Thanks for the kind words, Michael. You helped me grasp the way of working with solids some time ago. After your help, I 'got' solids and then the fun began. I'll post some more stuff here as I get the chance.

Frenchy, I really liked those images and am duly impressed with the results. I think Zbrush has become a very viable hard-surface tool, especially with version 4. I plan on doing some hard-surface experimentation with Zbrush, just to see if I can get exactly what I want out of it, but I have to say I am very, very happy using MoI and find it to be indespensable for several reasons. Primarily, I like the flexibility and accuracy inherit in MoI. As much as love Zbrush, I never feel like I have as much precision as I would like and sometimes I feel like I am fighting the program to do something simple or it is just too much trouble trying to pull off certain shapes predictably. Admittedly, it might mean I just need to spend more time in Zbrush, but I think what I'm trying to say is that if I want to get the curve of a handle, just 'so,' it's not a big deal to refine a curve in MoI. Trying to do the same thing in Zbrush has proved to be quite frustrating at times.

I also had to iterate a lot on these weapons, making scalar changes, proportional adjustments and other incremental tweaks - often over extended lengths of time. Sometimes I had to revisit models months after I had initially made them. Usually, the changes were significant, but subtle and I needed to be able regenerate some surfaces exactly (with scale or other proportional modifications). It might take a few times to remember how I constructed certain shapes, but I was usually able to figure out the steps with minimal guess-work. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say MoI really saved me on many occasions because the construction history was right there in the curves I had created. I would not want to revisit a model made in Zbrush several months later and try to duplicate all the steps needed to make the file. I can pretty much guarantee I won't get the steps right.

Another big reason I like MoI is the files I generate are usually very lightweight and easily exportable to other applications (like Zbrush). MoI's mesher gives me a lot of flexibility. I use it to help me kick-start my in-game LODs as well as exporting really beautifully parameterized high-resolution meshes out for sculpting work in Zbrush. Honestly, I think you get it all when you work in MoI. Once a mesh is proofed and fully fleshed-out in MoI, you can go just about anywhere you want with it.

Maybe I'm oversimplify things or it's just my imagination, but I see a lot of overlap in things like Shadowbox for Zbrush or Voxel primitives in 3DCoat and solids in MoI - at least in the final result. Artists are a lot less concerned with things like topology (still very important, but not the end-all-be-all it used to be) and much more concerned with things like aesthetical design and flow, volume composition. In other words, the tools available today really do let artists be much more artistic and less technical than in years past. It could be I'm just getting older, but I think it's just that tools and the hardware have matured and improved.