Sigh, this is descending into 360 vs PS3, Tastes Great/Less Filling territory...
What is it about digital artists that gets them so attached and worked up about their weapons of choice ?
its not digital artists... its human You'll find the same kind of arguments for pretty much any software/hardware/movie/everything in life that involves choices.
Anyway, I like mudbox better. Just thought I'd throw that out into the topic!
Cheez, I think that's because when guyA states he likes app1 (not even bashing on app2 at all), some smartass guy2 always comes around and say 'ha no you're WRONG app2 is so much better'. So the first guy tries to go in an argument explaining that maybe everytbodies need are different. Then guy2 states again 'ha no you're WRONG app2 is so much better'
Zbrush is useless to me unless i use it every day, if i stop using it for even a week, all knowledge of how to use it is completely lost. What a waste of time.
New mud looks fucking awesome, and i just a ordered a new pc, q6600, 8 gigs ram and 9800 gt. YESSSSS
i'd like to think we could have an objective discussion on the merits and faults. strengths and weaknesses of whatever. in this case i figure we're talking zb and mudbox. personal opinion aside ( and since i can't make any calls on MB 2.0 ) zbrush is fucking rude. how so ?
no matter how you fucking dice it it is blatantly more step heavy. click intensive. convoluted than need be. end of story
i do not find it complicated. nor hard. just entirely messy. and stupid
it is of course not without its virtues. it is awesomely powerful. actually has SOME sweet workflow aspects. and feature for feature it has a wealth of wicked tools. where it fails is bringing those tools toward a cohesive whole
if we're to share opinion i'll state that : i believe the goal of software developers should be to make their apps as clutter free. streamlined and efficient as possible. i cannot see that pixologic express this same philosophy
zbrush works. you can use it. it gets the job done. but matter of fact it is an untidy affair ( at best ) in need of a serious clean
I think it's inevitable that when you spend hundreds and hundreds of hours using an application you're going to develop a bit of an emotional attachment to it. That's how people are in general I think.
I'm just happy that there are two sculpting apps competing with each other. Zbrush and Mudbox are both great in their individual ways. Zbrush has a lot of powerful and brilliant tools like transpose and topology masking, while Mudbox has a more accurate display and greater ease of navigation. Besides, it's not as if the two programs are mutually exclusive; it's fairly simple to work between both programs to take advantage of their unique strengths. I like to work on the proportions and gesture of a character in Zbrush, while I'll use Mudbox to get a better read of the surface and forms as I progress. I'd hate to be deprived of the utility of either program.
Anyways, I'm really excited to see what Mudbox 2009 has in store for us, and I'm sure that the eventual Zbrush 4 will have some amazing new features as well to keep up with the competition. In terms of technology, it's a great time to be a 3D artist.
What it doesn't tell you is that it rotates at 1fps.
Frankly I'll always stick with mudbox, the interface in zb is just too much unintuitive hassle to learn + learn again for me to even care about the benefits it has over mudbox. An upgraded mudbox is nothing but music to my ears... I just feel a total idiot having bought the old version if there's no upgrade fee option. Let's hope there is instead of having to buy it flat out.
Oh yeah, there's definitely nothing personal here. Especially not with per, who I've always respected as an artist, and also a lady. =D
I'm the last to push anything on anybody. I really could give a fuck about what the guy next to me is using. I'm certainly not pushing anything on anyone here either. Anyone interpreting my text as such needs to drop some defenses and shed a few fanboy pounds, and maybe learn to reed moar gudder. I can hardly be insecure about my own software choices since I use and own the same stuff everyone here is talking about. I'm just as much invested in mudbox as anyone (probably moreso than some pirates or salary goons who don't even own it posting in here).
Facts are, some like mud, some like Z. Nobody is more right or wrong than anyone and arguing stupid shit down to clicks and navigation schemes makes no sense, especially when the discussion I was having above was about what I can and can't do in both softwares - which, last I checked there's nothing wrong with that, and brings me back to what I was saying originally - I hope to see more Zbrush tools make their way into mudbox in the future. I mean, mudbox already copied Zbrush in the sculpting dept and improved on some aspects of it. Why stop there? =D
Beyond Zbrush Central I haven't bothered looking. Even then, all I use right now is Subtool Master and some alphas.
I really hope some of the materials stuff we are seeing and hearing about for MB2 can be baked. Love to be able to bake the AO right in mudbox, then tweak or paint over it in a new layer, etc.
