zBrush or Mudbox?
polycounter lvl 6
Hi,
Some of you have probably heard this question a million times, but I would love to hear your opinions on 'zBrush or Mudbox'?
Just to clear up:
- I have had a small dabble in both.
- Mudbox is free to students like me and I currently can't afford a zBrush license (I'm not in to illegal downloading either).
Would it be best for me to start learning some Mudbox, then switch to zBrush if and when I could afford it?
Thanks,
Jamie.
Some of you have probably heard this question a million times, but I would love to hear your opinions on 'zBrush or Mudbox'?
Just to clear up:
- I have had a small dabble in both.
- Mudbox is free to students like me and I currently can't afford a zBrush license (I'm not in to illegal downloading either).
Would it be best for me to start learning some Mudbox, then switch to zBrush if and when I could afford it?
Thanks,
Jamie.
Replies
True, I didn't intend for it to be a pure VS thread, just what people would advise would be a good step for me. Seeing as I have access to Mudbox, I will get going with that.
It's just that Mudbox gets slatted in some areas on the internet, so I wanted a wider opinion.
I love Zbrush for its topology tools, dynamesh, subtools, but hate its UI and tranpose tools (which I must admit have improved in R4)
Mudbox I love because its so easy to use out of the box very clear UI, and its fantastic for painting details straight on and the way it uses layers is great.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90136
It's all there.
Personally, I say jump into Zbrush. It's harder than Mudbox, but once you get good at it, it's way more powerful. Additionally, since your concern is money, it's a real buck saver in the long run. Zbrush updates are all free after your first purchase. Whereas Mudbox may come out with a new version each year that you have to fork over $400 every time just to stay up to date. Good luck and get busy!
This is very very very questionable, especially when zbrush cant bake nor paint ptextures like ptex diffuse, ptex displacement, ptex vector displacement, etc.
If you get into a ptex workflow zbrush is not really your go to thing and pixologic doesnt seem to have an answer for this even though ptex has been open sourced for 3 years now.
I guess I will make-do with Mudbox, as I have access to it (It's free for students). I think at the end of the day, as long as you are sculpting great artwork in the long run, it doesn't really make a huge difference which program it is created in. I can always make jump ship at a later date if i feel like it and could afford it at the time.
Mudbox (imo) gets unfairly slated by some people on forums, and its kinda tricky to compare it like-for-like with zBrush because they're both used differently. Many also (incorrectly) assume that Mudbos isn't used that much but it's actually used extensively and more than people realise. Tron, Avatar, Thor Tintin, Planet of the Apes, and MOH, are just a few examples of its usage and in some cases Mudbox was the only scultping package used.
I agree with Jedi's comments about zBrush and Ptex (as just one example). But I wonder, and I am purely guessing, if the fact that zbrush is 3D/2.5D, that it's trickier for it to implement Ptex? Or maybe, they simply haven't got around to it and instead concentrated on other things?
No matter what software you use, it will only ever be as good as the person using it.
In terms of learning sculpting I would say to scrape your pennies together, get a student license of ZBrush and use the student version of MudBox for texturing, which is a pretty common workflow. The thing is that Mudbox is really designed to fit sculpting into a proper pipeline and that's cool, BUT ZBrush's brush engine along with Dynamesh, QRemesher and all of the other tools make it a better application for learning pure sculpting technique without getting bogged down with pipeline concerns. There are only a few professionals that know MudBox, but don't know ZBrush like the back of their hand so the better you know ZBrush the easier it will be improve your sculpting and then work around some of the sculpting limitations in Mudbox later if/when you might have to use it because of where you will be working at.
The other issue is that they've been so focused on innovating the sculpting tools in ZBrush they probably decided to shift Ptex to the back burner for the time being. It seems like the MudBox Devs really needed to get vector displacement with Ptex going, because with their straight polygon approach they were requiring people to get beefier and beefier machine to just brute force through those millions of polys while ZBrush letting artists slice and dice through billions of polys like a hot knife through butter on two and three year old laptop machines.
ptex IS industry standard. and it's vastly different then uvw. there is not really any copmparison. ptex is a file format and API for storing unlimited amounts of texel data of all types. it was designed to store 10x10=aprox 100k, 22x22= aprox, 500k, 30x30= aprox, 1000k and larger texture sets. multiple map types and other information. it also provides caching io and much more in the api.
your previous point seems to contradict this. mudbox supports ptex, an open standard. ptex 'leapfrogs' over anything that autodesk or any one else has produced. autodesk also supports alembic, exr, open subdiv and many other open standard based formats and technology.
the reason why many companies shy away from collada is because it is controlled by KRONOS and an ISO official standard. ISO/PAS 17506:2012 that makes it hugely inflexible in a fast paced always changing environment like computer graphics. if you want to change the standard it has to go all the way to iso review and approval which is nuts. fbx has a free api and sdk and anyone can incorporate fbx into there application. even blender supports fbx.
freeform mesh/voxel sculpting has existed for a long time. 3dcoat had this feature long before zbrush and also sculptris had this feature which was subsequently bought by pixologic. dynamesh is certainly not innovative. it also has a number of shortcoming just like voxel sculpting. there are also a number of advantages that subdivision has that make it desirable in most cases. from an artistic standpoint in a production environment you want to avoid starting from a simple blob and you rarely if ever have enough control or time to be diddling around as a 'designer'. concept artists use 3d as an aid in there 2d workflow. they are not professional sculptors and modellers.
as for your other point you have it backwards. hardware keeps getting better to improve the quality of both game and software.
