Where is Mudbox 2.0... ZBrush is too hard to use!

[Anonymous]

Hey, I've been using ZBrush for a few weeks now, even did video training... then I download MudBox 1.0. While it doesn't have all the same features it's like 10x easier to use. If Autodesk includes texture painting and a few more features they have me.

ZBrush is extremely hard to use! I had a displacement map out of MudBox in like 2 minutes and into Max... no such luck with ZBrush!

🙂

Dudes where is 2.0???

[#2]

Wow, a thread in which we all bash something in unison! Scary! lol 😄

Yep, 2.5D and the coding attached to it is exactely the issue at heart.

Well, its all been said about that and I could ramble on for hours, but..... nuff said! Where is Mud 2?!?!?!?;)

[Anonymous]

I love sculpting in Mudbox on the initial levels of a character,still do,as you can do far better at lower levels in Mb because of the fantastic tools like the scratch brush and the fact that you have smoothed poly real 3d display.And the feel of sculpting on a smoothed mesh is far closer to real sculpting, zb the faceting of the mesh can get in the way while doing lower res.Moment the polycount goes up the performance drops in mudbox,a smooth stroke starts to develop wierd angles .
Also Im not able to subdivide all the accessories to the same level.Damn id be happy with just the ability to use more than the 2gb of ram.I can work up to 13 mil polys on my laptop with zb3 real time and fast response.with mb I can work very very slowly with 4.5 mils and stepping levels can take a few minutes not to mention opening files and closing them.
Performance on a quad core 4gb dell machine running xp64 zb3 performs smooth at 37 mil polys ,I can have five characters in a scene all detailed.
Mb in the same config maxes out at the same level as on the laptop.

Zb3 has its quirks and the workflow is a steep curve to learn but once you learn it its fine.Crashing etc happens on some configs and bugs are a a problem once in a while but usually there is some way to get your stuff done.Id say right now I dont see how life could go on for me without ZB3.

Mb 2 should rock with just a 64 bit release considering how good it is in the current state. Im sure it will be a lot more than that with the chameleon engine etc and maybe a posing solution!

[Anonymous]

i hear what you guys are saying but even with the 2.5d many things could have been handled better or could have had a more elegant solution. In fact the worst things have nothing to do with 2.5d
Like the ui. The ui could have been a lot better and a lot simpler. and there is no reason that the ui has to take up your whole screen in a way that makes having two monitors useless. the 2.5d isn't the reason you can't detach menus and put thm on your other monitor.
Or the navigation, there is no reason that they couldn't have made it so that you can do the traditional alt-click navigation or at least been given the option. In fact there is no reason why they couldn't have stuck to the industry standards as far as keyboard shortcuts and navigation is concermed.

face it, zbrush was a toy that the big kids adapted to their needs. The one thing they did that was really smart was to give users the ability to create plugins by giving users scripting capabilities. The majority of the really cool features like zmapper, came from the community.

I hope mudbox 2 give you the abilty to do some sort of MEL or Python scripting.

[Anonymous]

I love sculpting in Mudbox on the initial levels of a character,still do,as you can do far better at lower levels in Mb because of the fantastic tools like the scratch brush and the fact that you have smoothed poly real 3d display.And the feel of sculpting on a smoothed mesh is far closer to real sculpting, zb the faceting of the mesh can get in the way while doing lower res.Moment the polycount goes up the performance drops in mudbox,a smooth stroke starts to develop wierd angles .
Also Im not able to subdivide all the accessories to the same level.Damn id be happy with just the ability to use more than the 2gb of ram.I can work up to 13 mil polys on my laptop with zb3 real time and fast response.with mb I can work very very slowly with 4.5 mils and stepping levels can take a few minutes not to mention opening files and closing them.
Performance on a quad core 4gb dell machine running xp64 zb3 performs smooth at 37 mil polys ,I can have five characters in a scene all detailed.
Mb in the same config maxes out at the same level as on the laptop.

Zb3 has its quirks and the workflow is a steep curve to learn but once you learn it its fine.Crashing etc happens on some configs and bugs are a a problem once in a while but usually there is some way to get your stuff done.Id say right now I dont see how life could go on for me without ZB3.

Mb 2 should rock with just a 64 bit release considering how good it is in the current state. Im sure it will be a lot more than that with the chameleon engine etc and maybe a posing solution!

I agree about performance. Most of the people on this thread, including myself know how to use zbrush. I don't use it any more because the nature of what I do, I don't really need more than a few million polys, but the rest of the guys who are forced to use zbrush because of it's performance, get results in spite of zbrush's quirks.

