Where can I expect better performance and stability? I am on Win8 and see grey screen in Zbrush half of a time.
Should I try to install Win7 instead of Win8? Can somebody compare the performance on the same hardware. Is there any difference at all.
You need to state what your specs are. I’m on Windows 7 Home Premium and it runs fine here most of the time 4 CPU’s>>I5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz each and 8Gb RAM.
I haven’t noticed any stability or performance issues on my W8 machine. I use W7 at work, but the hardware is completely different so I cant really do a comparison.
Do you have a screenshot of the grey screen you’re talking about?
I don’t think you’ll see a difference in performance between win7 and win8, at least with Zbrush.
Grey screen, greyish actually is what windows shows you when a program stops responding. My specs is i7 3770k 8gb ram
Your specs beat mine. Is it only with very large files or certain operations? Have you maxed out the time between quick saves?
No, I didn’t change it. It starts to occurs during any calculation heavy operation after I exceed total amount of 20 mil for a scene. Zbrush goes greeyish with little cpu loading actually. Especially during rendering. I often need to render normal material with fibermesh and micromeshes . It hangs Zbrush and sometimes the whole Windows.
Looks like also that pushing esc button during any calculation expensive operation would send Zbrush grey too.
I do recommend save often, change the time to max on quick saves because you don’t want it to decide it’s time when it’s no good for you. When you’re in Preferences to do that, make sure you have multiprocessor use enabled, optimize there. 
Maybe you’ll have to change your workflow.
Everything looks enabled, multiprocessing and 4gb of memory. Perhaps it’s something with my workflow, I am not sure. I am doing hi-res textures for an environment and often use Zbrush render rather then projecting.
- Have you tried using ZBrush Layers for your background?
- Was the background made outside of ZBrush?
- You might not need all of them polys.
- Compositing isn’t cheating ;)
I am afraid I need all them poly since I need to generate not only color but also specular level, glossiness and reflectance maps. It’s only possible to do with keeping details with different specular values as separate subtools to be easily material/color changed or masked.
Or perhaps I am missing something. Never tried anything with Zbrush layers. BPR render seems not working without polys also
I use Zbrush not for backgrounds but rather for in-game hires textures: walls, rocks, ground, grass, different props etc. The in-game environment textures are getting pretty big now and they couldn’t be parted and rendered separately into multiple pieces as easily as character ones
http://docs.pixologic.com/reference-guide/layer/ May only work with best render. Once you’re happy with your object in the screen, create a new layer to draw your next object on, repeat as needed. Once you draw your object and create a new layer, you can’t edit that tool in 3D on that layer, it’s locked and you’d have to redraw it. HTH
If those 2,5D layers would be a bit more developed with mask/alpha support, visibility on/off , more like Photoshop layers + depth , it might be a cool thing.
I always had problems with doing speciular related textures/ masks under this 2,5 approach. A psd layered output would be very helpful. Maybe there is a 3d party script or something?
ZAppLink works with your paint program…
Thank you. I didn’t know Zaplink can transfer layers in Photoshop.
ps. I wonder is there any way to turn subtools automatically into 2,5d layers?
I have used both, I used ZBrush under Windows 7 on a much older slower computer and loved it, I now have a blazingly fast computer with Windows 8 and I can’t do anything without a fight. Your operating system can ruin your hardware and make any potential benefit minimal.
Windows 7 is vastly better in my opinion, I would trade down any time if I could.