Sculpting tools, mudbox VS Zbrush
I know this is apples to oranges, but I'd still like to read a little discussion on the subject. I played with zbrush2 briefly when I was in school, but then it was still a 'character tool' and I knew I wanted to be in environments so I didn't pay it too much mind. Sculpting seems to be gaining momentum in a lot of environment art lately, with just the open-world and mobile guys still clinging to heightmaps-generated normals mixed with crazybump passes on the diffuse.
ZBrush seems to have more industry acceptance as a standard, but mudbox has a much more friendly interface to me. Mudbox also seems to stick with being a sculpting tool, while zbrush is a bit more jack-of-all-trades. ZBrush also has the benefit of being able to re-topo something if you really go to down on the sculpt, which although it isn't a feature that's heavily used by enviro guys (that I know of anyway), probably because its very likely to pull your stuff off-grid, it's still a nice option to have in special cases.
If you were going to pick one package to learn and stick with, which would it be and why?
ZBrush seems to have more industry acceptance as a standard, but mudbox has a much more friendly interface to me. Mudbox also seems to stick with being a sculpting tool, while zbrush is a bit more jack-of-all-trades. ZBrush also has the benefit of being able to re-topo something if you really go to down on the sculpt, which although it isn't a feature that's heavily used by enviro guys (that I know of anyway), probably because its very likely to pull your stuff off-grid, it's still a nice option to have in special cases.
If you were going to pick one package to learn and stick with, which would it be and why?
Replies
I tend to favor mudbox, its what we use at work, we use it for sculpting cliffs, cracks in buildings, damage to structures, hair helmets, wrinkles in cloths and all kinds of details. Everyone really likes its simple approach. I use Zbrush in my off work time for pretty much the same stuff. I'd say I'm still learning its kind of wonky way of working. But I keep hearing if you stick with Zbrush long enough the usability stops being an issue and at that point the one major thing mudbox has going for it, kind of dries up and blows away.
Zbrush has quite a bit going for it zspheres, transpose, smart-ish topo, some pretty amazing sculpting tools. But its viewport display is kind of piss. I can see mudbox being a little better in that arena especailly now with some pretty advanced realtime shader support.
Also the latest version of Mudbox was pretty buggy and I haven't checked it out since they released the latest patch. Aside from it feeling more like a minor update to the tools the fancy shader display and painting was pretty "cool" but not really useful in my day to day needs.
I'm slowly being pulled to Zbrush as the more I use it the less the interface becomes an issue. I wish we used it at work so I would have more exposure to it.
when you are going up and down the levels.
I pretty much picked up zbrush within a few days, but mudbox just frustrates me.
In zbrush I can just sculpt, then rotate around the local axis ie the last point I sculpted, then
rotate the model by clicking on the background.
The only thing that does bug me is the view itself, too many shader options and sometimes
the details you sculpt look so different by the time you get back in to max, but aside from that
I loves it.
TBH though the more I do 3d the more I prefer to 'model in' most of what i do in max then
just add minor details in zbrush.
imagine sculpting with a paintbrush in real life, bit stupid really:)
I hear sp1 fixes a bunch of issues, but I haven't given it a 2nd shot yet. I did read the release notes for sp1 and alot of things I wanted fixed were not listed, so I'm sticking with zb till the next major mud release (which I expect within the next 6-8 months anyway).
Value for money: Zbrush. More tools than mud.
Hit the road running: Mud. faster to learn/easier to use
ZB handles it pretty well by not relaying on world space or object space, but the actual topology. So it doesn't matter where you pose pieces it finds them. Granted it requires you to work in a very particular way...
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Poseable_Symmetry
asymmetric forms sculpted in mudbox with tangent symmetry
http://polyphobia.de/nonpublic/muddles/pirate_mb_gallery.jpg
http://polyphobia.de/nonpublic/muddles/boxhead02.jpg
http://polyphobia.de/nonpublic/muddles/brks.jpg
and an very old very ugly very crappy first try on a posed sculpture
http://polyphobia.de/nonpublic/application_/sculpts/figure01b.jpg back in the beta days
it worked well in first beta, all you had to keep in mind is not to have any tris in your model
just a week ago when i started working on a streetfighter bust, zbrush didn't want to find me a center line too, so i guess the buggyness is not only a mudbox thingie
i'm not fighting for mudbox, as my workflow is 90% zbrush, i'm only using mudbox from time to time on conventions to present it to the crowd, as it's so easy to pick up i only need a few minutes to get back in, but in my day to day work i'm missing too many needed features, retopo, transpose, subtoolmaster just to name a few
Heh yea talk about you're role reversal, I mostly use Mud and I'm making a case for ZB haha.