For me tho I know that choosing a program over another it is all related to (apparently relatively) small things, but if I don't have them I go nuts.
First thing being, interaction with what I am working on! This is my biggest complain about Z, and it comes down to 3 things : navigation slowdowns, horrendous layer management, and weird shadowing. I know that some users are fine with sculpting at a specific angle, but I personally rotate my models all the time when I work, with very quick little flicks, and I know that Zbrush really never let me do that, ever...
That's why I enjoy Z for detailing or surfacing, but when it comes to flowing shapes around a character, I dunno, I just can't do it! hehe
And what saddens me if that, these things I don't like about Z, have never been improved or changed over the years so yeah I became very delusional about the app (still I give it a chance every couple months or so)
Heh I'd be happy just with the 3.12 features, zsphere perspective and AO baking is what I'm missing the most.
Technically you can produce an entire (static) asset from start to finish using ZBrush alone already. The main thing that would suck right now would be the UVs since there's no way of doing an intelligent unwrap afaik...
definitely, but we can keep using Headus UV layout that is good for me.
2.5 is not a problem for me if it has performance. Mudbox lacks on workflow tools that zbrush has and makes it way more useful on game dev.
Sorry to say this guys but i know some testers at various companies. They have nothing good to say about it. Apparently good things have been removed, useless things have been added, formerly simple things are now cumbersome and overly complicated. And any feedback given to Pixologic about that has been ignored.
They're catering to movie studios in the new version it would seem, and apparently left game makers behind at Z3.1 . I wasn't a beta tester so this should be taken with a grain of salt. They may have addressed some of this since I heard this stuff.
Behind the scenes, always a disillusioning view.
The movie studio stuff sounds good. Next-gen gaming is utilizing the same high-poly needs anyway.
Removing stuff...not so good. Need more info on that.
i use it all the time for tiling textures........................:-P
so there, dont knock sommit just cos you dont know how to use it
agree, i know quite a lot illustrators using those features, zbrush wasn't built for 3d artists in first place, we just took whats there and used it for our purposes
Indeed, there are people on ZBrushCentral (boozy_floozie for example) who make illustrative art entirely in ZBrush (with maybe a small amount of PS touch-ups here and there), try doing that stuff in Mudbox
OK I'm kind of a Zbrush noob, so.
1.) Pior - What do you mean by Zbrush not letting you rotate your model with little flicks? Is it just a break in your momentum because you have to drag outside of the model to do it?
2.) Neox - Is the fake perspective in Zbrush really that broken? Even setting the focal length doesn't give you more accurate results?
snowfly: create a body with several parts, ie. head, torso, legs turn on perspective and then turn one subtool off, like the legs the whole "perspective" changes then
if you have to create a character based on a real person it soooo damn much sucks because no focal length will do the job you'll always have to export back and forth between you main 3d app and zbrush to check if the proportions are right, because you can make it look good in zbrush but in the end it will look odd in real perspective
did anyone try to bake cookies in zbrush?
i don't understand people who do everything in that app and truly resent the fact that many things there are uncomfortable. these people crying and do not want to learn something new.
Why is debating about production apps a bad thing?
If people didn't talk about likes and dislikes nothing new would ever come out.
Zbrush and Modo and all the new innovative software that's constantly being developed are all because people wanted to new ways of doing things and didn't want to have to settle for whatever tools their company had in its pipeline.
EDIT:
The zBrush interface is tolerable because only zBrush is doing it. If every app out there starting implementing their own unique interfaces with almost no correlation to other apps, our job would get very miserable. It's what I call the Apple phenomenon. Only one company at a time can do it.
When i'm modelling with modo or max, my viewports are "flat", i have a flatness of 100% in modo, and in max my fov is the lowest.
Zbrush has a flat style viewport, hasn't it? and i feel it very nice to have ideal proportions. With Fov you can have distorted proportions due to the camera field angles. If something looks great in 2d viewports, with a proper camera should look better. For that reason, too many fellow friends use the isometric view of left, right, top, etc to model.
blaizer: thats fine for creating original assets, but like neox says, if you're trying to match a persons face taken with a camera (and hence has perspective in the ref) the ideal situation is to mimmic the same perspective with your camera as in the photo.. sounds like thats not really easy to do
i did some z face sculpts before they introduced perspective and damn did they suddenly look wrong when I took them into maya
Snowfly : I dunno, it's hard to explain. It's like a sum of many little factors : usually I zoom/pan/rotate all at the same time with the stylus (Maya nav style), but in Z I somehow have to start pressing a key, release it and go on with the motion to pan then zoom, reach the border of the screen if I need to rotate ... click some interface button to frame ... it's all very distracting to me. Whereas in Mud, Max and Maya I really feel like I can 'fly' around the model, constantly making adjustements and edits in screen mode... (However enve MAya's defaullts has huge downfalls, we spent days with a TA at work improving it :P. Best combo : Max+Switcher!!)
