yep i do agree totally !
3d coat also has very nice and done right paint features, and retopology tools that are worth the try! sculpting is not as powerful as zB in curreent version but it will be in 3.0 for sure. it has also nice UV tools so that i see i for it quite a bright future.
i personally wish those features could be in ZB too…
however i also think ZB and 3DC can work very very well together 
well, we don’t know, as Pixologic keeps mouth really tight on development of the app !! Mudbox is surely interesting and has a nice UI. what i think tho is that ZB has things like Zspheres and retopology , and that it works also in old machines quite well. I dunno if MB 2009 will do the same.
another small competitor is arriving tho and its here www.3dcoat.com
not at the same level of ZB for sculpting for now, but good paintingand texturing capabilitires, good retopology tools, 
and they’re working onto volumetric sculpting feature in this period. 
Sorry, but 3D brush retopo blows all the others way. It works, it’s stupid simple.
And zspheres I despise except for the simplest forms. The “Generates Intersecting meshes” and having to futz with the geometry just to get a good layout is a pain.
I am wondering weather newly updated Mudbox (amazing new features I must confess) is going to pull artists out of the ZBrush track? What do you think guys?
Even if Mudbox’s tool seems greatly improved (i’m looking closely to the new brushes), there are a lot of Zbrush tools that help me a lot in my dayly work, like the topology masking, the reproject higher subdiv tool, the cage mode, transpose…
It dosen’t seems that there’s something similar in Mud 2009, but wait and see.
3dcoat has the best retopo tools around, has good painting and detailing tools, voxel sculpting is promising (and actually unusable,but it’s an realy alpha version) , but, actually, for pure sculpting, i rely only on Zbrush.
Also Zbrush runs on cheap hardware with mediocre video cards. It zooms along even on my somewhat weedy notebook.
So true ! not depending from the video card was a smart idea , also because many times card drivers cause problems.
However, i’m following with alot of interest the developing of volumetric sculpting for 3d coat and despite the factit is an alpha, it seems highly interesting !
Volumetric allows for a process even more similar to clay sculpting.
first off you don’t have to subdivide the mesh to better sculpt a small region in which you have too low polycount in the base mesh ! so you will be able to get complex models , even characters from a single sphere if it is the case!
this being said, in ZB you can also subdivide local areas
retopo tools rock and i read from forums they will be also refined and streamlined a bit to get even faster workflow
really, i think 3d coat 3.0 will be da bomb !
I’m trying to convert the polygons in a box mesh from triangles to quadrangles in Blender. Anyone know of any tutorials that address this? I’ve read that triangular polygons in ZBrush are a no-no. Sorry to break the line of conversation, but I wasn’t sure where else to post this.
Alot of people on the 3d coat forums keep mentioning this as a plus point. But it’s such a negative point!! If I started all my models with a dense mesh It’d be a huge pain trying to get the forms I desire… not to mention all the smoothing that needs to be done trying to keep a smooth surface.
Subdivision levels is a huge feature not a limitation.
Until a Voxel surface can be controlled to the level of a polygon sculpt it will remain just a toy.
Aka. PoopaScoop
well yours an interesting point of view
may also be it depends from what approach an user adopts when sculpting.In ZB i personally have actually no real problems to sculpt at one level and subdivide the mesh further to get more details and so on. i also like so much z spheres someone seems to dislike at all.
someone tho,even in ZB, subdivides the mesh alot, then starts sculpting
3dcoat point would be you aren’t actually limited from how the polygon cage is so if this works well, this can be a good advantage , IMO
also i think you could be able to add/create several kinda shapes and join them to the initial voxels shape or something like that.
however i see volumetric sculpting as a different technology that can be very interesting and could bring very good advantages, may be even over ZB/MB current workflow.
I think we all will understand better how this feature compares to ZB and Mudbox approach when 3.0 will be released.
I totally agree it has big potential too. But I’m way to stubborn and maybe blind sighted to and benefits to working with a dense mesh 
So when I look at Voxels I’m confronted with a hard(er) to edit mesh.