its a bit like saying next gen consoles are forcing people to upgrade to new hardware that supports dx11 more ram better graphics etc. we should just use current gen hardware and dx9 because it looks ok to. zbrush does not use true 3d it uses a software z-depth rasterization trick. it is not even a 64bit process. i dont think you understand how mudbox uses 64bit adressing, cpu, ram and graphics memory to extend the possibilities far beyond what you can do with the cpu and software rasterization. mudbox is light years ahead of zbrush. the architecture improves performance as the hardware and graphics cards improve. zbrush is totally oblivious to all of that and relies on a few software tricks that do not scale. there is a big problem if your software architecture does not utilize hardware and does not improve its performance in step with hardware. mudbox supports hardware shaders, this is the 21st century after all. mudbox also can paint 500k map sets in real time. sculpting also uses memory and graphics caching extensively. in short it is designed for graphics workstations and takes advantage of curent hardware innovation. if you want to use mudbox on a pentium2 with 16mb of video ram then your sh*t out of luck.
ptex and VDM has nothing to do with hardware or the mesh scheme. these are innovative features that extend the tool set of the artist and they do so in the context of production. you really need to understand these tools and what they do before throwing out incorrect assumptions.
to answer the op's question.
@jamieRIOT
no matter how you word them comparison threads will always start flames and you will not get accurate information. if you want to get accurate info its better to ask about ONE software with some specific questions. then people will stay on topic and they will give you 'accurate' truthful info.
i do most of my work in mudbox now. i will pop into zbrush for certain features if needed.
1)
in terms of sculpting its a matter of personal preference. they have two different philosophies about sculpting. to put it short and sweet. mudbox wants to give you a small number of core brushes that are very versatile and can be customized to do many different tasks and effects. zbrush wants to give you a large number special purpose brushes each one designed for a specific type of task or effect.
2)
texturing is a bit more clear cut imo. mudbox has a much better paint box. it is designed for games and film texturing. mudbox can paint in ptex and directly on textures in 8/16bit linear or 32bit float color with as much textures space as you need. you can paint across multiple tiles with as many layers as you want with full photoshop blending modes and a nice layer editor. mudbox uses graphics card memory and ram to give you realtime painting even with huge textures with lots of layers. the brush set is very good and there are lots of other tools. curve adjustments, layer masking, clone, projection warp etc.
there are lots of other tools to consider but you can do a full model from start to finish in both packages. use which ever feels more natural. many studios have both tools in there pipeline to accommodate the artist preference. so i would not worry to much about picking the 'right' one. either one is fine.
Ptex is NOT industry standard it's standard for animated features at a couple of large studios and some other studios for certain projects, that's different than being industry standard. Many projects in many different other industry segments rely heavily on logically layed out UVs to have the option of manipulating or building textures in 2D apps like Photoshop which still has the most complete and extensible tool set for manipulating 2d images available.
With that being said as far as 3D projection painting I agree MudBox wins hands down and I already suggested using Mudbox for texturing, but this was a question about learning sculpting I think. As far as 3DCoat, there are things I like about the app, but I'll never understand some people that want to hold that up as innovative beyond the developments of ZBrush when the app is essentially still a relatively immature 3D application that tries to mimic an approach that Pixologic pioneered. In terms of overall performance, and how intuitive the brushes work ZBrush is the best option for focusing technique with a little less tinkering to get the brushes to affect the mesh the way you expect them to.
I wasn't backwards in anything I stated. While computers have gotten faster they've gotten faster on the consumer side more than the Pro side. It hasn't been until the last couple of years that DCC applications started optimizing for non-"Pro" cpus or gpus so it's not like Mudbox was taking advantage of GTX or other consumer level gpus until recently. They needed to dig deep into the back of tricks and unearth things like vector displacement to keep up with ZBrush's polycount numbers, which helped artists move closer to mimicking traditional sculpting technique versus pushing and pulling verts all day. MudBox can do a lot of the same things now but it requires a lot of tinkering and, as you said, even after all of that there are times you still need to pop back into ZBrush and it's invaluable to have that skill set that allows you to have that option.
you should not try to promote any piece of software or technology with factually inaccurate statements, false comparisons, and nasty flaming of the other options. this only make your opinion look untrustworthy and uninformed. you can very easily describe the attributes you like about a specific technology in an intelligent fashion without resorting to cheap shots and trolling.
first you said that ptex and uvw are the same. that is FALSE. now ptex is not industry standard but you contradict yourself by saying that ptex is used in large and small studios alike. ptex IS an industry standard. that is precisely why studios are using it and software companies have invested in supporting it. it is the standard for exchange and storage of non uv based texel data. your last point is also FASLE. ptex was never designed or intended to replace uv texture sets. ptex it another option for texturing along side artist edited uv-layout. they complement each other and give you more options to choose from.
if you actually used ptex which i dont think you have you would know that you can very easily transfer paint from ptex to artist edited uv-layout models. so even if your final target model has uv-layout textures you can still do all of your texture painting in ptex with no uvs.
in addition the best tool available to transfer ptex to uv-layout models is mudbox.
again this is FALSE information. mudbox does not use 'projection painting for its paint brushes and stamps it uses a true 3d brush that tracks the surface in 3space. this make painting in mudbox even better than mari imo because you eliminate far more distortion with 3d brushes. mudbox also has projection with grid warp if you want to use that technique.
again this is FALSE. and you have it backwards again.
i dont think you know very much about 3d sculpting or the history of 3d sculpting and i dont think you deserve to know unless you do the research your self as i have. 3d sculpting goes as far back as 1977. were you even born in 1977? the more recent developments that resemble current systems go back to around 1994. purely voxel base techniques go back almost as far.
