I work with a few Zbrush hardsurface wizards. Totally a viable route. These are the dudes: http://www.marcoplouffe.com http://drawcrowd.com/fred2303/projects http://cedricseaut.prosite.com All done in zbrush.
I played around with the idea of doing hardsurface in Zbrush and it's just silly to me. I prefer to have precise control and comfort that only traditional modeling can offer.
In that case, you should definitely learn how to make them shapes using a program besides Zbrush. Zbrush4R7 should bring in some nice solutions for hardsurface modeling using Zbrush. But you still should know how to achieve what you want via SubD modeling.
ima just say don't do it. its probably not wrong to learn it, because there are certain workflows where zbrush hardsurface might be realy usefull. but there will also be a lot of cases where its utterly useless and trying get the result you have to deliver will be certainly possible, but a lot slower then the alternative(…
This will be far more feasible with Zbrush 4R7, with dedicated smoothing modes, precise edge loop control, and things of that nature. The issue with using Zbrush as it is now for hardsurface work is that not only can you not go back and precisely edit edges, but it will sometimes produce a blobby result that cannot be…
I've gotten a fair share of work over the last year that was very mock-up heavy. There were plenty of opportunities to use zbrush for hardsurface work where it would have been a complete waste of time to try and block out the same thing with clean subdivision topology. When it comes to making adjustments like edge bevels…