ZBrushCentral

Zbrush4 performance/upgrade path?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey! The character team here at ArenaNet is having some general issues now that we’ve moved onto more crazy detailed boss monsters. Our PCs are clearly subpar and we are in talks about getting hardware upgrades. That said, it was our job to get performance metrics. In doing so we were not able to pinpoint what the most important upgrades would be for our machines.

Specs of the machine I’m working on are as follows:

Windows Vista 64bit

Intel core 2 quad cpu Q6600 @2.4 ghz
8gb ram
GeForce 9800 GT

Please don’t mock the pc, the mandate was that we develop on the min spec but that’s become very apparently not acceptable for zbrush.

So yeah! What is the most important upgrade(s?) we would make?

#2

What you have is more than enough for Zbrush.
I would switch out to Windows 7. Vista was crap.

Memory is the most important thing in Zbrush. But it can only use 4gb of ram.
What are your RAM specs? If you’re using slow ram, you’ll see slow performance.

How are you sculpting? HD geo?
How many other applications are using your RAM?
etc.

Where are your problems coming from? too many polygons, too many subtools? too many layers, etc?

I’m asking because you say the whole system needs an update, but from the looks of it, it is more than enough for Zbrush.

#3

Hey Beta! Thanks for the reply. The memory we have is 400mhz dual channel ddr2. I’ve got 8 gigs and I generally run the full gamut of programs in addition to zbrush that I used to create the assets. Max or maya, photoshop and zbrush.

I think windows 7 is out of the question as we are near the end of a development cycle and IT will not be able to support that transition.

I try to stay under 10 million polies on each subtool but it has become unreasonable to cut up the dragon im working on into another tool. It’s frustrating to have to dice up the model more than I have. The highest res subtool is about 12 million.

Again: this system has been fine for the last 3 years of development, but the monsters we are currently working on have become cumbersome. Hiding and showing subtools or portions of the mesh is becoming very slow and general operation feels sluggish. It’s saddening.=(

#4

I would upgrade the ram to faster DDR 3. I typically work with 20 to 30 subtools with 10-21million and have little to no slowdown until layers come into the mix.

#5

Fast RAM as Beta Channel said, and light speed CPU. ZBrush is using as much CPU as possible, then the more core and especially the featest core is the better. The graphic card isn’t used by ZBrush, then this isn’t a key point.

ZBrush is using at Max 4 Gb of RAM, then be sure that it always have its own 4 Gb. Photoshop is a RAM killer, then try to launch ZBrush first :slight_smile:

On the top of that, in ZBrush Preferences >> Mem submenu, don’t push the undos level. Keep them at 4 or 2 is enough.

FYI, I’m running at home a “old” Intel i7 920 quad core HT + 12 Gb of RAM on an SSD drive and ZBRush runs perfectly on large projects.

And +1 on switching to Windows 7 asap :wink:

#6

Thanks for the replies guys. We really appreciate it.