Zbrush 2.5 vs Mudbox!!! Flame ON!

Josh_Singh · Aug 2006

So it looks pretty much like they took all the cool things in mudbox and put them in zbrush 2.5
I dont really care, cool programs don't make cool art.
Here's the link!

MoP · Aug 2006

Lupus posted this earlier over in 2D/3D, definitely worth a look though, good that they're really focusing on areas to improve. Hopefully they've streamlined the interface too. Customisable hotkeys would be good too.

Daz · Aug 2006

Viewing that page is hard. I got too annoyed by the OMG OMG!!!1111 responses.

Rick Stirling · Aug 2006

Indeed - the signal to noise ration on there is overwhelming.

Still, I'd like to see how the next year pans out. Zbrush doesn't seem to have done much in MY EYES, but it's already firmly embedded in many pipelines.

Rick Stirling · Aug 2006

Update, from www.rsart.co.uk

I use Zbrush at work, and have done for about a year. It gets me results, but Ive never really gotten into it - it seems to me personally that it was the only package out there that provide the displacement painting functionality that was required for next-gen game art. Along comes Mudbox and right from day 1 its a more streamlined intuitive package.

Zbrush is already firmly embedded in many art pipelines, yet the Mudbox (beta) integrates really well into production pipelines (certainly Skymatter will have taken the two or so years worth of ZB usage onboard to determine what and what doesnt work in a production environment). Pixologic are now working furiously to respond to any feedback, and to help artists by adapting ZBrush to work better in modern production pipelines.

Then along comes Silo, practically free, with a superb set of modelling tools, great displacement painting and LSCM UV unwrapping. Where does it fit in? Certainly its better in my opinion than Zbrush for my job role. Thankfully there now seems to be a buzz about Silo 2.0.

ElysiumGX · Aug 2006

I'd like to edit a 3D object. kthanx. Mudbox vs. Silo 2.0.

sledgy · Aug 2006

The analogies, "being a rock star, you're only as good as your last hit record" and "what have you done for me lately?" certainly hold true with the art crowd

Just last year Zbrush was the cat's meow, now it's the SUCK! Somehow I doubt Pixologic "rushed" to get everything from Mudbox into Zbrush 2.5 - there just wouldn't be enough time. They must have been planning these changes many months ago. I need to check out Silo 2.0.

arshlevon · Aug 2006

i dont ever think zbrush has been the cats meow.. everyone i know has pretty much always hated the interface and how bonkers it is to work with, you just had no other choice. now someone got it right and thats nice, people are happy. i dont know if you remember but zbrush 2.5 was suppose to come out in december, well ironic thing is thats when the first round of mudbox betas went out, i would bet money that the reason for the 6 month delay was to implement mudbox features such as layers, that were never part of the 2.5 feature outline.

Josh_Singh · Aug 2006

I think you hit the nail on the head arsh.

Tulkamir · Aug 2006

Arsh... zbrush was all the rage for a little while. I deffinatly remember comming onto PC and seeing everyone all giddy about this new program that let you do all these amazing things called zbrush.

But yea, time to move on. The interface makes me want to scratch my eyeballs out.

MoP · Aug 2006

Tulkamir: It was all the rage because it was new and allowed a whole new level of detail to be easily worked in - however during everyone saying how cool this new opportunity was, everyone was also saying how dumb and weird the interface was.
I don't think anyone ever proclaimed ZBrush to be the best thing since sliced bread without at least a few reservations.

nealb4me · Aug 2006

Bee's knees? :P Anyway's I'm glad it has some competition now. Hope to play with Mudbox a bit when I get around to it.

Mark Dygert · Aug 2006

It's Zed brush...

...and flame on!

SHEPEIRO · Aug 2006

Zbrush-made by digiartists

mudbox-made by 3dartists/gameartists

or so it seems.

Joao Sapiro · Aug 2006

i really dont care wich one to get really, if i get better results using mudbox ill use mudbox, if i get better by using zed, then ill use zed eheh.

sledgy · Aug 2006

You'll get no argument from me that competition is good.