Let's not forget guys, it's all in good fun. Gwot and I are adults, and if we want to piss away our time talking about likes and dislikes, we'll very well do that and not expect moral high ground posers to butt in and ruin the fun. You tend to learn something in the process. If everyone was all politically correct, you'd never learn anything, but just hear the dreadful "everyone has different opinions, so you're not allowed to state your personal preferences. Be one with the many." hippie BS.
fucking thank you
being in a mode where you want to be sensitive to everyone's values and somehow have space for everyone equally without conflict is a value it's self. getting upset because someone doesn't share that same value is not only unconscious, it's hypocritical and has been frustrating the living shit out of me for some while.
Oh, no offense taken, Per128. Just a bit of rhetorical silliness on my part.
And yeah, I do think I'm better then everyone and a love-thy-neighbor, tree hugging hippy :P
I use my right hand to model, the left hand is just a ridiculous waste of time when it comes to
work speed and anyone that says different is just wrong.
I use my right hand to model, the left hand is just a ridiculous waste of time when it comes to
work speed and anyone that says different is just wrong.
Don't know if this is useful info for folks, but at my studio we're debating between committing to Mud or Z and one of the potentially deciding factors is that Autodesk is apparently very good about network licenses and Pixologic, for whatever reason is being very difficult about that. Any one else have trouble getting network licenses from Pixologic ?
Personally, I bounce between the two programs quite a bit. Its really, really easy to train up other artists on digital scuplting with Mudbox. I've done a few training rounds with ZedBrush for teaching texturing, though, boy howdy, it takes some mental gymnastics to wrap one's head around PolyPainting, converting color to texture yadda yadda yadda.
However, based on my time with the Mud 2009 alpha/beta/whatevah, texturing is going to be WICKED easy and a lot of fun to boot. And easy to wrap your head around, since its effectively like working in PS.
That said, I do really like Image Plane texturing in Z: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=46396
Its a little weird at first, and is certainly not user friendly initially, but I have found its a pretty fast way to use photo ref or whatevah kinds of textures in 3d painting.
On a serious tip, I've always wanted to try to use a flight controller joystick as a mouse replacement for modeling and just basic CAD/computer stuff. I don't think it would work, though. I would really like to try the Novint Falcon in Mudbox or Max.
just tested zbrush 3 and my pc can handel 26.460.160 !QUADS! (one subtoool) without a problem. maybe even more?
So stop bitching! zbrush is still faster than mudbox :P
I will try the new mudbox, but the old just had a really bad performance.
Per: I doubt the lag has anything to do with 2.5D, although I don't know what the reason behind it is. Silo and the thing Blender's sculpting's based on both have that lag at higher sudivisions as well, and there's no converting to 3d going on there.
I'm really looking forward to Mudbox 2 a lot now, since performance was the main reason I preferred Zbrush.
That'd due to RAM and HDD cache (note the "reading virtual memory message).
I can go above 15 million polygons and undo takes maybe 2-3 seconds, and the framerate is great (8gb RAM, q6600, etc.).
For memory, make sure in Preferences memory isn't set to 256, since I have 8gb, I max it out at 4096 or so (I think that's the max in Zbrush, since it's still a 32-bit app).
Here's some Zbrush tips (these may not be 100%, it's off the cuff )
Ctrl-N = new canvas (if you've dropped your mesh)
Drag on new canvas to draw the tool again
Import an alpha is very simple, just go to the alpha selection on the left, click on it, go to import, and import a grayscale image, .PSD is a fine format for importing,
If you want to "reset" Zbrush without restarting it, just to go Preferences in the upper/top and go to "Initialize Zbrush" and it'll clear it out for you,
If you "undo" too many times to when you imported the mesh for a tool, you'll get the default star tool,
You can increase the amount of "undos" in preferences
Zbrush is more dependent on the CPU than GPU, this being due to "2.5D" pixol technology (someone correct me if I'm wrong)
Don't just jump to a high subdivision from the start, else your model will get "mushy" or "melty," work the forms out in lower subdivisions (this applies to Mudbox too of course),
If you mask out an area, subdivide again, etc. then export, the line at which the unmasked portion was divided more will be a separate mesh, and can cause issues when baking a normal map to the low-poly, etc.
i only get slow down in zbrush when hiding/unhiding geometry on a 10 mill plus model. (unfortunatly working on large scene objects covering multiple 1k maps they need to be high as feck.
still the worst thing with it is those little things like pressing edit when in projection master by mistake and loosing all your work because of simple shit like that. also make a new tool draw it decide no thats not the right one press undo and it turns into a star WTF. and the need to restart it when making new documents cos it wont load a new tool in cos it doesnt have the same faces as the last one ggggggrrrrr.