I understand that maybe not everybody works that way tho!
Still I don't get why Pix wouldn't add a standard navigation scheme like that (as an option) since it is such an industry standard.
I really don't think Pixologic listened to the game industry user base enough when it had the chance. They essentially ended up creating their own competition by not addressing problems some users had with the interface and tool system. Weta may still have gone on to create Mudbox anyway, but I don't think nearly as many users would have moved to Mudbox had ZBrush been a more intuitive and beginner friendly program. A poor business decision on Pixologic's part. In the end it's good for us though because now we have two competing products to choose from.
And I like using both programs, so more free updates are always cool.
Pior, yeah, the navigation is one of my major complaints about ZBrush.
It's a bit silly since middle-click and right-click appear to do the same thing when over the canvas, surely they could have just assigned middle-click along with ALT + CTRL to Max-style viewport navigation!
Maya-style navigation wouldn't work since ALT+left clicking actually does a valid action on the sculpt.
Well I completly agree some alternative navigation system could be good at least as it's one of the biggest complains. But I love the current one, far more usable and fast then the "standard". And that was my biggest problems on Mb. But indeed the 2 systems would make everyone happy
Sorry to say this guys but i know some testers at various companies. They have nothing good to say about it. Apparently good things have been removed, useless things have been added, formerly simple things are now cumbersome and overly complicated. And any feedback given to Pixologic about that has been ignored.
They're catering to movie studios in the new version it would seem, and apparently left game makers behind at Z3.1 . I wasn't a beta tester so this should be taken with a grain of salt. They may have addressed some of this since I heard this stuff.
Behind the scenes, always a disillusioning view.
just want to call bullshit on this real quick, because there are no testers that work outside of pixologic. They came to the studio today to do a QA on flow and i inquired about the beta program because i was a betatester for 3 and wanted to know information about 4 and they said they will only be doing internal testing until closer to launch where they will open it up to people that don't work for pixologic.
Currently they have a beta team of less than 5 people
I'd really like to see them introduce a more traditional file handling setup and maybe nix the odd vocabulary that only applies within Zb. It's still set up as though 3d sculpting is just a subfunction of the main 2.5D painting app. I'm used to it now, but it'd still be nice to just go to File>Open for a .ztl and File>Import for an .obj and not have it prompt to save the 2.5d "document" every time you quit (and strangely not bothering to ask if you want to save any of the unsaved 3d "tools" you've been working on), and to get rid of this stuff:
And a flatten brush that doesn't, by default, raise the surface of the mesh above the surrounding polygons would be SUPER. And it'd be neat if the options for the sculpting tools were more accessible. Like if they were in one menu instead of being split between Alpha, Stroke, and Brush; and if they were more descriptive (who can remember what each number means in WrapMode?).
I customized my interface a whole lot though and it's made it a lot easier to get to the relevent parts quickly. Here's a screenshot:http://i42.tinypic.com/2utrtw6.jpg
@flysoup: just ctrl+click the load tool button and assign a shortcut to it, same with save and you have ctrl+s for saving your tools instead of saving the document
Neox, yeah I see what you mean now about the broken perspective, not even adjusting the focal length gives you any kind of consistency between Z and max. I don't find the perspective popping too annoying, but it would definitely be so much better if kept the vanishing point constant.
And yeah pior, the navigation control scheme falls apart really quick when you're zoomed in all the way and you have hardly and blank canvas left..and the lag at closeup...ugh. I think it works great for low-med frequency sculpting though.
Still starry eyed with Z, a little more experience and I can start hating on it too hehe.
I tend to use the zoom tool for close up detail. it gets a bit more pixelled out, but the performance is great.
only problem is that it locks the rotation when you are that close in
re the max/zbrush differences in the perspective view, I just check between the two every so often to make sure there is not some weirdness creeping in
Hopefully Zbrush 4 will have a curve mask tool like with mudbox. That would boost productivity dramatically. At least for me, im tired of making alphas just to sculpt a simple curve line. Pixelogic should put that in a long tome ago.
Originally Posted by Art-Machine View Post
Sorry to say this guys but i know some testers at various companies. They have nothing good to say about it. Apparently good things have been removed, useless things have been added, formerly simple things are now cumbersome and overly complicated. And any feedback given to Pixologic about that has been ignored.
