ZBrush 4R2 Sneakpeek
polycounter lvl 14
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=152654
Looks pretty neat so far. From what I can see looks like it has voxels in it now, as well as proper mesh slicing, and some weird ZSketch thing?
Edit: They are also giving out free exhibits-only passes for Siggraph if you're looking for one
Looks pretty neat so far. From what I can see looks like it has voxels in it now, as well as proper mesh slicing, and some weird ZSketch thing?
Edit: They are also giving out free exhibits-only passes for Siggraph if you're looking for one
Replies
They broke even more tools in ZB3.5 all the way to ZB4.
Plus, their lack of road-map demonstrations is really vexing, at least with Autodesk, when they screw-up, it's somewhat predictable (EI: XBR initiative which wasn't part of the UV toolset, yet they included it = expected issues).
Frankly, not impressed. Patch out all the bugs and give me 64-bit over any fancy rendering feature over any time of the day. Everything else can be added with due time.
But yeah, amazing stuff!! (That I'll probably never learn to properly use, heh)
New clay tubes/voxel/zsphere thing looks cool.
and yes. I thought that was a creeper as well.
I dont think 64 bit is needed as you can already use more than 4gb ram...What are the benefits?
I applaud Pixologic for doing what they do. iirc, I dont think they have charged for an upgrade since ZB2 (ish) and i can live with a few bugs, ( a feature in all software, that is also free) if i don't have to pay £300pa for an upgrade
Cant wait for the release
True, ZB uses 4GB of RAM and the remaining 4GB are used for temporary memory storage, so it's all good, just not as good as it could be, especially if you want to Polypaint at double ratio to downscale and fix up in PS.
Yeah, it's cool to have freebies, but sometimes, putting down the cash after what is now about 6-7 revisions since 3.0, to have a good portion of the software scrubbed wouldn't hurt.
I mean if 3DC is doing that (EI: Major upgrade versions = small fee if you have previous version of software) I don't see why Pixo shouldn't, they have provided a far better service for most people with their software when compared to other developers, but they're seriously losing momentum when compared to a few years ago.
I don't know what experience other people had with them, but in my case, most bug reports aren't followed up upon, they aren't well versed in handling Mac cases (which several of my friends have given up on).
Oh well, either way, I hope they fixed Auto-Masking for Brush...
"putting down the cash after what is now about 6-7 revisions since 3.0, to have a good portion of the software scrubbed wouldn't hurt."
Where did you link these two ideas? The MAJORITY of software has you put down cash every yearto have none of the software scrubbed and to only add bloat.
It would still be nice to get a reworked interface, something that doesn't feel like a choir to traipse through :P.
Voxel Zspheres alone have my pretty excited, guess Sculptris will become kind of obsolete, except as a more minimalist sculpting app.
As for retopo, seems pretty late to catch up with 3DCoat and Topogun by now.
and it's painting tools almost make photoshop obsolete
/offtopic
That said, I'd be happy if they would just give us a way to sort subtools (folders) already.
I just hope they've made the scaling on import/export a little bit less finicky. Actually having some form of scale inside ZBrush would be a huge help for the work that I do, but I guess that's a little counter to the way that ZBrush functions.
I didn't see a lot of stuff I'd be using in that video, but that doesn't mean anything really. I stick to basic sculpting, and posing tools. Max's retop tools work a lot better, and faster than ZB's anyway. And I just make stuff. I don't have to render it, or place it in a scene, or any of that stuff.
I've learned that most of the features that pixologic will brag about, I'll never use. I haven't seen any videos where someone has used the animation features of zb4. They'll never fix the bugs, that's just a waste of breath. They'll continue to do what they do, which in the case of these videos, is baffle noobs with their bullshit, showing them a ton of features they'll never use, but are generally cool looking. I'm not saying they're bad for this, just that that's the way it is, and will continue to be
The way I see it, the industry will ever so evolve over the coming years, and there will probably come a time from then when these tools won't seem so obsolete and just for caddy show off references about the product they are advertising.
