I think you would be surprised. Unless you know something I don’t.
The product is rather large, so we assume the company is larger than it is. I used to work at a video game developer and we had about 8 people on staff in total, and our customers were always amazed when they dropped by. I am making an assumption here, but I would be shocked if there were more than a handful of people working on this.
Anyhow, I am not picking fights here. Just trying to avoid the group think.
I won’t lie. I was like, WTF! Why do we need animation in zbrush? Am I missing something here?
BUT, now that i’ve read some of these replies. I can see where this is going. We could actually see how too transform from human to werewolf within zbrush. Being able too sculpt every in-between too really make that transformation flow would be great. Real power at your finger tips. Muscle deformations, facial blendshapes. I wonder if they will implement an IK system for easier posing and animating.
This could be really powerful. I just hope they don’t tie the animation too zspheres too much. If they apply a maya style blendshape function as well then we are all going too love this feature.
All thats left now is being able to paint textures similar too Mari, bodypaint or ptex, a better perspective viewport (similar too max or maya) with some proper materials with spec, reflection and diffuse :D. Am I asking too much? Heh.
I can see this issue from both sides. I work at a pretty big computer game company, so I have access to a complete pipeline whenever I’m at work. But I bought my own copy of Zbrush just as an individual artist’s tool for home. I still can’t believe Pixo has kept the price low enough for most artists to be able to afford it, and I give them huge respect for that. So they are clearly servicing two distinct markets with Zbrush, and that’s always a difficult position to be in! I’m certainly frustrated with the scale bug when I’m at work. But on the other hand, I’m totally stoked about the possibility of sitting at home on the couch next to my wife watching Lost and puppeting a little creature I’m doodling. It’s really just a matter of Pixologic bending some of those creative branches low enough for the artists who don’t have access to a full pipeline to be able to enjoy some of the fruit that was formerly inaccessible to them. Or in my case… I COULD come into work, or stay late and rig my creature in Maya or Max, etc… but honestly, that just hasn’t happened. Now that it’s going to be possible to stay in Zbrush to do that, I’m really excited to breath some life into my personal sculpts.
I’m also super excited about the possiblity of posing my sculpts in order to get into some of those hard to reach areas for painting and sculpting.
But seriously, Pixo… pleas don’t drop the ball on the textureing innovations.
I don’t know if I will ever use animation tools in Z-Brush even when implemented by Pixologic but I just wanted to post that it’s really cool what you’ve done, Darukin! It’s impressive!
So greaaaaaaaaat!!! 
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I love pixologic! it’s just amazing!!! Now I can say to my 3Dsmax teacher “I can animate in ZBrush check this!” 
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I keep hearing a recurring theme…that because you are an individual artist you can’t afford the higher priced programs like Softimage/Max/Maya.
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/
This program is FREE. So that’s really not a legitimate excuse imo. Actually, I bought all of my high priced software when I was working as an individual freelance artist from home.
I guess the frustration comes from actually having a job in this industry and feeling like resources that could be used to make my job easier/more fun are being squandered. Again, i’m not really expecting a response or a change in the direction of Pixologic, just letting be known what many professional’s are feeling at this point.
@Wayniac: +1 I own and use a good number of 3d packages, but after having to use blender a while back just for proper UV’ing my models in less time, I’ve grown to love it, and have moved 99% of my non-sculpt/painting workflow into Blender. The fact that it’s free is an aside for me, its the stability and toolset that won me over. I’ve would put blender’s animation capability up there easily with Maya and Softimage(And above that of all the other packages I use) And as a bouns, for me Blender and ZB play very well together.
A special bonus in blender is the ability to rig my low poly base mesh, export the low-poly base tpose to ZB, sculpt in ZB then export a displacement map in ZB to bring back into blender for the displacement modifier(like softimage/maya/max would handle it, but actually easier/less-steps in blender IMO). Then back in blender add a MULTIRES MODIFIER on top of my rig/armature modifier for my basemesh, then applying a displacement modifier(using my ZB dispMap) I can import back into the top level of my multires modifier(in blender) the displacement that came from ZB, thus repopulating all the levels below the top level with the relevant sculpt level data(so useful). So I can, as you would in Maya/SoftImage/Max, rig/weight/animate on the low poly mesh, with the animation/rig deforming using the low-poly base-mesh to deform the top level of multires data. Then an added bonus is the ability to add blender’s shapekeys(blendshapes for Maya users) while I have the multires modifier still on the rigged mesh, thus allowing me to use blender’s internal sculpt toolset to clean up the mesh at certain extreme poses, all the while keeping the displacement detail that was populated to all levels on my multires modifier when I baked in my ZB displacement map. Friggin awesome and useful for many of my pipelines. Then blender can pretty easily bake any high-res textures or displacement to a different set(smaller/larger) of UVs(maps sizes, or completely different UV layout) for easy realtime export if I’m working on a game asset instead of a film asset. The workflow is easy and logical, and no damn Autodesk licence hell any longer for me! Just wanted to mention that. Pardon the long post.