there is no 'innovation here. there are some slight adjustments and 'commercialization because hardware and graphics systems are fast enough that its commercially viable to use these systems now. but you do not seem to enjoy hardware and graphics card innovation and prefer software rasterization.
both surface based tracking techniques and voxel are not new and predate zbrush by many years. 3dcoat had voxels long before zbrush. also auto resurf and other features.
if you want to 'tinker' while you sculpt then lets compare how many brushes you have to use.
mudbox = 19 total.
zbrush = OVER 120 brushes!
can you name without looking even half or 1/4 of those brushes? i love zbrush but to suggest that the never ending menu diving for brushes. each one with obscure setting deep in the menu role outs and endless tweaking is anything like sculpting in clay or focusing on sculpting technique is just ridiculous.
this is where some people misunderstand. mudbox is 'designed' to have a small number of brushes that do a large number of different effect. precisely so you do NOT need to think about menus and 'tinker' with switching brushes and endless tweaking.
if you want to focus on 'sculpting' technique and improving your raw ability mudbox gives you that toolset.
you have had it backward enough times now that perhaps you are in front again? this is FALSE again. all graphics hardware has improved at the same rate and in most cases highend quadro cards are the test bed for advances. consumer geforce cards get new features after they are implemented in quadro and high end hardware.
this is profoundly uninformed. mudbox has been using graphics card memory for many years now. and started to utilize gpu before most other graphics software. but generally in step with the industry as a whole to integrate graphics memory techniques into the architecture.
the antithesis of this trend is zbrush. if you think that a few disk based storage hacks to increase point count in in a 32bit software rasterizer are an advantage i think you are in for a profound shock in the next few years. there are so many problems that i will not list them but to name just one, how long does it take you to step up and down from a 100mil to a 25mil mesh? and how long do you think it will take for you to recalculate a 100mil dynamesh?
again you do not seem to understand what VDM is and what it is used for. your coment is pure flames and inaccurate information. i cannot take this opinion seriously as it is devoid of any credibility or understanding of the subject.
again this is FALSE. the majority of people who have used mudbox and zbrush without hesitation will tell you that mudbox is by far much easier to use and has a much cleaner interface. the zbrush interface is visual spaghetti code. half of the inteface is legacy code that no one should touch. and the new extensions are deeply nested menus and sub menus. filled with unintuitively named buttons of all shapes and sizes. if there is one truth it is that zbrush requires a huge amount of 'tinkering and the interface is needlessly convoluted.
i use zbrush because i want to not because i have to. as i noted you can do models from start to finish in both packages. i also use many other software with mudbox. maya, 3dcoat, uv layout photoshop, nuke etc. again you are making inaccurate comments and it is nothing more then pure flame and cheap shots.
I will stick with it until some amazing new thing comes along , like sculpting in 3dsmax would be cool
Mudbox is great for: Texturing & UI
I wouldnt use it as a primary sculpting tool. Even Blender does a better job at sculpting now and can reach higher polycounts as well (and its free). Then you have to deal with autodesk... so far zbrush updates are free and substantial. Mudbox updates are not free and are unsubstantial. Really there no reason to happily tie yourself to Autodesk, artist try t avoid them if at all possible because their business model will suck the life out of you. Their products are great but the corp is not.
For sculpting I would recommend either:
Free: Blender
Low cost: 3D coat
mid cost: Zbrush
All before mudbox.
Both packages are EXTREMELY robust in production, so just try them both and make your choice (or not, like I did
this is estreamly bad advice. and your claim about blender is absurd. i honestly think certain people give out bad advice to try and prevent people from learning proper tools and getting jobs so they have less competition.
anyone who would suggest blender for anything to someone who wants to learn 3d art at university so they can get a job is giving bad advice.
i will nip this poly count issue right here.
the fact is that the poly count of a unique object can be much higher in mudbox then zbrush and is only liminted by the amount of ram you have on the system. and no HDgeometry does not count as it can not even be exported or used with most tools.
zbrush on most systems can obtain a larger total polycount with sub tools. essentially the active poly count is lower then mudbox but the total scene polycount can be higner. if you try to start merging all of the subtools you will crash.
mudbox could vary well handle more total polycount then zbrush but i have not benchmarked this on a 32gig system to verify that.
its a shame that instead of actually explaining the strengths of zbrush. which there are many strengths and reasons to use zbrush people feel the need to make up ridiculous fud that even a 5 year old would be suspicious of. there is really no need to do that and you just make yourself look untrustworthy.
yes, that is a great feature of zbrush and is definitely something to consider for students and people on a tight budget. it would be nice if autodesk had a more reasonable upgrade policy. but the foundry and others are just about the same. i don't think they will give that up unless they all drop there upgrade prices at once.
Thankfully it takes less than a week to wrap your hands around, and each version keeps getting better. ;-)
Gray, I like how you generally go around with this know it all attitude and try to strut your stuff in nearly every thread on this forum.
The only thing thats absurd is your apparent ego.
Everything I have said about blender is true, and I didnt believe it either until their community showed me otherwise. One user showed off an active 100 million polygons while sculpting with only 10 gigs of RAM.
One user over on the BA forums showed off a 170k dynamic topology sculpt in Blender (also rendered in Blender):
The point is not only is it a very solid sculpting tool, even its incomplete state but that it can produce results that make it a great sculpting tool.
Your stupid anti-blender bias just shows you havent been paying attention and following along with the development of the application. I used to be a "hater" as well, but the application has grown quite considerably. I know a few developers who use Blender as part of their pipeline...
Should new users forego learning other apps like Maya and 3ds Max for job placement? No, but then that was never part of the discussion. Mudbox used in the industry so far has been mostly for texturing purposes and map generation, thats exactly the market AD is targeting.
