Zbrush 4. Here the point of view of a customer, maybe interesting, maybe no, whichever, I hope this gets useful for take a more global vision of your software.
In first time, Zbrush keeps maintaining this two faces, this software is part of a chain of creation, in some place between Maya, Max, Softimage… and the render engines, Metal ray, Vray, Maxwell… and for other side, keeps maintaining this side of independence with tools like Zspheres II, new Shadow Box, own rendering engine…
For users that only have and are interested in Zbrush, from beginning to the end of their work, I suppose, (because my vision is at the other side of the coin), they should be really happy. New version, new brushes, new tools that raise the base model creation abilities, new cool features like timeline animation camera, but, how I said, I’m not one of this customers, (and would be great to know the point of view of this customers), I’m not gonna talking of this point of view, because I can’t, so, I will focus on the other side.
From the side where Zbrush is a tool more, another link of our workflow, things gonna to better too, but, maybe Pixo should keep an eye on this type of customers.
Pixologic has done a very well work, has released revolutionary tools, and simples, revolutionary simples, in really, and they works really great, like shadow box, for example, but from a Maya/Max/Softimage user point of view, perhaps is not as useful like would be for only Zbrush users. Of course, is great to take this type of tools at the reach of our hands, but we still need to do things like vectorial displacement mapping. This is something that goes “out” of Zbrush. Things like new Ptex Renderman textures, another thing that goes “out” of Zbrush. Things like 20 million polygon models that Zbrush cand handle perfectly, but that when we need to “get out” this hard work, this results… well, its so difficult not to see messages talking about not enough memory. With 20 Million polygons, it’s time of 64 bits. Zbrush is condemned to 64 bits or to fall in forgotten. It’s time to break this ridiculous 4 gb barrier, and up it till our really physical memory level. But, better we should go by chapters.
Vectorial Displacement mapping. Its needed. Now. Mudbox does it, Modo does it (and renders it), Vray, renders it too, renderman, Mental Ray custom shaders…, much unlimited than displacement mapping, we could store ears, wings, eyes, noses, wrinkles… like layers, but could be even better. Fast, only one click and its done. It’s time to use it and take advantage of the performace in time it can provide us. Would be great, besides, to take some presets, depending of the render engine we gonna use, what render engine use? Vray, ok, choose it in the output list and bang!, do it, just take it and it’s done. Maybe sound like “too much work”, but stop, think it. Never have taken sense that, for example, Pixologic wants to “win” Pixar or Chaosgroup, doing that they adapt a workflow for use Zbrush Vectorial Displacement Maps, neither the inverse. It’s an issue of communication. User doesn’t want waste the time discovering how we can use Zbrush maps in others softwares. If it is not agreement, everyone lost, thirds companies, pixo, users. Maybe a pair of calls for make a presets list and users will be buying Zbrush sooner that Pixo can dream. Hi, I’m Vray user, for Vectorial displacement mapping, what do you use?. Oh, Zbrush is preseted for this, works great, without headaches and odd configurations, bang bang! done!. Ok, then I’ll buy Zbrush. I need it, I pay it, I got it. All people wins.
For other side Ptex, Textures where all faces haves its real sizes one respect others, where every border “see” the “other side borders” and can mismatch the number/color of adjacent pixels with vectorial faces. Bye to remapping, bye to cuts, imprecisions. Welcome to "in this final render I can appreciate every detail I crafted patiently in Zbrush. Time to get our reward at the end of our workflow chain, in our final render.
For all good software, must reach a point in which its time to do a stop in the way, leave new features suspended for a while and heal and fix bugs, things that disturbs customers, kill limits of old features too much extrict and uncomfortable/squared. We have layers? great, maybe the layer should be editables in different weights than 1, for polish little details. We can do a lot of ways polypaining, maybe time to expand it to texture painting, far beyond Projection Master. Maybe, now with new Hard surfaces and decimation master, it’s time to see that not always we gonna have a homogeneous topology resolution for polypainting.
Exist some bugs in the middle of the users workflow that break this feeling with its creations, like dissapearing models at change point of view or rect lines that appears suddenly when we are trying to get subtle retouches, yes, it could be non importance things, but this abstraction of the reality that user experiments, this living inside the screen, completely absorbed in creation process suddenly interrupted for disturbing bugs can low our performance drastically, can be the difference between finish a perfect and clear complex hand/head in 10 minutes or be angered/frustrated over 30 minutes, finally finishing turning off the computer in the majority of the cases, or smashing it against the floor in some few ones.
It’s very frustrating to see how 2 minutes keeps away from our hands for the simple fact to hide a layer in a 20 million polygons model. Or waste another 2 minutes more in unhide it again, or another minute in a simple undo for not to have a 64 bits version yet, or see how after make an undo, the first stamp of the stroke doesn’t respect the light, almost subtle pressure we are exerting on our wacom pen and does a hard point that can transport our smile, our sharped look, our thinkings really really far away of our goal. Time to destoy all this “little” interruptions, disconnections, bugs, that togheter do Zbrushing a experience less wonderful that it should be for its own right. Only Pixologic can enlightment people with crazy new tools that surprise and breaks the established workflows, but its time to give at customer calm, trust and flexibility with all possibilities, features and brush types we got yet.
Or at least, this is my point of view.
