Smoothing features don’t actually modify the object’s geometry; it changes the way the shading is calculated across the surfaces, giving the illusion of a smooth surface. Most 3D programs default with a smoothing display. Some have the option to turn this off and use a flat shading display of your 3d model. Sculptris defaults with a smoothing display and has no option to turn it off. This is one reason why you don’t really see much flat hard surface models produced out of Sculptris. Zbrush doesn’t really use a smooth display as default. It does have one but it’s limited and you can’t sculpt your model while it’s turned on.
Another issue is Zbrush isn’t that great with triangles but instead is designed with quad faces. Sculptris is designed with pure triangles. You can bring an all quad model into Sculptris and modify and sculpt it without converting to triangles but once you use any dynamic tessellation, e.g., brush strokes with quality turned up at all, it will switch the quads to triangles. Without the intention of using dynamic tessellation, Sculptris’ main feature, there’s usually no reason to bring a model into it for editing.
Personally I stopped using Sculptris once Dynamesh became available. There are other users where I work that still like Sculptris but I have a process to bring their Sculptris models and edits into Zbrush for additional detailing and final modifications. I would recommend learning Zbrush better. Sculptris is a great option for users new to digital sculpting or 3d modeling in general. It’s also great that it’s free. However if you have Zbrush available it’s a much better tool. If you want to use both it’s generally better to use Sculptris to start out but finish the fine details in Zbrush. If you’d like I can post my process of bringing models between Zbrush and Sculptris without losing any details.
One issue I have with Sculptris is that it adds too many triangles for the level of detail it adds. This can be reduced with the reduce brush but I prefer a decimation process in another program like Zbrush.