They're catering to movie studios in the new version it would seem, and apparently left game makers behind at Z3.1 . I wasn't a beta tester so this should be taken with a grain of salt. They may have addressed some of this since I heard this stuff.
Behind the scenes, always a disillusioning view.
=============
Posted by: arshlevon
just want to call bullshit on this real quick, because there are no testers that work outside of pixologic. They came to the studio today to do a QA on flow and i inquired about the beta program because i was a betatester for 3 and wanted to know information about 4 and they said they will only be doing internal testing until closer to launch where they will open it up to people that don't work for pixologic.
Currently they have a beta team of less than 5 people...
Thanks for putting the record straight arshlevon it's about the same information I got....I guess we'll have to wait for a while before testing. If history repeats its self I have faith they will again become the REAL innovators...zbrush2 was an amazing step , zbrush3 brought incredible tools to us...can't wait for 4!!!:)
Art-Machine,
Please continue to blow air out of your ass... another ridiculous statement from an un-informed moron...
Although there are a few new features which I really like (the new backtrack -path lazy mouse feature is really handy) it still feels like a bit trade off, really missing subtool,decimation,zapp and transpose master.
Also I'm finding I cannot polypaint over texture having to polypaint convert to texture export to ps.
You can customize the hell out of that zb UI. I don't see what the problem is. ...and as a matter of fact UIs are kinda useless...Hit tab and work in fullscreen &use hotkeys for accessing commands and menus(default or custom ones)
Its so weird though, if you want to use one of their planes, you have to click this and that, if you save the document it doesn't save the mesh your working on, its just all sorts of fucked up.
pfft... lets continue to make "advances in technology"... i.e. screw the basics, that shite SUCKS.... who likes the standard brush!?! NO ONE! who uses the spacebar to pan across the document!?! WHAT A STUPID FEATURE!
i'll check it out, but i'm perfectly content with 3.1 still... i'll wait until "r25" if i have to get my damn spacebar back.
i would also like to add that just in under 30 seconds of that video, i vomited from the sight of all the features that were added to the update. STOP ADDING SHIT! FIX! IT! FIRST!!!
Replies
For me tho I know that choosing a program over another it is all related to (apparently relatively) small things, but if I don't have them I go nuts.
First thing being, interaction with what I am working on! This is my biggest complain about Z, and it comes down to 3 things : navigation slowdowns, horrendous layer management, and weird shadowing. I know that some users are fine with sculpting at a specific angle, but I personally rotate my models all the time when I work, with very quick little flicks, and I know that Zbrush really never let me do that, ever...
That's why I enjoy Z for detailing or surfacing, but when it comes to flowing shapes around a character, I dunno, I just can't do it! hehe
And what saddens me if that, these things I don't like about Z, have never been improved or changed over the years so yeah I became very delusional about the app (still I give it a chance every couple months or so)
definitely, but we can keep using Headus UV layout that is good for me.
2.5 is not a problem for me if it has performance. Mudbox lacks on workflow tools that zbrush has and makes it way more useful on game dev.
The movie studio stuff sounds good. Next-gen gaming is utilizing the same high-poly needs anyway.
Removing stuff...not so good. Need more info on that.
well, i for one could never get my head fully 'around' Zbrush. Everytime I start it up, it's like I have to learn it all over again.
Erm... ya can. Right under "New Document" in "Documents".
Turtles?
Hopefully they'll remove the whole canvas/2.5D bullshit all togheter. I can't see anyone using that except for some funky hermit lsd addict.
i use it all the time for tiling textures........................:-P
so there, dont knock sommit just cos you dont know how to use it
agree, i know quite a lot illustrators using those features, zbrush wasn't built for 3d artists in first place, we just took whats there and used it for our purposes
lol u didnt get the joke.. [ame]
I heard maya 2010 u can import .mud straight away and viewed as lowpoly with normal map auto generated.
lol, but seriously, if Autodesk integrates mudbox with max/maya/xsi so well, I guess zbrush will have hard time.
OK I'm kind of a Zbrush noob, so.
1.) Pior - What do you mean by Zbrush not letting you rotate your model with little flicks? Is it just a break in your momentum because you have to drag outside of the model to do it?
