How about instead of 3.5, 3.15? just release a bug free version of 3.1, because we all know 3.5 will have a slew of new issues to contend with if the previous releases are any indication of quality control.
For what it;s worth. I totally agree with j.fernwright.
3.0 was definitely ‘alpha’ quaility, 3.1 ‘beta’, when do we go gold?
G.
Yes, these too were cited among the reasons we dropped ZB for the Mac altogether in our shop. Unfortunately, rather than provide a service release for the obvious flaws (e.g. program malfunctions) which plague the 3.12 release, Pixologic has instead adopted, “You’re lucky we gave you anything and it’ll be fixed in 3.5” attitude (my paraphrasing.) 3.12 went from a promised production release to an intrerim release after the fact. Hence, Pixologic has bought and paid for the obsession with 3.5 you see from the Mac users, and the disappointment that there has been no service release, simply to correct the most irritating of these problems.
In our shop, we simply accepted Pix is never going to get a Mac version right–it simply isn’t in their DNA. My personal students who have Macs are simply using 3.1 (quite well, in fact) in Windows XP and Vista. The current downsides of emulating Windows in a mac environment are 1) cost and 2) 64-bit windows emulation (for allowing ZB to easily have a full 4GB RAM to itself) is still a little wonky. A minor downside is integrating Wacom tablets into emulated Windows environments, but I cover that pretty extensively in my blogs. The upside of emulating Windows for ZB on a Mac is that you have a rock-solid environment for ZB since you can create a Virtual Machine, just for it.
The biggest gripe we here from the PC side (and this is a valid complaint) is that if you hook a RAID system to the licensed PC (say by eSATA or internal configuration), Pixologic’s overly-senstive right’s protection scheme tends to wig out as it somehow things that if the RAID starts the LUNs for its drives in a different order, then it must be a “different PC.” This quickly exhausts the licensing chits for a PC user. There are no good solutions for this, and most are not DCMA compliant.
Pix’s simple answer, don’t use RAID on any computer where you want to use our products. Fine for students, but not really a “Produciton Ready” feature in a shop that ultimately needs to generate tons of Video content.
-K
The same thing happens when you upgrade Parallels or VMWare Fusion. It thinks your hardware has changed. I find the best solution is use Bootcamp. Then you’re not emulating anything. It’s also faster and far more reliable than a virtual machine.
Hey Jamez! I was reading about your 3d to 2.5d approach for detailing. Can you elaborate a bit more on that and if possible show an example or two. I am quite curious about the possibilities of illustration using 2.5 d. this might not be the correct thread though…
the 3.5 discussion:
I am really wondering about the "pioneering " bits. wow , what could it be? I think it could be volumetric modeling, or voxels, but that’s being done elsewhere. Any guesses anyone.
Hmmm :idea: , that’s interesting to me because I haven’t experienced any of that. I use it on two different machines almost daily, both mac pros, one’s 1st gen quad core, other’s 2nd gen 8 core. In fact, I’ve done all those things that Sav said is buggin’ out for him just today with no issues. I even put it all through a torture test of resizing the document over and over with models and with just 2.5d work. I did have one refresh issue occur, but just for a few moments. Zero crashes, though.
What’s also interesting is that some people were complaining that they couldn’t render at all without crashing. While it has happened to me for sure (near the end of the render only), it’s still rare enough that it doesn’t bother me too much. I always drop the scene to the canvas, and then save the 2.5d document and lights prior to rendering. So if it crashes, I just reopen it.
So either some of these bugs are system/environment specific, or I got a golden copy of ZBrush OSX! (that’s still a lil’ rusty because of the displacement exports, but sounds like I got it better than some)
The protocol we used to use (we’ve dropped ZB Mac altogether at this point) involved always de-registering ZB before making any changes to VMware. This kept the loss to a minimum. Bootcamp is the way to go, expecially if you have Windows copies of other useful programs (e.g. Photoshop) at your disposal. (My current laptop is a bootcamped Vista64 Macbook Pro with 6GB–haven’t justified replacing it yet.)
The VM solution is really more for my students who dislike flipping back and forth between OS’s
-K
I’m sure they’re coming up with all kinds of crazy stuff!
