New to Sculpting: Mudbox or Zbrush?

Yuri

Hello.

I'm new to the whole 3D industry (Animation, Modeling, etc.) and I have a question regarding sculpting.

I have been given the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite 2016 Ultimate (from a family member), which is a suite that includes Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, Motionbuilder and Mudbox. I'm very, very happy that I got this and extremely excited to start learning! However, I'd like to know how Mudbox compares to Zbrush. I highly doubt that I'll get Zbrush as I already have Mudbox and I don't have enough money to buy Zbrush myself. I'm confident that Mudbox will provide more than enough for me as a beginner, but I'd still like to know what I'm "missing" out on by not using Zbrush.

Thanks in advance for all replies. Have a good day!

Edit: How active is this forum?

lefix

I think you're perfectly fine with learning in Mudbox. The gained skills can be easily transferred to zbrush later on. Learning a specific tool is only a tiny part of becoming a good artist.

Panupat

Yes, sculpting skill itself is not tied to any software.

musashidan

Yuri said:
 but I'd still like to know what I'm "missing" out on by not using Zbrush.

The greatest software ever created!! No that title belongs to Windows Millenium.....  

But seriously, Zbrush bypassed Mudbox some time ago and is a far superior application. Mudbox has stagnated and will remain so. 

However, for learning/practicing sculpting MB will serve you well and has a very good sculpting engine with all the tools you need. It was originally built as an in-house Weta project and was production proven all those years ago. I used it myself back in 1.0

Plus it has a much better texturing/layering system than ZB and would make a great pipeline tool for you as you learn. As others have said the knowledge/skill you gain is completely transferable so don't even worry about it at this stage.....get sculpting!

 

Yuri

musashidan said:

Zbrush bypassed Mudbox some time ago and is a far superior application

I'm convinced that Zbrush is better than Mudbox. Everyone says so, but no one gives an explanation as to why, which is what I'd like to know.

PolyHertz

ZBrush has all the features Mudbox has and many, MANY more (and any features they both have ZBrush tends to do a better job at). That's why it's considered better.
Mudbox does only two things better then ZBrush; Painting, and the viewport. If you care about painting though, there are much better options available atp. And the viewport isn't enough reason to use it over ZBrush.

lorenzo_di_pietro

As far as I know, one of the biggest differences with Mudbox is that ZBrush lets you create a base mesh from scratch (with zspheres, dynamesh, shadowbox, zmodeler...) so, in other words, you can build an entire project from start to finish without involve a traditional 3D package like Max or Maya.

Like Polyhertz said, currently Mudbox is better than ZBrush only for painting, but in the next future... who knows.

Yuri

Oh, I see. Here's my final question (thanks so far for all the answers): In which way is Mudbox better than Zbrush when it comes to painting? Is it easier or...?

JedTheKrampus

Zbrush is better for starting a project and Mudbox is better for finishing a project. Mudbox has a much less fiddly layer system which is good for adding lots of small details and making realistic transitions between different types of surface. Its viewport is also more honest and the developers chose rendering features that are good for production rather than features that are good for illustration.

It's easier to check proportions against photo reference in Mudbox's viewport because it uses a real camera with a real perspective projection. This point doesn't matter much to me because I'm used to working in orthographic 99% of the time.

For texturing I prefer Krita for base color and photo/painted normals. However, I prefer Zbrush over any other program to at least start the gloss map because its masking features and clay-based brushes set to RGB and with Z off are ideal for capturing details from the underlying geometry.

If I had to pick one sculpting program I'd pick Zbrush. If I had to pick two I'd probably pick Zbrush and 3D Coat, because I think 3D Coat adds more to Zbrush than Mudbox does. But, if I had a hero piece I was working on that I knew was going to go through a lot of iteration and art direction, and if it made sense for that hero piece to have a conventional base mesh, I would pick Mudbox to sculpt it maybe 80% of the time because of its superior layer system for sculpting.

Mudbox's painting isn't particularly easier than Zbrush, but its layer system has blending modes other than Normal which is a real blessing. Also, if you need to paint huge amounts of detail with multi-tile textures Mudbox handles that amount of data better than Zbrush.

Mudbox can stand alone as a sculpting package and since you already have it I don't think it's worth it to get Zbrush. But if you feel like it sometime down the line it might be good to learn Zbrush anyway. It's a very special program.

Yuri

Your comment cleared up a lot for me. Thank you!

Indik

If you`re serious about sculpting and/or modelling for entertainment industry, you`ll have to learn zbrush at some point. It is far superior in features. It has lots of powerful things that work together and with other 3d software (ex. zremesher, dynamesh, decimation master, clip brushes, insert mesh brushes - the list goes on and on).
On the other hand, it`s a complex piece of software which is not novice-friendly, but Pixologic has great training resources and a very helpful community.

Mudbox hasn`t received any new features for years, and its functionality is being slowly intergrated into Maya by Autodesk.

Use Mudbox if you already have it, learn the basics. Later, if you fall in love with sculpting - get Zbrush ASAP. But if you lean more towards animation, rigging or some other stuff - Mudbox will do fine. As for the painting side - I didn`t like MBox for texturing/painting back in 2011, nowadays there are much better options (substance suite, quixel suite, 3d coat, Mari).