Hey Zbrushers…lets just wait to see what we get…and with regards to retopology in zbrush…Im pretty sure the appointment of Dr “whatchamacallit” with sculptris will deliver something special.
Use Zbrush for what it is…a complete delight. 
What i think is :
Actually , together with voxel technology, painting on texture within pixel space directly is quite a resource hog, and doesn’t free us from UVs, while, it seems to me that Pixologic wants ZB to work well on cheaper/older machines and be efficient enough however.
This could be also an excuse, but what could be also true and i happen to think seeing the way Pixologic implemented painting is ZBrush couldn’t be able to support painting within pixel space without some kinda rework of its painting engine.
I dunno if i am right, btw, but that’s what i think in this moment.
From my little understanding, after all, ZB behaves somewhat in this way :
first you sculpt THEN you export maps.
first you paint, THEN you export textures… and so on.
Its clear that in some way , the trick is to skip realtime writing on file, freeing resources of your machine thus not being a totally resource hog .
Problems in fact can present at exporting time , if you’re into an old machine.
Yeah thats what i fear.
I hope this doesn’t rule out working in texel space although that sounds like a hybrid of the pixel/uv space but subdivided. 
Im not looking to purchase something like Bodypaint (since it comes with Cinema 4d and will have no plans on using it), Mari (because of the requirements) or even Mudbox just because i own a zbrush :).
One can hope though.
Hey Nemoid :lol:
I agree with you but this said you dont drive looking at your bonnet but way ahead in teh dsitance…in fact voxel technology is already in Zbrush behind de scenes when u use remesh or shadow box…many artists including myself btw were taken by surprise by this sort of developpemnet and it was a damn good surprise .
The truth is that there is no clear definition of what is traditional and even among major studios there are severe differences even if i agree that at this point at least Polygons are still used MOSTLY in production
As a reminder the modeling paradigm doesnt stops at Polys plus Catmull clark subdivs BTW… any one that has worked in the industry for more than 10 years will know that …there are other paradigms for shape creation that if you need to inject in a poly pipeline can still be very efficient ways of shape creation.(just as Zspehres is not something that u inject in your poly pipeline but a very efficient way of creating shapes from scartch then retopo if needed)
To mention a few you have Parametric, Solid, Voxel,Nurbs, Bezier patches T-Splines and when it comes to subdiv i can think of at least more schemes that are available since a very long time and some of them are totally free like DooSabin, Butterfly, loop or Bezier Subdivs.
some of this paradigms are not only Not a minority but in fact a MAJORITY since modeling for the film industry is by far the smallest part of the market
In this context there is no ressources hog or anything like that i am afraid but more of a specific workflow determined by a particular direction that some developpers took at some point you can see this illustrated today even with Autodesk when they release a version of Iray for Max but not for Maya…there are developpment erasons, marketing reasons and conflict of interest reasons and has little to do with teh availability of the techonology…in fact saying thsi is exactly what this guys expect you to think so that instead of asking for some advanced feature you just remain quiet and buy their software as is.
without going into CG class history this explains why Renderman was not so optimized for raytracing while others developpers did emphasize that aspect years ago…there are many tools available but only a handful make it to production not because of how good they are but sometimes because of how boring yet solid, familiar and predictable they are wich is at the end of the day an asset in very heavy long productions…
the reason to this is that R and D is very costly and similar to a freight Train…slow, heavy but powerful yet not easy to stop…this expalins how some major houses stopped using Nurbs only a few years ago despite the fact that it was not a machine ressources hog but much worse a human ressources hog.individual artists or smaller companies do not have neither the pro nor the con of a heavy pipeline and should be more adventurous and progressive in their approach so that eventually indirectly they feed heavier industries with better toosll and workflows.
And thsi si where teh paradox lives…lots of artists look major studios for guidance and ressources while Studios need young guns and fresh blood to make things move.
