Newbie questions . . .

[system]

Greetings, All!
I’m brand new to the digital sculpting world. So trying to take in a lot here.
I have downloaded and started playing with Sculptris and like what I’m seeing. Very cool.
I am now looking at ZBrush and exactly what all it offers as a software package.
As a note, I have payed extensively with DAZ, and am coming from that world as far as what the software offers (Characters, lighting, rendering, etc.).
Zbrush seems to offer an nice lighting solution for rendering (Lightcap), based on a quick look at their video tutorials.
But in looking through many of the Top Row Gallery offerings here at ZBrush Central, it seems most of the artist here use 3DS Max or some other solution to create their final lighting or renders, etc… What is the reason for this? Is ZBrush maybe not good enough for this purpose? Just trying to get a grasp on, if I make the plunge into ZBrush, is that just the beginning of the inevitable money pit of new software purchases.
Looking at their site, it seems 3DS Max is fairly similar to ZBrush, at least on the surface, though ZBrush does seem more intuitive. Yet 3DS Max is many times more expensive.
Am I going to be able to accomplish what I need with ZBrush, to get realistic-looking final outputs and renders?

Thanks.

• Sol

[Cryrid]

Zbrush seems to offer an nice lighting solution for rendering (Lightcap), based on a quick look at their video tutorials.
But in looking through many of the Top Row Gallery offerings here at ZBrush Central, it seems most of the artist here use 3DS Max or some other solution to create their final lighting or renders, etc… What is the reason for this? Is ZBrush maybe not good enough for this purpose?

Zbrush uses a litsphere-based material system. This is basically a texture look-up that’s based on the direction of the model’s surface normal, where it maps the normal vector direction to a point on the matcap image and retrieves its color. Got a light coming from the top-right of your matcap/lightcap sphere? Your model is going to appear to be lit from the top right of your screen no matter how you rotate it.

It doesn’t have a virtual 3d scene in the same way that traditional 3d programs do, where you navigate a virtual camera through the world and around the model. Instead you’re looking at a painting canvas, and your model just floats on top as you rotate/scale/pan it.

There are advantages to a set up like this. It’s very quick and easy to preview your sculpt under a wide variety of materials and lighting conditions and it makes it easier for your computer to work with millions of vertices on the screen even if its 7 years old, but there are limitations as well. Ultimately it’s best left as a preview if you really want to get fancy with the render beyond what zbrush’s “Best Preview Render” and filters can offer (from the way a traditional/dedicated rendering software might bounce around light rays and reflections and calculate refractions, to using various inputs like colored texture maps to drive different properties such as specularity)

Looking at their site, it seems 3DS Max is fairly similar to ZBrush, at least on the surface, though ZBrush does seem more intuitive. Yet 3DS Max is many times more expensive.

There are actually massive differences between the two. At the end of the day they can both be used to create 3d models, but they go about it completely different ways. 3dsMax is also meant to do a lot more (like rigging, animating, rendering, particles and simulation, etc) while zbrush is more focused on painting/illustration and sculpting. Combining zbrush with a traditional modeling program like this can be a good thing to do (albeit expensive).

[system]

Zbrush uses a litsphere-based material system. This is basically a texture look-up that’s based on the direction of the model’s surface normal, where it maps the normal vector direction to a point on the matcap image and retrieves its color. Got a light coming from the top-right of your matcap/lightcap sphere? Your model is going to appear to be lit from the top right of your screen no matter how you rotate it.

It doesn’t have a virtual 3d scene in the same way that traditional 3d programs do, where you navigate a virtual camera through the world and around the model. Instead you’re looking at a painting canvas, and your model just floats on top as you rotate/scale/pan it.

There are advantages to a set up like this. It’s very quick and easy to preview your sculpt under a wide variety of materials and lighting conditions and it makes it easier for your computer to work with millions of vertices on the screen even if its 7 years old, but there are limitations as well. Ultimately it’s best left as a preview if you really want to get fancy with the render beyond what zbrush’s “Best Preview Render” and filters can offer (from the way a traditional/dedicated rendering software might bounce around light rays and reflections and calculate refractions, to using various inputs like colored texture maps to drive different properties such as specularity)

There are actually massive differences between the two. At the end of the day they can both be used to create 3d models, but they go about it completely different ways. 3dsMax is also meant to do a lot more (like rigging, animating, rendering, particles and simulation, etc) while zbrush is more focused on painting/illustration and sculpting. Combining zbrush with a traditional modeling program like this can be a good thing to do (albeit expensive).

Whoa, so I think the back of my head just blew out! LOL!!!
I will have to have my ‘3D world’ terminology dictionary on stand-by for future posts.
Thanks, Cyrid. I actually did get the gist of all that. I appreciate the feedback. Learning my way around it all, that helps.

• Sol

[system]

Zbrush uses a litsphere-based material system. This is basically a texture look-up that’s based on the direction of the model’s surface normal, where it maps the normal vector direction to a point on the matcap image and retrieves its color. Got a light coming from the top-right of your matcap/lightcap sphere? Your model is going to appear to be lit from the top right of your screen no matter how you rotate it.

It doesn’t have a virtual 3d scene in the same way that traditional 3d programs do, where you navigate a virtual camera through the world and around the model. Instead you’re looking at a painting canvas, and your model just floats on top as you rotate/scale/pan it.

There are advantages to a set up like this. It’s very quick and easy to preview your sculpt under a wide variety of materials and lighting conditions and it makes it easier for your computer to work with millions of vertices on the screen even if its 7 years old, but there are limitations as well. Ultimately it’s best left as a preview if you really want to get fancy with the render beyond what zbrush’s “Best Preview Render” and filters can offer (from the way a traditional/dedicated rendering software might bounce around light rays and reflections and calculate refractions, to using various inputs like colored texture maps to drive different properties such as specularity)

So what might be a recommendation or two to get more advanced lighting and renders beyond ZBrush, without getting into and breaking the bank, with another complete system like 3DS Max, etc.

[zber2]

So what might be a recommendation or two to get more advanced lighting and renders beyond ZBrush, without getting into and breaking the bank, with another complete system like 3DS Max, etc.

Blender is an extremely powerful 3D application and is open source (completely FREE). Highly recommended if your on a tight budget or even if you’ve got lots of money.