PoR3 · Aug 2006

Zbrush has a terrible user interface, where Mudbox is just like maya's, its so easy to use its amazing

'Zed brush' is how french people pronounce it btw

James Edwards · Aug 2006

I don't think I'll be putting my copy of ZB aside just yet. The new 2.5 vids look amazing. They've addressed most of the sculpting and painting issues I originally had with it. I never had a problem with the UI either so assuming they actually ship the damn thing this century, I think I'll be using it for quite awhile still.

Rhinokey · Aug 2006

unless they hired some humans to completely redo the interface on zbrush i think i'm going to stay a mudbox fanboy, i could use mudbox the first tiem i opened it up, it was not mysterious, or alien, it just worked

conte · Aug 2006

i am on zbrush side.

aesir · Aug 2006

At this point, I dont care what zbrush adds. Its entire interface pisses me off.

MoP · Aug 2006

Agreed, right now I don't care too much about improved toolset as long as they sort that bloody annoying interface out!

rawkstar · Aug 2006

eh... i didn't mind the zbrush interface much... but with mudbox i get a much clearer view of what my final asset will look like, which is something that i like... the facets in zbrush definitely made things look too sharp but the final model ended up looking more blurry because there would be 1 smoothing group applied to it once the normal maps get rendered. also perspective, thats huge. one thing i heard is that the Mac version of zbrush had perspective viewport and the PC one did not... the perspective preview part NEVER worked at all, even at 0 perspective distortion it would display models as if the FOV was set to over 90. ANYWAYS and ofcourse we get to the point of recognizing the people who are actually going to use the program, zbrush first and foremost was used for digital sculpting, it had other tools, but the main use for it in production was to make pretty organic highpoly models to be used for normal maps, or displacement maps, I probably haven't even touched about 60% of the tools in zbrush, because i never needed them. I dunno, also the documentation for zbrush was a bit scarce, there were things that people were doing on regular basis that weren't recorded anywhere, the basics were everywhere but none of the neat workflow tips and stuff were readilly available online, which was a bit frustrating, in other words, zbrush has too many buttons to push, and if you want to do something out of the ordinary you were left on your own to figure out how to push em... which is cool for a tinkerer type person who likes to figure stuff out, but if you need to get this asset done tonight asap it would probably help to have some documentation for some of the more advanced tools.

Slum · Aug 2006

I'm a bit behind the times when it comes to 3d art, I think. I've only just tinkered in Zbrush a bit, and I found it extremely frustrating (as I'm sure everyone did at first).

I got the chance to play with Mudbox for a little bit, and I must say that as someone who has no particular workflow/application bias, Mudbox wins. With Mudbox, I was able to poke around, change my shortcut keys to navigate like Max, and immediately I had the thing figured out and I was sculpting something. Now, I didn't dive into the advanced features, but as far as first-impressions go, my experience with mudbox is was a nice one.

Mongrelman · Aug 2006

I think Pixologic should should include a (free) training DVD such as from Gnomon or Kurv, I'm sure that would help many people get to grips with the program.
I found it very strange to start with, started to get the hang of it with practice and some tutorials. Then I watched some training DVDs and that helped a huge amount. I don't mind the interface that much, though proper perspective would be awesome.

But I'm not too bothered as most of what I want to do I'll be able to do in Silo, I'm just planning on using Zbrush for adding micro details.

Keg · Aug 2006

my beef with zbrush is the saving system. the UI portion I could deal with easily enough as I can adapt fairly well.

KDR_11k · Aug 2006

I'd comment if I could afford either.

milla · Aug 2006

I'm really excited about Mudbox, but only because of a friend's remarks about his experiences of using it, and the fact that it's out of NZ helps, naturally. I love seeing good products come out of this wee country. I haven't had any exposure to it yet, myself, but as soon as they put out a demo I'm going to grab it.

McIlroy · Aug 2006

All along for me the Zbrush interface has been a turn off and a hinderence . Ok maybe it takes a while to get used to but that is because the interface design is so terrible . I look forward to trying mudbox !

Zbrush 2.5 vs Mudbox!!! Flame ON!

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