@pior or better yet use the right click nav mode. It's far better than the default. It orbits around the cursor, you can orbit/pan zoom directly on the mesh, so you don't have to find an empty part of the canvas or use the canvas border zone. It feels a lot more natural and similar to trad 3d navigation.
@Justin Meisse your hand example is an extra unnecessary step. You can just dynamesh without doing a boolean operation for the same results.
pior Well, nobody said zbrush is ready for level desing or archvis setup For single model its navigation is perfect. From what I`ve seen Live booleans are better than ProBoolean in max. No way you can boolean 2-3 mil mesh from other 2 mil mesh in max in realtime UX is very simple and intuitive now too. Sure for those who don`t use Zbrush on a daily basis and are not confident with the package, there`s no reason (yet) to jump into.
Musa, Indik : I am fully aware of these various workarounds and tips'n'tricks, been using good old Zbrush since version 1, I'd say that's confident enough
What I am trying to get at is that if one has access to an objectively faster and more responsive workflow to do something (talking mostly about creative use of booleans for shape solving and exploration), there is no reason to use something slower. The new live booleans is probably one of the best tool available at this time (across all 3d programs !) to process models like in the example of the 3d printed toy with inserted joints shown in the video ; but it definitely not as intuitive and fluid as one might expect for actual creative use. Now of course everyone has different expectations and levels of tolerance, so that plays a role too.
At the end of the day being objective and critical of such things is actually pretty important, because that's the best way to push the app into becoming better and better with time ! Without repeated complaints about a lack of manipulator we wouldn't have gotten one by now. So even though the app is pretty great in its current state I think it's crucial to always thoroughly point out its shortcomings.
In short I'd rate the new booleans 3.5 Zstars out of 5 : Excellent output, but poor user interaction system at this time.
pior, agreed, each to their own. I find new booleans are as intuitive as it can be (three ops, realtime, no limitations). I`m not talking about ZModeler and other stuff, just booleans alone.
I'm fully in agreement with @pior I'm also a long term ZB user (1.55b to be precise) and as much as I love it and use it daily, as far as booleans go 3dsmax with custom scripts/hotkeys and fully featured modeling/spline tools, modifier stack, and proper scene/layer management system is just more efficient. Not to mention Max's reputation as one of the best scene layout packages. Then there's dynamic, non-destructive edge chamfering and the ability to create high/low assets simultaneously, eliminating the labourious step of manually retoping a hard-surface asset.....
For me, ZB is an amazing concepting and 3d print toolkit for hard-surface and lightning fast for character work but, the fact that n-gons are illegal topology is a big drawback for a hard-surface production asset workflow. And also, the lack of a dynamic filleting feature on the booleans means resorting to dynamesh/polish(which is now about a 3 year old technique) A dynamic filleting system would have really made live booleans the best around.
No way you can boolean 2-3 mil mesh from other 2 mil mesh in max in realtime UX is very simple and intuitive now too.
it's not realtime though, is it? the live boolean mode seems to be a render effect. the actual thing happens as soon as you convert to a boolean mesh from the tool palette. which is far from realtime and at least in my experience not necessarily going to lead to an end result or even work exactly as the preview showed me. looks like handholding is required to make it reliable if you happen to not start from a clean primitive.
the upside is that it no longer requires the old destructive workflow and neither is dynameshing mandatory anymore so you can even have control over the model topology this time.
No way you can boolean 2-3 mil mesh from other 2 mil mesh in max in realtime UX is very simple and intuitive now too.
it's not realtime though, is it? the live boolean mode seems to be a render effect. the actual thing happens as soon as you convert to a boolean mesh from the tool palette
Do you see result in realtime? Yes. How is it made is not important. Converting render effect to 3d mesh is one time 30 sec wait = no big deal. For me It`s like having a stable 60 fps in game with load times about 30 sec VS having 15 fps with instant load time
what i get in realtime is a preview, not necessarily an exact depiction of the actual end result - which btw. might just be a windows that says 'ooops'. certainly different from boolean ops in blender or max. there at least it has the decency to crash right away!
btw. anyone else getting crashes from quicksave? if it kicks in while i am doing something it crashes the session pretty reliably. manually triggering it does not have this effect. never had this one in older versions.
