well… actually, there IS no Mac version!!
I’ll believe it when I see it
Are we sure that’s not who Aurick is? A long time ago when I was a teenager (and therefore an orifice), I bought Animation Master from Hash studios for the Amiga (yeah, we’re both that old). I had trouble with the software and decided it had to be the fault of the software rather than my own incompetence (after all, I was a customer!!). I called and bitched at the tech support. They were polite but seemed less than entirely moved at the sound of my indignation. Later, I heard some things and realized Hash studios was such a small house, I’d called and gotten Hash himself and bitched at him. I grew up a little that day, thinking about that. All things considered, Hash had been a lot more professional than I’d been, and more professional than I’d have been if our roles were reversed. Pix is a bigger company, to be sure, but I always find myself wondering if Aurick is actually the programmer. Maybe he’s not. No way for me to know one way or the other.
who cares if aurick is the programmer atleast the guy at hash studios were professional and gave u info, we are not getting anything. ive been offline for like a month, n havent checked anything, so thought id have a look to see if anything has progressed, and have to say im really dissapointed that no more info has been released.
Flame!? I was disagreeing with you, that’s not the same thing from my understanding of “flame” which implies an attack. There was no offense intended and I apologise if any has been caused.
In my opinion you posted as though your conclusion was undeniably accurate, I felt that it could be misleading to others particulalry those who haven’t been following this saga! I posted in order to balance opinion.
I stand by my assertion that Aurick was avoiding giving any details away as he has throughout this thread and the previous one. You are of course welcome to disagree! 
In answer to your other post, the programmer and inventor/originator of ZBrush is Ofer Alon AKA Pixolator who very, very rarely posts any more. Sad really, he used to post regularly on these forums and is quite an artist in his own right.
I have assumed that, so think no more. Hence the “Cheers to speculation” conclusion of my post…
Why would he say “as good as the pc version, IF NOT BETTER THAN” if they hadn’t gotten some kind of good performance out of the Mac beta? (probably on intel) That wouldn’t mean they’ve fixed the bugs causing the hold up, that just means they’re optimistic of the end result after seeing equivalent, or better, performance potential. My rightful assumption, of course…
I can agree with all that this sucks. Luckily, this doesn’t affect me so much on a professional level, as I digitally paint mostly. ZBrush is great to combine with my 2d workflow, but I’m not dependent on it in any way.
For those that are actually falling behind in their business, I hope Siggraph brings you good news! If not, screw it, switch to pc for the sake of your career. It’s a pretty unanimous opinion amongst all that it’s the logical 3d platform for professionals, for software availability anyways. They’ll transfer the license…
My apologies, as well I can see how my intentions might have been read that way. I’m speculating, as we all must. My intention is simply to interpret what Aurick says, but to avoid some of the over-interpretation that runs rampant, like I think you’re doing.
Thanks for the info, by the way. I’m relieved to know Aurick isn’t the programmer (no offense, Aurick). I figured someone here would know the answer to this. I’ve always been haunted by my own memories of having made an ass of myself with Hash 
In order to post something encouraging? He may have said under his breath as he typed it “of course at the moment it’s about as fast as a pig in treacle…”
All I’m saying is that whether Auricks posts are placatory but meaningless or carefully worded hints we have no concrete information to go on. Any assumptions we make might keep us entertained while we wait but they’re pretty much worthless.
Of course you and Ronbo13 are entitled to speculate and assume just as everyone else is, equally I am entitled to disagree
I didn’t say Hash gave me info. In fact, all he did was say something along the lines of “We’ll take it under advisement”, with something less than deepest gravity in his voice. He was professional insofar as he resisted the natural temptation to be an outright tool with me over the phone, which my own tone would (honestly) probably have warranted. But he gave me a lot less info than Aurick, truth be known.
Personally, I’m so worn out from all the speculating, and theorizing that it just doesn’t bring me any comfort, or help me pass the time to even do it anymore.
