Pixologic releases the long awaited ZBrush 3.0 to a hungry community.
- CGSociety :: Software Release -
ZBrush 3.0 has continued the development of
artist-friendly digital art tools. Pixologic has boosted
ZBrush's speed; added real-time shadows, real-time
material-capture and render (MatCap).
ZBrush 3.0 also now allows full 3D sculpting and texturing with alphas and textures and has activated advanced ‘digital clay’ with up to one billion polygons using HD geometry.
Within this long-awaited release, three years in the making in fact, Pixologic includes real-time posing with ZBrush's Transpose functionality; perspective camera; 2D / 2.5D /3D mesh projections; mesh retopologizing; topology/cavity/color based maskings; one-click turntable recording and QuickTime export; support for 32- and 64-bit systems and multi-threaded support for up to 256 processors.
“With ZBrush,” says Ryan Kingslien, well known Product Manager at Pixologic, “we have set out to create a tool, which alleviates restrictions imposed on artists, and to unleash the 'artist within'.
We want nothing else but to create an environment that is an extension of your own creativity; an environment that will not only allow you to 'get the job done' but will also encourage you to experiment and go the extra step. Ultimately, our goal is to enable you to create and then be truly impressed with your own creations.”
ZBrush 3.0 continues Pixologic’s development by putting the artist in an immersive digital sculpting environment. The developers have boosted ZBrush's speed, refined its functionality as well as expanded its capability by adding real-time shadows, real-time material capture and render (MatCap), full 3D sculpting and texturing with alphas and textures, advanced ‘digital clay’ with up to one billion polygons using HD geometry, real-time posing with ZBrush's Transpose functionality, perspective camera, 2D / 2.5D /3D mesh projections, mesh retopologizing, topology/cavity/color based maskings, one-click turntable recording and quicktime export, support for 32 and 64 bit systems, mutithreaded support for up to 256 processors, and more.”
New Features: Transpose
This is a unique feature where an extremity can be molded and changed in a live model. An axis is selected, the point is dragged out to generate a handle and from that moment, this arm or leg, or portion of face, is totally pliable and sizeable around that axis, until you are finished with that manipulation.
Mesh extraction
Bulk up, using the body. This is a fast and powerful way to create new parts to your model. Using existing geometry you can quickly and easily create a jacket, a helmet, gloves, whatever your character may need!
Real-Time Shadows
Ever needed a light on that wasn’t there? The best visual feedback on a construction site of a 3D model is a soft light to work by.
Different parameters allow shadows to be longer or shorter, deeper or lighter, or to otherwise vary to reflect the sculpting lighting you prefer, or the lighting conditions your model will ultimately be used with. Use them with materials, MatCap, textures, or polypainting to reduce the need to render as you work.
Concept Sculpting
This brings to life the most basic mug-shot drawing you may have of a character. Inside a frame, with the side, back and front sketches of the character head, the image details can be collapsed down around any shape, which can then be moulded down into the completed form.
Lazy Mouse
The Lazy Mouse gives the artist more control over their brush stroke. It allows the artist to work with a greater degree of refinement than by hand alone. Using the Lazy Mouse artists can create very precise and controlled brush strokes with ease!
When using lazy mouse, you are effectively dragging the paint cursor behind the mouse cursor, with a piece of digital string connecting the two. Jitter in the mouse cursor will be greatly reduced at the other end of the string, and the line of the string indicates exactly the direction the paint cursor will travel in.
Polypainting
Polypainting allows painting on a model's surface without first assigning a texture map. A texture map can be created at a later time, and the painted surface can be transferred to the map.
Polypainting offers significant advantages compared to standard workflow:
* The resolution of the texture map need not be decided in advance. This is particularly valuable if you find you need more detailing on an area than you thought. Instead of repainting a new, larger texture map, you can simply transfer the existing surface painting to a new, larger map, with no rework necessary.
* Similarly, the UV unwrapping need not be fixed in advance. If one unwrapping proves unsatisfactory, simply create a different unwrapping and transfer the surface painting to that map.
* Removing UVs from your model frees up system resources and allows you to work with more polygons.
Other features
There are so many impressive new features that caught my eye in the new version of ZBrush, I have got to list them in a batch and let you swim through them at your leisure. There is now Gravity Controls, Cavity Masking, Curve Controls and an immense, almost inexhaustible supply of brushes to rake the form of your models as they are created.
Ryan Kingslien produced some stunning videos of some heads he made using the beta of ZBrush 3.0, posted on ZBrushCentral forums. Two particular ones, embedded above, show two heads being formed, and the new Rake brush being utilized.
“The rake is actually a combination of several new brush features in ZBrush 3,” says Ryan. “In this case, they combine to perform like a sculptor's rake. In other cases they can be combined to act like a stone chisel or a wood-cutter's gouge tool. There are hundreds of different sculpting brushes that can be created inside the new ZBrush. Another very cool one is a 3D liquify brush. You couldn’t rough out a head that detailed in ZBrush 2.0 without using ZSpheres.”
Some of the artists who had a hand in the beta testing of the ZBrush 3.0 product have made their work and comments available to accompany this article for the release.
