Hi Pilou,

i think the Design is good, because you can put more features/functions in a square menue than in a circular, imho.

Anyways, i love the UI layout of ZBrush much much more than for example the layout of 3DCoat with it's many rooms where you always have to switch, which i never understood. The only advantage, i see, with 3DCoat is it's (PBR) texture painting capabilities.

Regards
Stefan

<< i think the Design is good, because you can put more features/functions in a square menue than in a circular, imho.
But absolutly not "ergonomic" ! :)

<< you can put more features/functions
Not a problem : just multiply Pies!

See Blender Menu Pies : it's runing 10 times more speed!
And some tricky uses of parameters inside! Absolutly amazing!:)
You can have all principal functions under fingers!
Sure you must config first (or load some yet made) but after what a confort!

You have not that with the very rustic rectangular box of ZBrush! It's a nightmare to use the ZModeler! :)


Maybe in the ZB 5.0 !



here a Pie specialized in Sculpting : Pies menu is the more adapted for numerous functions!

quote: You have not that with the very rustic rectangular box of ZBrush! It's a nightmare to use the ZModeler! :)

Mmmhhh.... there must be a reason why Pixologic implemented it that way. You are the first person, i have read from, saying that it is a nightmare! Why all the ZBrush users are not complaining? :-)

Regards
Stefan

<< users are not complaining? :-)
:)

Stefan,

Sorry, I disagree. Z's topology remesher is not as good 3D Coats, and theirs isn't all that good, IMO. I believe there will need to be some serious AI work in remeshers before they are able to handle ZB, 3DC and CAD output in an acceptable quad format. My guess is it will be 2-5 years before we start to see acceptable autoretopo tools which need no hand tuning.

Sure, Zbrush is good for extreme character detailing and design and creating the "ultimate dragon scales," but hard surface modeling? Not so much. I can always 'tell' a Zbrush model rendered in KS. It just looks 'doughy.' My 3DC models have the same problem. Even if you disagree, reducing these million plus poly models down to VR level numbers while still baking in the required normal and parallax maps, is still a difficult task currently. It's certainly easier to start from poly cages then use plugins like hardops and meshfusion to create the hyper detail needed/wanted for the final model.

I'm sure you can find Z users who absolutely love the quad tools. But they aren't as sophisticated as what can be done in Modo or for that matter Blender or Lightwave. It's not it's primary function-- as a hard surface cage modeler. To do that you need very sophisticated controls over loops and offsets of loops, polyflow and other nifty tools (like Meshfusion). Heck, I can find just about any appfan for any 3D program who can do great work. Have you seen some of the SketchUp models created by their top users?

Zbrush is the accepted pinnacle of topology modelers. They've just added vector displacement in the recent release and announced as if it's some sort of amazing feature set-- being able to pull 'pseudo voxels' out and about-- just like 3D Coat did years ago. Hurray.

The interface is quite arcane and difficult to learn, even more than Blender IMO. I'm no fan and have regular discussions with others on WHY they believe it has to be part of a workflow for hard surface modeling. Nothing yet compelling for me.

<< Have you seen some of the SketchUp models created by their top users?

See for examples
http://karanak.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/234083-Making-of-Dreadnought Karanak (...scroll...astonished! )
http://600v.deviantart.com/gallery/ (Xlrlxi)

By Karanak


By xlrlxi *Sketchup, Vray, PS


By xlrlxi - Its UI 6 years ago! Not so clean UI ? Small is beautiful as usal! ;)


By xlrlxi *Sketchup - I am fan of its retro-futurist models!

Hi Chipp,

i don't want to start a long debate about ZBrush and 3DCoat, because each MoI user here should compare by themselves to see what fits better for them. The galleries of both apps can give users, interested in those apps, a good overview imho.

I dont know why you come to the conclusion that 3DCoats auto retope is better than ZBrush's. In the past i did several conversions and always had problems with 3DCoats auto retopo, resulting in no good mesh quality, like holes etc. Even the free InstantMeshes software did a better job. With ZBrush's ZRemesher i never had a problem, yet.

About ZModeler, it was implemented in 4R7 and so it's relatively new, imho. ZModeler has all the required tools available to create polygon models.

About Vector Displacement, it's a new brush where you can sculpt with Vector Displacement Maps. Maybe i have missed something in 3DCoat, but i have not seen a Vector Displacement brush in 3DCoat. If there is one then i appologize of course.