2.) Neox - Is the fake perspective in Zbrush really that broken? Even setting the focal length doesn't give you more accurate results?
if you have to create a character based on a real person it soooo damn much sucks because no focal length will do the job you'll always have to export back and forth between you main 3d app and zbrush to check if the proportions are right, because you can make it look good in zbrush but in the end it will look odd in real perspective
i don't understand people who do everything in that app and truly resent the fact that many things there are uncomfortable. these people crying and do not want to learn something new.
If people didn't talk about likes and dislikes nothing new would ever come out.
Zbrush and Modo and all the new innovative software that's constantly being developed are all because people wanted to new ways of doing things and didn't want to have to settle for whatever tools their company had in its pipeline.
EDIT:
The zBrush interface is tolerable because only zBrush is doing it. If every app out there starting implementing their own unique interfaces with almost no correlation to other apps, our job would get very miserable. It's what I call the Apple phenomenon. Only one company at a time can do it.
Zbrush has a flat style viewport, hasn't it? and i feel it very nice to have ideal proportions. With Fov you can have distorted proportions due to the camera field angles. If something looks great in 2d viewports, with a proper camera should look better. For that reason, too many fellow friends use the isometric view of left, right, top, etc to model.
I think it's a matter of taste.
i did some z face sculpts before they introduced perspective and damn did they suddenly look wrong when I took them into maya
I understand that maybe not everybody works that way tho!
Still I don't get why Pix wouldn't add a standard navigation scheme like that (as an option) since it is such an industry standard.
And I like using both programs, so more free updates are always cool.
It's a bit silly since middle-click and right-click appear to do the same thing when over the canvas, surely they could have just assigned middle-click along with ALT + CTRL to Max-style viewport navigation!
Maya-style navigation wouldn't work since ALT+left clicking actually does a valid action on the sculpt.
Hmm... wonder if that's scriptable
just want to call bullshit on this real quick, because there are no testers that work outside of pixologic. They came to the studio today to do a QA on flow and i inquired about the beta program because i was a betatester for 3 and wanted to know information about 4 and they said they will only be doing internal testing until closer to launch where they will open it up to people that don't work for pixologic.
Currently they have a beta team of less than 5 people
And a flatten brush that doesn't, by default, raise the surface of the mesh above the surrounding polygons would be SUPER. And it'd be neat if the options for the sculpting tools were more accessible. Like if they were in one menu instead of being split between Alpha, Stroke, and Brush; and if they were more descriptive (who can remember what each number means in WrapMode?).
I customized my interface a whole lot though and it's made it a lot easier to get to the relevent parts quickly. Here's a screenshot:http://i42.tinypic.com/2utrtw6.jpg
And yeah pior, the navigation control scheme falls apart really quick when you're zoomed in all the way and you have hardly and blank canvas left..and the lag at closeup...ugh. I think it works great for low-med frequency sculpting though.
Still starry eyed with Z, a little more experience and I can start hating on it too hehe.
And Jeez..Art-Machine..explain yourself man
only problem is that it locks the rotation when you are that close in
re the max/zbrush differences in the perspective view, I just check between the two every so often to make sure there is not some weirdness creeping in
Did they add something like it in 2.0?
Yes they did, I work with dynamics and even I knew that. :poly124:
if curves then it would be nice to have them like in claytools, lying on the mesh and not in screenspace like in mudbox
and yes, steady stroke was introduced with 2009
Sorry to say this guys but i know some testers at various companies. They have nothing good to say about it. Apparently good things have been removed, useless things have been added, formerly simple things are now cumbersome and overly complicated. And any feedback given to Pixologic about that has been ignored.
They're catering to movie studios in the new version it would seem, and apparently left game makers behind at Z3.1 . I wasn't a beta tester so this should be taken with a grain of salt. They may have addressed some of this since I heard this stuff.
Behind the scenes, always a disillusioning view.
=============
Posted by: arshlevon
just want to call bullshit on this real quick, because there are no testers that work outside of pixologic. They came to the studio today to do a QA on flow and i inquired about the beta program because i was a betatester for 3 and wanted to know information about 4 and they said they will only be doing internal testing until closer to launch where they will open it up to people that don't work for pixologic.
Currently they have a beta team of less than 5 people...
Thanks for putting the record straight arshlevon
Art-Machine,
Please continue to blow air out of your ass... another ridiculous statement from an un-informed moron...
Also I'm finding I cannot polypaint over texture having to polypaint convert to texture export to ps.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=077864
i'll check it out, but i'm perfectly content with 3.1 still... i'll wait until "r25" if i have to get my damn spacebar back.
i would also like to add that just in under 30 seconds of that video, i vomited from the sight of all the features that were added to the update. STOP ADDING SHIT! FIX! IT! FIRST!!!