In short, take your elitist attitude elsewhere.
There also the fact that there is much, much more learning material available for max, maya, zbrush and mudbox than for blender - that's an extremely important factor, regarless of how many millions of polygons blender can handle. With it's multiple builds and (seemingly) obscure interface, Blender has quite a barrier of entry really. Also I am not sure why one would think that mudbox is mostly used for texturing - many studios rely on it for all their sculpting ...
On the original subject : I think I would recommend both. Zbrush is great at creating objects from scratch, while mudbox just cannot really do it, even in mud2014. On the other hand, the visual feedback offered by zbrush tend to prevent good appreciation of the surface and forms of a model - something that mudbox excels at. I personally rely on both at the same time.
you seem to be angry that someone will challenge your fud and software bashing with facts and point out how absurd your comments are. i don't like to see people bashing software, any software, especially when its just flames.
i think your last rant was about how everyone is being laid off because of gamestop.
now you want to tell students to use blender instead of mudbox and zbrush.
how many job opening list blender as a required app? the OP is asking about what he should learn because he presumably want to be a professional. i don't think he would be at university if he did not. how many universities teach blender to student? NONE.
if there is a thread about mudbox i will generally post in that thread. if there is fud being posted i will comment on it. you will never see me post fud about blender max zbrush or any other app because i don't do that. i don't need to do that. and i think people are to smart to fall for it anyways. i will however pick such nonsense apart if i have the time. and show how silly it is.
i download every version of blender that comes out. i am not a 'hater' of blender and did not say anything bad about blender. your projecting that and its nonsense. but it is a fact that no major studio uses blender and it does not have a competitive tool set for professional use in many areas. so if a student ask what app to use the last app i would recommend is blender.
if a hobbyist asked what app they should use or someone with no budget or someone who wanted open source blender would be the first app i recommend.
as for your example you need to post some links to the threads that show 100million polygon sculptures in blender. and what builds of blender there using. because i just do not believe it unless i see it for a fact. every version of blender i try the sculptable poly count is very low. never over 5-10million. and even then the brush performance is slow.
I dont disagree with that, and I have never said otherwise. I am at my core a maya-zbrush user, but not everyone has the funds to license both. The problem is when people jump ahead and try to assume recommending X software is bad because no one uses it in the industry... and that is just simply flawed logic and actually untrue.
I know quite a few environment artist and even a character artist who has the option to use whatever software they want to get the job done...and as crazy as it sounds some of those use apps like 3d coat and or even Blender (often for UV unwrap). I dont recall saying one should use blender for everything, do you? I did say I wouldnt recommend mudbox for sculpting, but more so for its projection painting workflow (also map generation).
Recommending 3 options for sculpting shouldnt be considered bad advice. I always have and always will recommend using the standard job acquiring tools, but that doesnt mean using them for everything, just knowing how to use them is often enough.
Its kind of sad that some people jump the gun and assume because one recommends blender as an OPTION that I am suggesting not learning or using other tools at the same time. That is absurd. Its not there in my post thus one shouldnt make that kind of blanket assumption.
Again thats not and has not been a part of this discussion. Why bring it up? I have implied nothing contrary to this, as I have not implied it at all. Its just not there and part of the discussion.
that is very subtle point that is often missed. most people get the advantage of dynamesh but miss the second point about brushes. that is precisely the reason why i like the brushes in mudbox. they have a very tactile feel and respond to pressure sensitivity and very small adjustments to the brushes. i have always had a heavy hand and like precise strokes. both on paper and clay. it translate through to how i set my brushes in photoshop and in mudbox also.
I remember that back when I was learning Zbrush for the first time, all that was needed was to sit through the Angler Fish video to know pretty much everything about the app in an hour worth of time. Then mudbox could be figured out in about an hour or so too (without a need for a tutorial really).
Therefore considering that I (personally) don't know of any clear, thorough available material covering sculpting from start to finish in Blender, I wouldn't recommend it, especially since I find Blender's interface to be unnecessaily obscure anytime I tried it. Now of course this is just my opinion, but hey opinions is what this thread is about right!
Gray : Yeah, it's subtle and tricky to explain, as it comes from the differences in the brush engines, the difference in the way falloff works in the two programs, and above all the difference in rendering quality. I admire the results that many zbrush-only artists can get, but I have also been disappointed in the past when opening a zbrush-generated model (my own as well as others I had access to) in another "regular" 3d program, noticing odd proportional relationships and lumpy surfaces. Yet the good flipside is that importing a decent model in Zbrush often makes it look great hehehe
The only one that has a problem here is you. Its one thing for you to make your argument (which I support when non aggressive) as to why you think Mudbox is the best option, but its another thing altogether for you to try and beat others down with condescending comments.
You also seem to have a severe confirmation bias. You use some colorfully inaccurate words and extremes that end up becoming borderline rediculous. Who is bashing software here? If I say I think its a great texturing tool but not as good of a sculpting tool, is that some how bashing to you? Really man, think before you type. This isnt a competition. There is nothing wrong with a friendly debate, but keep the aggression out and up the objective commentary.
You seem have trouble making an objective and friendly argument on your own without attacking others in the process. Word choices like "fud" and tossing out extremely silly interpretations such as "ranting" and "bashing" to describe the target of your attack is nothing short of dishonest. It fact it screams intellectual dishonestly. We dont need aggressive elitist types here, and as a general rule of thumb those dont last long in this kind of industry...at least not where friends/associates hiring and recommending friends/associates are concerned.
Why even bother bringing this up? Is your intent to try and "hurt me"? Are you trying to some how "shame me"? Really now...