what i get in realtime is a preview, not necessarily an exact depiction of the actual end result
Do you have any proof of that? Of a situation where preview would differ from final result? What I get is 100% accurate every time and this is what Pixologic have shown in their demo.
musashidan my example isn't using an unnecessary step, it's comparing two methods, merging the hand to the arm using booleans and then merging the hand to the arm using dynamesh. Dynamesh is making a mesh that's way too dense even at a resolution of 8, there are extra steps I could take to rectify that but then that's extra time and potentially introduces other problems (like the fingers dynameshing together)
Another example which is great when you have a few hundred props that you need to create broken parts out of. I just made this really fast, I plan on building some better rock chunk boolean tools, maybe even do some photogrametry out in some of the rugged Texas terrain around me.
I really wish they would implement a dynamesh master style plug-in integrated into Zbrush itself. The adaptive dynamesh is fantastic and super quick but I really dislike working with the resolution slider if I can avoid it.. Maybe dynamesh master will get an update to support that. Maybe I should post that in that thread.
what i get in realtime is a preview, not necessarily an exact depiction of the actual end result
Do you have any proof of that? Of a situation where preview would differ from final result? What I get is 100% accurate every time and this is what Pixologic have shown in their demo.
that it's just a preview? as i wrote earlier in the thread i had crashes of the actual boolean meshing app right away after feeding it models with polypaint, textures, sculpt layers, also models with holes (head without body, etc). looked fine in live boolean preview though.
bit of a pain then to go through every subtool and make sure they are flattened and baked down as needed, perhpas with textures stripped out which is what's bugging me about the whole thing.
in my work i have no need for sculpting out of a sphere and cutting into that with other primitives which is what i've seen in the demos. and what has certainly worked in my tests.
@Justin Meisse I can definitely see the potential in what you're saying and it's great to see all the clever workflows people come up with every time ZB gets new tools but again, in your example, I might be misunderstanding what you're doing. Your final step is to DM the arm anyway so why boolean it first? Your broken rock example is certainly useful on a large amount of assets. Creating a master cutter mesh would save a bit of time if you didn't plan to go in and sculpt further on the meshes.
@beefaroni 100% Dynamesh master is what I use exclusively. I'm really missing it but I've no doubt Joe will update it soon for R8.
@thomasp as I'm sure you already know, boolean operations are solids modeling and meshes that are not watertight will always result in errors so this is expected. I wouldn't expect ZB boolean to be any different.
I guess I should have laid my picture out better, here's what I meant, I'm not going to dynamesh my boolean result, it's all one mesh, I will zremesh it to fix the topology if needed:
That pillar had layers on it and make Boolean worked fine. I don't really do dynamesh or boolean on polypainted models because painting is the last step in my workflow. I generally only paint selection masks and do my real painting in Substance painter and 3dcoat.
My work is modeling anything for any industry. I'm using a booelean subtraction right now to quickly fix something for a CNC milling project, it was a real time saver.
what i get in realtime is a preview, not necessarily an exact depiction of the actual end result
Do you have any proof of that? Of a situation where preview would differ from final result? What I get is 100% accurate every time and this is what Pixologic have shown in their demo.
that it's just a preview? as i wrote earlier in the thread i had crashes of the actual boolean meshing app right away after feeding it models with polypaint, textures, sculpt layers, also models with holes (head without body, etc). looked fine in live boolean preview though.
Every tool has limitations, you should`ve known this as you`re an experienced artist. Anybody who works with max and zbrush has crashes - that is the nature of 3d software. I`ve had numerous crashes with max booleans, in simple situation like trying to subdivide a model inside boolean stack. Or chamfering a boolean output. So is max deceiving me by booleaning low poly models and not being able to subdivide/chamfer them later?
@thomasp as I'm sure you already know, boolean operations are solids modeling and meshes that are not watertight will always result in errors so this is expected. I wouldn't expect ZB boolean to be any different.
my whole gripe with this new boolean function is that it's not expected at all if i have it working fine in the preview first.
a method where i construct a stack of boolean operations that seems to do exactly what i want and then just bails as soon as i try to bake it down, prompting me to look through the subtool list for an error in the setup is not exactly my idea of working. as of now i'm not even sure why it fails on some models as in what are the right conditions for a crash. not even actively tested what it does if an object has it's normals flipped or geometry partially hidden or masked. some of these can be difficult to spot - particularly inside zbrush - not to mention that you are not always aware that your mesh has holes to begin with.
btw. if i have such a boolean setup in blender then usually i can nail down pretty easily which object is the culprit and go look for solutions. here it just starts a process, does it's thing and may well produce a result in a new subtool - or just a generic error message.
in max, well, ok. point taken. you have my sympathies.
