Let me reiterate - ARE WE THERE YET??? ARE WE THERE YET???
ARE WE THERE YET???
It’s like being 5 and having to wait for christmas day all over again… I can feel a tantrum coming on
:’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’(
dude, if you’re really using steel wire you need to switch to aluminum - it’s much more flexible. annealed copper is good also.
thanks for posting the pics of your real-life armatures
Well key word is “Sphere” I’m not skilled MEL programmer but I do know it wouldn’t be hard to Geo instance a standard Sphere as Skin influence or better yet, now that Maya 2010 on its way connect with the Maya Muscle plug-in!
Someone that tested GoZ already mentioned that you could Rig your mesh before exporting with GoZ
with the Features thus far I’m set to make a great leap in my, as many yet uncompleted Zworks.
Pixologic, you have my money, my support, and my firstborn. I don’t know how you guys keep doing it but don’t stop.
Cant quit drooling…The game has changed…And the bar raised… Nice job
are we there yet?
ZSpheres are one of my favorite features of ZBrush. Once I learned how to properly use them of course. This methodology seams like voodoo. Which is the same thing I said when 3.0 came out too.
One thing that I have always wanted was a way to make the higher level functions in ZBrush non-destructive to the ZSphere armature. Transpose master, subtool operations and many others require you to delete your lower levels including your ZSphere rig. I would love to be able to keep it without having to bind an existing rig to your mesh. That process always gives me goofy results.
Man, this has got me so excited for ZB 3.5! ZSpheres II!!
You can see where this is all headed…
Considering the dreadful release of Maya 2010, I can’t wait to see Z5 or Z6 get me out of Autodesk land entirely.
This is fantastic stuff, all of it.
I wrote a post here a while back on how I would like to see animation evolve if it does. These new features really put us much closer to that reality.
can you step up in down in levels after using this? If not then I dont think It would be possible to use in a production env.
Interesting take on voxel/metaball steroided combo.
Depends which part of production. Those who work in pre-production are going to love this tool. We are getting closer and closer to being able to concept characters completely in Zbrush. Zbrush is not just for post-production, or modeling game assets. Not that you were saying that, but people should realize that Zbrush needs to appeal to more than just modelers and this new function does just that.
Cheers,
Matt
Well I’m coming at this from the perspective of a creature/character modeler for film. I promise you the first several months of every film we are concepting in zbrush. I just dont think NOT being able to go to a lower level is a “feature” for anyone. No matter what part of production you are in.
I think we can all agree being able to go up and down would not hinder anyone. It is not true however for the opposite.
And yea we’ve been using sculpting programs for concepting complete characters for quite some time. It’s an essential part of the process.
By what I have seen from the video, it uses unified skinning and for what you are looking/asking for, I don’t think mesh density levels are available like they would be for adaptive skinning. Of course,I could be wrong. The guys at Z could be working on a Adaptive/Unified hybrid mesh generation. THEN it could be possible. Currently though, until proven other wise by words or video…this doesn’t seem likely. As a workaround though, you could always retopo. Though I know this is wasting time and working backward…But it is available.
yea that is what I’m assuming it’s doing. Which is not ideal.
I’m curious about the GO Z application as well. I notice they never step down when using that either. That’ll be a bummer if it forces you to lose all your progress and lower levels by modifying the vertex count.
I do have the the main tech guys cell phone. I’ll just call and ask him. Maybe I’ll get the low down. ha. I’m just being lazy.
Josh
No it appropriates itself through the levels. At least, that is what I gleaned from watching as well as listening to the videos. Once again, could be mistaken.
Looking great - I can’t wait to try this.
I used to use unified skinning a long time ago in ZB2 and before but sort of let the technique fade. I think the last time I used it in ZB3.1 the poles did not sculpt well at all so I let it be. If I recall correctly, unified skins were not generally symmetrical, so hopefully these will be. And the zsphere skeleton looks like a development of the rigging feature they showed in some of the very early pre-ZB3 tech videos. Either Pixologic are very good at adapting old tools to new uses or they have a long-term development plan.
I think the first button is ‘Armature’ and I’m guessing from the on-screen action that the buttons just right of centre are for display modes (like the X-ray mode) but the rest are too hard to see, though they have some funky icons.
And if we are putting down a wishlist, I’d love to be able to close zsphere loops off to get rings and such like 
hey pixologic, instead of having everyone guessing and arguing why not just either release the product already or a more comprehensive video.
O my god yes!!! I forgot about that! That was one of my original wishes for Z2! I guess I forgot about that over the years! YES YES YES! connecting Zsphere would be HEAVEN!!!
Ok, so just called the tech guy over at Pixologic. You cant step up and down. So end of debate.
Of course there are ways around it. You’d have createa low cage then re-project or how ever you wanted to do it.
=)
HOLLY CRAP!!! - real-life worflow and muscl building like on a maquette with all the advantages of digital life!!! can wait to use it!!! 
If you rig it they will come…no wait that’s not what I intended to say… will the lovely skeleton be able to export to another app so that the bones are there, it seems like the system is already pre-weighted in some way so that would be awesome if that translated, even if it needed some adjusting later on. Anyways, the video rocks!!! 