ZBrush R2

[spacepainter]

[digman]

I thought the movies as funny myself, freedom to work without a base mesh, artistic freedom etc. No problem with that all but the WOW part, like this was the first time on the planet it had been thought of or done... Zbrush is a very powerful program and I know that you are not going to mention your competitor (3DCoat) which is a good business practice to do. The over the top movies got me though...

[Frenchy Pilou]

and a 2/5 rated sculpting. by me of course.

@Michalis

you are some harsh

It's just a technical demo not Art or very detailed deepth function

And its insects' plate is no so bad

[Alemar]

Go refresh with Qubicle a neat little prog!

Pilou

You are a genius!Thank you very much.

[renderdemon]

Not tried yet(I'm waiting for the email) but it seems dynamesh it's not as revolutionary as it could be.

The remeshing and reproject workflow is allready possible in zbrush,it's a thing I use for sketching a lot(you stretch the polygons and after remesh and reproject).

It's a step in the right direction,but I agree that sometimes the Pixologic's Videos can be a bit misleading.

[michalis]

Waiting for download, tic tac...

Meanwhile we could start thinking that new zb release is much more powerful than expected.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/forumdisplay.php?112-ZBrush-4R2-BetaTesters-Images-And-Tutorials

Have a look, particularly on this thread:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?161252-ZBrush-4R2-Beta-Testing-By-Darrick-Pister&p=893060&viewfull=1

It seems that I gonna love the new renderer at least.

[3dioot]

Great artists as always. Pixologic knows how to pick em for beta testing.

Did you get your upgrade yet Michaelis? Im still waiting for mine (please dont let it take three weeks). To be honest I am quite excited about it since the free upgrades were one of the deciding factors in purchasing zbrush. As much critique as I may have its still awesome to get stuff for free.

3dioot

[3dioot]

If you have questions shoot.

How fast is it? Is the reproject after the remeshing flawless or will you get problems with sharp ridges like line between the lips, nostrils etc? What is the resolution after a dynamesh update (is it high enough for high frequency detail like nostrils, ears, teeth etc). Can you smooth over poles normally now or do you still have to do the "press shift, stroke, let go" thing to do the alternative smoothing? Does dynamesh ever kick in "automatically" because it senses too much stressing of the mesh or is it always triggered by the user? How fast are the boolean operations like for example slice?

Ill think up some more questions later.

Thanks

3dioot

[3dioot]

Thankyou for answering so quickly.

Also thats dissapointing to hear but it does fall within my expectations.

Sure Dynamesh is a cool feature. But its also a patchup (sounds like previously available tools scripted together).

Sculptris is just a little app but if you look at it from the "free" (as in not limited by topology) sculpting perspective it allows you to do the same with much higher fidelity.

I really hope that with Raul working on liveclay for 3D-Coat it will become the spiritual succesor to Sculptris (since Zbrush clearly wont; this latest upgrade proves that much). Even similar features to Sculptris (brush quality please!) with the addition of 64bit and a proper scene manager like the voxtree would make me super happy and probably make it my sculpting package of choice once again.

Its my biggest wish to see the sculpting module of 3D-Coat receive a great, big revisit and a shitload of polish. As in the logo. So much polish it drips of to the sides.

3dioot

PS

Brushfeeling. Yes... Lets just hope Raul has a proper appreciation for what it entails and how important it is. Im certain he is a great coder but he will have to be a little bit more then a coder to make it all work. I hope he is open to feedback from artists on this matter because for 3D-Coats sculpting to become a succes he will have to be.

[spacepainter]

zbrush site overload...

[michalis]

@beatkitano

Zbrush and sculptris tools are great. We all know this. This is why I use these apps.

still waiting for my ticket, especially for playing with new renderer.

We also have 3dc in our tools so I don't really care about the new Zremesher.

I tried and bought 3dc the same day, when pixo unleashed zb3.5 for windows only. Introducing this zsketch thing.

I never looked back. I had a lot of other gifts like a decent retopo tool and some nice painting capabilities.

Two years past and I still don't look back... it costed me less than 200 euros, but I could happily pay for more at that time.

About non 3dc owners now.

Sculptris + new GoZ applink. A fast topology (even in zbrush, it works whatever you claim lol) and all are fine.

I really prefer sculptris than remesh solutions.

ZB4 old remesh:

Even at higher settings, try to remesh a hand (fingers) or some mouth opening (not too opened) or some teeth like, or other sensitive areas. It never worked.

Waiting for my ticket then, doodling for half an hour, combining spheres (like merging in voxels) in Zbrush, grabbing and remeshing.

But when I added these ... around head (for testing) and trying to remesh at higher settings it didn't work. A complete mess as expected.