About the UI, i have read in the past from a lot of people that the UI is strange for them, same as Blender's.
If people only try out those softwares and don't read the documentation or take a course, then it might be allien.

I, for myself, can only say that ZBrush, even if i have only scratched the surface so far, is an absolutely amazing 3D Software. It has so many unique features under the hood, which you don't find in other 3D Modeling apps. The good Pixologic folks are simply genius!!! :-)

Best Regards
Stefan

Hi Chipp, Stefan and everyone.

I'm not a "professional" user and I simply play with 3D-Coat for my hobby and I'm still learning it,
and only for a limited period, some months, I played with some trial versions of ZBrush.

IMHO the matter is quite straightforward :

1) ZBrush : High selling price, exceptional tools for very skilled people, very difficult learning curve, state of the art sculpting tools.

2) 3D-Coat : less than half the price of Z, more intuitive UI, not so difficult to learn, not so good as Z for scultpting but very good Surafce tools, very very good texturing/uving/retopo, very simple but useful built in PBR renderer, easy export to many rendering software.

Both software are great but for me 3D-Coat is more easy and fun.

Ciao!

Marco (mkdm)

Hi Marco,

there is no doubt that 3DCoat is a very nice and affordable app. I only wanted to point out things where i did not agree with Chipp. :-)

I'm a hobby user at home and must do professional work (with MoI) at my work place. I own licenses for both apps ZBrush and 3DCoat(Edu). In the past i used 3DCoat and i like it's (PBR) texture painting capabilities very much. Same goes for the "image to mesh" feature. However after purchasing ZBrush i no longer have a need for 3DCoat, except for those two features. While i'm still a beginner with ZBrush i personally find the UI workflow very well thought out and i'm always surprised when i discover new features in ZBrush and how well and cleverly those features are thought out.

That said, if a user would like to start, for example, with ZBrushCore or 3DCoat Edu, i would however recommend 3DCoat Edu, because you get more features for the buck.

Another thing i like to point out about ZBrush, is the use of-plug-in's. There are a lot of useful and free plug-in's available.

Regarding render engines for ZBrush, there is the modern and popular (and fast and easy to use) KeyShot renderer available, which only costs 400 USD for the Pro Version and 200 USD for the Standard version. O.k. you have to buy the KeyShot Bridge too and it works only with ZBrush, but compare that with the regular price of KeyShot...

Best regards
Stefan

Hi Stefan.

Thanks a lot for sharing :)

ZBrush...3D-Coat...I think that what really matters is first of all the talent and, in second place, how many hundreds of hours you can spend to learn and dig into your preferred tool.

This second point is really the crucial point for me, because in real life, it's so difficult to find time to devote to some personal hobby, like for example CG :)

Ciao!

You're welcome, Marco.

Well, about talent i see it a bit different. People who want to learn 3D don't need that much talent, only patience and willingness to practice and practice. If they are talented in their Art, they are doing, than that is a bonus point.

About your second point. Yes, that's true, luckily 3D is my main hobby and therefore i can devote as much time as i want. :-)

A note about learning Blender. When i started to learn and use Blender i had also a hard time to grasp it, because i was used
to other DCC apps, with quite different workflows. Luckily, our boss send us to a professional school, for one week,
where we had to learn and practice 8 hrs a day Blender. After i finished this training, i was comfortable with Blender.

Regards
Stefan

@You : "...our boss send us to a professional school, for one week..."

You're a lucky man :)

Ciao.

Stefan,

Certainly Cubicomp in the 80's had "all the tools to create polygon models" even if you did have to enter every vertex coordinate numerically and by hand. I have talked to PROFESSIONALS who use Zbrush, Blender, Substance, Maya and other apps. They tell me the polygon modeling in Z is not up to snuff. You, a self-proclaimed hobbyist, say differently. I'm inclined to believe the pros.

They also say the retopo in Zbrush, while good, is not great. Again, I believe them. Perhaps you can share some of your work and we can ask questions about it?

What is vector displacement other than a way to compete with a voxel modeler? I understand Z can create vector displacement maps, but so can 3D Coat, and also my understanding is it's difficult to create extreme mesh distortion in Z before vector displacement. Perhaps I'm missing something. If not, it seems like a way to PULL or PUSH extreme detail into a Z mesh, which is not an issue for a voxel modeler.