I never said what you are implying, which means you are perfectly ok with saying objectively inaccurate things to fit the nature of your attack. In that thread I did make an objective statement however, which was that the used game market has resulted in new games sales at retailers dropping 22% last year. This is an objective and easily proven piece of information. I went on to say that there is a cause and effect in the industry when it comes to used game sales and the growing trend for online requirements for games as a form of DRM as well as which kind of games are more likely to be funded by the publisher. I also provided links from fairly successful developers and studio founders who suggest the same. Perhaps you think they are all liars too?
If you disagree, make a strong but non aggressive mature argument why you dont think thats the case, provide some objective information and leave it at that. You seem incapable of doing that however, instead opting to call people "fud" and attack them on a personal level. You would be tossed out of any intellectual debate for that kind of behavior. Again this isnt a competition.
Where did I specifically say "hey all you students out there, use blender instead of mudbox and zbrush". You wont find it because thats not what I said. That is your words and your biased/highly inaccurate statement.
What I did say, as an opinion, was that for sculpting purposes, not texturing, I would recommend 3 choices (of which Zbrush was included). I didnt say students, I didnt say OP, I didnt even quote anyone. Now in case you missed it...this is an OLD thread from LAST YEAR. Even if I was speaking to the OP who says he cant afford zbrush, it would still be valid. Its not hard to learn mudbox, its probably the easiest app to learn.. but see learning to use something and using it as a primary tool for sculpting and painting is another beast altogether. You cant seem to make that distinction.
Maybe you should double check his posts. No where does he say he needs it for professional job placement, you can assume that all you want but thats not what he said. He did ask for a wider opinion on the matter. Your attitude is not really productive nor necessarily welcome. Artist here generally end up learning multiple tools that either become part of their personal pipeline or part of their skills set for resume use. Some studios offer freedom of software, others do not. Putting some choices for sculpting beside mudbox on their radar is not something you should scoff at.
This translates to: My ego, my rules, hear me roar. It really doesnt fit into any constructive type of posting behavior.
If a thread is about mudbox vs zbrush, it doesnt mean other software cannot be mentioned. We use comparisons, give opinions and point out differences between those which compete for that type of workflow. Its not your job or responsibility to dictate what people say in every thread or go around bullying those which set off your ego.
No the only one who has projected meaning where none existed at all in this thread has been you. You cannot keep it objective, and its a bit annoying after awhile.
I can logically argue that you are hating on blender based on your comments regarding Blender much less bringing it up in this thread. Your own words connote you have a bias against it, not for it or anywhere in the middle. If you find that is not accurate, then please consider your word choices before typing next time.
If you think Blender is the last app one should recommend, much less point it out altogether for a student, then in a mature manner make your case why, with objective information. There is no need to stomp your feet and go around attacking other posters. There is no need to go around calling people's comments "fud". If you cannot make a well reasoned argument without attacking, then it says you probably dont have a good argument to begin with.
See, you are going through the same thing I did when I called BS on their forums. Oh god was I attacked. Then poster after poster showed me how high they were pushing their polycount and the secret to how its possible. Right now dynamic topology sculpting bottlenecks around 700k, for this they decimate and use multirez to reach higher poly counts. For regular sculpting, they toggle a couple of settings which boosts performance, use the multi-rez modifier with optimal display toggled and double sided turn off...then they are happily pushing poly counts way past 25 million polygons PER object. I tested this myself.
Theres now even a plugin which might be inserted into the trunk which puts Zbrush's stencil/spotlight controls and workflow into the sculpting and painting process. Furthermore, they are adding pie menus for an easier workflow. The rate at which Blender is now developing is insane.
For the proof you need, I would advise you to go through what I did. Go on the blender artist forum and say you do not believe Blender is a good sculpting tool, that it cant reach high polycounts or offer strong brush options. Then sit back and watch as about 50 people start making you videos, tossing in pictures...probably insulting you a bit (it happens). If you are honest about the desire to know Blender's capability at this point, you will be impressed. Heck you can even draw out lines and have topology form over them like in 3d coat and the new version of mudbox.
Heck, some of them are even using displacement maps in addition to their sculpting to pump out surfaces like this.
As for which version of Blender had sculpting with that kind of capability... If i am not mistaken it came with 2.50 and starts to show off itself around 2.6x... In 2.66 Dynamic Topology was officially added to the build. With the viewport FX optimization on the horizon, the sculpting performance will go up even more.
See dynotopo:
I have even seen Blender starting to pop up at non blender booths at Siggraph and where before people would scoff at it... now theres a curious interest as to how far it will go. Dont forget that Mozilla Firefox and even Android started off from these kinds of Open Source software projects.
not saying some people don't produce nice things with it, just that for me its a bit sucky.
blender or 'bellender' as I used to call looks ok, might give it a try
i am not going to quote your last post because you did not make any new points to refute the two issues which i pointed out. you just seem to be angry that someone would challenge you and explain why certain assertions are false and certain advice is bad.
who is kicking the bees nest here? if you want to make factually questionable statements about other peoples tools and give out bad advice expect the bees in short order. that goes for any software or advice.
your posting in a public forum, not your bathroom. everything you say is fair game for fact checking by any other member of the board. if you post fud or erroneous information expect that someone is going to call you on it and point out your wrong. you should be grateful for that fact and not get angry by it. it saves you from going around for the rest of your live with factually incorrect information. if you do not have the emotional maturity or stamina to deal with that then you should not post factual information that you can't prove. or opinions that are easily challenged and shown to be rather dodgy and uninformed. if you have a problem separating your opinion from facts then you have a bigger problem. in that case you should probably consider a change of careers into TV new reporting.
short and sweet. you had two points.
