In this case it does matter because we are comparing the functionality of programs. The tools that the both have is a vital matrix of comparison because it gives the user an idea of what can be done and achieved in each program. So the tool set that you have in Sculptris has must be compared to to tool set that you have in dynamic topology.
I think these are pretty much the comparison that most have made when comparing Zbrush to Blender’s entire sculpting tool set. Although sculptris has a nice interface if you already a Blender user the bonus of using dynamic topology is that you most likely already know the interface.
that’s not true[/quote]
Yes. It is. Blender has gotten much better but it cannot yet deal with the level that ZBrush can handle. Don’t believe me, ask the BF developers, ask the Blender sculptors - it’s not a secret and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just ran a test then on a simple subdivided cube. 1.5 million polygons and Blender sculpt is unresponsive to brushes. 6+ million faces on ZBrush and still responsive to brushes.
ZBrush is the industry standard for good reasons and one of those is the insane number of polygons it can handle before crashing. Blender is nowhere near that level yet. This isn’t a dig at Blender, it is simply facts on the ground - Blender isn’t as focused on, nor internally structured around, the ability to hand ultra-high number of polygons. ZBrush is.
A fair comparison and interesting conversation would be Blender sculpting tools VS Maya (C4D, Modo, Lightwave, etc.) sculpting tools.
Zbrush is on a league of his own and should only be compared with 3DCoat I believe, but other 3D programs are starting to add its own sculpting tools into the toolset (most recently Maya), and doing that comparison we could see really how good (or bad) Blender is compared with similar programs.
I haven’t tried them all, can’t wait to try Maya 2016 :D, but C4D for example gets pretty slow pretty fast, and the brushes and sculpt tools it offers are very limited; in that aspect I think Blender is much better.
Also, one big plus Blender has (again, comparing it against Maya, Modo, C4D, etc) is dynamic topology. Besides sculptris, which was abandoned in terms of development and 3DCoat, I don’t know any other program that offers this.
Zbrush’s own implementation of dynamic topology is Dynamesh, and is really cool, but it’s just a quick remesher and not dynamic at all. I think I read somewhere (have to find the article) that the base code on which Zbrush was created doesn’t allow for a true dynamic topology, something to do with the “all quads” approach I think, and that’s why the Sculptris code never made it completely into Zbrush.
*Please anybody with a better technical knowledge on this correct me if I’m wrong.
Anyway, Dyntopo + better viewport performance with multiresolution makes a pretty cool combo for Blender, and I don’t think any other 3d program can offer the same thing at the moment. We just need a good remesher, that should be a priority.
This is not true; ZB has a very limited viewport performance, I have written this before. ZB uses subtools to selectively decrease the number of visible points. Couple of years ago they introduced “Dynamic Solo” mode which automatically hides all subtools other than the current active subtool. The maximum number of points a subtool can have is technically 25M ; however it starts to choke around 9 - 16 M, so enabling multiple subtools becomes almost impossible if you have a very complex sculpt. This limitation is also evident in ZB HD sculpting , which limits the sculptable area of a subtool to 9M points automatically (can be increased to the 25M max but again it becomes almost unworkable).
Blender’s sculpt modes have improved performance over “Object Mode”. However there things to note, dynatopo uses real vertices , which means the number of vertices in the sculpt are same in edit mode (dynatopo subdivides and collapses the edges/vertices). Multi-res (similar to ZB sculpting) has virtual vertices based on the current subdivision level, the higher the subd level the more virtual vertices. This means you can achieve more subdivision (hence more detail) from multi-res. Also the drawing method must not be compared to dynatopo since they use different methods.
If we really have to compare multi-res sculpting to ZB. Blender can work with much more vertices in sculpt mode, however this is not the case in object mode. If you have the ram Blender can sculpt a single multi-res model with 64M - 96M vertices (these are the numbers I have seen).
Yes, Zbrush handles big polycounts much better, but Blender isn’t that bad; look at the screenshot, with 8 subdivisions I got to 25 millions and while the viewport do get’s slower, the brushes are still very responsive.
i think, in term of efficiency, Blender is no where near the level of Zbrush. the amount of poly count to be invisible in the view port depends largely on the specs of the PC. on my crappy fossil, Zbrush can handle up to 50 million polies before it start crashing, whereas for blender, the view port start slowing down at 2 million, and completely crash the whole PC (not just blender) if i reach about 5 million. so hands down, Zbrush got that in the bag. it also have a large variety of tools and is proven to be very usable, i mean, just look at what people pulls out of it.
however, Zbrush also have the down side, which is the interface, IMO. it is what i would say is the definition of a cluster-fuck! the first time i got it, i can’t even get rid of that box which shows you the projects to open, i only learned that it is called the Lightbox later on. it’s true that you can re-organize your UI, but still keeping a default view like that would really discourage new users. so it is Zbrush that is 1 of those programs that makes me go: “curse this thing! i can’t do anything! i want to quit!”, not blender. but i kept with it anyway, because i know once i got it right, the result will be worth the effort.
Doris Fiebig, who is a member of this site, should chime in here and explain why she prefers sculpting in Blender, instead of Zbrush, which she’s been using for years in the past. She now sculpts mostly using Blender’s Dyntopo and only uses Zbrush for its remeshing feature, correct me if I’m wrong.
I haven’t ever tested Zbrush on this machine, but I get somewhere around 20~30 million faces in Blender fairly easily. I need to turn on fast navigate when I’m that high or the viewport gets sluggish when rotating and things, but the brushes perform just fine.
Blender really kicks ass when all the stars are aligned but just as question posed above, many users do not know all the tricks to get the performance up.
turn off global undo but leave the steps (saves memory)
turn on vbo (dont know is it default yet?)
turn on fast navigate
turn off double sided (default is off)
use a base mesh with more than 6 faces (1000 or so)
Okay, it might be that you would have to be a fanboy to claim that Blender sculpting is better than Zbrush, but I think this is a bit extreme (even more so for version 2.76 with the improved VBO and multires drawing code).
I would only find this applicable if Blender was still in the early 2.4x days and the best we had was some addon that allowed us to push and pull vertices.
Thanks, I did not know that option.
This is in “Options” tab, under Options menu and it works with multires. But this is confusing, it seems I have another “Fast Navigate” in “Misc” tab, and apparently it works with any mesh: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Display_Tools
I have no idea when I installed/enabled it.
(1000 or so)