I wonder, will new remesher works better? I think it does as pixo probably worked some more on this.

[michalis]

I like to share this:

I received a warning... not to promote 3dc in zbcentral again.

I didn't of course. To compare capabilities, to talk about possible workflows, to share my thoughts anyway... is not acceptable in zbc.

The funny is that talking to zb community about sculptris isn't polite either.

Polite is to stay at sculptris topic and don't post to main zb forum.

Dr peters (sculptris dev) stopped developing his autopo version... why?

[michalis]

And... the after retopo - multi res - surface - sculpt room.

I keep saying this, most of us actually.

You know beatkitano, I could live with the not-so-great 3dc sculpting tools alright. But I can't figure out a nice flow without this sculpt room.

[The Candy-floss Kid]

ZBrush gets better. 3D Coat gets better. This is a very happy situation to find oneself in.

[Taros]

BeatKitano have hit the point some posts before: Pixologic is not defining a new technique by implementing the dynamesh function or "melting" sculptris into zBrush, but they own an different, maybe most important feature, which is missed since a long time in 3DC: their great brush engine. No sculpting app offers this great brush feeling like the brushes in zBrush. I can't await to see the same quality in 3DC too, one day. Here is 3DC limping behind zBrush for a long time.

In my opinion Pixoligic reached a new mesh creation level for their users. The most of the features are boring for 3DC users, but in combination with the other zBrush tools, they offers a lot of possibilities and more freedom.

Very interesting to see the development in both apps. I am interested what we will see in the next versions of 3DC... liveClay is still in the beginning - but grows with huge steps. Some more functions like to freeze the mesh, to avoid melting while sculpting or similar functions, and 3DC will offer us great possibilities and new freedom too...

Now I take my popcorn and enjoy the development of both tools.

A further nice example for the new zBrush functionality:

[b33nine]

Finally got my upgrade link, seems pretty neat but it'll definitely take some getting used to to try and figure out how all the new toys work.

[AbnRanger]

Anyone tried to get the beta (10) drivers for 3DConnexion devices to work with ZBrush? Thought I saw a mention of ZBrush in the updates of that driver. This re-meshing (essentially answering the issue of polygon strecthing) and the prospect of using a SpacePilot with ZB, has me seriously considering a purchase.

As much as I love 3D Coat, I've literally had to fight with this program to get some work done many a time(plus wasting even more capturing video and filling out bug reports). The bugs can sometimes be so sudden and catastrophic, that I have to save every 10 mins. I hate to lose even 10 min worth of work. I think the stability that ZB offers is what is most attractive to me now.

[artman]

Anyone tried to get the beta (10) drivers for 3DConnexion devices to work with ZBrush? Thought I saw a mention of ZBrush in the updates of that driver. This re-meshing (essentially answering the issue of polygon strecthing) and the prospect of using a SpacePilot with ZB, has me seriously considering a purchase.

As much as I love 3D Coat, I've literally had to fight with this program to get some work done many a time(plus wasting even more capturing video and filling out bug reports). The bugs can sometimes be so sudden and catastrophic, that I have to save every 10 mins. I hate to lose even 10 min worth of work. I think the stability that ZB offers is what is most attractive to me now.

Its absolutely impossible that there will ever be 3DConnexion compatibility with Zbrush.

(unless its a sort of hack that "fakes" camera trigger.)

You cannot rotate camera and do a stroke at the same time in Zbrush,its impossible in the logic of the program.

Even camera movement is recorded as a stroke itself.

....You have a Mudbox licence,why dont you use it?

[AbnRanger]

Its absolutely impossible that there will ever be 3DConnexion compatibility with Zbrush.

(unless its a sort of hack that "fakes" camera trigger.)

You cannot rotate camera and do a stroke at the same time in Zbrush,its impossible in the logic of the program.

Even camera movement is recorded as a stroke itself.

....You have a Mudbox licence,why dont you use it?

That's what I've been asking myself, but this dynamesh certainly has piqued my interest. It and Shadowbox appears to give much of the functionality of Voxels, without the system overhead and program instability issues. May have to stick with a 3DC/Mudbox workflow, as I don't really want to take on another steep learning curve.

[3dioot]

Abnranger,

Perhaps you have allready tried this but I found Sculptris to fill the "problems" you are describing pretty well. Sure you cannot create holes in it but creating limbs/appendages/antenna is easily and fluidly done with it and you can get quite a bit of detail into your model before Sculptris chokes. Its extremely stable also. It has GOZ but since you use mudbox im certain that with an obj export and some reprojecting (which I assume mudbox does have an equivalent too) you you could be rocking with much (not all) of the same freedoms voxel sculpting currently gives you.

