ZBrush is quite powerful but by no means necessary to create stunning pieces. But the good news is you don't have to go without a proper sculpting app since there is Sculptris it comes from Pixologic and it's FREE! It's pretty solid and provides almost anything that's needed to get you started.
I found the ones on Pixologic to be pretty good for starting off. Same for the Eat3d dvd. Really it's just a matter of grasping the difference between the document and a tool, and perhaps a brief understanding of how the materials behave if the tool has no vertex colors.
Also you have a free tutorial by Scott Eaton on Pixologics website, he has a section dedicated to sculpting cloth that should help you out some more, check it out here http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/artistinaction/scotteaton/
The Max, and other plugins will come with the release of ZBrush 4. Pixologic is only releasing these ones early because of the next Mac update for zbrush. Which is in June. So the lucky mac users will get GoZ before we do >_M
I cant remember how we did it at my last studio, but i think you can request a 64bit version of Zbrush that will utilize more memory. Check with ur IT dudes at work or if ur home, contact Pixologic about it.
I have recently upgraded to 4R3 and i've installed the 4R3 version of Image Plane plugin, located in C/program files/Pixologic/zbrush/zstartup/zplugs. The same location as all my other functional plugins. Nothing is showing up in the texture tab for Image Plane at all :/
Also, don't use the inflate slider (and possibly others, but Pixologic doesn't pay me for QA so I haven't checked) if you don't have fully unmasked geometry available for it to work on. If there's only partially masked stuff it will crash everything in a fiery hail of agitated screaming.
Well of course, but you could always just retopologize your sculpt after you block out the main forms in Zbrush :) Plus the creator of Sculptris now works with Pixologic, so we can probably expect to see some sort of dynamic tessellation in a future release
Anyone know if Pixologic is going to do a ZPipeline guide for Max like they did with Maya and XSI? Where's the love? I did find this thread at ZBrush Central though. I didn't read the whole thing, but it seems to be useful: http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=26326
I have never had a random restart with Linux that did not involve power failure. My windows reboots randomly about nightly. I just wish Linux had more software support...(Pixologic/Allegorithmic, I'm lookin' at you.)