The other thing on the note of everyone speaking how the tools are in fact useless. The thing to keep in knowing of is... Pixologic didn't create Zbrush for the sole purpose to benefit Game developers and Film visual fx artists. They made it simply with the easing purpose of doing traditional art methods easier in a digital medium. Which later expanded into the growing entertainment business that which benefits all of you today working.
I just say be happy that they are at least exploring methods with computer code to leverage a fun way to create art on the computer that Autodesk seems to have no interest, or preparation in development to find the ability to make use for. Other than to follow Pixologic because they are the ones making the direction.
They are focusing on getting so far ahead of the game that nobody can catch up to them, and trying their best to provide users with OPTIONS to use these crazy new ways of working as they see fit. Zbrush is a mess, but it doesn't dictate how you have to use it. It has a highly customizable user interface and GOz provides the option to get your work out of crazy land and into a more rational piece of software if that's what you need to work.
I don't think you can have the amount of innovation and risk that pixologic infuses into Zbrush with a consistent, extremely stable, and ultimately unflexable foundation. They need to keep things loose so that they are free to tango, toy around, and see what works in the marketplace to stay as far ahead of everyone else as they already are.
What they should really do is a Uservoice thing just like Autodesk now has for 3dsmax. And follow what the users say too, don't just put it up.
Now release the SDK already!
sure there are bugs which are annoying. but the software grows leaps and bounds in each itteration. far more than any autodesk product does. at some point, i can honestly see pixologic being the industry standard over autodesk. if both companies keep going the way they are, that is.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I've been flamed by some guys previously on CGTalk far calling this out so I usually just shut my mouth about it nowadays.
Oh and some of the workflow is still broken to this day. We use zbrush to later get displacement maps and for this you have to store the unsubdivided state of the object as a morph target and press SmoothUV before you divide the mesh. I've wasted countless hours on fixing sculpts where someone forgot to do either of these button presses, or split a subtool in two to lose the morph... And both have been causing problems for years, but no fixing for you. Or why the hell are UVs flipped vertically? Pixolator mis-coded something in ZB2 and can't be bothered to fix it?
When the majority of your customers change, you would do better to acknowledge that. If they make their living from the digital content creation industry, they should cater to them and not the few enthusiasts doing scary bad stuf in their app.
Or is it only good to have leading studios as their customers when they want to advertise and sell their product?
+1
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. . .
Well, in either case as it would seem. They had a vision to begin with and will continue to do as they so please. Luckily the response from people as a whole (not a forum). Seem to speak more highly of it because it seems to be working quite well. Which I would heavily agree with, as Pixologic is just doing what they do best.
I would just say Kudos to them. Because if I were a full-time Mudbox user. I would be pretty irritated that I would be getting minor large updates per-new-version that comes out that another simply did 1-3 years prior to that.
You also have to be careful what you wish for, because Mudbox's updates put Pixo's to shame, in regards to tech, Ptex is nothing to scoff at, and warping textures/masks in something which has come out for it, which with Zbrush, people still struggle putting up a proper seamless wrapping mask on a mesh.
If Max can do it in Viewport Canvas, why can't ZB?
Personally, I think Pixo is playing a VERY dangerous game to which they will lose, and when that happens, people have no one but to blame themselves for all the issues which will come to do this, Pixo knows full well they App is starting to fall apart, and they're ponying that by adding new features so that you do everything in ZB instead of outside, which, sorry to say this, is very unethical and underhanded.
Infact, if you like the direction this is the going, then why bother using game engines at all?
So shall we see what Pixo has broken and not fixed within the last decade?
In the Brush options, people have the ability to tingle with graphs and masks, but these are broken, Brush Mask's don't work correctly and the graphs don't reset properly (EI: they erase even the original settings).
The export and import function is finekey as bloody fuck, since it breaks up my scales, but that's not all, GoZ sometimes doesn't respect my scales and breaks up my UV's, meaning if I have a Sym model, I might as well say bye bye when rewelding my points if I baked the normals before this step.
They took out the baking tools, which could have been left in. Instead, they gave us some new baking tool which is not only horrible as it bakes 'black' spots in my normals if I creased a mesh and pinched, but I need to correct that in PS, it also doesn't help their AO baker isn't upto par.