I'm not a fan of the fact that it's still virtually impossible to edit existing multi-mesh brushes, and now also the multi-alpha brushes.
If you want to change something, you basically have to make the whole thing over again.
I made some multi-alpha brushes, for example, that now have much larger file sizes than they need to, because in spite of the name "alpha" apparently they store all of the original geometry data and I did not decimate them.
I made a little script that convert multi alpha brushes into a Ztool with multiple Subtools. That
could help to rebuild a multi alpha brush, but i wanted it to work with
Insert meshes brush, and it's impossible Well the free plugin script is named zCycler, as it also a brush cycler plugin that works with R7 , R8 and PC and Mac.
Could someone here please check the STL I put in Google drive (link below). It's a quiet simple succession of subtools for a Boolean Operation. The live boolean goes fine but when I try to create the resulting mesh I have an error message.
Just to precise, for each subtool I took care to delete lower subdivisions, remove Dynamic subdivs, remove any masking or frozen sbdivisions. Don't know if any of that could cause an issue as it didn't work anyway.
Solution was to convert each subtool to a dynamesh. So it's probably a wireframe issue. But if someone had a precise idea about the reason why it didn't work without dynameshing everything, I would greatly appreciate it
and when I rotate an object quickly I get this slight ghosting effect, anyone else experiencing this?
Everybody seems to have this small lag when moving the view. Not a huge issue. ZBRush 4R8 P1 is stable and the new tools are exciting enough to just forget about this small inconvenient
Damn TeriyakiStyle My hero ! I didn't even know about that "Show Issues" button. That'll teach me not to read the manual to the end and trust my usual feeling with UIs. "If ZBrush displays a message after using the Make Union Mesh function, you will be able to use the Render >> Render Booleans >> Show Issues function. This function can be enabled only if you select the Tool which contains the errors."
Thank you so much for having taken the time to go through my faulty tool. Most of the wireframe is so ugly It's a wonder that zbrush is making the boolean at all ! What's funny is that those new additions (located in Render !...) show geometry errors that the old Geometry >> MeshIntegrity >> Check Mesh Int / Fix Mesh doesn't show at all.
lotet - I get horrible graphics tearing when rotating a complex model. not very impressed. i have no real need for live booleans, so might just stick with previous release for now
another anooyance is that when exporting back to a 3d program, zbrush messes up the location of the model, sometimes its miles from the 0,0,0 location
lotet - I get horrible graphics tearing when rotating a complex model. not very impressed. i have no real need for live booleans, so might just stick with previous release for now
another anooyance is that when exporting back to a 3d program, zbrush messes up the location of the model, sometimes its miles from the 0,0,0 location
yeah, definitely doing some strange things here and there. I wouldn't go as far as saying its a deal breaker, and also Im lazy, dont have the energy to reinstall R7 and get everything set up again.
@Lotet : Just FYI, there was no need for you to uninstall 4R7 in the first place. As usual the Pixologic upgrade/authorisation instructions were incredibly convoluted and cryptic, but yeah it is perfectly possible to have both 4R7 and 4R8 running on the same machine, both authorized.
I may repeat something that has already been said, but what I like the live booleans feature is the fact that it's now even easier to mix hard surface and organic modeling in the same software, However, I think the vector displacement is even cooler than live booleans, and mixing these two together with some IMM brushes will probably give some insane result in the future
I must be one of the only people who is having a hard time getting my brain to adopt the new gismo. Transpose line is second nature to me. I think it's genius. It just feels weird having a 'normal ' gismo in ZB. The way it sits there in screen space is freaking me out!!
Same I'm still using transpose but I'm slowly trying to get used to a gizmo I'm kinda sad they changed it.