The healthy approach of Pixo when they started was to not be attached to any old technology and be free to experiment and start from a blank canvas without worrying about how you will interface with production …it is only human for people that want to join an existing pipeline to be impressed and scared about not conforming and this is the Cg equivalent of peer pressure…the good news is that you are also free to make an educated choice rather than just carry the gossip as unfortunatley too many artists do until someone decides to kick the hornest nest for them like Pixo, 3dcoat or other innovative companies or any of the real smart guys developpng tools.
i personally never thought of voxels as a high frequency detailer tool (if it was possible it would be great though) we do use 3dcoat in production since not so long and i can tell you that for certain tasks it has proved to be a unique in his kind unmatched tool …slicing, booleans, cuts and merges are something impossible in any other non voxel based app and it is fast enough and stable enough.As a funny anecdote there was a very human and predictable resistance to change that was never based on rational approaches but rather childish comments like the color of the interface or the personal religious beliefs of the developper…
this said i agree that Zbrush is very performant and i dont know how to obtain similar tools as the ones i just described…but it will be more impressive than better retopology alone.
i am convinced that we need more “smaller” specialized tools in the industry rather than less generalistic tools in this context it is always interesting to see how other industries solve ceratin shape creation problems and either copy them or be inspired by them.
first you sculpt THEN you export maps.
first you paint, THEN you export textures… and so on.
You forgot the topology+UV problem.
First you sculpt the base then you retopo, then its the right time to sculpt details. Else, you’ll find yourself fixing all the lost details after reprojecting.
Same for painting,
But there’s a limitation, you can’t paint or sculpt details on stretched faces, so, have it in mind when retopo.
Its all we have in zb and its more than enough for me.
But more sculptris is coming soon, let me see what you all can do without a fast autoretopology tool. Because sculptris becomes a real artistic tool now. BTW 3dcoat crew are trying to implement “unlimited clay” (dynamic tessellation) right now. I already tried this kind of workflow using sculptris+3dc+zb. Its the only way to have a real powerful sculpting tool.
@Gasoil thanks for your long explaination. we surely need better artistic tools. If it was for me, i’d just rig and animate and render within Zbrush or similar innovative apps. Even less technical but more artist oriented ones for sure. That’s what i feel its needed int he future.
@Michalis. you have to retopo if you start from scratch in ZB, btw.
However mine was more a technical consideration about how ZBrush works, in the sense Zbrush uses this method of skipping real time writing on file, while in other apps like for example Modo you are actually painting in flat 2D in your texture map, while the app projects in realtime the result onto your 3d model. this ends up being more resource heavy on your machine, than the ZBrush method.
The less times you export a model, the less chances something will screw up. Sorry, but that’s the truth, reason why they tried FBX and now are trying to get GOZ type function in Autodesk products.
its healthy to keep devs on their toes… i dont trust that much big devs because they tend to say “well this is not how you are supposed to do it” we are the clients remember and the big devs have been caught many times trashing small tools by labelling them "no industry standard, toy or not production ready"just to come back several versions later doing exactly the same wich is proof that some of those standards are just there until they have enough time to figure it out or buy the tool from someone else.Basically theya re buying time.
You see this everyday in every industry and makes me very angry because money should go to the most motivated and innovative approach not to the company that barks louder (marketing)
but this requires educated choices hence my long posts on some CG history and contexts.
i havent seen any major modeling R and D in production in fact i have seen none…so it is important to push for external R and D in this field. I Cant believe how much every aspect of Computer science has evolved in the past years yet the CG Pipeline remains quite the same if it wasnt for tools like Zbrush , Sculptirs or 3dcoat…i wonder how much better tools can also be developped in other CG fields.
funny to see how some artists have a mental block with this…soemone mentioned that Voxels might ne used in 5 to 10 years …wrong …we are using it as we speak…it might be small percentage of modeling tasks just as a few years ago Zbrush was much less present in our workflow and now it is a pivot part of it.
If Sculptris had the basic brushes from ZBrush with it and was more stable, I wouldn’t even need to use ZBrush anymore…
WOW!!! It’s terrific!
U right unfortunately CG apps are also a market. and so it happened a bit like VHS and Betamax. VHS was the crappiest standard, yet it had success and became the most diffused one.
Actually what we now call standards are tools which simply had more success. New technologies which are in development now could not have the same success and get diffused and so be further developed and became standards as well.
That’s why someone says that well’use things like voxels in the future rather than now (even if you’re right: we’re using tose now in a certain extent).
i kno this alreayd been asked somewhere probably but its hard 2 find…
anyway, does anyone know wen z4 r2 will come out? or have a guess? lol
can be improved reconstruct subdivide? or keep quad and edges for decimation master?
