Will PBR be a "novelty toy"? No. Unreal Engine 4 exclusively uses a PBR workflow, Cryengine uses PBR these days (not sure if it's required), Marmoset Toolbag 2 uses PBR, Marmoset Skyshop for Unity uses PBR, IIRC Unity 5 will use PBR, I'm sure high end proprietary engines like Fox Engine use PBR as well. Offline animation…
I agree with the others. If I were you, I would look into PBR and try and learn all I can about it. This is a good start. http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn
PBR is physically based rendering and is just a more realistic capability to next gen engines. Instead of just color, normal, spec, you use color, roughness, metallicity, normals to define your materials. Marmoset Toolbag 2 is a PBR based engine that people use to do their shaderwork and it has an excellent lighting system…
Don't quote me on it, I can only repeat what I've heard from my friends in the industry. Maybe I shouldn't be concerned, I've been told I'm not godlike enough to make full and proper use of zbrush anyway, and I don't doubt that. :p Thank you for the resources. PBR may not be relevant to the job I'm aiming for right now,…
Thanks. I guess I'm just going to have to sit down with this weapon and compare its texture quality to other MMOs and figure out what's lacking. I guess the pressing question on my mind is how many of these PBRs are commonly accepted in a professional setting? I've heard studios snub Z-Brush as playing with clay in spite…
An art director at square enix said zbrush is a toy!? *facepalm* I don't even know what to say about that. Anyway, along with the marmoset tutorials that Tobbo posted above, here's a good video overview of PBR by our very own d1ver (I think that's how he spells it?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNwMJeWFr0U I think it…
Okay, that's a fair assessment of PBR, thank you. :) I have a friend who works with Square up in Canada, his art director has repeatedly dismissed zbrush as a toy. I don't know how widely held that view is, but it's a variable that I have to consider when choosing what software to familiarize myself with. I admit to being…
So my college training mostly consisted of the core concept training, and hand-painting textures. I don't know anything about PBR, Marmoset, etc. Where exactly do these programs fit into the workflow? Are they strictly designed to create materials from scratch and bake out appropriate spec/nrm/etc files? Or are they…
Zbrush is an integral part of the workflow for many people in a professional environment. I do not know of many studios these days that use normal maps but at the same time refuse to use Zbrush for the high poly; I don't know where you got the idea that studios snub it. You are also misunderstanding what PBR is. It is a…
Please go use Zbrush. Like ysalex said, you don't have to be 'god like'. But, from my experience, you do at least need to know how to get around in order to be helpful for most studios. Go practice. The first few things are going to be bad, but that's fine. There is no downside to learning Zbrush at all. As for PBR, follow…