ZBrush 2.5

Monday, July 31st 2006

Alright. So the fun begins! I'm in Boston. The booth is up. It’s a cool booth. Some great images from ILM and Electronic Arts. Also, Damian Canderle, Sebastien Legrain and Jeff McAtter's images are up on the top banner and they are huge! Thank you so much for the images guys!

Today, we are going over the presentation and I think you will be very happy with the new features that have been added to the new ZBrush which is a free upgrade for ZBrush 2 users.

ZBrush strives to be more than a leader in digital sculpting, it strives to bring the future of digital art to today’s artists. We, as artists and developers, do not stop at creating tools for today’s artists. We create tools for tomorrow’s artists as well. The future of digital art is getting better and better and Siggraph is the time for all of us to celebrate how much computer art has advanced.

In this post and following posts I will highlight some of my favorite features of the next ZBrush. Here is a first look.

Speed, speed and more speed.

SubTools – millions and millions of polygons and support for multiple objects and multiple textures.

3D sculpting with an alpha, texture, and stroke – the power of Projection Master in full 3D.

Mesh Extraction – a fast and incredibly powerful way to create new geometry from existing geometry.

3D Layers – store sculpting and texturing in 3D layers for a non-linear workflow

Topology Projection – transfer high-resolution sculpting from one model to another without loosing the hi-resolution details.

Poly Painting – paint directly on your models surface without any UVs.

ZCasting - Broadcast your ZBrush session to the ZBrush community.

The new ZBrush is significantly faster and capable of handling much larger polygonal models than ever before. The new ZBrush is optimized for 32 bit systems as well as 64 bit systems, taking full advantage of the processing power, multiple CPUs and available RAM.

I have made two short movies of the new features using a model I am working on in the new ZBrush. Everything you see is 100% pure ZBrush.

DOWNLOAD MOVIE HERE

The first movie is about our new SubTools feature that allows artists to work with multiple objects and multiple textures. It also allows you to work directly on models with a staggering number of polygons. The model you see here is twenty two million polygons!

DOWNLOAD MOVIE HERE

The second movie is about Mesh Extraction. Mesh Extraction is an incredibly fast and powerful way to create geometry. Mask a part of your model and simply extract it. Poof! Instant geometry. ZBrush automatically generates a new SubTool with clean edges. Check it out!

Also, one more feature I want to mention here is ZCasting. ZCasting will enable ZBrush artists to connect with each other and broadcast their ZBrush session to the community. Look for more information on this soon. Oh and perspective? But of course. More on that later.

Now, a little about the show tomorrow. Our first demo is around 10 am. We will be doing one demo every half hour or so. We have Alex Huguet demoing his ZBrush workflow in the afternoon. A schedule will be available at the desk in the booth. See you guys tomorrow!

Best,
Ryan