Zbrush or mudbox

[Steban]

Im staring inthe high poly modeling process and i want to know what software is better for sculpting, Mudbox or Zbrush, if my modeling process was developed in 3ds max and why.

[Perversonality]

Download the demo versions and try them both first. Everyone will have different reasons for why one app works better for them over the other, but ultimately it's down to you as to which you prefer.

[poopipe]

mudbox is less weird but ultimately less powerful (in my opinion obviously).

I'm not exactly bowled over with mudbox 2009 to be honest - the texture painting is a welcome addition but performance with very high detail meshes is still a long way behind zbrush 3.1

[DarthWayne]

Originally Posted by poopipe

mudbox is less weird but ultimately less powerful (in my opinion obviously).

I'm not exactly bowled over with mudbox 2009 to be honest - the texture painting is a welcome addition but performance with very high detail meshes is still a long way behind zbrush 3.1

Sorry but if you are looking at raw polygons (ie ones you can extract maps from) then mudbox is the more powerful of the two. Both apps are aimed at different markets to be honest and it depends which camp you fall into as to which 'religion' you follow.


I'd hardly say that this a long way behind when you can paint just about every map type under the sun and preview it in real time lol. Last I looked zbrush was not only tied to your polygon count but also had an inability to review anything but a bump or diffuse map. Some of the toruble is due to people getting used to bad working practice. Yes a blur brush for texxtures in mudbox owuld be nice, but it doesn't make it 'unusable' as I've seen some people say. This is more down to problems in their own way or working than any particular software.



Wayne...

[Perversonality]

Thank you both for demonstrating my point above

[DarthWayne]

I'm not a fanboy so that phrase doesns't apply to me. I make a large ammount of my living teaching people BOTH applications, and with 5 dvd's out on both zb and mud as well as my zbrush book you could say that I speak from an 'independant' point of view.

Both applicatoins are fine apps...whihc you chose is really up to many things and some that can't be quantified such as how you prefer your sculpting to 'feel'. I was simply correcting a misconception that zbrush has higher polygon counts etc etc... I use both, and as far as I'm aware thats still legal lol. (Although I mean that last line as a joke, soe of teh crap I've had over the years for daring to release for both mud and zb is unreal.... its not a religon guys its just software and tools.)

Wayne...

[poopipe]

oops, i mispunctuated.

what I meant was...

the texture painting is a nice addition

and...

that the sculpting performance on high res meshes (8million tris plus) in mudbox 2009 appears to still be noticeably slower than zbrush3.1

I haven't messed with the shaders etc so I'm only taking about raw geometry here.

I didn't mean anything negative as such - I think I was just a little disappointed after hearing so much hype about performance improvements

[Steban]

thanks, but the real problem is that my computer is not the most appropiate, taking into account that, which software is the best one for me?

[Freespace-3DT]

Originally Posted by poopipe

I think I was just a little disappointed after hearing so much hype about performance improvements

Well I'm VERY pleased with the new mudbox. The previous one couldn't handle above 500,000 polys, but the trial for 2009 lets me work at 8 million polys just fine. 20 times the performance is aces in my book.

Steban: That being said, the very BEST solution is indeed to take the time and download each trial version for FREE and see how they work, both performance wise ( you said you don't have a high-end PC ) and how user friendly they are ( but we already know the answer here... ).

[pixolclay]

Hey there. In my professional opinion, either software works perfectly fine. In the end, its all a matter of whats the best tool for the job. Every user or company has their preference and its all dependent on what you feel more comfortable with. Personally, I feel more comfortable with ZBrush, specially with some of the coming upgrades...(very nice for maya users but at work I sometimes rely on Mudbox to solve some needs which would otherwise seem to take longer in ZBrush. Whatever feels more natural and comforftable is the best tool for the trade...