1) in your opinion blender is the best choice for students who want to learn sculpting, fallowed by 3dcoat.
the OP did not even ask about blender, and its pointed out what bad advice this is for a number of clearly explained reasons.
Dataday, gets extremely defensive because his opinion is challenged and shown to be rather dodgy advice for students. the same logic applies for 3dcoat. and imo 3dcoat's sculpting is the least polished of all the rooms. zbrush has a far superior sculpting tool set. and the same goes for mudbox. if you think mudbox is a texturing tool then you have lost the plot. Bellsey in post(14) pointed out a number of shows where mudbox is either the only sculpting tool used or heavily used.
2) blender is a much better sculpting package then mudbox. its faster then mudbox. you can sculpt 100million plus meshes in blender like butter in under 10gigs of ram.
there is two issues there.
feature for feature does blenders sculpting and related tools match or surpass those of mudbox? that includes sculpting, map extraction. paintbox, resurf, utility tools, decimation etc. this is one of those things you can argue about for ever because its opinion vs opinion. its a personal preference of tools. i would just say that if blender was really superior in a production environment and its free then why is there no studios using it?
a link to the ba forum does not cut it. you need to show 'the thread' that has 'the model' that is being sculpted at over 100million polys in under 10gigs. and also what build of blender because there are many builds out there with different branches compiled in. so people can test and confirm that this is true. if this is true i would love to test it and confirm that it is true and concede that blender can handle that type of polycount. but in all my tests up to the 2.6x releases i have not seen anything near that polycount. your other number of a few hundred k for dynamic topology seem more reasonable but 25mil+ in real time seems far fetched.
Because you didnt offer any counter point. All you said was something along the lines of "I dont believe you, you are full of "fud"".
Feel free to re-establish your counter argument without all the immature condescending comments. If you can manage to do that in a mature manner, I will address whatever points you think you have. In fact try bullet points.
You make absolutely no sense what so ever especially within the context of this thread.
First its "you're" and if you say its open to fact checking...then do some actual fact checking. I havent seen you offer anything much less make any effort to "fact check" my statement regarding the polycount capabilities within Blender. Your entire argument so far has been "nuh uh, you are stupid". This isnt kindergarden bud.
All you have done so far is argue for the sake of arguing, no facts no concrete details, just semantics. You are right however on one aspect, everything you type here is pretty much "on record", so if you wish to continue avoiding a mature dialog then its pretty much here for the world to see. May it help you in future employment endeavors (sarcasm).
Wrong. Did I say "blender is the best choice for students who want to learn sculpting?" No. Did I say "in this order, here are the best to least best sculpting applications"? No I didnt even say that. I did lay out 3 sculpting applications in no particular order outside of their cost.
Is your reading comprehension to the point where you cannot distinguish the difference between recommending a set of options as opposed to a list from best to worse?
The OP was last in this thread LAST YEAR champ. Did I quote him? I dont think I did, and again even if I was (hypothetical) responding to his aged original post, my post would still be valid.
It did two things, of which you totally chose to ignore. It confirmed, in my opinion that mudbox is a great texturing tool with a great UI, and it confirmed that its probably not the best sculpting tool as there are other options that can be seen as better.
I am sorry you are struggling with such an opinion, and I am also saddened that you cannot accept and respond in a mature manner with concrete details as to why you disagree.
You wont get far if you go around calling your peers here liars. Just a heads up.
Defensive implies sentiment, it implies that you some how got an emotional response out of me in which I feel the need to defend some emotional bias. I have already shown thats not the case, but if you need to confirm your own bias to feel that way, go for it. The fact is you are not being rational.
Are you a 3d artist? If so you dont know the difference between polygons and meshes. Thats not helping your case, if you even had a case to begin with.
In my opinion blender is a better sculpting tool than mudbox. I made it quite clear its my opinion and if you choose to disagree with that, go for it but do so with actual points and reasoning, or just say "i disagree with you" and leave it at that. Instead, you some how feel the need to attack people on a personal level, to insult them, to imply they are stupid and that you are just so much more knowledgeable about all things. Now that is stupid, and you really need to cut it out.
There are a few facts I can confirm from visiting the Blender Artist forums, which again you are more than welcome to do as well. Of them, one is that Blender can achieve higher poly counts. You seem to have an issue with this, and that is fine...but its also just your opinion. All your other colorful sarcastic and mocking wording is completely unnecessary.
Who said feature for feature its better than Mudbox? I dont think anyone made that claim. Right from the get go I have said Mudbox has one of the best texturing and map generation tools. I never said Blender was good at that, in fact at this point in time its quite bad at that. On the topic of sculpting, only sculpting, I do believe that its a better sculpting tool.
As for what studios use and dont use Blender, thats a good question that many ask. Blender is often used on an individual basis rather than a company wide basis. The reason for this is that documentation and paid support play a big role in choosing which applications to use for the core. I know quite a few artist who are environment, prop, and character artist in the industry who use Blender for specific purposes. It can be loaded on a USB with custom setting and a tiny file size and be used on the go. A former Naughty Dog employee I talked to down here uses Blender, he now works at Neversoft. On the forums someone at EA VA said they have blender installed on the majority of their art stations. My gf who is a professional compositor at a vfx company down here in Los Angeles said some of the 3d guys use Blender for various purposes. I know matte painters who use it to block out scenes for use in both Photoshop and Krita (another amazing piece of free software).
You have users over on the modo forums using blender, even CG Society winner for one of the nvidia contest won the special prize for best product viz using Blender for modeling and rendering.
