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Forgive me if this is old news but has anyone had a play with zbrush?

I just noticed that on their test render pages I couldn't find a mantra example so I posted one up, led me to think maybe you lot hadn't seen it.

zbrush

Now I love Houdini, but that little package for character modelling looks like it rocks. If you check out the download area you can get a sample head and displacement map, and wade through pages of test renders from other packages, it quite interesting to compare them all.

B)

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I'm a zbrush convert :D It's a great package by itself but the main reason I got it for was it's displacement map generation abilities. You can import your model (OBJ), subdivided it a few times so it's in millions!! of polys and then sculpt it in realtime, to get those wrinkles/folds/bumps/etc. Once finished the program lets you export a displacement map that will generate all that painted detail on your low res geometry.

I find it's a great addition to houdini, or any other 3d package really. It has a bunch of other stuff in there as well. A cool program.. with a quirky interface until you get used to it ..heh

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Have you tried the same thing in Houdini? Is it possible to use the sculpt sop with the same sort of interactivity? I don't know if it's just that I have a slow machine but I find the sculpt sop quite sluggish at times. I'm interested to know if zbrush is more interactive with very hi-res meshes. If it is I wonder what it is they are doing that makes it quicker.

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The speed of zbrush is impressive and I don't think other programs will likely match its performance.

I assume that they have come up with a very smart "polygon buffer" thingy for those extra polys when subdividing the mesh. I have only played once with the tool, but (I think) I remember that when loading a high res mesh into zbrush, the performance is still pretty good, but not quite as fast as using a low polymesh mit subdivisons.

My guess, that if their smart data-structure for handling these veryhigh res poly objects for editing would be integrated into another package, you'd need to do some internal data conversion again, to apply other operations to the mesh. But I'm only guessing :rolleyes:

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as far as i know, it converts it to something other than poly's.. something they've made up..(it's actually very wierd, if you keep zooming in on the viewport, your model will get pixelated, so its def not "real" geometry) that's why it advertises sculpting 1 million plus "polys" in realtime. from what i hear, no one really makes a model in zbrush to use in another app really.. either you keep it in zbrush or you bring in a low res model from your app of choice, mesh it out and sculpt it and create displacements for your original app to use at render time.

you can convert it out back to a standard format like obj or something (can't remember exactly).. my roomate tried it but it was so heavy that it kept crashing maya if you ever tried to load it. he sent it over to me and tried it in houdini. it didn't crash but wouldn't display or load it at all. kinda wierd but didn't really play with it too much.

and yes, i feel the sculpt sop is very sluggish.

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yeah houdini has the sculpt tool... but you would have to subd your model to some crazy amounts to get something similar.. then keep that for rendering. The nice thing with zbrush is that you get displacement maps out of it and you can keep your model low res. Actually as far as sculpting your polys I find the sculpt sop to be quiet fast (I won't complain if they make it even faster though :) ).

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Ah well not really, I have a setup that will take a low res model and a high res version and make a displacement map out of the hi res one for rendering on the low res one, all in Houdini. The problem is the sculpt sop isn't great when you get really heavy meshes.

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I downloaded the demo, and played with it for a couple of hours...

Nice app! :D

Although it looks like Mr. Ofer dropped some serious acid while designing the interface ;)

I haven't tried bringing stuff in and out of Houdini, but I can see how this could be a very useful tool to have lying around..... on a windows box (eeek!).... the demos are very impressive, so I guess it's a matter of spending about two years to get to know the "quirky" interface :)

Cheers!

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