Which is the right direction from continue developing Zbrush?. Should it be splitted in two, like did Adobe with Photoshop and Image Ready?, Should it be design an interface for paint and composite in the Zbrush canvas, and other for use it like impressive plugin for displacements, normal, color… maps or simply trust in the user hands?.
Pixologic project is forced to become in the mega-complex-maps-creator plugin for 3d software packages and fight against Mudbox (…and Modo, …and Silo, … and…) and stay in the market, or simply the original project to make an impressive 2D advanced software is reached almost to an end?. Certainly I hope the first, or at least, I bet on it when I chose Zbrush for deform and paint in a real 3d way, in place of Mudbox or Photoshop. The truth is that for me, Zbrush are two things, an advanced Photoshop, from the painting point of view, and an advanced modeler, from the sculpt point of view.
By the way, about this questions, I haven’t any right to reclaim an answer, for very customer I be. I ask myself about, but I not intend to find answer here, nevertheless, if you wanna answer, I suppose more than one will read it…
Besides all this, Zbrush is oriented to the organics shapes. Well, maybe this don’t surprise anybody, surely is because was one of the outstanding things of the 3d softwares, but if we try to paint (only paint) non-organic shapes, we can reach a point from which we need stop and think a not solved solution, I talk about this later.
About Sculpting, Zbrush is really complete and comfortable, I’m really satisfied with the tool about this.
2) The Painting Side
The painting side of Zbrush is simply perfect. If you wants paint your organic homogeneous topology, Zbrush is simply the most advanced software for do that actually. Mudbox is now starting, and Modo and Cinema Body Paint are on the painting high end edge too. But when you need paint an object without a homogeneous topology, like a long table with rounded borders, the things show some problems (I’d like be wrong about this). But, we’ll see why and how solve it.
The first thing, Zbrush never promise it was the best painting heterogeneous topology objects, all images that “sell” Zbrush are homogeneous (and beautifully complex), so perhaps customers haven’t any right to reclaim heterogeneous topology painting support. We need it, but the deal is closed yet ;D
2,1)
Why?. Simple. Zbrush currently uses “polypainting”. Uses the object’s vertex for paint (vertex or pixols, depends for the point of view). This is perfect for homogeneous topology, because you have the same resolution everywhere, but with heterogeneous topology, for example, a long table with round corners, well, the most bigger polygon (the table useful surface) is the most big area, and it only haves four polygons to paint (a ridiculous gradient), while the real details possibilities appears in the insignificant rounded borders of the table. If we subdivide the mesh for reach a more reasonable paint resolution, we waste memory subdividing borders and (and the worst), we modified the original low resolution mesh. We can store a morph target, work in the subdivided model and later, try to reimport the original mesh, but the detail is added to the “other” topology (the borders of the low-high-low mesh, err… aren’t borders anymore). So it doesn’t work.
2,2)
We can change to other way. Import the model, create a high texture and help us with the Projection Master tool, the unique tool that can paint on a texture in Zbrush actually. This method works, but we should be claiming Projection Master repeatedly one and another time (hey, it’s not too bad, works really well).
2,3)
The thing is that I think clearly that we need to have the ability to paint directly on a texture using not only Projection Master, but with all tools. A way to do this would be:
If “Colorize” is on, user lets know to Zbrush he/she want paint with polypainting method. If its Off, we want paint on the texture. But, how we can see the texture we gonna paint, and we have painted yet, we are talking about two textures and actually we only get a slot for choose texture. Or we need two slots (one for the active texture, and other for the painted texture), or simply if “Colorize” is on (polypainting) and we choose a texture, this would be the painted texture slot, and if we have “Colorize” off, we can use the slot for choose the texture to paint. Although if this method would be real, the logic will be that “Colorize” becomes in a switcher called “Polypainting” or “Texture Painting”.