Blender was used to unwrap the UVs for one version of the bear in the movie TED.
The point here is that Blender is no stranger in the CG world but its also something used more on an individual level.
3d coat is often bought for its retopology tools, so it shouldnt be surprised that Blender is sometimes used for one aspect of a larger personal pipeline.
Should someone still learn and use all the major industry heavy apps? Absolutely, but for a personal pipeline anything goes. Great texture apps like DDO and NDO2 get used, pure modelers like Silo get used. If they are not in every single studio, this doesnt make them bad program or inferior, it just means that pipelines are currently not built around them. Modo is a great application, yet it has very little usage in the game industry. That doesnt make it a bad low poly modeler.
Mari is one of the best texturing applications, yet its barely used in the game industry. Does it make it bad? no.
Industries change over time, artist often have the freedom to go with whatever software application they can get the best results from in the right amount of time. While all that happens, less used apps get better and better. Thats just the nature of the beast. Will AD still be an industry leader in the future? who knows.
I have a lot of friends who work at Pixologic and I was even taught by one of their developers. I even own a license to use it. It is still the best sculpting program on the market bar none, and I think everyone interested in sculpting should learn it and use it. Not everyone has that option though, thats why there are alternatives. Sometimes the alternatives are better at one thing than another. 3D coat has its perks just as Blender does, just as Mudbox does... Recommending Blender as an option for sculpting should never be seen as the same as saying its the best at everything or that no other app is better than it. Mudbox is not the strongest sculpting program out there, AD knows this, they cant go head to head with zbrush on that aspect, so they focus on other areas such as texturing work flows and map generation...and they found their niche. Studios will use it just for that purpose alone.
The problem with what you ask is that there are many threads with many instances of sculpting to varying degrees. I did managed to find one of the examples (attachment on one users profile) they posted when testing where the bottleneck is for polycount (at what point Blender starts to really chug). You can see where they hit the performance wall and how much memory was used to get to that polycount here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=218808&d=1361602122
If you wish to re-enact such a feat and see for yourself... turn off outline under display tab, add a mesh (easiest is subdivided cube applied) with a multirez modifier. Turn on optimize under multirez, turn off double sided under mesh properties and then sub divide it up and sculpt.
Here I did a quick example to show you it is possible.
http://i33.tinypic.com/ok0f3k.jpg
On linux its easier to push more and in case you are not aware, linux is widely used within the industry (vfx, games..ect).
Now with the previous images I have shown (prior threads), good sculpts in blender can be had or under a million polys...for fine details higher poly counts can be achieved. Again I didnt believe it either until their community showed me otherwise.
I think I have made a far stronger case than you have, which was just not believing my claim about the polycount. I highly recommend you spend some time on the BA forums and just see what they are doing so you can get caught up as to where Blender's capabilities are at. Again ask questions, and you will be surprised.
If you look for the best sculpting tool, Zbrush is the way to go.
I purchased it recently and while I have to admit that the workflow feels awkward first, it is way more powerful than Mudbox when it comes to sculpting. I have mudbox as a student version. And the painting tools are nice. But sculpting feels less natural and is not as advanced as Zbrush.
For retopo and painting I prefer 3Dcoat. It's as good, if not even better (at least for retopo) as Mudbox in these regards. Especially with version 4.
Zbrush is also not that difficult to learn. After a couple of days I got used to the basic workflow.
About the ongoing Blender discussion here.
I would say it is quite good for sculpting. More advanced than the build-in sculpting tools of Max, Modo etc. But compared to Zbrush it is still nothing.
Dynamesh is way better than Blender's remesh modifier, same goes for the Brushes. They feel clumsy in Blender. Polygroups, layers, Noisemaker, HD Geometry, Zspheres. All stuff that beats Blender by far. And Mudbox as well. I also dislike dynatopo in Blender. It produces weird topology sometimes and you have to go very high with polygons to get a smooth surface. It has some advantages. But I find you get cleaner and more controlable results with Dynamesh in Zbrush. Not to mention the awesome viewport performance, which Zbrush offers.
I was amazed how many polygons it can handle. With Blender my computer can handle around 800K poly's with smooth performance (30-60fps). One million poly's are critical. 1,5 million and it is unusable (mind you, that I already use all the little performance tricks like VBO enabled, double sided polygons unchecked etc.)
In Zbrush however, I get seven million verts with still a smooth performance. Huge difference.
Blender is a part of my tool shelf. And it's a fine app. I use it for low poly modeling, rigging, UV's and animation. And since I build my business around Unity, it serves my needs and I don't have to buy a expensive Max license for those few tasks.
But for professional sculpting, texture painting and retopo. Blender is not the best choice. That's the reason why I bought 3DCoat and Zbrush.
This is the reason why loosing ourselves in technicalities without experiencing a given workflow first hand all the way through a real asset is kind of pointless really. Let's try to remain productive
Get a life and dont bring your fanboyism and attacking over here, as if blende artists wasnt enough for you. Nobody needs this. Grow up or dont post here.
Good job at figuring that out, and what user name do you go by on the Blender Artist forum?
The funny thing here is that the only type of fanboy I have been called on Blender Artist is a Maya fanboy. I have also been called a Blender hater over there because I can criticize bad elements about the application.
So there goes your attempt at...smearing someone else. Furthermore I have never been "asked" by mods to tone it down...whatever that means. Tone down mature posting behavior? Tone down defending other apps like Maya? You really have nothing objective to go on because quite frankly its apparent you are making that up...unless you are referring the time I had been asked by one of their moderators to not accuse another poster of lying, which I didnt do. Showing skeptism, friendly in nature, is not accusing someone as lying, its saying "I find that hard to believe but will be happy to be proven wrong"...and thats because I didnt believe that you could sculpt 25+ million polygons in Blender. The person who made a claim I was skeptical agreed with me in the end.