If we don’t get a release of ZBrush 3 for mac by siggraph, or at the very least, some solid information of actual progress being made, then I’ll have to assume it’s time to look for other options. You can’t feed the pooch on wishful thinking.
Actually no I won’t give them credit and ALL of it was in fact a Denim software app. I still have the disks and I know Greg well as I used to work with him.
Denim was bought by Discreet and they turned the product into Combustion. I will give you that they ported a lot of the tools from Flame/Inferno (color corrector) into Combustion.
Here is a question for everyone, what would be your first choice as a ZB replacement? I have started to think about trying to find an alternative that might bring at least some of the sculpting capabilities. At a glance Modo seems pretty nice, but I am interested to give Silo a try due to the price. Since I am a Maya guy, Autodesk releasing Mudbox for OSX would be ideal but not sure I can continue to wait.
Hi, I am keeping an eye on 3D Coat. I have Modo, it’s great, but I still wouldn’t really sculpt in it yet. 3D Coat is being developed rapidly and a Mac port is due out any time now. Seems it takes an app to specialize in this stuff to be really good at it.
-Jim
3DJ, I saw some of the posts about 3d coat but hadn’t really checked it out until just now. Okay This guy did a full port of his application starting in April. It looks really close and he is constantly communicating with the board at every step, getting feedback soliciting ideas, soliciting hardware usage. HELLOOOOOOO PIXOLOGIC ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? He will get some of my hard earned money the day 3d coast comes out. It may not be everything I hope it is but I will gladly support that kind of behavior with the hopes that he is able to meet my expectations. Who knows, maybe in six months I no longer care about Zbrush.
He’s already talking about adding volumetric sculpting in version 3 - starting dev july, releasing around September time, which is nice.
Using Voxels. So no more stretched polygons, or damed Zspheres. Build your rough mesh, rough in forms, refine mesh, and detail…
3D-coat isn’t as memory efficient and needs a better video card than Zbrush. But for banging out a base mesh, it could be awesome.
Can we please kill zspheres, and at least get some Blobs or something to retopo over in Zbrush?
Well, as the idiot I am, I had to look up the definition of treacle, but that’s pretty funny!
Truth is, you’re a 110% right as far as the validity of any speculation, and we all know that. No one will know sh** until it’s released, but the anticipation + lack of info stirs the pot quite a bit for good ol’ speculation. Don’t let the assumptions ruffle your feathers, there’s over a 1000 posts worth of them here.
I don’t even care, as I said earlier, I mostly do 2d illustration. ZB is an interesting compliment to that, but it doesn’t speed up the process by any means! I can speed paint laps around ZB sculpting and 3d rendering! It’s just for the experience and fun, and something I will use for photorealism down the road.
I feel for those who need it, business wise. May Siggraph bring good news at least…
I’ve brought up polygon free digital clay a hundred times in random zbc forums, and I think it would be awesome. Imagine being able to sculpt almost anything from a sphere, with no worries of topology, and the detail of each stroke perfectly distributed, no matter how much you stretch the “blob”.
Yeah the sculpting would be cool, I’ll look forward to seeing how that develops!
I don’t know how you’d get a voxel model into another 3d app though? Would you then have to build a poly model to approximate the shape of the voxel model and project the details onto it? Dunno, I know next to nothing about voxels/volumetric modelling!
I’m sure one could develop algorithms to convert the voxel structure into a polygonal object. Perhaps somewhat similar to adaptive skinning in ZBrush, or mesh generation methods utilized in metaballs. With controls to set polygonal resolution/density ofcourse.
The resulting mesh would be useless for animation purposes, but it would suffice for those interested in just rendering their sculpts in other applications.
Thanks for the info! I guess for animating purposes you would have to create a mesh manually but then I suppose that’s no different to the workflow some are using already with ZB. Z-spheres, sculpt, retopologise…
Hmmm… could be very interesting!