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#541

wow really nice image there digitaldecoy ! :wink:

yup surely the subdi levels approach ZB and MB have is great for sculpting organics.it allows to exploit machine power and ram at the right moment, plus, since it subdivides and smooths, allows for a more precise way of sculpting organic shapes and features. you can also go up or down to your hearth content, make changes (for example on proportions) and return back t your detailed mesh.

this being said, i see 3Dcoat toolset is proceeding quite well. to be an alpha toolset it seems that things are improving fast. maybe volumetric sculpting will be more suited to do more precise -greeble stuff like digitaldecoy made or also more mechanical or bio-mechanical stuff too. (btw this stuff is doable in ZB also, but it is more complex)

It will be very interesting to see how VS will be once released in version 3.0 and from what i see in the forums it has still something like 50% of power to unleash !
i think 3d coat will be a great complement for Zbrush and traditional 3d apps indeed.

#542

I have to agree with maxgamer “demo must have been super on a computer”
I dont have a smokin fast PC or anything, but I can push a decent amount of polys around in ZB.

I will say (don’t shoot me) I am very impressed with Mudbox 2009. Clean interface and highly intuitive. I know Pixologic will have some crazy new tech on version 4 but I’d be happy with just a new interface. :wink:

#543

:qu:

What’s interesting is that a 2 million poly sphere in ZBrush looks to be as detailed as a 9 million poly sphere in Mudbox.

Get your magnifying glasses out and go microscrbe your name on the side of a sphere in both programs. You’ll see!..

Tis strange… ZBrush must use polygons with magical properties.

Or perhaps mud polygons are chunkier than wax?

#544

To me the best thing about mudbox is that it has a 64bit version. At the moment ZB has some 3gb memory limit which is a true limit really.

#545

ZB is great because its technology allows it to work quite well even in normal machines. this is a thing that makes it actually different from other apps like mudbox. it also doesn’t hog your video card either so you usually don’t have so much probs with card drivers and so on.
i see the 2.5 technology to be an advantage rather than an actual limitation, even if sometimes id like ZB to have dream on features like animation. it has a so artistic aproach tha makes me wonder how pixologic could deal with this.it would be surely a great thing to have, but’s too complex for an app like ZB imo.

MB i tried it ib version 1.0 and i did like the UI, very intuitive and logic.

in ZB you sometimes have to search for some function, and it has some convoluted workflow in certain areas.(remembering the exact steps is sometimes difficult too)
but this being said it is great and you have tools that do complex jobs wth a click of a button.

new version of MB i have to try it. however, i think it should be quite good release feature wise, but if that means it requires a supermachine its a no no for me

#546

I’m 99% sure Zbrush is 64 compatible.

Super machine?! I’m running Mud2009 on a very modest machine and it faster than Zbrush.

6400 dual core
2 gig ram
7600 Geforce

Thats in no way a super computer.
To note where I notice the greatist speed increases compared to zbrush is changing levels, undos and esp. navigating while zoomed in (zbrush hates it when you are zoomed in on polygons for some reason)

I have heard that some effects, like AO don’t work so well on ATI machines, that could be what you guys are on about.

#547

It may be happy to run on a 64bit machine, but Z3 still has a 4gb ram limit ( 3-3.5 true limit depending on OS ).

This tells me Zbrush 3 is not true 64 bit (yet). I am suprised however that it does not support PAE, which would allow it to use more memory ( several hundreds of gigs ) on 32 bit machines with PAE. PAE means you can store data in memory in excess of 4 gigs, but you can’t execute code there. It’s like uber fast disk cache, and is used by databases that support it on 32 bit oses.

I do love the fact that Zbrush doesn’t care about the video card, it runs fine on my laptop witj 4 gigs.

