Z-Brush 2

[Erik]

Z-Brush 2 is out.
Apart from underdeveloped animation etc it is an extraordinary tool for detailing meshes.
What's more: Per Anders is creating a plugin so Z-Brush's NormalMaps will be importable in C4D.

Nice tool for who can afford it (us Europeans have to pay VAT, which makes it about 500Euro, US inhabitants pay 485 Dollar if I'm not mistaken).

www.pixologic.com

[gidge]

Oh yea man, just got my upgrade installed and holy moly...

I am totaly feeling like a fish out of water... [confused] [confused]

The UI changes will take a bit to get used to for sure, and so will all the new stuff... this app is huge in options...

Stay tuned... ;)

[gidge]

Well, thus far, after but only a few hours playing around with ZBrush I feel compelled to say...

...I love Wings3d and Silo when it comes to modeling stuff...

About the only thing I modeled in Z1.5 was the beard in my ole avatar here, and it looks like I won't be doing too too much ZSphereing with v2 either... another beast entirely compared to the good ole box modeling apps as those I have mentioned... I suppose that I really prefer to box stuff out... seems to me that I have much better overall control of things... or I am just to plain braindead to figure the ins and outs of this otherwise very popular app... wow, talk about your learning curves... yikes

That said, yea Erik, it will no doubt prove to be a valuable tool for adding detail to an existing mesh for sure... might even get to doing some painting in it... but for now... well, I dunno... I am totaly flabberghasted to say the least... [saywhat] :(| :(| [confused]

[Erik]

Well, I installed a demo long ago, and didn't like ZBrush at all. I now installed their latest demo (still not ZB2) and I see a bit more how it works. What I like is that it is like speaking a foreign language as it's completely "Arabic" or "Chinese" to me, but I love to learn bizarre stuff, even more when it's completely useless (for me I mean). Keeps me from becoming too practical and an artistically correct pawn of thebraindead moral majority.
But I also downloaded from their forum that huge pdf with example scenes for ZB2, and man, that's an example of how things can be explained. Top quality.

As for the rest: since I tried points modelling, I loved it. I don't have much time so I progress far more slowly than the rest, but, and I am proud of that, I start to see a first glimpse of how 3D works. Once I got this, things go at a very high speed. But first I need deep, deep roots, or iow: a sound foundation to build my empire on.

Empire? Yup: I would love to have Mojoworld! Hehhehe.
And an app that can expand every hour to ten times its length without loss of quality.

may all vertices be with you!

[gidge]

Yea, they do have a really decent method of instruction between the fine Help files that come with, as well the ZScript provisions... so yea, really solid instructional support for sure...

I am glad to hear that you are enjoying yourself doing the traditional modeling thing... it is fun yet very relaxing I find.

regarding the artistically braindead moral correctness... hey, I resemble that remark [confused] :P

Nah, seriously, there comes a point whereby I don't even show some of my worx on some forums any more... just because of what you have described with said remark...

I remember posting my Messier model wip on one forum in particular, to which there were some who suggested that there were "too many loops", others who followed up with comments suggesting that my mesh was too dense, and that I really needed to model from a much simpler form and then subdivide after the shape was there first...

Duh, the durn head was built out from a 8 section x 6 slice primitive sphere... I had extruded the body from a cube primitive , (doesn't get much more basic than this ;) )and then welded the two together and once I got the shape the way I wished, instead of immediately subdividing into say level 1, I stayed at level 0, real boxy like, and simply cut and connected my way along... sure it took a tad more time to do than allowing the subd to auto generate my mesh for me, but this method allowed me to position things rather than allowing machine math to do same... so yea, I sort of had to chuckle at the reply's for sure... I mean if I wanted to make just another mutant figure just like everyone else, I suppose I would be able to... but where is the artist interpretation in that? Too funny

here's the model wip that I am refering too... tell me how one would gain more muscle tone with less mesh... infact I can see that I could even add more mesh to certain areas to bring out details even more extreme... I mean this guy still needs the viens eh

I will attempt to add some stuff in ZBrush, once I have played around with it for a while first though