[Anonymous]

Thats right Mookie ,I know a lot of the artists who commented here have done work in Zb,I was just alluding to the using part because I dont face a problem with different workflows ,I flit between Alias studio tools ,Sketchbook pro ,maya ,xsi,Zb3 ,Mudbox ,Photoshop ,Corel painter ,
. Amazing artists like Zack petroc, Scott Spencer etc all work on both the apps.I feel both the softs have a lot to offer to the sculptor.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

my problem with z and manny other tools is... when i stard to work i get in trance, i cant think anything... im working and its fun... but if i had to think i cant get back into these trance/fun feeling... and thats the point... without these feeling i cant work... in z i have a lot to think... 😮

[#8]

i hear what you guys are saying but even with the 2.5d many things could have been handled better or could have had a more elegant solution. In fact the worst things have nothing to do with 2.5d
Like the ui. The ui could have been a lot better and a lot simpler. and there is no reason that the ui has to take up your whole screen in a way that makes having two monitors useless. the 2.5d isn't the reason you can't detach menus and put thm on your other monitor.
Or the navigation, there is no reason that they couldn't have made it so that you can do the traditional alt-click navigation or at least been given the option. In fact there is no reason why they couldn't have stuck to the industry standards as far as keyboard shortcuts and navigation is concerned.

The UI is not really a problem, it was more that you can't have shortcuts keys for everything. The navigation is to do with the fact that it isn't a 3d app. In mudbox you have a camera which is rotating around a 3d object. In zbrush you have a tool on a canvas which has to be picked up and rotated. Zbrush navigation is more akin to a paint program navigation.The perspective in 3.0 is a hack, and isn't very good. They tried to change the navigation options for 3.0, because they know how it irritates so many people, but couldn't do it, because it's not an easy task, it's a fundamental problem.
I think it's a real problem for zbrush. They are at some point going to have to do a complete rewrite of the code to make it a 3d app, or real 3d apps like mudbox are going to eventually eclipse it, not to mention the fact that a lot of the bigger 3d apps will soon all have their own in-built sculpting, painting etc. Zbrush is going to end up on the sidelines, because I don't know where it can go from here with it's 2.5d crap..

[Anonymous]

The UI is not really a problem, it was more that you can't have shortcuts keys for everything. The navigation is to do with the fact that it isn't a 3d app. In mudbox you have a camera which is rotating around a 3d object. In zbrush you have a tool on a canvas which has to be picked up and rotated. Zbrush navigation is more akin to a paint program navigation.The perspective in 3.0 is a hack, and isn't very good. They tried to change the navigation options for 3.0, because they know how it irritates so many people, but couldn't do it, because it's not an easy task, it's a fundamental problem.
I think it's a real problem for zbrush. They are at some point going to have to do a complete rewrite of the code to make it a 3d app, or real 3d apps like mudbox are going to eventually eclipse it, not to mention the fact that a lot of the bigger 3d apps will soon all have their own in-built sculpting, painting etc. Zbrush is going to end up on the sidelines, because I don't know where it can go from here with it's 2.5d crap..

I guess you are right.

I think there are gonna be some more problems for them because it won't be long before all 3d apps can handle multimillion poly models. I can see that at some point in the future, unless they rewrite from scratch, zbrush will return to being a hobbyist tool or a tool for 2d illustrators who use zbrush as a sort of glorified corel painter. Actually I think they should actually start pushing it more as a texturing and painting tool. (Of course, imho, zbrush is awkward for this too).
Who knows?

[GED12]

If mudbox 2 has texture painting then the designers better do a really good job of the colour picker and swatches. These things need to be simple and really quick to use. Zbrush still has a useless system for swatches and the colour picker is small and annoying. Something like what we have in painter would be cool I think, just with the swatch system from photoshop underneath 🙂

[#11]

Does anyone actually 'paint' textures on models anyway though. Surely it's all photo projection and clone sampling.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone actually 'paint' textures on models anyway though. Surely it's all photo projection and clone sampling.

This model was sculpted , textured and rendered in Zbrush without any photo projection neither cloning. I only used stencils and custom brushes.

I'm wondering what Mud 2 will bring. This is one of the reason why i spend some time on this forum.
Honestly, i expect more from Mud 3, when this app will be a mature one, with the addition of more sculpting/texturing tools. Some times it's a long road since V1.0. Lok at Xsi history, and much more with the potential integration of mud tools into Maya...

On the other hand, besides it's 3d sculpting tools the 2.5D mode of Zb is very useful to create/modify bump,dislacement maps, custom textures and alpha brushes, create normal maps from bump... i couldn't live without, even if this app has a non-standart interface.

[Anonymous]

Great to hear your views Francois!:).Amazing render for one thats done in ZB!

[Anonymous]

modos textures is 100 times better then before but the sculpting sucks...you should try that out

[Son_Kim]

even if this app has a non-standart interface.

thats really second, the most annoying thing for me about ZB is the navigation, it seems to be built for tablet user..i use a mouse. Its not something i can overlook since, navigation is something you all day long when sculpting to painting.