I was proven wrong and I was happy about it. Ironically, Gray is exhibiting the same doubt I did on their forums...yet you call me a Blender Fanboy.
So silly, so inaccurate, so intellectually dishonest.
on the second point we have some solid facts now.
awesome... i like facts.
first attempt at 100mil, crash.
second attempt at 100mil, crash.
third attempt at 100mil, crash.
fourth attempt at 100mil.... it subdivides to 100mil...
viewport rotation, horrible. brushes totally unusable. i dare not try anything else and exit the program...
that pic you posted and the other pic... if that's the sort of sculpting that your happy with then we are not playing the same game. i want to actually 'sculpt' my models not just load them into an unresponsive viewport and crash.
now we get to the heart of the fud... deep in fud land...
those are your words. thats your advice to the OP. someone from uni asks which sculpting package they should use mudbox or zbrush? they already know those are the two choices for professionals. Dataday's reply? blender, better then mudbox. go for blender its rock solid for sculpting 100millinon polygons much higher then mudbox etc, etc.
im sorry Dataday but that is a TOTAL JOKE... I would not recommend that to my worst enemy. you can barely get it to load without crashing. thats your advice? that's much better then mudbox? really?
back in reality land where people actually want to sculpt on the models they load. i did a little test in mudbox. as you know mudbox uses ram and vram to its fullest potential. so really you are only limited in polycount by the available resources of your machine. i did the same test to see what i can do in mud. hows the sculpting at 100million+ in mudbox?
i could go higher, much higher. if you have 32gigs of ram then you can go quite a lot higher in polycount. but im not going to do that. why? because the point is that at 100million polygons its utterly impossible to do anything in blender let alone do serious sculpting. as i stated before you are good at about 5-10million polygons. which is a great feat for blender and the open source. its the best open source sculpting app around. but its NOT an option for professional sculpting and its NOT what students at uni should spend there time learning. mudbox or zbrush are the ONLY options at this point.
edit:
i hope you realize that all of those film studios that you alluded to that use linux do so for there render farms and there workstations. except for a few small boutiques all film studios use linux for there workstations and all of the sculpting that is done is on linux also. do you know what sculpting package is use on those workstations? mudbox... there is a reason why mudbox maya nuke and others run on linux. because mudbox maya nuke etc are the primary tools use for films. you should think about that.
For me, I tend to take a step back and look at the pipeline and workflows and not get too overly excited at some of the sculpting work. That's not being ignorant, as some of the work being produced is stunning. But the thing to remember is although the high res sculpt looks great, there's still some amount of work to be done before that asset can go into a game, and for me that's the key. I know I'm going to sound biased, but this is why I like some of the features that have appeared in Mudbox in recent versions, in particular things like Ptex, Transferring scuplt and paint layers (regardless of topology - very cool), sculpting/painting in tiles, texture map extraction, and now retopo/poly reduce.
Many have often highlighted Mudbox's performance in relation to other packages like Zbrush and 3D-Coat. Mudbox does require a good amount of ram and GPU, but that's because it's true 3D sculpting and painting, compared to being voxel based like others (including Blender, though I could be wrong here and doing a Blender a diservice). And again for me, this is where I believe the advantage is, in Mudbox I'm working with and directly on my mesh, I know what I'm seeing and getting.
When it comes to which package to learn in order to gain work, then for me, people should really do their homework and look at what's being used. However, that doesn't mean you should ignore everything else. The software is merely a tool, it's whose driving it that matters. You have to have the skill and talent to begin with as the software won't necessarily make you better. Much can depend on a persons skillset and preferred discipline. I can use Mudbox very well, but no matter how good I am, I know I perhaps won't be as good as a diehard character guy. I can hold my own, but it's never been my forte.
I've always recommended that people get their traditional art foundation skills nailed, as these are what really matters and they're always with you.
Though I'd prefer people to start using Mudbox, if they want to start in Blender (or whatever) because they prefer it, then that's fair enough. The main thing is that people should be willing to change and adapt if required. If you get to work at a studio that uses a different package to what you know then you'll probably need to change anyway, as in many cases it's unlikely you'd be able to use whatever you want.
gray I'm just going to ask you outright...Do you work for AD or just an overzealous fan?
Also I have used ptex and I am aware that, if you wish to, you may add an extra step to your texturing workflow where you can basically project to layed out UVs from your ptex bits.
As to ease of use, you again want to twist my words into a debate about UI's when my criticism falls squarely on the how the brushes "feel" and how closely they work relative to the way most people might expect specific virtual brushes to work and how much tweaking has to be done or not done to get them to behave the way the user needs them to behave. The brushes are 98% of what the user interacts in a digital sculpting application and Pixologic focuses a lot of it's R&D behind developing their brush engine.
From a practical standpoint it makes no sense to tell a student character artist not to learn ZBrush...it's just foolishness at this point. Perhaps at some point in the future Mudbox will overtake ZBrush in terms of use, but ZBrush is still currently at the foundation of every good character artist's learning/breakthrough process for good reason. Additionally should ZBrush move to satiate the complaints about the UI in Z5 or later and/or develop a Linux port it's very possible Pixologic could get back the couple of large studio customers it lost to Mudbox. All of those people know ZBrush already anyway and they only switched to Mudbox because of the more conventional DCC UI. If Mudbox loses any kind of significant market share to ZBrush it wouldn't surprise me if AD slowed annual aggresive development down immediately like they've done with XSI.