@pior - yeah, I know, I did it mostly to clean up disk space and that I accidentally opened the old version a few times instead of R8. I havnt had any crashes or anything with R8 so its not that big of an issue.
as for the new gizmo, I had no idea how much my workflow relied on the transpose line. its crazy actually, I always disliked the transpose line untill now, when I realize how useful it is lets just say Ive learned to appropriate it a lot more.
A cool thing I noticed though is that the transpose line is polygroup sensitive (mask by polygroups) but the gizmo is not. so I have a hotkey for switching between the gizmo and the transpose line, which have really added to my workflow, since they work a bit differently you can switch to the one that will work best in a specific situation and just jump back n forth depending on what you wanna do.
Yes, the Gismo has the same function as the TL in that you can still ctrl+click a vert to mask all other PG and the axis will be snapped perpendicular to the surface normal. And yes, Y is the default hotkey to switch. As with any ZB button,when you hover the mouse the hotkey is displayed: 'Gismo 3D Y'
So I made sure I read through the entire thread before diving in with my own opinions and a question.
Firstly I like how they "cleaned up" the UI - pixologic also fixed a UI error (white bar) that has been plaguing me off and on for a few years now that has no "official" fix. I also always appreciate their updates.
That said and I'm reading a lot of others hinting at this - while live Boolean is really neat - for hard surface it's also pretty useless in most cases as while the operations are non-destructive, the end results are pretty useless in all but the most simplified "front facing" models because you won't actually be positioning the various pieces in zbrush - but in Max/Maya then goZ-ing it anyway. They also still don't have nested and/or collapsible layers - which I'd bet they are holding out on as an option for "5" to hook you.
Without precision or scale standardization - it doesn't matter how polished something like live booleans is - they will still be impractical to use in most applications. "But you can set everything up in Max/Maya/Other!" -you are right... just like you needed to before. Now we are at the point that we need to get used to building the LP on top of the HP as we set up all the block-cuts and chamfers and other boolean subtractive "Stamps" in Max - but all the extra prep is quickly approaching "just do it all in Max" levels of prep and time investment. Maybe my workflow is just ameturish or I'm missing some fantastic tool or option- But Zbrush still feels like it's restricted to mostly cloth/organic character modelling along with "dents and scratches" final touch work. On top of all of this the LP modelling after a highly complex HP boolean extravaganza seems like a complete nightmare at this point. It seem like 100 lbs of LP work for 5lbs of HP hard surface edge polish.
Anytime I see a highly developed "made exclusively in Zbrush" model I cringe at how much extra manpower that has to go into it to make it useable as anything other than a stylized static object. I still think Dynamesh is Zbrush and pixologic's high point (and I'm eternally thankful for the tech).
@Grimwolf@musashidanconcerning the non-destructive nature of live booleans - it's really cool, but pretty useless in most hard surface projects where you need to know the angles and locations of various pieces. One of the hardest things to do in Zbrush is to make a beam that's 22 meters long with 5 3cm diameter holes 7cm apart and 1.35 meters from one end. Yet it would take someone in almost any other 3d program less time than it takes to read my entire post up to this point to make that happen. yes "Not all tools can be great at everything" - but not being even above average at this particular task makes "Live booleans" almost entirely useless for hard surfacing - Not booleans mind you, Live booleans. There is a difference.
@kanga correct me if I'm wrong but that watch asset would be a nightmare to LP cleanly or build out into individual pieces? Could you tell me what mm the movement in that watch would be - for example?
---
So I have 2 questions.
1. Is there a way to set it so the transpose line is the default? Have Y already "untoggled" at startup etc?
2. I run an OC'ed 5930k with 32GB ram and fully clean install of 4R8. The performance chugs really bad when I do something as simple as pull out a "64" resoltuion (11k polys) stock dynamesh sphere into a second (ctrl-drag transpose line). It never chugged anywhere near this bad if at all in 4R7. Dynamic subdivision is off and Polyframe is off. Just normal stock startup "64" sphere and a drag-duplicate function.
It feels like they re-worked the entire back-end or something, or there is something going on with translation with the transpose line that simply wasn't there before. The new "gizmo" that us supposed to replace the transpose line works about at the same performance as the 4R7 transpose line worked. It feels like they built some sort of "transpose line" emulation on top of the the gizmo instead of it being a more core coded thing - and that layering is causing the chugging/poor performance.