One of the posters at the top asked if ZBrush would replace other modelers, to which I replied categorically no. Great work is being created in all modelers and Z won't replace the whole suite of 3D apps.

That is still my stance. You are certainly welcome to think differently.

Hi Chipp,

Regardless what pros say, i'm pretty sure that ZModeler can replace dedicated
modeling apps. If not now, then in the future, because it's still relatively
new. If i had always listened to the pros i would not have the apps, which i
like, in my toolbox. :-)

ZModeler short videos overview: http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/tag/ZModeler

I'm following 3D as my hobby since 1985 and did before my first, very lo-res,
3D'ish looking images on an Atari 800XL, with a graphics tablet. :-)

Please see this thread, for example, about the space ship and if you scroll down
a bit about the bass player. Both models where done mainly with ZModeler.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?207149-ZBrush-4R8-Beta-Testing-Gallery&p=1210095&viewfull=1#post1210095

If people had followed the ZBrush site for a while they could have seen more
examples done with ZModeler.

With Vector Displacement, there is no need to compete with a Voxel modeler.
In fact, there was never a need for ZBrush to compete with a Voxel Modeler, like
3D-Coat. ZBrush is the accepted de-facto digital sculpting standard, worldwide.
If it was not then we would have seen much more works done with Mudbox or 3D-Coat,
compared to ZBrush.

Sure, there could be improvements made in ZRemesher. I pointed out that
ZRemesher is imho better than 3D-Coat's auto-retopo tool, which you
claimed the opposite. Auto-retopo is not the holy grail, i'm only amazed
how good ZRemesher did it's job so far for me, compared to 3D-Coat.

In the end it does not really matter if you prefer 3D-Coat or i prefer
ZBrush and what we both say here in public! People should download both
trials, look at the galleries, forums etc. and make up their own minds.

Best regards
Stefan

>They also say the retopo in Zbrush, while good, is not great. Again, I believe them. Perhaps you can share some of your work >and we can ask questions about it?

Normally i don't like to do that, but o.k.. Here's one simple example of a logo design made by a professional Designer and messed up, so that it could not be 3D printed for his client. I, as a hobbyist, reworked the design, so that it could be 3D printed.

As you can see in my picture i used a much higher mesh resolution in 3D-Coat than in ZBrush, because 3D-Coat gave worser results with an equal polycount. I also run several tests with 3D-Coat with it's various settings, to see if maybe one setting would result in a better mesh. The second picture shows where the 3D-Coat mesh is faulty, compared to the ZBrush mesh.
The ZBrush mesh was remeshed with it's default setting and needed only one try.





Best regards
Stefan

BEAUTIFULL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Info ;)
About "voxels":
if ise one possible major base function of 3D Coat, there are also existing "in ZBrush but "hidden" for the users!

In some functions like "Unified Skin" for transform & replace some volumes made with other ways , "ShadowBox" for create volumes from tricky projections... ;)

"Mmmhhh.... there must be a reason why Pixologic implemented it that way. You are the first person, i have read from, saying that it is a nightmare! Why all the ZBrush users are not complaining? :-)"

I have used ZBrush since v1.25. It looks the same now as it did 17+ years ago, just with more buttons and menus. The original developer is artist. If he were an engineer, I'm sure it would look quite different.

I communicated with Pixologic many years ago about the interface and that CAD users in general are going to reject it. I did explain there is crossover between CAD and sculpture, and that will grow in the future. It would be useful to adapt the interface to a more CAD like environment (or offer it as an alternate), and provide tools and workspace that use absolute values so dimensions and location could match the typical 3D cad application.

I think there are a small number of ZBrush users who also use 3D cad applications, although its certainly more than it was almost 20 years ago. Maybe if the VFX and Gaming markets we not growing as fast, it might entice the developers to consider additional markets.

<< its a nightmare!

Only for the ZModeler! ;)

You can't say that is a pleasure to choose over numerous functions from a board! :)
(even if few are "contextual" !)
Icons are more friendly and better radial icons ! :)
and you must not read the newspaper! :)

Thanks for the interesting reply chrisd!

@Pilou: Icons are imho good when you have only a few tools/functions like MoI has, for example.
I think when having tons of tools/functions like ZBrush has, you have more a hard time to remember
what each icon means, because then you have to read the newspaper... :-)

Regards
Stefan