Sculptris - dynamic mesh tesselation

[michalis]

First Autobulldozer now Pixobulldozer.

I can only agree with this.

how do you get, easily and reliably, all of the goodness from zb into your standard 3D program? Half of the good stuff still lives and dies at the edges of its windows or requires un-necessary voo-doo IMHO.

Here:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=83524

and here

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=186059

No voo-doo.

[Javis]

No voo-doo.

Eeek! Unfortunately ZB is all voodoo. I know some really BIG studios (which unfortunately must remain nameless ATM...) that hate ZB and are damned eager to drop it, precisely because of the crazy voodoo one must perform just to use it... Not to mention re-learn it if it haven't touched it in a little while. PITA.

[polyxo]

Eeek! Unfortunately ZB is all voodoo. I know some really BIG studios (which unfortunately must remain nameless ATM...) that hate ZB and are damned eager to drop it, precisely because of the crazy voodoo one must perform just to use it... Not to mention re-learn it if it haven't touched it in a little while. PITA.

Strange.

I find Zbrush very logical, easy to use, rock-solid, and extremely well documented.

I am not a master of this program as Sculping does not play a central role in my profession -

but it is certainly one of best made Software-Packages I have ever touched.

One can really feel how many thoughts have been invested in even the tiniest aspects of editing.

This permanent bashing of Zbrush and its workflow in this Forum is really ridiculous - I

think the incredible work done with this app speaks for itself.

[Calabi]

Its menu system may be logical, but its not human logical. Alphabetical menus, within menus, with arbitrary names may seem straightforward and perfect but they arent designed around the human brain and how it catalogues and processes information. They couldnt have done a better job if they wanted to make the menu system unfathomable to people. Its a good program but its processes and methods for doing things are needlessly complicated. To paint you have to click on and find things opposite sides of the screen. To retopo you have follow a series of instructions which make no sense.

To do anything apart from the most basic things you have to read a manual, you have to learn and memorise where things are and the arcane proccesses it involves. Nothing you have learned insinctively in all the other native windows programs applys to Zbrush. Its a program apart from every other. You may say thats a good thing but there is a reason windows programs obey certain rules. Ease of access being one.

I do not need to learn the different methods for every program. I can without having to read a manual for a new program if it obeys certain rules of windows, learn how to use it pretty quickly(with just perhaps a few hints, I can find new thing see the names click on them and with the knowledge I've gained from other windows programs transfer that to this new program, and have an idea of where this thing I'm wanting might be or what that name might mean). You can attach new information to old information.

Why is it so bad that Zbrush doesnt follow the rules of other programs? If we were in the DOS days you would have a hundred different programs all with different rules and menu systems. Can you imagine having to read a manual for each and everyone one of them, if you wanted to do the simplest of things.

I garantuee if every program followed their own rules and arbitraryness then we would not have the uptake of software we do today. People would not have the inclination, the time, or patience to learn and use all the ones that they do. People do not like having to learn things. Well they dont like having to be forced to learn boring things.

Learning to use an User Interface is boring and a waste of time(that information is not transferable to anything else, brain cells are being wasted just for a program that does things its way, for no other reason than because). They know that. They'd rather be learning how to sculpt or paint or animate, not where to find it and what combination of keys it requires. Blender has realised that, that part of its problem of uptake was its crazy UI.

There are no complaints without something to complain about.

[polyxo]

Learning to use an User Interface is boring and a waste of time(that information is not transferable to anything else, brain cells are being wasted just for a program that does things its way, for no other reason than because). They know that. They'd rather be learning how to sculpt or paint or animate, not where to find it and what combination of keys it requires. Blender has realised that, that part of its problem of uptake was its crazy UI.

I understand your comments and also like the idea of standardizing things.

What you in your comments largely ignore however is that the Zbrush GUI was deliberately made different

but with a strong concept behind it. This app is the only program I am familiar with which is

truely ptimized for Tablet-Input and for nothing else.

This imo justifies the key-differences in Ui/GUI architecture to classic mouse-input-driven apps.