Try moving something around with the transpose line then doing the same operations with the new gizmo and see the performance differences.
...@kanga correct me if I'm wrong but that watch asset would be a nightmare to LP cleanly or build out into individual pieces? Could you tell me what mm the movement in that watch would be - for example?.
Not sure what you mean by mm movement. The model was never intended for LP but more an exploration of the ZB 4R7 modeller and keyshot combination, except the numbers which were imported from Max. What good is it? Well in a 3Dapp I wouldn't have explored the shape. I didn't start with a concept and work through it like you would with a commission. I just whacked a cylinder in ZB and saw where it took me. As an Industrial Designer (years ago) concept sketching and final renders were limited to a series of single views and the skill of the designer when it came to material visualization. The final step was sending your mech model drawings (not much fun to make really) to the model shop, where you would agonize over material sample chips. The real life modelling phase was dead expensive too. So as a concept work flow I really appreciate the freedom ZB and external apps have given us. Modeled and textured in ZB, rendered in Keyshot.
But the watch was just straight modelling and cutting. I haven't had a chance to mess with 4R8 yet but even the Pro Boolean modifier in Max and the polish by polygroups workflow in ZBfloored me. Max setup. Polishing and noise maker in ZBrush, rendered in Keyshot. I found the end result very slick. Check out the fillets, they are insane If you wanted a LP you could also use many of the original Max parts as a base. So I am not sure where your questions are coming from. Personally, as far as product/concept vitalization and game asset production go the tools are an inspiration.
Replies
@Justin Meisse your hand example is an extra unnecessary step. You can just dynamesh without doing a boolean operation for the same results.
Well, nobody said zbrush is ready for level desing or archvis setup
From what I`ve seen Live booleans are better than ProBoolean in max. No way you can boolean 2-3 mil mesh from other 2 mil mesh in max in realtime
Sure for those who don`t use Zbrush on a daily basis and are not confident with the package, there`s no reason (yet) to jump into.
What I am trying to get at is that if one has access to an objectively faster and more responsive workflow to do something (talking mostly about creative use of booleans for shape solving and exploration), there is no reason to use something slower. The new live booleans is probably one of the best tool available at this time (across all 3d programs !) to process models like in the example of the 3d printed toy with inserted joints shown in the video ; but it definitely not as intuitive and fluid as one might expect for actual creative use. Now of course everyone has different expectations and levels of tolerance, so that plays a role too.
At the end of the day being objective and critical of such things is actually pretty important, because that's the best way to push the app into becoming better and better with time ! Without repeated complaints about a lack of manipulator we wouldn't have gotten one by now. So even though the app is pretty great in its current state I think it's crucial to always thoroughly point out its shortcomings.
In short I'd rate the new booleans 3.5 Zstars out of 5 : Excellent output, but poor user interaction system at this time.
agreed, each to their own.
I find new booleans are as intuitive as it can be (three ops, realtime, no limitations). I`m not talking about ZModeler and other stuff, just booleans alone.
For me, ZB is an amazing concepting and 3d print toolkit for hard-surface and lightning fast for character work but, the fact that n-gons are illegal topology is a big drawback for a hard-surface production asset workflow. And also, the lack of a dynamic filleting feature on the booleans means resorting to dynamesh/polish(which is now about a 3 year old technique) A dynamic filleting system would have really made live booleans the best around.
the upside is that it no longer requires the old destructive workflow and neither is dynameshing mandatory anymore so you can even have control over the model topology this time.
Do you see result in realtime? Yes. How is it made is not important. Converting render effect to 3d mesh is one time 30 sec wait = no big deal.
For me It`s like having a stable 60 fps in game with load times about 30 sec VS having 15 fps with instant load time
certainly different from boolean ops in blender or max. there at least it has the decency to crash right away!
btw. anyone else getting crashes from quicksave? if it kicks in while i am doing something it crashes the session pretty reliably. manually triggering it does not have this effect. never had this one in older versions.
What I get is 100% accurate every time and this is what Pixologic have shown in their demo.
Another example which is great when you have a few hundred props that you need to create broken parts out of. I just made this really fast, I plan on building some better rock chunk boolean tools, maybe even do some photogrametry out in some of the rugged Texas terrain around me.