Yeah Super that's weird, I got that too and that's one of the reasons I can't stand Z. However many users seem to not experience that. Or maybe they just don't zoom?
(btw I don't necessarily mean slow sculpting, but mostly object manipulation slowdown)
I get the same thing. Frame rate is great in zb as long as your staying zoomed out, but zoom in and it can become almost unusably slow. And that's running on a decently powerful machine too (2.4ghz core2 dual, 4gb ram, geforce 9800gtx).
do you mean zoom in (zoom in the document) or do you mean zoom in the 3d view? never had that.. not even with my old athlon 3000, strange.
What i love about zbrush is, that you can sculpt without a keyboard (would be handy with a cintiq on a sofa). The basic controls are usefull and powerfull and make sense. Everything beyond that just feels strange. I can use it, but it's strange.
Luckily i only use zbrush for sculpting and painting and a little bit of baking, nothing crazy.
Well you can 'magnify' the document and obviously it does not slow down but you just get the pixels closer and bigger - nothing usable. But if you 'bring' the object very close, it slowdows a lot for me. Call me a bonehead, but that's typically the kind of things I don't want to have to worry about when sculpting...
What i love about zbrush is, that you can sculpt without a keyboard (would be handy with a cintiq on a sofa).
umm you can do that in mudbox as well... I've setup the hotkeys on my intuos 3 so that I never have to manually point at anything else except the canvas while sculpting.
And the controls dont make sense in zbrush, you got a zoom function that doesnt do what you expect a zoom should do, and the proper tool to zoom is scale... how is that logical!
And then you got this hold hotkey, hold click, release hotkey but keep click down business going on... I've never even seen another program do this "complicated" type of mouse/keyboard action before... this is the kinda controls you expect to see when playing a game, not while doing work.
the one that fucks me is taking quite a hit to performance ( speed of the viewport at least ) when isolating parts of a model at high counts. so. less poly's ( or whatever ). less speed. pixol-lack-of-logic
At the end of the day, we are benefited that it's not only Zbrush, but now also Mudbox. Both are great tools, and both companies are working on new features to try to attract new customers, therefore, we do indeed benefit from this competition.
I don't give a damn about all the fancy new lighting and stuff (though realtime AO does sound rather awesome). All I really care about is those non-lumpy strokes.
Thanks for that comparison pic, Per. I'm actually really psyched for the new Mudbox and have been for the longest time. I've never really had a decent play with ZBrush just because I've found Mudbox to be so much more user friendly, so I'm a straight up Mudbox fanboy.
I've never really had any problem with the performance with Mudbox, just because I've never really pushed any of my sculpts into the multi-millions. So I'm hoping there are a few more extra features that will help compete with the tonnes that ZBrush has. Not that I'd use 80% of those features (probably because I wouldn't know where to find them in the labyrinth of a UI in ZBrush).
I'd just love to see re-topo in Mudbox, because that is something I know I would use.
Fingers crossed.
Retopo would be sweet. That's one thing I was stoked about in Zbrush initially but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Not a deal breaker by any stretch though since there are other options out there - would just be nice to be able to do it without having to export to another app at all.
The realtime shaders sounds interesting. For a second there I thought they were going overboard with the fressssnel, but I suppose since it's customizable you could if you really wanted to. Wonder if they have any texturing features planned to work in conjunction with that?
Off topic: One of the guys at work showed me an alternate workflow for retopo in Z- paint the edge loops onto the mesh, then trace over that with the retopo tool. Silly but effective.
Just heard the news Im really looking forward to this, I got mudbox 1 when it was released and though it is very easy to use there are some constrainsts, it really forces you to work at lower levels and use smaller and smaller brush sizes as you go up cause if you dont then performance and brush quality suffers alot. It looks like they have sorted out this stuff in Mudbox 2009 Im really exited to see what we get, the painting engine sounds really useful too.
I dont care much for zbrushes "features": zspheres, transpose tools or even retopo tools...those are things that other programs can handle more efficiently and without work arounds. Whenever I hear about a new feature in zbrush it involves crazy work arounds for something that should be simple.
