ZBrush or Mudbox, which you prefer?

[Morne]

Hi all

You like Zbrush or Mudbox more and why?

[sv]

Mudbox by a country mile.
It took me about half an hour to understand the program; messing around with it for a few hours I was able to create a really detailed head exactly as I wanted.
Zbrush seems strange and weird to me; totally backwards logic - so you rotate the model not the view... yeah, that doesn't work for me...

[duke2]

If Mudbox was on-par price wise with ZBrush, i'd be all over it. But it's not, so I ain't.

[thablanch]

For user freindliness: mudbox.
For power, innovation and lots of features: z-brush

For arch-viz, when it is just to fluff a pillow, both can do the exact same job.

Duke2: Mudbox comes free for 6 months with your autodesk subscription. But it is weird that a product that can do the same thing ( even a little less) is more expensive.

[Morne]

Hi all

Old thread, it's been a few years and I'm sure things have changed a bit. Now that you get things like Entertainment Creation Suite etc. I geuss price isnt any more much of an issue between these two applications. I'm more interested in user base. Seems Mudbox has a huge following now, but still, Zbrush seems to be dominating in the bigger studios? How about freelancers or "one man shows"?

I'm thinking for character stuff and maybe the odd strange plant... possibly even some minor furniture work.

Your thoughts or comments is appreciated!

[AJ Jefferies]

I much, much prefer Zbrush over Mudbox.

Zbrush is the first 3d application I've used in years that feels genuinely innovative. You'll hear a lot of people complain about the interface and working methods vs more 'traditional' 3d applications (including Mudbox) and these complaints are all fully justified but I personally love that learning and using Zbrush has forced me to think about things differently.

Like I said, all of the complaints about the way it works are justifiable - if you are comparing it to other applications... But once you get your head around the way it approaches things, Zbrush just feels much more exciting. I like that I can open it with literally nothing and start roughing out a character in just a few minutes.

I also like the freedom of being able to jump between different approaches to creating something, for example:


This head was made from a simple (3 ZSphere) basemesh, then iteratively creating and refining the forms as I subdivided for more detail.

Where as this guy (still WIP)...


Was made using Dynamesh, working with a highly dense mesh from the get-go and constructing the features as you would from clay.

Ultimately, it all depends on how much you enjoy learning/working with the program, if you're not getting on with Zbrush (and there is a lot to take in) then there's no point banging your head against it for weeks on end. Mudbox is still an incredibly powerful program and you'll find brilliant (and terrible) work done with both in relatively equal amounts but for me personally Zbrush is the more creative of the two.

[lukx]

Pixologic all the way !!! Since I bought ZBrush there's been ton of free, huge updates !!! Please don't buy mudbox, support good guys form pixologic and show middle finger to greedy autodesk !

[stevesideas]

Pixologic all the way !!! Since I bought ZBrush there's been ton of free, huge updates !!! Please don't buy mudbox, support good guys form pixologic and show middle finger to greedy autodesk !

Have to agree. Pixologic really are great when it comes to upgrades. The community is fantastic as well. I would go with zbrush any day.

[vlado]

Sadly if you need PTex support there is only one choice. This may not be too important right now, but it does offer some advantages.

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

It seems like mudbox is more like a standard 3d app so easier to start with, but it fails to reach the higher level of detail that zbrush can. Zbrush on the other hand falls down in the texturing area in terms of resolution and workflow so a lot of artists twin it with mari.

Maybe 3d coat too? Or just start with sculptris for free and see how you go?

[simmsimaging]

I don't sculpt much myself but found both worked quite well. If you aren't doing crazy complex Weta Digital stuff then you will be fine with either on that front.

Texturing though: Mudbox is easier, Zbrush is better IMO. The Mudbox stencil/mask system I find limiting, but that was probably curable with flight time. Ptex was nice and the interface is nice and clean and pretty responsive even with larger brushes and high res textures.

However, there are major problems with doing any kind of serious detail work. Really high-res and fine detail work just falls apart (artifacts, lines jumping all over the place) and it's a limitation of the program. I went back and forth with Autodesk over many months and eventually gave up. They actually gave me my money back and I scrapped it. For 1K it needs to work much better than that IMO.

As an aside, I actually like 3D Coat for texturing work, although it's been quite a while since I have done any.

b

[Morne]

Hmm ok I'm looking at Sculptris at the moment, but I geuss ZBrush is the same... How can I get my object from here, into max, and have it as quads? Is this possible?

[joconnell]

The normal workflow is to make a base mesh in your 3d app with really nicely laid out mapping coordinates, bring that into zbrush / mudbox and sculpt on it, then calculate a displacement map between your low res base and the final high res. You get the option of a nicely flowing mesh for skinning / rigging in the case of character stuff, but all the high quality detail when you render it.

As far as I know sculptris will allow you to load in a mesh to start with, but it won't generate any displacement maps or anything else. I think you can get other programs or plugins though to compare the differences between meshes and generate a displacement map - think they might be along the lines of some of the normal mapping utilities?

[AJ Jefferies]

Sculptris is excellent but it is very limited in terms of functionality compared to Zbrush & Mudbox. Also, if memory serves it tessellates the mesh as triangles, so you would need to re-topologize the mesh if you wanted quads.

John's right, a lot of people will build a decent base mesh in a 3rd party app (Max, Maya...etc.) with UV's and sculpt on top of that, but if you're making dramatic changes to the shape then it can cause the UV's to distort which can be a real problem. In these cases it's usually more worth while to rebuild the topology at an interim level, UV it then extract the displacement/texture/normal/vector maps from that.

I've recently completed a job using Zbrush that I could show the steps of getting the detail onto a rigged mesh but I'd need to check if we're clear to show it.

[FSGFX]

mudbox all the way, for detail sculpting and texturing
with clean uvs you are able to paint really highres stuff, multiple 4k maps onto one object.