Btw nice stuff so far!
bit of a pain then to go through every subtool and make sure they are flattened and baked down as needed, perhpas with textures stripped out which is what's bugging me about the whole thing.
in my work i have no need for sculpting out of a sphere and cutting into that with other primitives which is what i've seen in the demos. and what has certainly worked in my tests.
@beefaroni 100% Dynamesh master is what I use exclusively. I'm really missing it but I've no doubt Joe will update it soon for R8.
@thomasp as I'm sure you already know, boolean operations are solids modeling and meshes that are not watertight will always result in errors so this is expected. I wouldn't expect ZB boolean to be any different.
That pillar had layers on it and make Boolean worked fine. I don't really do dynamesh or boolean on polypainted models because painting is the last step in my workflow. I generally only paint selection masks and do my real painting in Substance painter and 3dcoat.
My work is modeling anything for any industry. I'm using a booelean subtraction right now to quickly fix something for a CNC milling project, it was a real time saver.
I`ve had numerous crashes with max booleans, in simple situation like trying to subdivide a model inside boolean stack. Or chamfering a boolean output. So is max deceiving me by booleaning low poly models and not being able to subdivide/chamfer them later?
BTW, Clean Tool Master runs cleanup in automatic mode.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?164728-Clean-Tool-Master-(with-Dynamesh-Project)-unofficial-Information-Installation
upd: Clean Tool Master doesn`t work until updated. Dynamesh master works fine (not updated either)
a method where i construct a stack of boolean operations that seems to do exactly what i want and then just bails as soon as i try to bake it down, prompting me to look through the subtool list for an error in the setup is not exactly my idea of working. as of now i'm not even sure why it fails on some models as in what are the right conditions for a crash.
not even actively tested what it does if an object has it's normals flipped or geometry partially hidden or masked. some of these can be difficult to spot - particularly inside zbrush - not to mention that you are not always aware that your mesh has holes to begin with.
btw. if i have such a boolean setup in blender then usually i can nail down pretty easily which object is the culprit and go look for solutions. here it just starts a process, does it's thing and may well produce a result in a new subtool - or just a generic error message.
in max, well, ok. point taken. you have my sympathies.
That could help to rebuild a multi alpha brush, but i wanted it to work with Insert meshes brush, and it's impossible
Well the free plugin script is named zCycler, as it also a brush cycler plugin that works with R7 , R8 and PC and Mac.
https://gum.co/zcycler
and when I rotate an object quickly I get this slight ghosting effect, anyone else experiencing this?
Just to precise, for each subtool I took care to delete lower subdivisions, remove Dynamic subdivs, remove any masking or frozen sbdivisions. Don't know if any of that could cause an issue as it didn't work anyway.
Solution was to convert each subtool to a dynamesh. So it's probably a wireframe issue. But if someone had a precise idea about the reason why it didn't work without dynameshing everything, I would greatly appreciate it
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz8DR8RiLOM-bmZNbmp2dFNOalk
That'll teach me not to read the manual to the end and trust my usual feeling with UIs.
"If ZBrush displays a message after using the Make Union Mesh function, you will be able to use the Render >> Render Booleans >> Show Issues function. This function can be enabled only if you select the Tool which contains the errors."
Thank you so much for having taken the time to go through my faulty tool. Most of the wireframe is so ugly It's a wonder that zbrush is making the boolean at all !
What's funny is that those new additions (located in Render !...) show geometry errors that the old Geometry >> MeshIntegrity >> Check Mesh Int / Fix Mesh doesn't show at all.
another anooyance is that when exporting back to a 3d program, zbrush messes up the location of the model, sometimes its miles from the 0,0,0 location
A cool thing I noticed though is that the transpose line is polygroup sensitive (mask by polygroups) but the gizmo is not. so I have a hotkey for switching between the gizmo and the transpose line, which have really added to my workflow, since they work a bit differently you can switch to the one that will work best in a specific situation and just jump back n forth depending on what you wanna do.
Firstly I like how they "cleaned up" the UI - pixologic also fixed a UI error (white bar) that has been plaguing me off and on for a few years now that has no "official" fix. I also always appreciate their updates.
