ZBrush 4 has been announced (again?) and will be getting a release on August 9. link:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=089971
I'm hoping they give proper 3d per-pixel painting, and paint layers. They also need to overhaul retopology and give some sort of dynamic mesh sculting (voxels, Dynamic tesselation, or something else).
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I'd also like to see zbrush move towards the standard window style, I find programs that deviate from the standard extremely frustrating; Zbrush just has too many things that are 'different for the sake of being different'. I had a really really bad first week with zbrush cause of the UI, it was easily one of the worst programs I've ever used in terms of making a complete noob feel welcome. Now I understand the interface and what the whole document/tool thing is I'm much happier (I still secretly want to stab whoever made it so hard to understand though).
EDIT: Never mind, I should learn to read betterer.
GOZ!
One of the reasons why sculptris was so awesome initially (aside from the Selective used of denser topology as PolyHertz mentioned) was the fact it uses many of the standard key combos from photoshop - scaling brushes etc - was really quick to get into.
Speaking of the adaptive density thing, even though most zbrush users are likely using super top end machines, it can't do any harm having some kind of optimisation, allowing you to increase density on important stuff like faces etc, while leaving less detail where you don't need it.
-better retopo tools (basically I hope they bought Topogun and put it in)
-better paint tools/layers
-optional dynamic tesselation
but I'm sure they have a lot of great ideas. can't wait to see what's in there.
mudbox FTW!
*runs away quickly*
I'm certain they will deliver.
Seriously though dynamic tesselation should be the standard in all sculpting apps imo.
Isnt that a misnomer? You dont need to step backwards and forwards. You may have to retopo the result which is the same as if you sculpted it normally, the amount of polys remains so low you can easily manipulate do heavy changes without resorting to subdiv levels.
Not everything has to have subdiv levels, its not a fundamental tenant.
Being able to sculpt cloth detail and then adding the folds on lower subdiv levels having the details addapt nicely.
I think that cant really be replaced.
1. sculpt basic shapes
2. sculpt in details
3. sculpt in very fine details
4. change the overall shape without losing any detail
I agree that its a cool new workflow, especially for the basic form sculpting and well proportion finding etc. i think its great for concept sculptures, but it will get really hard once you want to do more than just some doodling and get past the ideation sculpting.
having to do another retopo to be able to do such things takes away the speed advantage you get, i mean this will be 2 retopos then, 1 for the lowpoly and one for a step inbetween when you go from concept to production pipeline
If it wasnt tesselation but dynamic subdivision(squares) and you had the subdivision levels.
Although with Sculptris part of the reason you lose details has to do with it beautify/relax algorithm (always turn that off in options and it'll go away so long as you don't have Detail turned on).
Zspheres can help a lot, but for the resulting mesh, i always need to edit a bit. I wish it could handle topologies like this (the pentagon way)
But as the link states they dont have the plugin for XSI just yet. So I am still considering. :S
So far I have photoshop CS5, SoftimageXSI and still looking forward to have Zbrush :S
Perhaps there is a user created plugin? There's GoMax for Max (obviously) and it works really great.
I think they may have run a special when 2 went to 3 to purchase it at the old price before they bumped it up. I think it used to sell for something like $400 - $450, something like that, then they jacked it up. That's about the only special I remember seeing. They may offer a special for the release of 4, but I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the price point the same. PLUS, with free updates, a standard non-inflating price point makes it justifiable to not run any specials in the first place. I would however expect the cost to increase once they go from 4 to 5 if they don't bump it up with this release.
I'd love to get layers for polypainting... layers with blend modes and opacity sliders.
Aside from that, I hope there's no new updates for a while after this! Updates means having to make update videos for my online course!!! :X
I wish there were better tools for polypaint, ie more brush variety and colour layers.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=090818
Great ^^
Would make organisation a lot easier.
I'm impatient to see the new features. I hope to see the horrible dotted brush effect fixed.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showpost.php?p=710032&postcount=139
Have they shown or said anything in regards to improved retopo tools at the show for those that have checked out their booth?
Shadowbox looks very, very useful. I'll be interested in seeing how convoluted the interface is, however.
Disco Stu: I'm sorry to say that's (very, very) probably rendered, rather than realtime. It even says so at the bottom of the image
Flavafly: GoZ support for max has been confirmed for zb 4, so your prayers have been answered!
Shadowbox is actually pretty straightforward
the SSS is rendered, yes, but its rendered in Zbrush.
Yes, yes it has.
It's something that 3.1 didn't have. 3.1 was very nice, fast and smooth strokes, but with 3.5, they fucked all, cool tools i don't use and a huge lack of perfomance compared to 3.1.
Zapplink is another thing that does not work properly.
i think the dotted stroke has a lot to do with your machine, i use to have the problem on my old computer, but on my new machine my strokes are silky smooth. it also has to do with how fast your making your marks, on my old machine i would just take it slow and easy and they lines would be straight, if i tried making quick strokes it would more and more dotted the faster i made my strokes. now i dont really notice it all, i am not sure if its a ram thing, or a processor thing, but something in my new machine fixed it. i got a mac, but i am running windows on it, 16 gigs of ram, quadcore, everything runs pretty good.
I'm gonna guess its the ram, 16 gigs of it translate to a like 4 ft long epeen and everyone knows thats a large epeen.
Enhanced retopo sounds promising too.
Buying a new computer to counteract something they broke in an update isn't exactly high on my list of priorities. I happen to love the new 3.5 tools though, so I'm just learning to live with the dotted strokes, and hoping they've fixed it in 4.
somehow the sensitivity is more twitchy now and I reduce the strength of my brushes to about 10 then change my wacom settings so I have to press on harder.
I actually stopped using the standard brush though and use the inflate brush with lazy mouse on a small radius.
I can do lovely smooth strokes with this method though i don't tend to draw fast anyway.
I do thing they need to address some issues with the pressure sensitivity though. The defaults should work fine like they do in 3.1
I did most of this in 3.5 and the strokes are pretty smooth. I am using an intuos 3