As far as the 3d > 2.5d > 2d workflow, it’s a gem for an illustrator. I wish I could show the work I’ve done, but it’s all under the code of silence for now. I am working on a new project that I’ll FINALLY be able to post! I’ll do a little step by step when I do.
The thing about it is you can bring out incredible detail that would normally make a computer explode. Pixols are the key. Just like pixels, the resolution of the document is just a grid of them.
Load the demo head for instance, resize to a large canvas around 2000 - 4000 pixols wide, drag it into the scene, scale it as big as it can be while fitting (you’ll have to zoom out), and drop it to the canvas by exiting edit mode. (you don’t really have to enter edit mode, you can move, scale, and rotate with the widget)
Then grab the simple brush, which is not in the 3d brush palette, it’s in the tool menu. These brushes have completely different behavior than 3d brushes. Most have no interest in them because they’re actually trying to create 3d content. All of my work is printed flat. What you’ll find is that no matter how much infinitely small detail you do, it never slows down!
The more you mess with it, the more interesting results you’ll achieve. Don’t view it as a substitute for 3d detailing. View it as a way to put that extra level of visual interest into your final renders. Push the model as far as you can in 3d, and be sure you get the angle of the final renders right. Also be sure to render passes of the original 3d model as you normally would first and save it as a separate document when you jump into the 2.5d detailing. Then render passes again when you’re done. You can still change the lights and render effects. All of the depth information of the 3d scene stays in tact.
Other tips: Mess with the deco brush as a sculpting tool with different alphas. You can achieve some cool detail. Also there is no smooth brush now. I use the smudge tool with a low intensity to ‘lightly’ smooth areas that need it. It’s fantastic for cleaning up visible polygons, but definitely not a substitute for the smooth 3d brush.
Good luck! You can p.m. me if you run into any issues, or contact me through my old, dusty, non updated website!
Have they never heard of feature creep??
You sort out what you want in the new release and set a realistic production date.
If any features are taking too long so that you are going over the deadline you cut the feature and save it for the next release.
Once the point release is out you fix any out standing issues that are causing the users grief to keep them happy
By doing this you will get a more stable piece of software as there is on going bug fixing while also giving the customer regular updates
If your a home user a free update is understandably worth waiting for, but if you use it everyday in production an additional £500 is pocket money to get regular fixes and updates
I can understand that pixologic want to release an amazing piece of software but theres been no updates for almost 2years and they are now starting to alienanate there customers
Although im sure this will be ignored like every other comment on the forum
Oh any chance you can fix the smooth brush while your at it please
Not doubting you. I found it cropped up most often in non-proportional scaling of the canvas and very large canvases (in the range of 4000 x 4000.) Sort of the kind of stuff Meats Meir used to do for illustration purposes.
I’ve personally experienced the topology “drag-masking” bug quite a bit on the Mac side. (I used Mac 3.12 for about 2 months when it first came out.) Can’t give you a clear picture on how to reproduce it, but it definitely sent ZB into a tail spin. 
I just avoided using that masking type myself (as cool as it is.) I don’t see the same on Vista64 ZB 3.10.
Overall, my personal experience since 3.10 came out is that ZB3.12 is less stable “at the edges.” If you stick to sculpting and 2.5D work (excluding non-proportional canvas manipulation), ZB3.12 will work great on a Mac. However, we have a pipeline that requires taking .objs in from other programs, UV optimization needs (which ZB use’s .obj to take in), and generating maps (displacement and normals). Here’s Mac ZB3.12 is quite inferior in terms of functionality and stability to ZB3.10.
I found the majority of my crashing under OSX came from dealing with .obj import myself. Having been using ZB 3 on windows since the day it came out, I can say, at least for my work, ZB 3.12 Mac is a much inferior product to ZB3.10 Windows. (Although there are a couple of nice things in ZB3.12 Mac that I’m looking to be incorporated into ZB 3.5 PC, such as independent textures for subtools.)