One may not like to leave a once aquired mouse-driven mindset but I think it's dumb to call Zbrush

disorganized.

You are correct that there's also some tedious or badly executed things inside Zbrush like the Retopo-Workflow.

On the other hand the app is unbeatable slim for most basic operations apart from editing Geometry.

Masking/Hiding/Transpose/Camera-Manipulation - this all works incredibly fast and elegant, one does this

without thinking or having to press buttons at all. In these mentioned areas 3DCoat may be more

Windows-conform but its performance does not even come close (yet).

Performance here has nothing to with speed of calculations or such... here gets visible what I meant in my first

post "one can feel how much thought has been spent on the tiniest details".

[philnolan3d]

It's funny I could almost copy and paste that entire comment into a Blender discussion I was just having. It's exactly what I was thinking only put more elegantly.

[splodge]

The software on its own could have never competed with all the other sculpting apps. It would have disappeard into the ether.

I think Sculptris would've ended up being open source if nobody had made the programmer an offer. I don't think Pixologic would've liked the idea of an open source Sculptris that would ultimately devalue Zbrush.

If the coder hadn't hinted at making Sculptris open source then Pixologic may have been content to sit back and leave Sculptris alone.

btw - I'm not criticizing Pixologic. They made a smart move.

[Calabi]

I understand your comments and also like the idea of standardizing things.

What you in your comments largely ignore however is that the Zbrush GUI was deliberately made different

but with a strong concept behind it. This app is the only program I am familiar with which is

truely ptimized for Tablet-Input and for nothing else.

This imo justifies the key-differences in Ui/GUI architecture to classic mouse-input-driven apps.

One may not like to leave a once aquired mouse-driven mindset but I think it's dumb to call Zbrush

disorganized.

You are correct that there's also some tedious or badly executed things inside Zbrush like the Retopo-Workflow.

On the other hand the app is unbeatable slim for most basic operations apart from editing Geometry.

Masking/Hiding/Transpose/Camera-Manipulation - this all works incredibly fast and elegant, one does this

without thinking or having to press buttons at all. In these mentioned areas 3DCoat may be more

Windows-conform but its performance does not even come close (yet).

Performance here has nothing to with speed of calculations or such... here gets visible what I meant in my first

post "one can feel how much thought has been spent on the tiniest details".

I know Zbrush was purposely made to be different you cant fail to notice that. Its arguable whether thats a good or a bad thing. In a way its nice, and refreshing to see a program not conform to the dullness of every other program. Expectations garnered in other programs have to be set aside when using Zbrush which is good because its not not doing anything the same as other programs(pixols and all that). But the menus have the appearance of being disorganised. One of the most important things in a program is being able to find things. 3D art is unfathomable at the best of times. It doesnt appear to follow its own internal logic in some areas.

Zbrush now may be perhaps let back by the fact it was the first out the door to do what it did in the way it did. Its long time has resulted in bloat and what were once strengths may have now been reduced to weaknesses. Its got competition, other products doing what it does almost as well, but in a more straightforward manner. There's no denying that Zbrush has lost customers, it may not have otherwise if its ui was improved.

There should be more studies about what makes a good ui and why. Blender did one, which was very interesting.

[adrianr01]

I have tried sculptris and its amazing, some days before zbrush took it over, its layout is refreshing and the dynamic tesselation is awesome + grab tool is super, i recently did some more work and what so great about it, is when you zoom in, the detailing goes into a higher level, you can keep zooming in and do the smallest details it keeps dividing the mesh. doing eye creases en lips is easy.

i think they will keep sculptris as a extension or base creation tool with a close connection to zbrush, with there goz-app, and they will do some feature swapping

the grab tool is exactly how i wished vox follow worked, freely pulling volume out of the mesh.

i wonder if dynamic tesselation is something that could be implemented, theres alot to consider i guess.

[AbnRanger]

It's funny I could almost copy and paste that entire comment into a Blender discussion I was just having. It's exactly what I was thinking only put more elegantly.

