I dont really think Microsoft has anything to do with Pixologic not making one for Linux.
You can blamed Microsoft for your third party software woes.
As a software developer I think I see the issue here.
Indeed, Microsoft simply supply good tools to develop programs with, most people use Microsoft products, it therefore makes more commercial sense to release to Windows first, then Mac. It does not make Microsoft evil, itās simply that they supply the tools needed to develop ZBrush quickly and efficiantly and that most of the market out there uses Windows.
And why not, as Microsoft have grown windows and itās use along side itās own income. I admit the price of thier OS is still way too high out of the box shelf product, but hell most computers come with it as OEM and is alot cheaper than buying it in a box. Clever move by Microsoft as most new PCās will be sold with Windows on board as OEM sales and this is a clever marketing corner microsoft got into first.
By definition most people (including me) use Linux as itās free and as such is not a commercially viable market place to try and spend 10 of thousands developing for, when likely they will be happier with an open source alternative (not that there is one that comes even close, but you know what I mean).
Point being most people who have Linux, have it as it costs little or nothing and as such is not the market place to make back the 10ās of thousands of $ it would cost to develop for. So, if pixologic found themselves in a possition where they had a spare 20-30k (or more) and the man power to do it then maybe they will develop and support Linux, but right now, they are working on the Mac version and bugfixing/enhancing the windows version.
I am sure in an ideal world Pixologic would love to have a Linux version they could support, but for nowā¦
Well, obviously Iām not a programmer. However, with all those easy to install open source software, Iāve observed that, apparently, many of those software (like free rendering engines, for example) are available for multiple platform, and often are released together. Itās maybe possible to surmise, as a non-programmer, that compiling software across multiple platform arenāt really that difficult. Pixologic needs almost a year between a PC and a Mac (possible) release.
So, can someone explain to non-programmers (Iām sure there are many here), what is going on here? Even wine has been demonstrated to be able to run zb under linux. What is (possibly) the problem in compiling ZB across different platform?
Wine actually runs part of windows so it can run a windows program. The application running like this is running in an emulation layer. It is not really running natively in Linux.
Things like rendering engines, that do not have sigificant gui components are all about the math of the rendering engine. This is easy to write in a portable fashion. These are relatively easy to port.
Many cross platform apps that are gui based rely on 3d party toolkits for the graphics that are cross platform. i.e. somebody else has done the hard work of dealing with the (completely different) windowing systems. Porting an application like this isnāt so bad either.
ZBrush has itās own (different) gui, so it probably needs to be rewritten for each platform. This is very hard. ZBrush also does a lot of advanced things under the hood, particularly in the area of memory management. In order to accomplish this it likely depends on parts of the operating system (i.e. Windows, Linux, OSX) to get that done. This sort of functionality does not transfer between say Windows and OSX. Iām sure there are other reasons too, and not all of them technical.
I just tested ZBrush 3.1 on Linux and boy does it work! I donāt want to jump the gun too much yet but it appears to be radically outperforming another exact same specs system with Windows installed, except that system has less RAM! Hopefully there will be no problems.
This is OLD hardware Iām testing with and even an old cheap Wacom graphire is working Perfectly.
Iāve tried a few apps which have run better on Wine than on Windows. ArtRage being one. That works like a dream. Ludicrously cheap as well.
I was waiting for ZBrush Mac. I havenāt bought the app yet. Pixologic probably wont get any cash from me until I have a Mac version but possibly I might use it under Wine now - no guarantee that it will always work though.
Iām running Ubuntu 7.10 with the latest Wine from Wine HQ compiled on the system. I did this because the Ubuntu package caused some kind of problem with pressure on my graphics tab. You simply need to copy your WinSxS folder over to the Wine install. If you have all the files. Otherwise you need to download a redistribution package of Visual C++ 2005 from Microsoft. This is already mentioned somewhere on the forum.
I agree. Zbrush 3.1 on Linux through wine does outperform Zbrush 3.1 on Windows XP SP2 on the exact same hardware. I have only tested this on 32bit systems though.
This is on an intel core 2 duo procs, 2 Gigs of Ram machine.
The actual polygon performance and the multithreading performance test give similar results. However the power seems to be in Linuxās speed in writing to disc, making the ācompacting virtual memoryā and āreading V Mā processes much faster.
For my current model I cannot work in windows because I have to wait about 30+ seconds everytime i do an āundoā or unhide geo or anything that requires VM read or writes, on Linux I can model fine and have to wait 10- seconds for the same actions. This is on the same machine.
Right! This is awsome news. I would be interested to know if anyone got ZApplink to work in linux. If so, then I can say bye bye to windows. at least when it comes to working in 3D.
I just installed the ZBrush trial on my other PC again. I was able to do this because Windows locked me out. It thinks a hardware music sampler I attach is āchanged hardwareā and expects me to phone Microsoft to plead for further activations. Anyway I have Norton Ghost so ghosted back the system and tried the ZBrush Demo gain. And they wonder why we want to use Linux or OSX?
Maybe my radically outperforming is a bit of an exaggeration but it definitely outperforms. With the same poly count, navigation around the model is way smoother. If I swap over the RAM from the other machine (Windows will probably lock me out again) Iām sure Iāll get higher poly counts.
However, I guess anything working on Linux is radically outperforming because you donāt have all the other usual Windows problems to deal with.
Youāre right about the ācompacting virtual memoryā and āreading V Mā being much faster under Linux Wine.
Has anyone here got the licensing working with ZBrush under Wine because sometimes this doesnāt work and would obviously be a big problem? Iāve just tested the demo. I have not bought the app yet. My intention was to do so when a Mac version arrives.
I try install Zbrush trial on Ubuntu linux, under wine. It work fine, better than Vista version on my PC (can divide much more, about 30% more), but Zbrush under wine cannot use Wacom tabletā¦ this is a big issue for me (wacom tablet can be fine istall and work fine in ubuntu, but Zbrush search Windows drivers, so cannot work)
I think my Wacom did work. I canāt verify this now because the ZBrush demo has run out. I had a few problems with my Wacom under Wine. Itās an old Graphire. Not very good but good enough for ZBrush. Under other Windows apps with the Ubuntu Wine version, I had no pressure sensitivity but when I used the Wine version from Wine HQ it worked.
Pixologic canāt get a Mac version. There is a heck of a lot more Mac users than Linux. :lol:
When Blender developed its own very capable sculpt tool last year, it was revealed that with the typical Windows setup currently used it could handle 1 or 2 million polygons.
With Linux, on the same machine and itās relatively small fast kernel it was able to work with 12 million polygons effectively.
By all means Linux capable Zbrush.
The sooner we can walk away from Bill Gatesā dog the better.
Iām getting a new box, and wow, this is good news! I mean really, 64 bit support under Windows sucks. Iād love to see a Zbrush Linux port, fully 64 bit capable.
Except for the differences between BSD and System V system calls, porting Zbrush to Linux after they get it working on the mac should take relatively little time. In fact, Linux supports a good deal of SysV and BSD style system calls.
I find it odd that Zbrush mentions in their marketing literature that Z3 supports up to 256 cores, and there really isnāt a mac or windows machine sold that supports this much. Meanwhile, massively smp, 64 bit computing is common on Linux and other unices.
The fact that ILM uses Zbrush, and ILM uses a lot of custom code designed to run on Unices may mean Pixologic already has a in-house unixy version.
Hi.
We are starting new commpany and we could be much happy if there could be Zbrush for Linux.
Please do it. 
I tested ZBrush 3.1 under wine ā¦61, it works fine, but I have error: WinTab serviece not available
I would buy it today if there was a support for linux.