I cant wait to be able to load in poses(obj’s or FBX’s/Collada’s with skeletons) other than my TPose in ZB and have no artifacts populate the various levels when I use and alternate pose to sculpt on, then going back to the tPose with no distortion/artifacts(as is now the case for me in ZB3)
I remember being one of the very first Zbrush Beta testers in 2000, when all Zbrush had was 2.5D, it didn’t have any 3D capabilities yet. (I still loved some of the cool effects I could get from it, though.)
Comparing that version to what is coming… I’m dumbfounded at how far Zbrush has come!
Animation? Awesome! All Zbrush needs now is real Raytracing / SSS / Volumetric Lighting etc. (as good as Modo or better) and then the game is over for any other package out there, I mean OVER. That’s all she wrote.
Thanks Pixolator! You are our God. 
To me this looks more like a “Flash” kind of process than the ancient methods of 3d animation, not knowing anything about how this movie was made i only can say is that at least it looks different and looks like innovation, the real core of Zbrush.
It’s true that zb needs stability, bug fixing and and urgent updates to the oldest modules like the UI and or the Rendering engine but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t move forward at the same time. again the real core of zb.
ZB is more than just for pros use, non-pros are as demanding and have needs to be cover too so i dont buy that argument, back in the day the pros used to write their own tools instead of relaying in other ppl’s software. pay for updates is always easier.
I Liked the movie and i only wonder what kind of new stuff one can create, now is just a matter of “when”
These videos are amazing. It looks like the animation system is going to be a lot of fun, and mechanical modeling is going be much easier. I can’t wait for Zbrush 4! Great job! Zbrush 4 is something to look forward to!
The sky is the limit with ZBrush.
So it has been…so shall it always be! 
Man is never satisfied only complaining more and more to have more and more like other apps go to the other app then don’t stick with zbrush
anyway it s a great feature and one more time pixologic evolve the 3d world !!!
I do more sculpting than animation these days, but the ability to rig a character and truly pose (not just transpose) a character is huge to me. Don’t get me wrong, transpose is great, but this will be taking things to a whole new level for sure.
well I guess alot of us have secretly thought about it or even not so secretly … but since the zsphere rigging introduction … transfering it to another app as a normal rig … and what if … goz could transfer a zsphere rig as a regular rig … and sculpting layers as morph ? heee ? … now that would be useful … work on a model with the great ease and control of zbrush and have a detailed , rigged and textured model in one goz click ? of course that would mean featuring layers for textures and disp maps … but … a one click solution … hmmm …
zbrush is already a great tool …wether they implement these animation features or not … but that would be super special …
Hey all,
First off this is has some serious potential, not as a replacement for an app like Softimage or Maya, Zbrush could not and should not try to be an end to end 3d app…what it does well is do things differently to achieve different looks that you cant or couldn’t get before ZB existed. Pix thinks differently, and that’s a good for all of us.
I work in the commercial industry where new “looks” are what put companies on the map. Not necessarily “realistic” looks but abstract ones and different ones that grab the eye…looking at the last two posts from pix I could see using these tools to do new and INOVATIVE motion graphics…something I have been wanting to do for ages is get our mograph guys to understand ZB could have already have been being used for generating unique elements for their comps from ZB, but they get excited for about two seconds and go back to AE and PS…
That being said there are some bugs to be squashed as well, but we are half the problem. Its really easy to complain about them…but we need to be better about finding the clues to solve the issues…or there needs to be a better way to help track down things like why there is that pesky scaling bug. We have to provide them with the clues to fix the problem…random ass sh%t is a really hard bug to to fix. I have been on betas for years…bugs live through many cycles in many programs…why? They don’t fixed until someone, very often a user finds a pattern in the random ass s*&t the bug can not be solved. Is there a place on the forums to discuss issues like this so we can compare notes and help Pix and the team get these issues fixed…trust me it haunts them at night…they want the bugs fixed as bad as we do.
Also one a side note…pix like to sneak clues into videos like this…I think I might have spotted a very interesting thing. When the face turns blue, looks like animatable color layers to me…so does that mean we now have color layers?
did i understand the text at the end of the video correctly?
it says info about this will be available after z4 later in the year, which means its not a feature of z4?
also later in the year, c’mon
No you did not…the ten year anaversery celebration will be held after zbrush 4 was releases…c’mon
hey space i think its talking about there ten year aniversary party in celebration of them being around for the past ten years, with these new features that they are developing i hope they develop optional graphics card support for the render engine so we can get better results if we have the ability to be able to use a video card…
looks like punchatz answered before i could…
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the shadows are not 3d. it is like photoshop shadow effect.