Phil, Blender 2.5 underwent a major UI redo just to address all the complaints about it. It may not be what YOU want, but it is a major improvement. What's more is, coming from Lightwave, you should know they DELIBERATELY chose to make their tool naming convention, UI layout, and shortcut keys non-standardized...and thus it's much harder for someone to grasp LW, coming from other applications. I learned on 3ds Max and still prefer it today, but I've taken some courses in Maya, and it's a fairly logical transition for the most part.

So, it's fine for companies to aspire to be unique, but they risk turning users off because they make the learning or transition curve too steep. In Lightwave's case, unlike ZBrush, they are fighting to gain marketshare and a larger userbase. There are some things about 3DC that doesn't seem logical, like having to choose another tool in order to drop the current one...and transform gizmos that aren't centered on the object, by default, etc....but on the whole, the fact that it emulates Photoshop's layer system and UI structure, makes it much more user-friendly, in my opinion. It's also one of the things that attracts many users to Mudbox over ZBrush.

[philnolan3d]

How could LightWave make shortcuts and such non-standard when LW was around first? There was no standard at the time. In fact in recent versions LW has started adapting itself to match the other apps even though they came out later, for example instead of using X C V for cut, copy, paste it now uses Ctrl X, Ctrl C, Ctrl V, by default. Although I have switched it back because X C V makes more sense.

[AbnRanger]

How could LightWave make shortcuts and such non-standard when LW was around first? There was no standard at the time. In fact in recent versions LW has started adapting itself to match the other apps even though they came out later, for example instead of using X C V for cut, copy, paste it now uses Ctrl X, Ctrl C, Ctrl V, by default. Although I have switched it back because X C V makes more sense.

Max is celebrating 20yrs at Siggraph and Maya/Power Animator has been around even longer....so LW may have some early origins of it's own, it's clear they never tried to adopt, at any point in time, common industry standard conventions. The wanted to paint themselves into a corner by insisting that it remain "different." Now they are realizing that approach has been part of the problem, and why they are adopting some of the structural aspects of other applications....such as a Modifier/History stack and unified Modeling/Animation environment. They ignored users on those fronts for years.

So, don't bash an application for it's UI when no.1 IT'S FREE....and no.2, IT'S FREE...and no.3 they already made major changes in that effort, that you conveniently ommit. That little free application, with it's quirky UI (your words, not mine) can run circles around Lightwave in many if not most regards. Heck, it's fluid system is a great alternative to expensive plugins for a Max user...and did I mention it's FREE?

[philnolan3d]

I know what max is celebrating, but LW is also 20 years old this year, though with Aegis Modeler and Video paint it's UI goes back 22 years.

As someone on CGTalk said yesterday, Blender expects to be treated like one of the paid apps so they should be also criticized like the paid apps.

[Nemoid_]

Max is celebrating 20yrs at Siggraph and Maya/Power Animator has been around even longer....so LW may have some early origins of it's own, it's clear they never tried to adopt, at any point in time, common industry standard conventions. The wanted to paint themselves into a corner by insisting that it remain "different." Now they are realizing that approach has been part of the problem, and why they are adopting some of the structural aspects of other applications....such as a Modifier/History stack and unified Modeling/Animation environment. They ignored users on those fronts for years.

So, don't bash an application for it's UI when no.1 IT'S FREE....and no.2, IT'S FREE...and no.3 they already made major changes in that effort, that you conveniently ommit. That little free application, with it's quirky UI (your words, not mine) can run circles around Lightwave in many if not most regards. Heck, it's fluid system is a great alternative to expensive plugins for a Max user...and did I mention it's FREE?

You right I'sd surely not dismiss Blender because of its UI. it is a good app, and what they're cooking lately is great, especially compared to Lw feature wise.

Actually, every app has its own UI , but there are things which became somewhat a standard. for example, even ctrl X, V, and C, could sound banal, but you have the same in windows an office, so its natural for a PC user to use these shortcuts to cut, paste and copy. ctrl z for undo, too.