Its about as fun and comfortable as pulling my teeth out with a string tied to a door. 😄

modos textures is 100 times better then before but the sculpting sucks...you should try that out

the painting is maybe 2 times better, but there are some odd tools, like the lasso..that don't seem to behave like that of Photoshop, so its totally useless. The brushes themselves from 201 to 301 hasn't change in one annoy aspect. If you zoom in or out, the size decrease/increase, thats not very useful in production..nor is it practical..and for the life of me i don't get why they didnt fix it, so it behaves like Mudbox/ZB brushes, where it remains the same size when zooming.

I'm sure the skymatter folks wont make silly mistakes like those, for the painting engine in Mudbox 2.0.

[nilx]

The UI is not really a problem, it was more that you can't have shortcuts keys for everything. The navigation is to do with the fact that it isn't a 3d app. In mudbox you have a camera which is rotating around a 3d object. In zbrush you have a tool on a canvas which has to be picked up and rotated. Zbrush navigation is more akin to a paint program navigation.The perspective in 3.0 is a hack, and isn't very good. They tried to change the navigation options for 3.0, because they know how it irritates so many people, but couldn't do it, because it's not an easy task, it's a fundamental problem.
I think it's a real problem for zbrush. They are at some point going to have to do a complete rewrite of the code to make it a 3d app, or real 3d apps like mudbox are going to eventually eclipse it, not to mention the fact that a lot of the bigger 3d apps will soon all have their own in-built sculpting, painting etc. Zbrush is going to end up on the sidelines, because I don't know where it can go from here with it's 2.5d crap..

i have to disagree with much of this. there's little reason to believe that so many of the convoluted behaviours of zb are inherently bound to whatever system they've set up to display / mimic millions of polygons. it is my opinion that the developers of the app are, while technically brilliant ( and short of calling them morons ), stubborn and out of touch with what the community will accept ( under duress of such high poly counts ) yet not prefer. the app is usable, and without question massively powerful, but too clumsy. it is truly maddening to sit in front of such a thing as zb knowing that with even a few small tweaks it would be like a beast unleashed. sadly, with the mentality pixologic have shown for all these years, we might only ever know zbrush as a caged down zoo animal next to what it could be

[#17]

Well, there's little point in arguing over exactly why its rubbish. Whatever the reason, it all goes back to the devs and their decision-making, but I believe they are being hampered at every turn by the central concept of the program, which was the idea of making it a cross between a 2d paint app with virtual 3d aspects They constantly have to think up workarounds and hacks to try and simulate 3d, and it never turns out the same as a real 3d app.
The 2.5d was a great idea at the time zbrush started, because it allowed more polygons with fast performance on slow systems at that time, and beat any other app by a long way, but now, with the rate of technological progress, faster systems, and especially when mud2 comes out, 2.5d it seems rather archaic and unnecessary.

[#18]

zbrush is still a very powerfull programme, billions of polygons 🙂 , and has lots of features yet to find expression in MB2 - we can only hope. I agree with oddity that 2.5d is a shore of indecision upon which pixologic is in danger of becoming stranded, a beached whale gasping out its last bloody lungfuls on the sand.

[Anonymous]

I'm totally agree with you Oddity, that's exactly what I think.
What was a real strenght at the start become a weakness.

I think that to be able to continue the race they have to switch to full 3D, and to be able to do that they have to totally rewrite their software.
They take 3years to switch to 3.0, how many time it will take to do such a thing?

Mudbox is not as powerful as Zbrush, while talking about number of polygons, but it got the basic feature working write.

I really think that Zbrush is loosing the race, but I'm probably wrong.
Personnally the only reason I'm using it, is its number of polygons, but I am using it as a sculpting app, maybe that's why I don't love it so much.

[Anonymous]

They constantly have to think up workarounds and hacks to try and simulate 3d, and it never turns out the same as a real 3d app.
The 2.5d was a great idea at the time zbrush started, because it allowed more polygons with fast performance on slow systems at that time, and beat any other app by a long way, but now, with the rate of technological progress, faster systems, and especially when mud2 comes out, 2.5d it seems rather archaic and unnecessary.

Every 3d app have to simulate 3d in a 2d enviroment...Unless you 3d print your work, it will always be a 2d image, no matter what app you use.

[Anonymous]

Every 3d app have to simulate 3d in a 2d enviroment...Unless you 3d print your work, it will always be a 2d image, no matter what app you use.

That is silly. You are going into semantics now. According to you nothing ever made inside computer can ever be considered 3D.
By 3D we mean anything thing that is rendered in either Direct3d or OpenGL NOT software rendered like Zbrush.
Mudbox, Maya, XSI, Max, Lightwave, etc are all either Direct3d or OpenGL application. This makes them true 3d. Do your homework!:)