You and gasoil definitely make a good point and if development of new features was the only worry I would probably agree with you guys. There’s just some things I feel should be top priority to make zbrush more enjoyable to use like an overhaul of the interface which is more organized and requires less steps to get basic tasks done. Layers, which are critical need to be less finicky. I would really love a less restrictive file structure as I will never be organizing everything inside zbrush’s native folders. Autosave would also be a nice option as zbrush can be unstable at times.
I don’t want to just bark out requests, I just find zbrush to be a pleasure to use while I’m actually sculpting and unnecessarily tedious when I’m doing anything else inside the interface.
This is also not in pixologic’s best interest to bring on new users as I’ve seen many students in my school get really frustrated learning zbrush and trying to remember all the crazy keyboard and dragging combinations and such.
I don’t wanna compare brands, but I have seen people with limited experience in zbrush pick up mudbox in a day and fall in love with the fact that they can spend more time actually working and less time wrestling with a clunky interface.
yep well its a vicious circle…if no one makes a move things remain the same and in this aspect while technologies are developped here and there it is ultimately up to the Artists to push it and diffuse it.
Also when Disney decided to dev Ptex , a UVless system , i guess they didnt say "wait a minute it is impossible to do texture without UVS!
by definition you dont create the future with ideas from the past this is were we can, while asking for improvement to our workflows also do a bit of homework and point out at either existing ideas or production bottlenecks for Pixo or others to figure out solutions.
Pixo s take on problems has been very refreshing but to me modeling wise not yet finished again i would love just to have a way to erase geometry call it tesselation on the fly, voxels or something else i dont really care but teh bottom line is that i cant yet feel a total freedom without that sort of function and its a shame that despite the undos , symmetry and high frequency detailing and other sophistiacted high end tools we are still missing a basic function that i can achieve with a simple pencil and an eraser…this again due mainly to the mesh base nature of the software.
While some people are legitimately frustrated for not having good retopotools (that ultimately can be solved in other very cheap softs) imagine how frustrating it can be to not be able to erase and for this simple function there is nothing except at this point to a certain extent Voxels or Shadowbox.
again modeling is about shape creation not only about “create a cool looking troll with lots of detail” creation…look around you and you will see many many shapes based on substracting, carving or scooping out volume …it was also teh main sculpting technique used 2000 years ago in rome to carve out shapes out of marble… we cannot for the sake of logics be partial and say that sculptors love their armatures and clay (and Zbrush is very good at this) and not mention substarctive sculpture in teh same logic.
While there are ways to do this differently for certain things there are others right now that are impossible in Zbrush.
I totally agree with this. Subtraction is extremely important in sculpture and as of now not so easy in zbrush. I’m personally not a huge fan of the clipping brush workflow. I’m really impressed with how well booleans work in 3d coat and would love that functionality to be added to Z. Obviously voxels and polys are 2 different beasts, but maybe dynamic tessellation may be the answer.
As I have little experience with dynamic tessellation, I wonder if anyone can confirm or deny that there is no ability to retain subdivision levels. I really like the ability in Z to reproportion at a lower subD w/out effecting my details at my highest. I would be really disappointed if we got tessellation and lost this ability.
with dynamic tessellation in sculptris for now you can subdivide the mesh or reduce it, but you cannot go easily back and forth like it happens now in ZBrush. The great thing is you can add geometry on the fly (and its done into a very nice way) so the real benefit is you reach to create from scratch complex organic shapes you should do with zspheres/zsketch in Zbrush. the process is funnier, faster and more productive IMHO, especially for maquettes.
BTW since the mesh is made out of triangles you will end up having to retopologize it, or obtain a quad mesh in some way and maybe import it in Zbrush if you want high frequency detail using displacements or normal maps and not bump map.
BTW dynamic tesselation is awesome. But Voxels would be actually gorgeous. 
Very interesting updates like always
Totally no other words, awesome.
BTW dynamic tesselation is awesome. But Voxels would be actually gorgeous.
3dc team are ready to implement dynamic tessellation as well. Do you know why? Being a zb and 3dcoat user I have some ideas on this.
Scusptris is a quite deferent approach, it doesn’t need multi res as it can do it in parts of the mesh. ZB is basically a displacement editor. The best around IMO. These apps are ready to run as one, a good auto retopo method is missing though. And certainly not a young apprentice to do this humble and important job. :lol:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showpost.php?p=829349&postcount=74