Actually Lw had to start to implement things that became a standard at least feature wise or people coming from other apps couldn't understand it at all: they added edges, materials following the Maya (and other apps )scheme, nodal shading, ortho cams, and so on to make Lw a bit more similar to other apps. another thing I always found is viewport navigation a la Maya is easier to get confortable with into a small timeframe. it also has no manipulators for modelling (another standard since ages) so ask an user coming from another app to understand why it has no manipulators in modeler. He'll probably reply you what app is this? LOL he's too used to manipulators.

BTW, Lw is a good app as well, it has a good feeling, especially in modelling and its easier to grasp than Maya as a 3D app. also i like the textual UI. so as you can see there are things which are good, when they're efficient and other are needed standards to respect.

Surely a clean UI and streamlined workflow helps a lot.

Newtek understood that, and for CORE allowed alot of customizability for UI, and also introduced common standards, coming from other apps: construction plane from Modo, manipulators, edges, and i hope they will find some good inspiration in Maya timeline and animation system both graphically and feature wise, when animation will come.

[Javis]

Strange.

I find Zbrush very logical, easy to use, rock-solid, and extremely well documented.

I am not a master of this program as Sculping does not play a central role in my profession -

but it is certainly one of best made Software-Packages I have ever touched.

One can really feel how many thoughts have been invested in even the tiniest aspects of editing.

This permanent bashing of Zbrush and its workflow in this Forum is really ridiculous - I

think the incredible work done with this app speaks for itself.

Hey man,

My comments are not bashing at all. It is my opinion and the common opinion of many people, including large studios. The interface IS completely horrible to use, and I'm not the one. And yes, it's work flows are also horrible IMHO.

Just because someone can create great looking art with a tool, doesn't mean that tools interface is awesome or fun to use, or for that matter easy to use. It just means that person spent (or wasted depending on how you look at it) time to learn and re-learn it. Pixologic would be wise to take a page from their new sculptris, it's UI was a pleasure to work in; Simple. Because no one wants to use an over complicated UI or application.

[AbnRanger]

I know what max is celebrating, but LW is also 20 years old this year, though with Aegis Modeler and Video paint it's UI goes back 22 years.

As someone on CGTalk said yesterday, Blender expects to be treated like one of the paid apps so they should be also criticized like the paid apps.

Who said anything about what the Blender Foundation thinks of itself? It's totally irrelevant to the discussion. The proof is in the pudding. It's kicks some tail in many facets of the program, and whether you like the UI or not has no bearing on it's worth. Plenty of folks HATE ZBrush's UI, but that doesn't stop it from holding the lion's share of the market. It's a matter of personal preference. If it can save time and money, what difference does a UI really make. That never stopped Maya users from producing tons of great content. The Blender 2.5 UI is certainly more modern than Lightwaves ancient 90's throwback, and it is a full-fledged application at that, unlike LW CORE.

I use Max still, but I do think Blender is proving it's merit lately, and that many studios are going to have to start taking notice...and when they do, it will make 3D applications all the more affordable. They have been nudging in that direction lately, with Maya and Softimage dropping their prices in the past few years.

[Nemoid_]

about ZB UI personally i don't think its horrible. it is functional in many aspects, especially using a tablet.

The main problem i see it's in workflows, that many times involve several passages, and if you forget one for a reason you found yourself lost. so many things could be way more straightforward and intuitive. some aspects of the workflow are caused from technology limitations (retopo, for example is handled through z spheres, so this is why you haver to draw one, and do that convoluted workflow) others are like that because they're not automated. they add the features on top to the ZB UI not enhancing the workflow in a less click one.

Sculptris, which makes less things than ZB, demonstrated many things can be handled more elegantly, with a minimal UI and for these reasons many people liked it. Maybe Pixologic can learn something both from 3DCoat and Sculptris, and Mudbox too. don't see that happen in 4, tho. It could rather happen for 5.0 maybe.

[polyxo]

My comments are not bashing at all. It is my opinion and the common opinion of many people, including large studios. The interface IS completely horrible to use, and I'm not the one. And yes, it's work flows are also horrible IMHO.

