What is zBrush?

[Nuttbusta]

G'day all,

This is my very first post, I love how active these forums are.

I've recently got back into 3D modelling after many years of being to busy with other work to scratch my own behind.

I'm trying to refresh my skills using 3DS at the moment, which is working ok, i'm doing some tutorials and reading tips etc.

Everywhere I read I see mention of a package called zBrush.

Is this a complete modelling and rendering tool or is it just for finishing?

Should I be exploring this package? Or should I continue to hone my skills in a single package before biting off more than I can chew?

Cheers.

[Perversonality]

Zbrush is a sculpting tool so it has a distinctly different workflow to normal poly modelling. Check out http://www.pixologic.com/ for the official site. Mudbox is an alternative which is available from Autodesk (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13565063). Both have trial versions, so it's definitely worth giving them a try

[xXm0RpH3usXx]

if u r going for a free sculpting program google "sculptris"
(if licensing is a problem for u with zbrush and mudbox)

those programs are used for multimillion polygon meshes to carve into them and make the surface in 3d rather in 2d and then you make a texture out of it and put it onto a lowpoly mesh...
this way the lowpoly mesh looks almost as good as the highpoly version

[dhin]

If your are just getting back into modeling and haven heard of Zbrush then you've been gone a long while... I'm not sure I can add much more than what the others have said, but this may help some.

Zbrush and Mudbox and sculpting programs work around the idea of "clay modeling." In the real world you have a piece of clay and you shape right, well the idea is the same but in a digital format. It is geared towards use with tablet or pen input devices like wacom. In that way it can be a much more natural method for creation of 3d objects and meshes over traditional polygon modeling and meshing. These packages often support some powerful tools for textures and what not, and you can get some very detailed hi-polygon meshes from them. If you work with low-poly these high detail models can be used for normal mapping, but normal mapping in this way isn't limited to just low-poly work.

These packages almost always have an export to one of the other formats, OBJ, 3DS, etc, so once you have the details you want you can import it into another modeling package for clean up and rigging and the like.

I personally find them all to be a little difficult to use, just because there is a lot of functionality and not much user friendly intuitive layout to the programs. BUT that is my impression.

[Nuttbusta]

Thanks for the responses guys, I might check out a trial version at some stage and see if I can get my head around it.

[TekNeek]

You'll be pretty much set if your follow this tutorial (http://3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/making_of_birth/making_of_birth01.php) :)

But, this is on an older version of ZBrush, but the how-tos are the same, just a warning, buttons could possibly be in different places)

Best of luck!