I did not receive my license yet but from what I heard and the explanations by BeatKitano I highly doubt I'll prefer dynamesh over sculptris anyway.

3dioot

[michalis]

I highly doubt I'll prefer dynamesh over sculptris anyway.

he he , you're not alone on this. But I'm waiting for my ticket first.

The first I'll test is the dynamesh as a new remesher.

Is i possible to dyna-remesh a scultris tri mesh? Using lower density? reprojecting then?

Is it possible to remesh an imported obj full of groups? resulting to a single generic mesh?

What will happen to an opened mesh?

having new tools is nice and sometimes really helpful.

About direct sculpting, I don't think that dynamesh will change my workflow. Voxels are the more direct tool IMO. And zbrushing after retopo.

[renderdemon]

Not sure you are right 3dioot.

Sculptris is cool but it's not completely true that you don't have problems with limbs.

Sometimes ago I was sketching an hybrid(humonoid/insect)and I had a lot of problems trying to do the righ angles in the insect limbs,the way it works adaptive tessellation makes it really hard to do some kind of angles(it's feasible but not easier).

From this point of view 3dcoat is simply superior(I mean voxels,you have full control of shapes,the only limitation is resolution).

From what I'm seeing now(finally I had updated to zbrush r2) dynamesh makes easier starting sculpting from scratch(it's really cool if you want to use only one program as you don't have to spend time jumping from one program to another)

[michalis]

OK, all these look good. He still speaks a lot, as always. lol

Like real clay... buy some real clay and do some real sculpting.

Because you may not do this... buy 3dcoat.

I have the feeling that I'll find some different use of new remesher.

Still waiting for my ticket

[AbnRanger]

I am just totally amused with the buzz centered around this new functionality. I like it in the sense that, if I work in ZBrush, I have much of what I had in 3DC, but nevertheless, there never was this kind of giddiness (among the CG community as a whole) about the same feature set within the Voxel sculpting room for some time now.

In my mind, Pixologic had to spend a lot of time scouring through 3D Coat's Voxel toolset and said..."ooh, cool...we got to add that, and oh yeah the way their Curves tool works is pretty neat. Oh and let's try to emulate their snake tool and maybe their muscles tool." They basically cherry picked what they liked about Voxels (the guy even says in the video that the way it remeshes is VOXEL-based). Their userbase discounted the value of these features in 3D Coat all this time, and now that Pixologic has copied those distinctive features....they get all the accolades?

[3dioot]

Yep there's definitely a bit of copy pasta in there (the curvequadfill is like any voxel tool+lasso ), but that's competition, and to be honest I don't think Pilgway can spend that much money into marketing, not right now anyway.

One thing though: when andrew and Raul are done with the base of liveclay, the polish IS A MUST HAVE, cause Imho that's only what is making people look the other way. Look at mudbox, it has like 40% of zbrush features, but their brush are so carefully tuned it's still a competitor, even at his debut when it wasn't backed up by the autodesk monster.

When I talk about sculpting software with work relation, what always get out when speaking of 3dcoat is "yeah but their brushes don't feel right". It's praticaly been the excuse for not looking at it nowaday... but that's about to change

What BeatKitano said.. Andrew just never "got" how important certain things were (even after they were bounced in his face about a thousand times) and I think in the end he paid the price for it. We will see how it goes now Raul has joined.

As far as mudbox. It has a different approach to digital sculpting. Its much cleaner, leaner, faster (because it doesnt shy away to embrace hardware even though it leads to some depencies) and more in line with industry traditions regarding function and layout. The only reason I bought zbrush instead of mudbox is the price and, closely related, autodesk's scam.. erm i mean "upgrade policy" of releasing a new version every year regardless of adding new features.

For marketing; I strongly believe that if Pilgway does it right this time the marketing aspect will be pretty much covered by its userbase and "word of mouth".

3dioot

[Mykyl]

It may be voxel based but that is it. Its faster than natively using voxels at least on my machine. This dynamesh is fantastic but there is always one thing that zbrush does not have that 3d coat does that I would really love to see. Proper widgets to manipulate meshes around. The transpose tools are fantastic for posing but get in my nerves for moving things around. I'm guessing native widgets would not be possible as all movement seems to be screen place based.

I disagree with dynamesh not being that special. It is simply stunning and fast to work with. Its nothing like remeshing as it happens instantly without rigmarole.

I can now make hard edged models in zbrush but still not as easily as 3dcoat for the base.

Of course as I have said before I would use 3d coat for retopology every time although sometimes I get stuck wondering which mesh is which in the list that shows up in 3dcoat when retopoing a model.

Long live both apps is what I say for very different reasons.

I cant live without my zbrush for pure illustration and I cannot live without 3dcoat when I want to take things further.