Well... that sounds pretty bashing to me And I completly disagree.

Voxels are the far more interesting Geometry-concept for my needs and I really enjoy Andrews rapid

technology-implementations like Ptex or the latest Quadrangulation-Successes.

Workflow-wise /in terms of GUI-maturety and tools-consistancy however I find 3D Coat still very raw in comparison.

I am not critisizing Andrew here - it is absolutely amazing what he gets done as a single person!

Still I can not work in 3DCoat for 5 minutes without running into at least little glitches like Editors which do not

refresh or undock without getting touched - or massive annoyments like being forced to change to another Camera-Navigation-Scheme

just because I want a square stroke-outline or want to use the Sphere brush- stuff like that...

You won't find any similar errors in the mentioned program you dislike that much, I in fact surprisingly have not run

into a single bug yet.

[Javis]

Well... that sounds pretty bashing to me And I completly disagree.

Just because I disagree doesn't mean I'm bashing the software. I don't like it, you do: Agree to disagree.

Voxels are the far more interesting Geometry-concept for my needs and I really enjoy Andrews rapid

technology-implementations like Ptex or the latest Quadrangulation-Successes.

Workflow-wise /in terms of GUI-maturety and tools-consistancy however I find 3D Coat still very raw in comparison.

I am not critisizing Andrew here - it is absolutely amazing what he gets done as a single person!

Still I can not work in 3DCoat for 5 minutes without running into at least little glitches like Editors which do not

refresh or undock without getting touched - or massive annoyments like being forced to change to another Camera-Navigation-Scheme

just because I want a square stroke-outline or want to use the Sphere brush- stuff like that...

You won't find any similar errors in the mentioned program you dislike that much, I in fact surprisingly have not run

into a single bug yet.

I agree here. I still run into all sorts of problems with 3DC when I use it, usually small niggling ones, sometimes big show stoppers. Once the 3DC UI has undergone an organizational phase, it will likely be much better than it is now. At least it can function, and is mostly navigable.

[Digital777]

I was wondering why everyone was talking about ZB and then noticed that they have taken over sculptris. I am guessing they want to take anything good, the coders skills and people to think of it as a free version then buy ZB. It was a nice app but i think that the updated blender sculpting was better even in beta stage, that is also opensource as far as i know so unless they buy out blender i expect many more tools like it will get made in the future.

[ifxs]

ZBrush has an interface that took me time to get into, thats for sure; almost as much time it took me to get into blender. But now, just as with Blender, ZB is an invaluable tool, as is 3D Coat of course.

I've used lightwave since version 4, LONG TIME AGO, and a bevy of other apps through the years. Though, as the conversation veered toward lightwave, I PERSONALLY prefer the new Blender2.5 over it any day; I dont mean to offend anyone. I've spent thousands and thousands of hours in a number of 3D apps, and Blender is by far my favorite 3D app for non-sculpting/painting workflows(but thats about to change with the new sculpting branches being merged in as we speak, layers, masks, multires, vert painting, lots of good stuff).

Speaking of sculptris now, I've enjoyed Sculptris since beta1, love it for it's strengths. I find it so very useful the ability to use the reduction brush in sculprtis to "paint in" my poly reduction for 3D prints that call for a limited poly count. And hollowing an object quickly for a watertight thin-walled 3D print, so fast, so easy; grab/reduce/etc. It has many strengths, and if ZB can integrate them into itself, or setup some awesome GOZ with re-projection working well, that'll be awesome. I'm just glad Pixologic got Sculptris and not a certain other company, though would have been much cooler going open-source IMO. That being said, there is already an implementation of the sculptris-style "unlimited clay" available for testing inside of blender 2.5(certain builds). Here is link to a video of it in action: http://vimeo.com/11990450

[polyxo]

I agree here. I still run into all sorts of problems with 3DC when I use it, usually small niggling ones, sometimes big show stoppers.

That's why I think people sitting in a Glasshouse shouldn't through stones.

Here quite a few people keep telling how bad Zbrush GUI and workflows are, another

person commonly associated with 3DCoat has the audacity to already criticise the Mari-GUI

in a widely read CG forum without even having touched it yet.

