Zbrush or Mudbox 2010?
So I got em both, holiday presents from a very kind friend. Haven't installed either... wondering which one to go with? From my meager understanding they do similar things, 3d sculpting. I've seen more Zbrush tutorials but I know mudbox has a big following as well but is it as well-used as Zbrush?? I'm trying to figure out which one to use, I'm totally newb to both programs.
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I noticed that people very new to 3d go along with zbrush just fine, plus as you mention there is a lot of information available.
However if you are very confortable with regular 3D apps you might have expectations of speed, handling and many other little things that will make you like Mud much more. Mud has close to no info online and no dedicated art community since the day Autodesk bought it ; however it does not really need that anyways since it can litterally be completely explained:mastered in 5 minutes, thanks to it's focused feature set and straight forward simplicity.
Both are pretty buggy
Have fun!
- High end cinematic animation.
In that case you want to generate displacement maps to be applied at render time. They can be generated in Mud, in Maya, and other programs too. However the mesh receiving the disp map must be very close in silhouette to the final result.
- Real time game stuff
Here you generate Normal maps faking the surface quality of the 'pretty' model. Even tho it's realtime stuff (very optimized end result), it also has some rather intimidating technical limitations you need to get familiar with. Look for the chair thread by ZacD in the art section here to get a good idea of the process. Then look for the 'Why you should never render blablbla' thread by Mop in 2D/3D discussion to learn more about the underlying tech of it all.
- 2D or 3D Illustration
In the case of 2D illustration you dont need to send anything back to maya - just photoshop really. If you want to pose your sculpted character, you can very well export a light enough level of it to Maya or Max, pose it there using a simple rig or other tricks, and send that proxy back to mud or Z -> your dense model will follow. Z however has some (limited) tools to do that internally tho, called transpose. This is how 99% of the posed illustrations posted on ZBCentral are made.
I would suggest ... don't make big plans at the moment, just play with the apps, you'll figure the technicalities later!
Good luck!
Autodesk chunked up the price and failed to impress me with 2.0.
Pixolgic kept releasing free updates.
Humm wonder which I've stayed current with...
Zbrush has a higher learning curve, Mudbox is pretty much launch-n-go. So if you're going to spend any time learning something it will probably be Z.
I haven't tried 3D coat recently, it might still be too rough around the edges to use in production? Still, you might want to try it out see how you like it.
As far as your situation goes, I would go ahead and start learning Z-Brush. From what little I've used of it, I was quite impressed by what could be accomplished. It seems to be swiftly becoming the industry standard for really high-poly modeling.
I'm actually really impressed with a lot of the new features in zbrush, and I think even mudbox users cannot deny how great it is for hard surface sculpting.
In my opinion it all depends on what you want to do.
With Zbrush there will be a larger learning curve, but you will also be able to do more in that single app, Plus certain things can definitely be accomplished faster in zbrush than mudbox imo (for example the stylized hard surface character art you see done in zbrush with the polish brush).
However, if you simply want to become a better sculpter (artistic skill wise), I really think Mudbox is the better choice. The simplicity of mudbox makes it a lot more like real sculpting than zbrush imo.
So, if you want to take a chance at learning a more difficult program which has more all in one capabilities go with zbrush.
But if you want a simple program to get you going with 3d sculpting, and your simply looking to get better at high poly digital sculpting go with Mudbox.
Either way they are both great programs, and I'm sure there will be people who disagree with me on some of this, but what it all really boils down to is personal preference.
Good Luck!
BTW: I recommend checking out these free dvd's if you want to get quickly acquainted with mudbox:
http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/mudbox/mudbox2009/index.html
And these if you are leaning towards zbrush (not free but worth it, trust me):
http://eat3d.com/zbrush35_intro