[Tycane3D]

ahm yea, been playing with mudbox 2009 trial, and gotta say. wow, im never looking at zbrush again.
About polycount handeling, well, mudbox 2009 uses your gpu a lot. For instance, at my work i have the pleasure of using a 6 gb 8 core machine of infinite @sskickage, but it has a crappy video card, at home i'm using a dual core, but with an 8800gt, and last night i did some tests, and my home computer handles 8million poly models in mudbox 2009 as if it where a 10.000 poly model. At work tho, this uber machine with crappy video card has a really hard time dealing with 2 million polies, and it doesnt support any of the sweet features like live ambient occlusion, depth of field, hdri etc etc

and the main 2 things i like about mudbox is the sane interface. i dont know what pixelogic was smoking, but it wasnt good, and secondly. not having to deal with projection for highdetail sculpting, those 2 things (not to mention stability, zbrush is not stable in any shape way or form on any computer i have tried it on, especially on x64) make it more something for me.

i do like zbrush's clay shader tho.

[poopipe]

At work I'm on a quad 3ghz xeon with 8gb and a quadro 4500 and it wasn't pushing the polys at anything like the rate i was expecting - zbrush steams along very happily on that.

I'm wondering whether its to do with the graphics card since it's a couple of generations old now and certainly falls behind the 8 series and up cards in terms of advanced shading effects - even if it can shove alarming amounts of geometry round in a max viewport

I've got a quad xeon with 4gb and a gtx260 at home now so I'll give it a poke on that at some point and maybe I'll change my mind.

[DarthWayne]

Originally Posted by poopipe

I'm wondering whether its to do with the graphics card since it's a couple of generations old now and certainly falls behind the 8 series and up cards in terms of advanced shading effects - even if it can shove alarming amounts of geometry round in a max viewport

Short version: I've just looked at the hardware lists and it's not recommended as it has limatations within the card itself. I've included a screen shot from the pdf to clear things up for you.



Long version / rant:My 9800gt flies like a dream and I'd recommend anyone wanting a good card thats not going to cost the earth top pick one up. The 1 gig onbard ram gives more than enough texture pace for most people. I think its a bit unair that a lot of people are expecting 2k9 to run on a 3 year old laptop. (I'm not aiming at anyone in this thread btw...just been a long week with lots of crazy assed stuff from people wanting to run it on really old machines.)

The commmon sense approach would be if someone is (or wanting to) develope assets for next gen games, then it sort of goes without saying that you are going to need a rig capable of running said 'next gen games'. Yes in an ideal world all new software wouldn't require an upgrade..but hell I built a new machine for the beta testing so I think most people are going to have it a bit easier pocket wise than that. So changing a graphics card isn't exactly end of the world for many people.

Different apps will always have a different 'feel' to them whether that be brush wise or UI wise. I see alot of the poeple dissing mudbox are simply people who either don't understand that the hardware requirements are not negotable..if a card does not support the instruction sets needed, then theres nothing anyone can do unfortunaly.Others simply do not bother to read the manual... I think what throws people is that mudbox v1 was easy to pick up.but this time round theres a lot of stuff thats no so obvious. So if your a person who doesn't read manuals...then you may have a harder time. Thats again NOT aimed at anyone here, its just after about 300 emails in the last week I sort have noticed a pattern by now.

Sometimes its easy to forget that when zb2 came out ...everyone had to upgrade to keep in step with the polycounts that they needeed...the same thing hapened again with mudbox v1, and again with zbrush 3/3.1 although oddly enough its deemed as 'unacceptable' this time around by some people.....Each time anytg that truley pushes the boundaries of hardware comes out.it'll require an upgrade. I'm sure none of us expect to keep a pc for more than ayear without it showing its age these days?


Wayne...

[poopipe]

ah, nice one.

that'll be it then - getting an upgrade at work is going to be a bit of a challenge given the cost of Quadros but things look positive for home machine

For the OP then, we could say that if you're running on an older gfx card (say nvidia 7000 series gen or earlier) zbrush might be the better option than mudbox 2k9 in terms of performance but as has been said several times the big deciding factor will be feel - that's a personal thing and the only way to decide is to try both.

[DarthWayne]

I'd personaly recommend the 9800 gt (1 gig) as its cheap now and works like lightning with mud2k9..and for a fraction of the cost of a quadro...and I haven't even tried softmodding it yet into one.


Wayne...