That said and I'm reading a lot of others hinting at this - while live Boolean is really neat - for hard surface it's also pretty useless in most cases as while the operations are non-destructive, the end results are pretty useless in all but the most simplified "front facing" models because you won't actually be positioning the various pieces in zbrush - but in Max/Maya then goZ-ing it anyway. They also still don't have nested and/or collapsible layers - which I'd bet they are holding out on as an option for "5" to hook you.
Without precision or scale standardization - it doesn't matter how polished something like live booleans is - they will still be impractical to use in most applications. "But you can set everything up in Max/Maya/Other!" -you are right... just like you needed to before. Now we are at the point that we need to get used to building the LP on top of the HP as we set up all the block-cuts and chamfers and other boolean subtractive "Stamps" in Max - but all the extra prep is quickly approaching "just do it all in Max" levels of prep and time investment. Maybe my workflow is just ameturish or I'm missing some fantastic tool or option- But Zbrush still feels like it's restricted to mostly cloth/organic character modelling along with "dents and scratches" final touch work. On top of all of this the LP modelling after a highly complex HP boolean extravaganza seems like a complete nightmare at this point. It seem like 100 lbs of LP work for 5lbs of HP hard surface edge polish.
Anytime I see a highly developed "made exclusively in Zbrush" model I cringe at how much extra manpower that has to go into it to make it useable as anything other than a stylized static object. I still think Dynamesh is Zbrush and pixologic's high point (and I'm eternally thankful for the tech).
@Grimwolf @musashidan concerning the non-destructive nature of live booleans - it's really cool, but pretty useless in most hard surface projects where you need to know the angles and locations of various pieces. One of the hardest things to do in Zbrush is to make a beam that's 22 meters long with 5 3cm diameter holes 7cm apart and 1.35 meters from one end. Yet it would take someone in almost any other 3d program less time than it takes to read my entire post up to this point to make that happen. yes "Not all tools can be great at everything" - but not being even above average at this particular task makes "Live booleans" almost entirely useless for hard surfacing - Not booleans mind you, Live booleans. There is a difference.
@kanga correct me if I'm wrong but that watch asset would be a nightmare to LP cleanly or build out into individual pieces? Could you tell me what mm the movement in that watch would be - for example?
---
So I have 2 questions.
1. Is there a way to set it so the transpose line is the default? Have Y already "untoggled" at startup etc?
2. I run an OC'ed 5930k with 32GB ram and fully clean install of 4R8. The performance chugs really bad when I do something as simple as pull out a "64" resoltuion (11k polys) stock dynamesh sphere into a second (ctrl-drag transpose line). It never chugged anywhere near this bad if at all in 4R7. Dynamic subdivision is off and Polyframe is off. Just normal stock startup "64" sphere and a drag-duplicate function.
It feels like they re-worked the entire back-end or something, or there is something going on with translation with the transpose line that simply wasn't there before. The new "gizmo" that us supposed to replace the transpose line works about at the same performance as the 4R7 transpose line worked. It feels like they built some sort of "transpose line" emulation on top of the the gizmo instead of it being a more core coded thing - and that layering is causing the chugging/poor performance.
Try moving something around with the transpose line then doing the same operations with the new gizmo and see the performance differences.
The model was never intended for LP but more an exploration of the ZB 4R7 modeller and keyshot combination, except the numbers which were imported from Max. What good is it? Well in a 3Dapp I wouldn't have explored the shape. I didn't start with a concept and work through it like you would with a commission. I just whacked a cylinder in ZB and saw where it took me. As an Industrial Designer (years ago) concept sketching and final renders were limited to a series of single views and the skill of the designer when it came to material visualization. The final step was sending your mech model drawings (not much fun to make really) to the model shop, where you would agonize over material sample chips. The real life modelling phase was dead expensive too. So as a concept work flow I really appreciate the freedom ZB and external apps have given us.
Modeled and textured in ZB, rendered in Keyshot.
But the watch was just straight modelling and cutting. I haven't had a chance to mess with 4R8 yet but even the Pro Boolean modifier in Max and the polish by polygroups workflow in ZBfloored me.
Max setup.
Polishing and noise maker in ZBrush, rendered in Keyshot. I found the end result very slick. Check out the fillets, they are insane