I'd call such bad style as it becomes obvious to any tester after just a couple of minutes

that 3DCoat has the most of homework to do itself.

Once the 3DC UI has undergone an organizational phase, it will likely be much better than it is now. At least it can function, and is mostly navigable.

I think one had to examine the entire architecture, not only visual interface-functionalities.

• All allowed navigation schemes have to be consolitated and had to work under all circumstances
  
• Modifier-Keys have to work in predictable ways
  
• Command-Inversions should work logically - this for instance is not the case with closed stroke outlines)
  
• visual widgets should get rethought and streamlined - not at all sure that the currently used tripods are the most clever option...
  

I also see the "Tool remains active until other Tool is picked" - philosophy as very questionable.

This is often slow as one can not quickly grab a colour with the Colour-Picker and go on painting or

quickly select another object to edit without first having to drop the current tool.

This Setup on the other hand may also lead to accidental transformation of objects as the transform-widgets

appears without having been called and can't be suppressed without - again - changing to another tool.

Long story short:

The current 3DC Tool-Setup simply doesn't allow for enough user-controlled "nested/transparent"*

commands while another command is actually running. That in my opinion makes Object Selection, Masking, Hiding,

Colour-Picking a lot slower and more cumbersome than could be.

I am wondering: Is the Tools behaviour in Lightwave somehow similar to 3DCoat's so that what I describe here

doesn't appear to be a major pain to you? Coming from Rhino where nested commands to quickly trigger/suppress

some extra action are Bread and Butter this really makes me nuts...

*example for nested commands:

Hold Alt in Photoshop temporarily switch to the Colour Picker while the Brush-Tool is active

[adrianr01]

*example for nested commands:

Hold Alt in Photoshop temporarily switch to the Colour Picker while the Brush-Tool is active

Totally agree, been strugling with that, some kind of "sticky keys" should be implemented, hold key down = switch tool, release goes back

[Nemoid_]

Lightwave modeler has this method: You fire up a tool, use it, then you drop it hitting spacebar or shortcut, and use another tool. Classic Lw has not sticky keys a la XSI, for example. Dunno about Rhino method.

[michalis]

I find Zbrush very logical, easy to use, rock-solid, and extremely well documented.

Let's be reasonable now... I used to play some VG once upon a time... its nice to win, ... I mean to export the model. I found similar tricks-hacks to 3DC too BTW.

As for blender, I liked the 2.49 UI, I like the new one too, but now I need two displays for this Never mind, blender is a great app, better than most people in blenderartists.org believe.

[ifxs]

DYNAMIC TESSELLATION AS A MESH MODIFIER!!

well, here it is, version 2 of Sculptris for Blender, AKA: "Unlimited Clay".

Anyone who uses 3DS MAx, or Maya will likely appreciate the unlimited clay NOW being a...... MODIFIER!!!! yes, its dynamically applied to your base mesh and can be turned on and off... IMO, VERY impressive.

Here's the new demo video using some of the new hard surface(and other) sculpting toolset.

unlimited clay modifier

[spacepainter]

I find it so very useful the ability to use the reduction brush in sculprtis to "paint in" my poly reduction for 3D prints that call for a limited poly count. And hollowing an object quickly for a watertight thin-walled 3D print, so fast, so easy; grab/reduce/etc.

Interesting, Thanks!

[haikalle]

Very impressive. Nice to see that the person who coded this into blender never gave up. He had some hard time to make this

fast while ago and it seams that he is the winner of that battle. Thumps up.

[philnolan3d]

Are there any examples of the blender version doing clean high detailed stuff? Everything I've seen from it is really low detail stuff like it's made of play-doh.

[haikalle]

I haven't seen any very high detail models yet. But I really think that it will changes after this feature is fully done. Because when you can use

unlimited clay + multires modifiers together that will be a killer combination. And unlimited clay will be a modifier so you can turn it off/on or

add several of them together.

This was only the first test video, so I think that there is more to come...