I am curious too about the mesh extraction tool. If you extract a mesh at a high poly count, will you be able to reduce the polys to a low number by recreating it’s subdivision history and export it separately as a low poly mesh and will it still retain it’s form at a low poly count and not be all polywogged?
Tell us more!!!
anynews of a release date??
that’s what’s killing me!
What about the previously annouced features such as enhancements to ZSphere modeling, surface and volume rigs based on zsphere skeletons. Are those features, demoed at last year’s Siggraph, (and promised to be in 2.5) still in scope for 2.5?
http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/products/2.5.html
Are they still in?
Oh and now with the new laws stating that if a product is announced it must ship within 3 months, does that mean we might see 2.5 before siggraph 2007 or is this again a bunch of features that will ‘never’ get delivered?
Also, why do you guys call it 2.5 and offer it as a free upgrade? You could easily call it ZBrush 3.0 and charge for it. Or based on new Maya versioning scheme (new features to version number ratio) you could call it ZBRush XX.
Intriguing questions, to be sure. Stay tuned for more videos!
…but no such laws exist. Or you’re misinterpreting them. Flat out, it doesn’t work like you described.
They promised a free upgrade, and made a great many sales of the existing version based on this promise. They could have released last year’s candidate as 2.5 and charged for this year’s upgrades, but for whatever reason, they chose not to. And while many of us would gladly pay for our 2.5 upgrades, to make that switch now would invite negative PR, and probably a class action suit.
So, while they could have easily done what you suggest, they can’t easily do what you suggest. Timing is everything.
Two more questions…
- Are there any enhancements to direct polygon or edge editing? For instance, sometimes I would love to quickly select an edge or a polygon, split, bevel, or extrude it.
- With regards to the texture layers, do they support blending modes just like the layers in Photoshop? Can one Zlink between photoshop while maintaning the layers?
Cheers
Hy folks that’s great, but if its only a joke as last year, or six month later its not funny ! i want my update ! 
Super cool the videos, and for MAc ?
ok… I must agree that those videos are amazing. But where??? when??? Who?? How??
cheers!
I second that. These tools looks amazing, but are mac users going to have to wait a full year after the windows release to enjoy them, like with Zbrush2? Also any chance we will see Zmapper for OSX anytime soon?
Same answer as above: Wait. The past two days have released four new videos, each covering a different area of 2.5 workflow. Your question is outside the scope of those videos, which means it will probably be covered in tomorrow’s set, or the next one.
I think they were more saying that the 3D layers include vertex color for all geometry. Vertex color can be baked to a texture and edited with Zapplink, but then you lose all the advantages of it being vertex color. At the state that they’re showing, their texture has no UV coordinates and therefore won’t work with Zapplink with or without layers.
Likewise, 2D blending modes don’t make a lot of sense for the actual geometry. What does “darken” or “soft light” mean in that context?
That’s just a theory. I could be wrong. They’ve only just opened the subject. We’ll know know more as more videos are released.
COOL FEATURES…
THANKS DAVE CARDWELL & SKYMATTER TEAM…
Which in essence makes this a 2 year wait for Mac users. We waited sooo long last time. I can’t believe 2.5 hasn’t been released yet. I barely come here anymore. I just saw that there was news from siggraph on zbrush 2.5 so I popped in. I thought it was suposed to be out a year ago before X-Mas.
what other new sculpting brushes are there besides the flatten?
this looks unreal cant wait for it!
Alright, now…Behave! :lol:
Seriously the new features look amazing. I have to comment though that the mesh extraction feature while cool, wastes a ton of polygons. The sames features could be easily created in a traditional subD modeler far more efficently; though no where near as fast. Hopefully, the re-topology feature will make it simple to desez them.
I was wondering about that feature also…I guess if you do all your work/renders in zbrush then it could be usefull…but without being able to export a template based texture it’s not much use.
Like you mention I imagine thats where the re-topology tool would come in handy but also remember you may waste a few extra polys using mesh extract, but you can also use a hell of a lot more in ZB 2.5, 40 million on 64bit systems apparently…
As for the release date, take as long as you like guys, a year wait has bought us all extra goodness, imagine what would come in another 12 months ( just release the Mac version at the same time as the PC)…
But obviously now you have Mudbox etc knocking at the door so I’d get a wriggle on chaps, before they pinch your ideas…
nice vids!
poly painting = vertex paint?
the vid mentioned no uvs needed.
I think users have waited LONG enough don’t you think? Sure they can just keep adding and adding features and “maybe” release it in a few more years.
Zbrush 2.5 is “Teaseware” hehehe
If 2.5 was released on schedule as advertised, applications like Mudbox might not have been created.
Now that seeing the new zbrush 2.5 vids, the current state of Mudbox (it’s still beta) don’t look as sweet anymore 
ZB currently has a colour to texture function, which I assume will be able to be used to bake your painted polygons into a texture.
I was wondering the same thing. Maybe it’s just that an object can have so many polygons now that at a certain scale its polys are close to the size of a pixel.
Exactly. I imagine that the vertex painting somehow allows you to paint at a greater resolution than single-color-per-vertex and then output to a texture map once you’ve assigned UVs.