Replies
its not digital artists... its human
Anyway, I like mudbox better. Just thought I'd throw that out into the topic!
Then obviously people get angry.
New mud looks fucking awesome, and i just a ordered a new pc, q6600, 8 gigs ram and 9800 gt. YESSSSS
no matter how you fucking dice it it is blatantly more step heavy. click intensive. convoluted than need be. end of story
i do not find it complicated. nor hard. just entirely messy. and stupid
it is of course not without its virtues. it is awesomely powerful. actually has SOME sweet workflow aspects. and feature for feature it has a wealth of wicked tools. where it fails is bringing those tools toward a cohesive whole
if we're to share opinion i'll state that : i believe the goal of software developers should be to make their apps as clutter free. streamlined and efficient as possible. i cannot see that pixologic express this same philosophy
zbrush works. you can use it. it gets the job done. but matter of fact it is an untidy affair ( at best ) in need of a serious clean
I'm just happy that there are two sculpting apps competing with each other. Zbrush and Mudbox are both great in their individual ways. Zbrush has a lot of powerful and brilliant tools like transpose and topology masking, while Mudbox has a more accurate display and greater ease of navigation. Besides, it's not as if the two programs are mutually exclusive; it's fairly simple to work between both programs to take advantage of their unique strengths. I like to work on the proportions and gesture of a character in Zbrush, while I'll use Mudbox to get a better read of the surface and forms as I progress. I'd hate to be deprived of the utility of either program.
Anyways, I'm really excited to see what Mudbox 2009 has in store for us, and I'm sure that the eventual Zbrush 4 will have some amazing new features as well to keep up with the competition. In terms of technology, it's a great time to be a 3D artist.
Frankly I'll always stick with mudbox, the interface in zb is just too much unintuitive hassle to learn + learn again for me to even care about the benefits it has over mudbox. An upgraded mudbox is nothing but music to my ears... I just feel a total idiot having bought the old version if there's no upgrade fee option. Let's hope there is instead of having to buy it flat out.
I'm the last to push anything on anybody. I really could give a fuck about what the guy next to me is using. I'm certainly not pushing anything on anyone here either. Anyone interpreting my text as such needs to drop some defenses and shed a few fanboy pounds, and maybe learn to reed moar gudder. I can hardly be insecure about my own software choices since I use and own the same stuff everyone here is talking about. I'm just as much invested in mudbox as anyone (probably moreso than some pirates or salary goons who don't even own it posting in here).
Facts are, some like mud, some like Z. Nobody is more right or wrong than anyone and arguing stupid shit down to clicks and navigation schemes makes no sense, especially when the discussion I was having above was about what I can and can't do in both softwares - which, last I checked there's nothing wrong with that, and brings me back to what I was saying originally - I hope to see more Zbrush tools make their way into mudbox in the future. I mean, mudbox already copied Zbrush in the sculpting dept and improved on some aspects of it. Why stop there? =D
I really hope some of the materials stuff we are seeing and hearing about for MB2 can be baked. Love to be able to bake the AO right in mudbox, then tweak or paint over it in a new layer, etc.
Sorry - wrong thread
fucking thank you
being in a mode where you want to be sensitive to everyone's values and somehow have space for everyone equally without conflict is a value it's self. getting upset because someone doesn't share that same value is not only unconscious, it's hypocritical and has been frustrating the living shit out of me for some while.
thanks! I'll go get sexual relief now.
And yeah, I do think I'm better then everyone and a love-thy-neighbor, tree hugging hippy :P
work speed and anyone that says different is just wrong.
Lefty is for shortcut key input, dude. :poly129:
Personally, I bounce between the two programs quite a bit. Its really, really easy to train up other artists on digital scuplting with Mudbox. I've done a few training rounds with ZedBrush for teaching texturing, though, boy howdy, it takes some mental gymnastics to wrap one's head around PolyPainting, converting color to texture yadda yadda yadda.
However, based on my time with the Mud 2009 alpha/beta/whatevah, texturing is going to be WICKED easy and a lot of fun to boot. And easy to wrap your head around, since its effectively like working in PS.
That said, I do really like Image Plane texturing in Z:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=46396
Its a little weird at first, and is certainly not user friendly initially, but I have found its a pretty fast way to use photo ref or whatevah kinds of textures in 3d painting.