I think that if Pix had set expectations for ZB3 Mac correctly at he beginning (e.g. it’s going to be a perpetual beta until 3.5) they might have bought themselves fewer problems. As a beta, ZB3.12 isn’t bad. It’s missing features and a little crashy in some areas, but overall fullfills its primary missions sculpting and 2.5D illustration reasonably well. Certainly better than most other products that attempt the same. However in the traditional model-texture-animate-render-edit type pipelines, where ZB has to play in the model-texture space in a friendly way with the animate-render space, ZB 3.12 Mac seriously leaves a huge amount to be desired, especially when compared with it’s near twin, ZB 3.10 PC.
-K
Very informative stuff, Kerwin. I’ll see if I get any of that with irregular proportioned document sizes. I do, however, resize the canvas as large as 4000 x 6000. As an illustrator, obviously I have a simpler workflow, which means a simpler list of complaints. Although, I swear, it’s not as crashy for me as it seems to be for a lot of you Mac ZBrushers. Wish I knew why so I could help, but I’m definitely not complaining. At least the early release of 3.12 revealing all of the hiccups should yield a more solid 3.5.
I like your stuff Jamez. That was the kind of thing I was hoping to experiment with as well as playing with the extra dimension to get traditional impasto effects - but alas, not yet.
I do know this, if Pixologic released a public beta to its existing userbase this mess would not happen. Its not like they’re charging for the next version anyway so what advantage is there in not doing? There must be a zillion hardware set ups between us which means ZB would be exposed to every bug imaginable.
Haha but entitlement != yours
If it gets built, it will be a glorious gift. It can only be built in the most efficient and reasonable ways humanly possible. Nothing can or should change that. Adults will know this.
Charmed I’m sure. That was very adult of you.
ideal != success
gift != cost
adult != intelligent
Thanx! 
Although I’d say your portfolio is quite a bit more impressive! My site hasn’t been updated in ages, actually since it was first published over a year ago…I gotta do that one of these days…too damn busy working for the man…
As far as impasto pixol painting, I tried it too. Not really the same, huh? Painter actually has pixels with depth for the impasto effect, but it’s way too far from the real thing. Painter as a whole is still nice though. In the end, I don’t mind the digital art look anyways.
Cheers
You can’t really cut out features if they are already in progress, especially not if the affect other parts of the program. With 3D apps it’s extremely difficult to decouple modules. With microsoft word 2011 or some such crap that kind of engineering works better, but when you are doing stuff no one has done before it’s much harder to estimate and control a product. Everyone likes firm release dates, but what’s the point of a ‘firm’ release date that is missed over and over or doesn’t contain the promised features? That’s how most dev houses operate. It’s pretty easy o guess when it will be out based on past versions anyway, at least as well if they pulled some date out of thin air. My guess is sept, but of course that is just a guess.
I still can’t figure out how such a major glitch of not being able to create useable displacement maps could have been overlooked, or allowed in a final release. That’s not some minor little issue that one can simply choose to ignore and hope it is dealt with at some point down the road. It really impacts one’s ability to use ZBrush in a pipeline. Again, I thought one of the main reasons for the last big delay was so these kinds problems could be dealt with without having to reinvent the wheel. Yet, here we are again waiting for months just to get even a glimmer of information on when a fix might be forthcoming. Going on no information whatsoever, given the length of time that has passed since this issue was first raised, I have to guess Pixo has had to go back and change a whole lot of things again.
I’m not going to be looking for a whole bunch of bells and whistles in the next update. All I really need is to finally have a complete software that does what it’s supposed to do. That’s my wish -plain and simple.
You do realize why Pixologic take so long in creating new version of zbrush dont you? Its a marketing thing. 
They offer free upgrades of Zbrush for everyone. So no money is made with upgrades.
They slow down the development so much and keep silent that it annoys many users so much that they sell on their copies in a fit of anger. This is where the marketing genius takes over. When the new version is finally released it is so fantastic and a must have that those who sold on their copies have to stump up the cash to get back into Zbrush. Absolute genius. he he.:lol:
Cheers
Mike R
Alternatively, having to purchase and use other products to work around zbrush’s deficiencies has pretty much eliminated my perceived need for zbrush. I can’t remember the last time I even launched the program to look at it. Until this is resolved, there’s no place to use it in my workflow. therefore no reason to upgrade.
Walter