Cheers

Mike R

[AbnRanger]

Well, the remeshing still takes the user CTRL+ click-dragging to initiate it. What a lot of people don't understand about Voxels is that 3D Coat remeshes with EVERY single stroke. Don't believe me? Hold W to examine the wireframe, make a cutting/Boolean operation and then immediately hold down the W key again, to see that indeed 3DC resampled/reorganized the mesh to evenly space the tris.

It is this functionality that is both distinctive and brilliant, but also introduces a tradeoff in 3D Coat. If it didn't have to do this, the sculpting speed in Voxels would be on par with ZB or MB. It already is (in my opinion) when the resolution stays low enough and the brush size doesn't go beyond a certain radius.

Perhaps Andrew needs to bring someone like Bay Raitt or Leigh Bamforth in (to Kiev) for a week or two of direct consultation, working to improve brush feel among other critical things. I think this is one area where Pixologic and Mudbox dev's have something of an edge. They are artists themselves and know intimately what artists need. Andrew has them beat on brain power and effort, but not having an experienced artist on staff to help shape/test the tools daily, is probably where 3DC is coming up a bit short. Just my opinion, anyway.

[Digital777]

I am just totally amused with the buzz centered around this new functionality. I like it in the sense that, if I work in ZBrush, I have much of what I had in 3DC, but nevertheless, there never was this kind of giddiness (among the CG community as a whole) about the same feature set within the Voxel sculpting room for some time now.

In my mind, Pixologic had to spend a lot of time scouring through 3D Coat's Voxel toolset and said..."ooh, cool...we got to add that, and oh yeah the way their Curves tool works is pretty neat. Oh and let's try to emulate their snake tool and maybe their muscles tool." They basically cherry picked what they liked about Voxels (the guy even says in the video that the way it remeshes is VOXEL-based). Their userbase discounted the value of these features in 3D Coat all this time, and now that Pixologic has copied those distinctive features....they get all the accolades?

Yeah exactly, right now there is a big buzz about this despite the fact the technology has been available to people for a long time now. I said something similar in the recent Shadow Box request thread, Shadow Box is something 3DC already had with the Sketch tool yet ZB got the credit for it media wise as it will for a lot of what it's added in this recent update despite the fact every time i watch these videos it keeps reminding me of 3DC.

What was funny is when i read a review for 3DC recently on a website for one of these 3D magazines they made it sound like 3DC was a addon for ZB and not it's own product, it's kind of sad in the 3D world that until things are shown in a program with a huge user base (like ZB) they go without notice and the people that did it before go un-credited.

What BeatKitano said.. Andrew just never "got" how important certain things were (even after they were bounced in his face about a thousand times) and I think in the end he paid the price for it. We will see how it goes now Raul has joined.

With 3DC sometimes things seem more like technology previews rather than complete tools, ZB then takes these ideas and makes them more finalized which is probably why they are getting the credit for a lot of 3DC's features right now. That is probably because before when there was just Andrew there must have been about a thousand things to complete on the to-do list so something gets done in basic form and then it's on to another task and maybe a few updates later because there is so much work to be done and also bug fixing. I am guessing ZB will have a lot more developers so this type of thing won't be a problem for them.

I remember when it was just Andrew developing 3DC i suggested a few more developers join and i basically got a load of negative comments, however now we have Raul as a new developer i can say for a fact it was the right thing to do and 3DC's development is going a lot better with LC on the way and now it's just getting better and better. I think 3DC could maybe have a few more devs also like maybe the guy that makes MeshMixer so it's more like a collective of the best indie 3D devs.

Perhaps Andrew needs to bring someone like Bay Raitt or Leigh Bamforth in (to Kiev) for a week or two of direct consultation, working to improve brush feel among other critical things. I think this is one area where Pixologic and Mudbox dev's have something of an edge. They are artists themselves and know intimately what artists need. Andrew has them beat on brain power and effort, but not having an experienced artist on staff to help shape/test the tools daily, is probably where 3DC is coming up a bit short. Just my opinion, anyway.

Yeah that would be a good idea, there was the Spiraloid's requests post on Mantis so hopefully all those features will get added.

[renderdemon]

To be honest I really don't like the idea that some users can influence the development and others can't.

Every guy with a licence has the right to say his point of view aboout the program,what it works,what it doesn't work.

[michalis]

So if pixologic "copied" 3dcoat. it's OK for me. What isn't OK is that 3dcoat doesn't copy zb and sculptris tools behavior.

@renderdemon, why do you have this idea? I really hope we can influence the development. I mean, to give the general idea of what 3dcoat needs for not being the 3d swiss army knife or whatever some magazines call it.