At those showing me their machine can have Blender handle far more polygons, I’m not arguing that. We all know (or should know) that the number of polygons that Blender AND ZBrush can handle at interactive speeds is dependent on the machine in question. Better machine, more polygons. The fact remains that on the same machine ZBrush handles more polygons than does Blender. When Blender is given more resources, so too is ZBrush. When Blender can show more polygons, in my experience so too can ZBrush… and it will display more of them than Blender.
Outside fanboy “reality distortion fields” this isn’t even in doubt - it’s just an easily tested & reproducible fact. Regardless of how or why ZBrush is able to show & sculpt on more polygons than Blender, it is able to do so. It’s the reason why it is used by everyone from home office freelancers to the FX studios used by Sony, ILM, Warner Bros, etc.
As others have pointed out, the better comparison for sculpting performance on an “equal” basis is the other generalist applications like Maya, Cinema4D, etc. Blender fares quite favourably against them. However, the question was asked comparing ZBrush to Blender and it’s simply not in doubt, factually speaking, which can handle more polygons.
I think there is a point of diminishing returns there anyway. If I’m in the market for getting Zbrush, it really wouldn’t be due to the poly budget it grants. I’ve never even come close to needing 30 million polys; never mind needing “way more” than that. Blender is totally fine in that regard to me.
If I were to get Zbrush it would be for some of the other features; sculpt layers, extrude, and things of that nature. I’d probably be more likely to go with 3DCoat though. I find it a lot less awkward than Zbrush and it has a Linux version.
Seem’s smart. Even though I have a non commercial version of zbrush, for my personal projects I prefer to use 3D Coat as well…granted I dont expect to get nearly the same quality as a result. For you though, I think 3D Coat is a good mix, especially with its superior texture painting. A handful of known blizzard artist use it for their hand painted textures.
In general I would rate them like this (including the generalist 3d apps):
Zbrush > 3D Coat > Mudbox > Blender > Modo > C4D… starts to get blurrier the more one moves to the right.
The vast majority of blender users I suspect are hobbyists and buying ZBrush is out of the question if they want to get into sculpting. Blender sculpting meets their needs. If one wants to do more then there are the more feature rich sculpting applications.
Take off in what way? The reality is the majority of people actually using it are hobbyists, you can’t ignore what they want to use blender for no matter how elitest you want to be .
That’s not quite true. If you ignore using multiple subtools, ZBrush is limited to about 25 million polys. You can throw more resources at it but you can’t get any higher. For the 64bit developer preview version of ZBrush 5 you’re currently limited to about 90 million.
Sure, and if you ignore VBO’s and similar optimisations, you can’t get interactive frame rates over a few million polygons in Blender either. We’re not going to get anywhere if we selectively exclude the features each uses to push their polygon upper limit. It not even like I was talking about the HD Geometry “hack” that pushes sculptable faces into the billions - I’m simply talking about the standard tools used to sculpt high-polygon characters.
There is a difference between software being able to handle scenes with a given polygon count and editing objects with that polygon count. I was somewhat specific in my use of language for that reason. Throwing more resources at ZBrush allows for handling more of those 25 million polygon subtools. Due to the way their respective viewports are coded, Blender tends to choke on multiple super high polygon object before ZBrush does.
Again, there is no shame in this - Pixologic has been focusing on this problem for a lot longer and spent a lot more developer-hours solving it. It’s not like 3DS Max or Maya handle those scenes well either.
The only I see is a blender vs blender sculpt development. Two years now. :eyebrowlift:
Only some minor fixes of less importance, that’s all.
You probably know how much I loved blender-sculpt.
This polygon performance limit, is it independent of what video card you have, or the strength of your PC?? If not then surely Blender will be just fine with higher polygon counts in the years to come with more powerful systems…
And then what is the ideal number of polygons that a sculptor would want it to handle, or would people just keep pushing for higher ever higher numbers???
Zbrush is better for sculpting. The brushes are great.
Blender is good and can still make nice stuff. Zbrush is when you want to spoil yourself.
3dCoat is good as well and is worth looking into. Sculpting not quite as nice as Zbrush but still good. Has great texture painting and retopo tools as a bonus. So less back and forth from going to zbrush to another 3d app.
I haven´t used zbrush that much, but it´s definitely more responsive on a less powerful PC, this much I can say And yes, soooo many more options and possibilities. Still love to sculpt in Blender though.
For those arguing on polygon counts, Zbrush is built around specialized code designed specifically to make their performance as fast as possible (while minimizing memory usage).
They have been perfecting the code for how many years now (compared to Blender just seeing a recent push in really optimizing the viewport outside of Dyntopo mode)? It’s code designed just for sculpting and texturing and as a result will naturally be better than the general code that’s needed if it happens to be part of a full-fledged 3D application.
It also does not rely on you having a good graphics card just decent cpu and plenty of RAM. With its relatively low price it also has a relatively low barrier of entry compared to some of the other big applications
This kind of got lost in the discussion, but I’d say if your goal is to sculpt the likeness of someone with accuracy, I wouldn’t worry about software and instead focus on your anatomy and other art skills.
For example, let’s say you learn that the distance between eyes tend to be on average one eye-width; you can use that knowledge to observe the proportions of the person you’re sculpting and place their features more accurately. Jackie Kennedy, as an example, had eyes slightly further apart than one eye-width. You’re unlikely to duplicate that aspect of her face accurately if you don’t even notice it. Software, brushes, kick-ass computers, and Wacom Cintiq tablets, aren’t ever going to force you to make that observation – they just might make it a bit easier and convenient to practice them.
I’d just go through some artistic anatomy guides, and start practicing using whatever sculpting/drawing software you have.
And yes, soooo many more options and possibilities. Still love to sculpt in Blender though.
