3D Archives

ZBrush doesn’t have a User Manual in PDF form you can download and curl up with. Instead, it has an online version over here.

ZBrush also encourages us to use the integrated help which explains every feature of the app. All we have to do is press CTRL / CMD while hovering over an item in its extensive menu.

Trouble is, when I do this on my Mac, I can barely read anything – if at all. You’d expect that an $800 piece of software would at least WORK out of the box without extensive digging into how to make the friggin help show up. But of course that’s not how it works with ZBrush.

Lucky for us the entire UI is customisable (albeit a tad difficult to understand how), and thanks to MentalFrog’s suggestion I could tweak my ZBrush popup help from “totally irrelevant” to “actually usable”. Let me show you how.

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I’ve gotten over the culture shock of the ZBRush Interface. It grows on you after a while. Or so I keep telling myself.

The emphasis in ZBrush is about sculpting 3D models – something I’m not really into. I want to use ZBrush as a texturing tool and paint existing 3D objects, so I jumped right ahead and took a good look at something called Spotlight. This is ZBrush’s image editing and painting feature.

Everything needs some funky name, usually beginning or containing the letter Z. I’m surprised they didn’t call this Zpotlight.

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Confusion, headaches, frustration, anger, hopelessness, sadness, depression and resentment. Those words probably best describe my first two days with this new software.

These are not emotions commonly associated with creativity, artistic output, joy, happiness or inner fulfilment.

And I had such high hopes for ZBrush! My capability of wanting to learn, the excitement of exploring new territory and the certainty that sooner or later I’d be able to figure it out were no longer with me.

Plus my usually reliable learning resources weren’t able to teach me the basics!. For a moment there I lost all hope.

Then I discovered that there may be light at the end of a very dark tunnel after all. Let me tell you all about it in the first part of this exciting new series or Learning Zbrush.

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Don’t panic, this post is not in French, it’s merely an homage to my man Fred Lebain whose collection of Holga images has always inspired me.

I hear great things about a piece of software called ZBrush. Apparently it’s the best thing that’s happened to the 3D industry since the candy machine. The current release 4R6 packs a heft price tag of $795 (about £560) and therefore sends the message: “It’s not a hobby tool – it’s business software”.

The sales pitch says it does it all and more – from modelling in a very artistic and intuitive way, to texturing better than any other app could ever do. Their customer service is fantastic and they have a showcase site called ZBrushCentral where creators from all over the world can share their works and be admired.

Over the next four weeks, I’ve decided to find out for myself.

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