#548

my 2 cents… Mudbox vs. ZBrush for what its worth. :smiley:

#549

So what if Autodesk added Maya to Mudbox?. Would Mudbox then be better than ZBrush?. Or would that be considered cheating? :slight_smile:

#550

wrong

same mesh, left is zbrush with faceted rendering and right is mudbox with smooth normals

#551

I was talking about a 2 million poly sphere. That ZBrush sphere you’ve shown is nowhere near 2 million polys!. :slight_smile:

Create a 2 million poly sphere in both mudbox and zbrush and then zoom right in and scribble on it. The scribble on the mudbox sphere will look far more pixelated despite the shading. It’s odd…

#552

LOL it doesnt matter what polycount it is. as long as zbrush has faceted display every mesh will look faceted when compared to same polycount mesh in mudbox. you are definitely doing something wrong.

but just for fun, here is a ~2 mil sphere comparison (u can still see faceted faces in zbrush):

http://i33.tinypic.com/oauclx.jpg

#553

Take this!:

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/40e667b106.jpg

:stuck_out_tongue:

#554

i laugh. hysterically. that mudbox even has a place on the shelves. in essence like 99.9% of people are choosing the feature barren ( by comparison ) mudbox over zbrush for essentially two factors * :

familiarity of environment ( windows standards. ’ traditional ’ 3D app feel. etc )
navigation

it’s testament to the stubbornness of pixologic that they’ve not offered these aspects to users as OPTIONS. that mudbox simply exists is blatant proof that there’s an audience wanting for it. an audience so wanting that they’ll knowingly and gladly give up the amazing toolset zbrush has. and proven power on even the weakest of machines. just to escape its paradigm. ****. simply offering a maya like navigation as an OPTION would likely bring 50% of mudbox customers back to zbrush. where’s the harm in that ?

fundamentally. mudbox is less about competing with zbrush and more about providing the ( arguably ) two most requested / complained about features of zbrush. done and dusted. and sold for an exorbitant amount. can’t help but think it’s autodesk who’s laughing now

leaving out for the moment layered painting which i’m sure zbrush will have in it’s next release

#555

@ splodge you must be very new at this.

export that model you exact model to zbrush and you will see faceted preview.

http://i37.tinypic.com/9sfevc.jpg

#556

Yep, looks pixelated, but not as bad as Mudbox’s. :slight_smile:

I know ZBrush doesn’t use phong shading on models. That’s not the point. I’m more than happy with the smoothness of a 2 million poly model in ZBrush.

What I’m saying is that fine lines scribbled onto 2 million poly model in Mudbox look much rougher than the fine lines scribbled onto a ZBrush sphere. I’ve since looked into why this is the case and it turns out that Mudbox is drawing lumpy diagonal lines when using a very small brush. You’ll see this if you closely inspect the lines from the side.

I’m sure they’ll be able to fix it eventually. It’s probably just a bug…

#557

Totally agree

#558

Ditto. I played with the new Mudbox and have to say. After my innitial excitement I realised… Zbrush had all this ages ago. Plus with the new photoshop extended, it’s painting be-littiles anything else out there… not sure what kind of polycount u can actually import into it tho… Tho for me - a game developer - I’m just painting on low res meshes with normal maps. So it’s more than Ok.
Tho, I have to say photoshop cs4 ext. is the greatist thing since normal maps came along.

#559

Hey, z-people

Here is a very cool plug-in. http://www.lbrush.com/index.htm. for 3D-studio MAx— called Lbrush

You can sculpt and make fast facial animation, trying to dig more into it…but looks very cool…check it out

#560

http://3d-coat.com/v3_voxel_sculpting.html

that is pretty nifty… you can stretch to kingdom come and you’d never have to worry about poly distribution. you can do something insane like pull out a tube from a sphere and then start sculpting on the side of the tube!

of course, i wonder how the feel of the sculpting is and whether you can have things like symmetrical sculpt.

but on first blush, it looks dam impressive. just like old techniques like vertex coloring (zb’s poly paint) is coming back with a vengeance as a result of our faster computers, looks like commandandconquer redalert2, alpha centauri and novalogic’s voxels are coming up in the world too!

it all comes down to how the sculpting feels and how dense you can make the voxel space…

jin