Seriously though good thread going so far. Glad to have you back Per.
for the joystick
On a serious tip, I've always wanted to try to use a flight controller joystick as a mouse replacement for modeling and just basic CAD/computer stuff. I don't think it would work, though. I would really like to try the Novint Falcon in Mudbox or Max.
Also, using a joystick for sculpting? That's crazy, but might be crazy enough to actually work. :shifty:
So stop bitching! zbrush is still faster than mudbox :P
I will try the new mudbox, but the old just had a really bad performance.
I'm really looking forward to Mudbox 2 a lot now, since performance was the main reason I preferred Zbrush.
I can go above 15 million polygons and undo takes maybe 2-3 seconds, and the framerate is great (8gb RAM, q6600, etc.).
For memory, make sure in Preferences memory isn't set to 256, since I have 8gb, I max it out at 4096 or so (I think that's the max in Zbrush, since it's still a 32-bit app).
mudbox UI > Zbrush UI
its like MS-DOS vs windows.
Ctrl-N = new canvas (if you've dropped your mesh)
Drag on new canvas to draw the tool again
Import an alpha is very simple, just go to the alpha selection on the left, click on it, go to import, and import a grayscale image, .PSD is a fine format for importing,
If you want to "reset" Zbrush without restarting it, just to go Preferences in the upper/top and go to "Initialize Zbrush" and it'll clear it out for you,
If you "undo" too many times to when you imported the mesh for a tool, you'll get the default star tool,
You can increase the amount of "undos" in preferences
Zbrush is more dependent on the CPU than GPU, this being due to "2.5D" pixol technology (someone correct me if I'm wrong)
Don't just jump to a high subdivision from the start, else your model will get "mushy" or "melty," work the forms out in lower subdivisions (this applies to Mudbox too of course),
If you mask out an area, subdivide again, etc. then export, the line at which the unmasked portion was divided more will be a separate mesh, and can cause issues when baking a normal map to the low-poly, etc.
still the worst thing with it is those little things like pressing edit when in projection master by mistake and loosing all your work because of simple shit like that. also make a new tool draw it decide no thats not the right one press undo and it turns into a star WTF. and the need to restart it when making new documents cos it wont load a new tool in cos it doesnt have the same faces as the last one ggggggrrrrr.
still its good
Make your Canvas the size of the Mudbox window, zoom into an area which fills the screen and you are fucked. Lucky if you get 5fps.
(btw I don't necessarily mean slow sculpting, but mostly object manipulation slowdown)
What i love about zbrush is, that you can sculpt without a keyboard (would be handy with a cintiq on a sofa). The basic controls are usefull and powerfull and make sense. Everything beyond that just feels strange. I can use it, but it's strange.
Luckily i only use zbrush for sculpting and painting and a little bit of baking, nothing crazy.
umm you can do that in mudbox as well... I've setup the hotkeys on my intuos 3 so that I never have to manually point at anything else except the canvas while sculpting.
And the controls dont make sense in zbrush, you got a zoom function that doesnt do what you expect a zoom should do, and the proper tool to zoom is scale... how is that logical!
And then you got this hold hotkey, hold click, release hotkey but keep click down business going on... I've never even seen another program do this "complicated" type of mouse/keyboard action before... this is the kinda controls you expect to see when playing a game, not while doing work.
It doesn't "make sense"... but it does work.
Snowfly, it will have default lighting, and that could be a preview, but you will be able to change it, by adding lights and adjusting materials.
It might actually deliver on most if not all of my wish list...
They inverted the background gradient :P
I've never really had any problem with the performance with Mudbox, just because I've never really pushed any of my sculpts into the multi-millions. So I'm hoping there are a few more extra features that will help compete with the tonnes that ZBrush has. Not that I'd use 80% of those features (probably because I wouldn't know where to find them in the labyrinth of a UI in ZBrush).
I'd just love to see re-topo in Mudbox, because that is something I know I would use.
Fingers crossed.
-caseyjones
Off topic: One of the guys at work showed me an alternate workflow for retopo in Z- paint the edge loops onto the mesh, then trace over that with the retopo tool. Silly but effective.
I dont care much for zbrushes "features": zspheres, transpose tools or even retopo tools...those are things that other programs can handle more efficiently and without work arounds. Whenever I hear about a new feature in zbrush it involves crazy work arounds for something that should be simple.
the ability to load a .max file, and to open that same file again in max afterward.