I hope one day there's a "Blender, but it's actually ZBrush" open source alternative to ZBrush.
Once you use ZBrush, you'll never want to go back to traditional CAD-style creation.
I won't claim that Blender can't solve it, but, the workflows are completely different. You end up thinking of models like clay that you can shape and paint, not triangles with textures.
Please, someone, somewhere, spend five years making that an open source project. (Realistically, it's a bit melancholy that such a project probably won't ever get made; there's no incentive to. ZBrush exists, and it has a fine price point. I just love thinking about all the algorithms under the hood that power the whole thing... It would be so cool to see the code.)
- Zbrush has an extensive ecosystem of bushes. There are specific tools for specific jobs, and (not having used Blender at all) I am skeptical Blender successfully replicated these workflows.
- Zbrush has modes that are extremely precise. For example, you can mask off a specific section of the mesh, similar to masking off a portion of an image in Photoshop. Except, in Zbrush, you can do it spatially -- it's not a "mask per triangle", but rather "a mask per pixel". You can literally slice a mesh in half, vertically, screen-wise, then hide one half, do some work on the other, then un-hide. It's an effortless flow that people use all the time.
- Zbrush is most natural to use with a tablet in one hand and a keyboard in the other. That video isn't using a tablet at all. Having a mouse interface just isn't appealing for artists. The reason I bring up this point, is because I can't overstate how natural it feels to use zbrush with a tablet –– you can bring up a "context menu" just by tapping a button on your pen, select a new tool by flicking your wrist slightly, and immediately begin using that tool. It's far more configurable than I'm describing here.
Ultimately, Blender has to serve too many masters. If you have to design a UI that can do anything, it can't do everything well. It must make tradeoffs. And these tradeoffs are reflected as reduced artist productivity, which is why many artists use Zbrush for their professional work – it's a tailored experience specifically for artists.
Now, all that said, I am impressed with what Blender can do. I like that it's open source. But, if you want to go toe-to-toe with the pros, the pros are going to point out exactly why the interfaces just don't cut it. If it takes 20% longer to accomplish X, those small costs add up. But there's also a "step change" that you get from the Zbrush flow that I don't think you'll get with Blender's interface. It's subtle, hard to describe, and honestly something you'd have to invest time in to understand.
Caveat: I've been out of the art world for around five years at this point, so feel free to ignore all of my points. But, I approach this from a gamedev studio mentality: from experience in the industry, I can say that Blender never once came up as a realistic option. It was 3ds max for a long time, then mudbox pioneered the sculpting concept (I remember Aron Zoellner from my first job going on and on about why Mudbox was so cool and a big deal), and then Zbrush totally dominated the scene. There are reasons for this, despite my inability to perfectly articulate them.
Scrub through https://youtu.be/EdEVj39ur-U?t=1545 and watch how effortless everything is. That artist is doing so many operations per second relative to your Blender video that it's hard to overstate just how much more productive they are. (I realize your video was an introductory example for Blender, but it's hard to imagine someone doing in Blender what that person is doing in Zbrush.)
> (not having used Blender at all) I am skeptical Blender successfully replicated these workflows.
I don't quite understand why to wish for something without having tried out what's there?
> That video isn't using a tablet at all.
What leads you to say that?
In the description it literally says: "I use a graphics tablet to paint with..." Did you read that as meaning that he doesn't use a graphics tablet to, say, sculpt?
If so, I think that's a misreading. I own a graphics tablet that I use with Blender in part due to Grant Abbit's (the presenter) advice that it's really a necessity when it comes to sculpting in Blender. :)
> – you can bring up a "context menu" just by tapping a button on your pen, select a new tool by flicking your wrist slightly
> If you have to design a UI that can do anything, it can't do everything well.
While that may be true, Blender's UI is more of a UI toolkit (in the not bad sense of the concept :) ) and the tabbed "workspaces" and/or "application templates" of Blender enable the UI to customized to the specific task at hand.
> Caveat: I've been out of the art world for around five years at this point, [...] I can say that Blender never once came up as a realistic option
Ah, okay, that's useful context--yeah, Blender today is not Blender from five years ago. :) The 2.80 release pretty much changed everything and there's been huge development effort in that time.
There's probably better examples of non-beginner focused sculpting in Blender but here's another teaching video from the same guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOSdRdeS5oM
Blender already has a pretty advanced sculpting system? And it integrates with everything else for retopo and such. I don't really do sculpting so I don't know exactly how it stacks up against ZBrush, but I know it's going for the exact same use-case and I believe it's well-regarded
Blender is actually quite good for sculpting and the features set got much better with the last few versions. I'd say it's a very very light version of what ZBrush can do. The only problem is that blender's performance aren't nearly as good. The moment you subd a model for sculpting, the viewport because laggy and that's bad you're trying to paint.
Nah, I was surprised. ZBrush has an extensive toolset specifically for creating machinima. You won't want to do CAD with it, obviously, but ZBrush isn't a CAD tool.
It's a common misconception that ZBrush is for organics. You can create some badass space marine type mechs.
I respect Blender and like it a lot. I just don't think it can do anything close to what you see in that video. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
Artists love Blender, and that's good enough of a reason to stick with it. I was just hoping to see more of this style of modeling, since it was the only style that made intuitive sense to me personally.
EDIT: (Sadly, it looks like Eat3D is now offline. It was such a fantastic series. Perhaps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdEVj39ur-U&ab_channel=Chofn... "Zbrush Hardsurface Techniques" is a sufficient replacement though. Scrub through that, to random places, and you'll see exactly the sort of flexibility I'm talking about with ZBrush's flow.)
What I meant by 'mechanical parts' is not spaceships, but actual mechanical parts, like that you're going to send to a 3D printer or a 5 axis CNC machine.
Blender is actually good enough to handle this. Not as well as things like Fusion 360, obviously, but for simple parts, it works.
Once you use ZBrush, you'll never want to go back to traditional CAD-style creation.
I won't claim that Blender can't solve it, but, the workflows are completely different. You end up thinking of models like clay that you can shape and paint, not triangles with textures.
Please, someone, somewhere, spend five years making that an open source project. (Realistically, it's a bit melancholy that such a project probably won't ever get made; there's no incentive to. ZBrush exists, and it has a fine price point. I just love thinking about all the algorithms under the hood that power the whole thing... It would be so cool to see the code.)