ZBrush work

[Gaussian]

Brett, are you really serious about Lightwave's interface?! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif[/img]

[bmh216]

Danny,
I did quite a bit of work in 3DS Max 4 before switching to Lightwave. It's interface is a bit daunting as well, with a lot of cryptic symbols that I always found myself resting my mouse over and waiting for the "tooltip" to tell me what the heck it does. That changes with time and familiarity, of course. After awhile, I knew what (just about) everything did, and I was comfortable. Then, I began using Lightwave. Everything is laid out as text...very different from Max. I know it's just my opinion, but I love it!

I am one who doesn't really agree that modeler and layout being separate is a bad thing. Modeler is like a separate place to create objects which you then use in your scene as you need. Not such a bad thing. When I used Max, I was always shuffling objects around and moving my viewport to find a place to model something that my scene needed. If I attempted to model it "in place", vertices and edges got all mixed up, making it difficult. Also, after using Modeler's layers, I really can't do without them.

I was just wishing that Z-Spheres was available as a standalone modelling app, instead of laying out $400 for a full app that I don't really need nor care to take the time to learn. It just looks like a really interesting way to model, but I don't want to get myself involved in learning it if I have to buy the whole ZBrush to get it.

Thanks for the info on the export, I was curious.

Brett

[ivan louette]

Brett, I agree with you about Lightwave. But I find also its plugins implementation is actually the best in 3D programs.
I like very much ZSpheres; it's a much better technique to grow organic shapes than metaballs because it creates a very logical polygons arrangment.
Why not a plugin?
But I think this is only the beginning of a new evolution in 3D modeling.

ivan

[gidgit]

I agree, ZBrush is still in it's infancy stage and is worked on continually... and yea, it is a very fun app to play around with... as far as interfaces go, well... I for one am glad that there are so many choices of apps, different UI's and approaches out there to choose from... some people prefer apple juice, while others prefer orange juice etc... cool... besides it is the results that count right? Cool [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[Gare]

The pushing and poking of "clay" is a very attractive and inmtuitive paradigm I'd like to see added to extruding, lathing, and so on.

To continue my line of thought with the other thread on plug-ins for 2d paint systems, check out what you can do with KPT X Gel, a stand-alone module for Photoshop and compatible programs. This works and feels like ZBrush's Jelly Bean mode. Also, amorphium, which is free when you buy Universe for $299, can do sculpting like ZBrush does and it export=s to DXF, OBJ, and other popular formats.


My Best,
Gare

[bmh216]

Well, Alias/Wavefront's Maya has what's called the Artisan tool, which allows you to "sculpt", as it were. There is also a way to do it in Lightwave (it's a bit of a workaround) using weightmaps.

I think this is why the Zspheres modelling method caught my eye; it seems like a very intuitive way to model (much like sculpting) as opposed to pushing an pulling vertices all day.

Brett