You should try making your next model by gradually stepping up to higher detail when u need it. I really think you’ll be surprised at how much better your work comes out.
I’ll try making one with a dense mesh!
LOL in ZB I usually do model gradually stepping up to higher detail when i need yet ! so no real prob!!
maybe voxel sculpting will be more similar to real clay sculpting process. (where you don’t have polygons at all and so you don’t have any resolution problems )
however from what i see in 3dcoat forums, i love how you can get more precise modelling in certain cases, trim surfaces and other things…
I actually think traditional clay sculpting is the same as starting with a dense mesh!! The main benfit traditional clay has is theres is no interface* and your hands and 10 fingers can quickly work in unison.
If clay had levels I’m sure it’d even make things easyier
You right though that voxels does have it’s benefits
What I’ve come to realize is that voxels aren’t necessarily 3D Coat’s real strength, but rather it’s the high res meshes that holds the key to the success of digital clay modeling.
There isn’t anything to prevent Pixologic from adding tools that can add geometry to the surface of a mesh. Want a large lump on the side of your object but don’t want to stretch the polys too far?. Then just use a lump tool to add (boolean) a lump of geometry.
Voxels aren’t the only answer. They may even turn out to be a weakness because of the memory requirements.
But what 3D Coat will show is that there’s definitely a demand for a more freestyle approach to modeling. and many ZBrush artists have shown that a low res mesh is irrelevant. Most of the models that hit the top row will probably never see a game engine.
Booleans add ugly tris though, and ZBrushs tools don’t behave well around Tris. The advantage to voxels is no tris.
Plus 3D coat’s retopo is light years better.
well as for now, 3dcoat bigger selling point are
-
how it handles painting/texturing
it seems andrew nailed this quite well. in ZB we have polypainting which is not bad at all, but people likes more a process similar to photoshop in 3D : texture layers as it happens to be into 2d ps layer system, same fusion methods, etc…plus 3d coat adds many interesting features to this process -
retopology tools
ZB has retopology, but 3D coat added an entire dedicated toolset for this process and it happens also that developer added exactly what users requested into a very short timeframe - i personally asked for a spin edge tool and andrew just put that into retopo ! -
easy to pickup UI
No, i don’t hate ZB UI at all. but 3D coat has a more standadr approach and this is easier to pick up to most users.
this being said, Pixologic still rocks however. there are many tools in ZB that make wonders with the click of a button or so, and the program keeps bringing the artistic approach into 3DCC
Tris aren’t necessary with high res mesh booleans. This is why I said that it’s the high res mesh that is 3D Coat’s strength and not voxels.
You can easily add new geometry to a high res mesh and manually smoothen the seam if needed. Of course, this wouldn’t be possible with low res meshes.
and retopo is for people that want a low res mesh. Which I already said that many artists don’t care about low res meshes. Low res meshes are for game engines and animation programs that can’t handle high res meshes.
Indeed!
I will always use ZBrush for doing game engine models. I don’t like retopping my models. I’d much rather model with the correct topology from the start. So I expect to use ZBrush for many many more years yet.
But as I keep saying, many artists don’t need to care about topology. These are the kind of people that will love 3D Coat and it’s more freeform approach to modeling.
and me, I love 3D Coat for making stuff just for fun.
I’m trying to convert the polygons in a box mesh from triangles to quadrangles in Blender. Anyone know of any tutorials that address this? I’ve read that triangular polygons in ZBrush are a no-no. Sorry to break the line of conversation, but I wasn’t sure where else to post this.
I was holdign off purchasing the ZBrush for home use until I had the chance to try the new Mudbox Demo.
I have to say, there is no way I am going to switch to Mudbox.
The demos that they were running for Mudbox must have been super computers as the slow down that I am experiencing is devastating. Sure, the texture painting is a great addition but I have a feeling that ZBrush 3.5 will be just as good.
After using ZBrush at work it would be a real step backwards to jump over to Mudbox.
Thank you Pixologic for creating a great sculpting package. I have incredibly high hopes for 3.5 and you will be seeing my payment this week for the latest Mac version of Zbrush.