Projection mesh start backshooting the points if I SUB-D my model too many times, and if I projected too many times before the final SD-Level projection. Which is stupid, because last I checked, projections go outwards and frontally by default, not sideways and backwards unless I say it to.
About custom UI's, did you know that some icons and tools cannot be placed as you wish unless you have a VERY SPECIF start-up file?
Retopo tools are not needed, but everytime in a new update, they try and improve them in some weird way, which is akin to trying sculpt Mt. Rushmore with a toothpick.
These are the top of my head.
Now you could argue ZB doesn't need to cater to the gaming industry, that it can go to the movie and jewelery industry, yeah, and on that subject, if the bugs don't make it for you, then the other industries should deal the seal, because they optimize even less.
If you're making jewelry, you need loads of polies to sculpt nice clean edges, and not having a 'smooth' view doesn't help, so having 64 bit would have been great for those and correct rendering with parametrics in 16 bit, expect neither exist since ZB uses it's own hyper enhanced clairvoyant space age rendering, which cannot be transferred in size to other apps, unless we get the right size to render photometrically.
Movie industry is having more fun with SUB-D modeling in final pieces and Mari/Mudbox painting rather then Vertex painting in ZBrush, true, you can divide a mesh and sculpt/paint parts of it manually, then bake down to multi-maps, combine them in PS and clean them up, normalize them internally before compressing them.
OR you can use something else and cut down 1/2 of the work.
People are quick to call to guns against Autodesk when they release some robust updates which are patched up in a month or two, or when they decided to change the way they do business, and instead call Pixo visionary when they still don't offer a way to render custom fur or real glow on mesh parts short of painting pixelated materials.
But hey, I guess if something is free, it's void of any criticism, it's not like Blender improved for free in any way or form in under 1 iteration.
What this guy said ----^
I'm actually excited for a couple of the additional tools, would definitely help my workflow out and save me several hours of bullshit.
Not game art, btw.
I cant really imagine going back to making assets without having ZB in there somewhere (in most cases) and i cant overstate how efficient ZBrush has made my workflow. If we dont take sculpting into account (which is undoubtedly the most advanced of any application), we can look at things like subtools, mesh projection, decimation, unified and adaptive skin, UV Master, Subdivision reconstruction, Morph targets, Surface equalisation, Shadowbox, Remeshing, Clipping tools, Matcaps, Matchmover, projection master, GoZ, Zapplink etc.
We have plenty to be happy about and these tools, IMHO, outweigh any small irritations with bugs.
It would be nice if the bugs were fixed and things like vector displacement were added, but im happy with what i have right now
The extremely annoying issue is the workflow problems and known bugs that have been there for years, have been called out many times, shouldn't even take long to fix, and many artists/tech artists could be liberated from a lot of wasted time and effort. And yet the devs at Pixologic decide that completely useless stuff like super primitive animation is more important?
In other words, don't break Import/Export, without that, a 3D program is as good as a dead duck, and yes, I did try to eat pixels, they don't taste too good.
When you import a mesh it should remain the same size as the mesh in Max or whichever program you are using and remain at that size on export. (Unless you scale the mesh in ZB that is)
What are your import/export settings? (tool shelf and prefs)
I didn't know about the sphere workaround, sounds interesting but how the hell should I learn about it?
Just to be safer than sorry in the end. Luckily in the end the tools never go away and break, and offer more than 3 ways of use.
I found it by going to the zbrushcentral forums and searching for "import/export scale." the search results have expanded since then but it's there. it was pretty easy really.
Can you give me an example so i can reproduce the issue please? I have never had this problem.
I create meshes in Blender and export as obj, import into ZB, group split, sculpt and then export and everything is the same size as it was when first created.
2 of our artists here at sony will be showing off some of the beta features at siggraph, there are some pretty neat updates, there are a few features i already cant live without.
It seems like whatever it is that caused it, happened earlier on in the production of the asset, and so it wasn't noticed until much later. And at that point it's hard to figure out what happened.