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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 traditiona

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.)

brundolf 6y ago
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
- immigrantsheep 6y ago
  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.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ur-whale 6y ago
> Once you use ZBrush, you'll never want to go back to traditional CAD-style creation That's a little too broad of a statement IMO. If you're building organic shapes / characters, then yes. For mechanical parts, using ZBrush is torture. Also: as others have pointed out, there's already quite a lot of ZBrush-type features in Blender.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  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. Eat3D has a fantastic series of videos that goes into detail on this precise topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOKVGbZmEc&ab_channel=Eat3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOKVGbZmEc&ab_channel=Eat3D 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=ChofniKnol 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.)
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    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.
  - follower 6y ago
    Ah, if you're specifically interested in "hard surface sculpting" then this might be a more useful query for you: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+hard+surface+sculpt&sp=EgIIBQ%253D%253D https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+hard+su...
jedimastert 6y ago
Can you tell me what stands out to you as different between ZBrush and Blender's sculpting mode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3XtAFUWNuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3XtAFUWNuk I've never used ZBrush personally, bu from what I can understand they're a pretty similar workflow...
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  - 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 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.)
birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
This is open source: https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/ https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/ You could organize some crowd funding to expand it to the feature set you need.
TrevorJ 6y ago
CAD is to organic modeling what an IDE is to MS word. TECHNICALLY they do the same basic thing....but not really at all.

brundolf 6y ago

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

immigrantsheep 6y ago
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.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ur-whale 6y ago

> Once you use ZBrush, you'll never want to go back to traditional CAD-style creation That's a little too broad of a statement IMO. If you're building organic shapes / characters, then yes. For mechanical parts, using ZBrush is torture. Also: as others have pointed out, there's already quite a lot of ZBrush-type features in Blender.

sillysaurusx 6y ago
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. Eat3D has a fantastic series of videos that goes into detail on this precise topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOKVGbZmEc&ab_channel=Eat3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOKVGbZmEc&ab_channel=Eat3D 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=ChofniKnol 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.)
- ur-whale 6y ago
  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.
- follower 6y ago
  Ah, if you're specifically interested in "hard surface sculpting" then this might be a more useful query for you: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+hard+surface+sculpt&sp=EgIIBQ%253D%253D https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+hard+su...

jedimastert 6y ago

Can you tell me what stands out to you as different between ZBrush and Blender's sculpting mode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3XtAFUWNuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3XtAFUWNuk I've never used ZBrush personally, bu from what I can understand they're a pretty similar workflow...

sillysaurusx 6y ago
- 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 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.)

birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago

This is open source: https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/ https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/ You could organize some crowd funding to expand it to the feature set you need.

TrevorJ 6y ago

CAD is to organic modeling what an IDE is to MS word. TECHNICALLY they do the same basic thing....but not really at all.