2,4)
Other function that would be great should be the use of 2.5 functions for the model we were working (with the polypainting or texture painting modes), and a function to flood the object with the effect, I mean, if we want to blur all our paint, simply choose blur tool, choose its intensity and flood all pixols for equals (visible or not), and well, it will be possible the use of masks before do it.
I know actually Projection Master leave us do something alike, but only with the visible pixols.
2,5)
Continuing this journey about problems and ideas for solving painting issues (pity about not have the code too!), and to use the Projection Master or Clone Tool, would be use the Stencil mode for paint color, not only alphas. (It’s more, alphas and color at one time, this a little bit later). Actually we can’t paint color through Stencil, only grayscale. Imagine you have a perfect tiled texture of wool, the color and the alpha, both coincident (you’ll find this in maxwellrender.com, in the mxm contest, in the touch-contest), and you have a character with a wool jersey. You can paint wool fibers one by one, but with a continuous texture it would be much faster (and this actually only can be done for sculpt trough Projection Master), so the idea would be or use the Projection Master for do it, or get a new brush (Clone tool in edit mode, but with a few new parameters) that paint a warp-texture-ready pattern.
2,6)
Respect to the paint and sculpt at time, I’m afraid exist a little bug in Zbrush (or it is intended?):
Open Zbrush, choose a model, assign to it a material that allow to you see what color are you painting, choose the Standard brush, activate “Colorize”, choose a color and Paint and Sculpt. Now you should be able to paint and sculpt simultaneously, but if you choose Nudge, Move or Pinch Tools, you’ll be unable to paint. (If someone try with others, attention to the “rgb” button, some brushes deactivates it.)
2,7)
And by the way, it appears to me or the “bump mapping” of the Zmapper doesn’t work?
2,8)
Of course, another thing would be great to have layer painting (in which case, it would be to make modifications on Texture Slot or extended it, and add alphas), and it would be great include the layer blending mode (Screen, Multiply, Soft Light…). Well, in the industry of videogame this is very common, like blood layers that be included in a game depending the country where it be published, and well, it will be a great flexibility.
And Yes, I’ve been seeing the LayerPaint plugin from Eddy Loonstijn, it’s great, but at this moment haves a really err… non-dynamic workflow, with all buttons and dialog boxes that need to be canceled or accepted… Eddy!, man, don’t anger with me! :-D.
Do you see what I mean when I say about “Advanced Photoshop”?. (Buy Photoshop probably more than one would be thinking… Well, I’m gonna finish soon.)
2,9)
All this painting ideas could be used too for paint deep, I mean, you apply the finished color map texture at the model, and paint with a brush like “single layer brush” over the applied map to deep where the texture pixels would be darker (and flood option would be great too).
2,10)
About interface customization. Do you have some problem for dock in you own menu the Misc counters of Preferences Menu?. I can’t see it in my own menu. The curious of it is that using the same interface in linux (unbuntu) trough Wine, it works perfectly!.
2,11)
Can we get in a customize interface the curves graphics (brush menu> Smoothing Curve, or Edit Curve)?
2,12)
By the way, do you plan embed python in the future?.
2,13)
The button Tool>Texture> “Disable UV” should warn user about the uvs gonna be destroyed. Any customer could waste a few hours of Uv mapping work if it imports an object into Zbrush, push the button, sculpt (non uvs workflow), exports it back to his/her 3d soft, deletes the original and save. Or a least, splash a screen warning dialog. Although I suppose you should see about the possibility of really disable it without delete it.
2.14)
About Projection Master. When you paint a model trough it, but this is masked, is not difficult that you finish painting the border of the brush from the color of the mask. And for other side, It would be great that Projection Master don’t pain polygons (pixols) that have the normal perpendicular to the camera (or the projection direction). Usually this result in an infinity streaks that waste previous work, and this do that user spend too much time hiding parts of a model that are perfectly outlined to the camera in the final position of draw.
Well that all. Hail to the forum.