Mudbox vs. Zbrush

[LittleKnownDude]

Ok which do you prefer and what would you tell an unbiased person to persuade them to use it?

Thanks in Advance
LKD

[DreameR]

zbrush > mudbox

(thats the 'greater than' sign by the way)

[bounchfx]

really depends what you are planning to use it for from what I've gathered.

[Vincent]

Man, i don't want to sound "mean" (if that's the good word) but you should reply or just say "thank" to all those people giving you great advices in your first thread, they took the time to give you great answers!

And: I use Zbrush, way more often than Mudbox, but I can't really tell you if it's better... :)

Good luck to you !

[Deto]

I'd pick mudbox. Cause its easy to approach. Its ALMOST plain simple to everyone who has done anything with 3D or photoshop :D

[ReplicA]

Gotta agree with Vincent, If you ask for help, and get it, it's a good thing to say "thanks" at least.

Also, how much research have you done on these apps? Have you gone to their respective sites, and did your own digging, or our you just looking to see what's more "popular"?

I might sound like an ass here, but seriously these "app x vs app y" threads are really stupid. One person prefers app x over app y because *, another person the opposite. It's all personal preference at this point. Do your own research, figure out which one sounds best to YOU, figure out which one you want to spend the money on. No one should have to "persuade" you to use one or the other. Noob or not, doing your own research is pretty much basic, and these types of threads are useless.

Alright, rant over.

[freakmean16]

For me ZB its better than MB, i dont know why but it really works better in my Pc , but well its your choice after all, you better try them both and decide for yourself!!!

[cookepuss]

As a matter of personal opinion.... ZBrush FTW. For now.

There are a lot of reasons such as overall depth and whatnot, but the seemingly small addition of ZSpheres makes a world of difference when banging out a totally new sculpt. That has totally changed the way I do things.

Mudbox's biggest asset is not a feature, but a word. Autodesk. Pixologic is generally not too responsive and pretty slow on the upgrade front. I expect Mudbox to be the opposite in the long run. Autodesk can throw a lot more money at the problems and push it past ZB in less time.

Regardless, there's no one perfect app. ZB just has the added benefit of having been around for a longer time. Pixologic has had more time to field test ZB.

Ask this question again in 2010. The answers might not be the same.

[cookepuss]

I might sound like an ass here, but seriously these "app x vs app y" threads are really stupid.
Well, if you've been following LKD's other posts, you'd recognize that he doesn't yet know that these sort of topics are played out. Eventually, he will. Right now, he's a total newbie with no idea where to start. He's PMed me a few times. I feel that his interest is sincere and not at all troll-like or lazy.

It's not about which is popular. I think that LKD genuinely wants to know. It's not about an app war. It's about gaining insight that you simply won't find in demos or marketing brochures.

I think that we owe it to him.... (yeah OWE)... to help him understand the different points of view. It's easy to become jaded after years worth of "which app is best" threads. However, every now and then, it is necessary to extend a hand and give those opinions. We're supposed to have the inside track. Let him benefit from our perspectives, mistakes, and words of advice.

Demos and brochures alone won't help him since he doesn't know what to look for just yet. Threads like this are an important part of the research process too.

Remember, this is a community. Let's answer his stuff in that same spirit.

[ReplicA]

I see where you're coming from, cooke, but there's noob, and there's lack of common sense. LKD might be an alright guy, and all that, and yes these forums are a community, but doing your own research, and lurking in the forums BEFORE asking this kind of flame-starting question is basic common sense.

There's nothing wrong with being noob, we all were at one point. There is, however, something to be said for the person that lurks, gathering knowledge from others questions (like this specific question, which has been asked a million times on hundreds of boards), putting forth the effort of going to the manufacturers sites, and seeing what's good about their app, then going to the competitions site, and seeing about that app, following that up with the work others are creating with those apps, and putting all that info towards what they want to do. Go lurk on the boards, find what people are saying about the problems they are having, the solutions they've found, and on and on...

I appreciate lkd's situation, I honestly do, but I remember with great clarity when I was there. I checked the net for forums, lurked like a stalker in the bushes for a long time, learning things from others without starting stupid threads, that go nowhere, and either end in flame wars, or very little REAL information given. Yeah, I was psyched to get going on my 3d stuff, and I had no idea what was going on. I hadn't even heard of a polygon up to that point. BUT, I knew the best way to gain knowledge on a subject you know little to nothing about, is by checking the questions already asked, and answered, BEFORE asking those same questions.

Alright that's it. That's my total gripe over this, which I guess boils down to, "lurk moar". Anyway, I feel ya LKD, I've been there, and remember it. I'll not mention anymore on this topic

[zeke3d]

either program is fine, I use zbrush, but didn't understand a thing until I took a traditional sculpture course with a set of amazing instructors. You need to get your hands dirty, either by using the trials or demos of programs or pick up some Super Sculpey (http://www.dickblick.com/zz332/17/) or some pencils and paper and lets see what you can do with that. But you cant learn to swim by being talked through it in a forum or classroom. lets see dem's artwerks! either that or you are just wasting our time and patience.

[LittleKnownDude]

@ Vincent: yes your right I should have gotten on and thanked everyone. (I just did for that matter) As i said in that post ive had some problems and been studing basic figure anatomy and am using someone elses computer to do this.

@ReplicA: Sorry I dont have that much common sense as far as this going to start a flame (i really didnt mean to.) And thanks for the critisim ill take it constructively.

@All thanks for taking the time to help ill use it to my best advantage.

[ThatDon]

ZBrush. It's all that and a bag of chips :p

[YdoUwant2know]

For the most part, it is still a matter of opinion. Depending on what you want to do with it, they will both work just fine.

Z brush, has a lot of great features and is amazingly powerful, the problem is that the interface is completely different from any other 3d app and has a major learning curve.

Mudbox on the other hand does not have all the bells and whistles, but anyone with 3d experience will find it much easier to work with initially.

My opinion, try them both and use what you think is best. In this industry, fundamentals are more important than any single app. Chances are what ever program you use, your first job will use something else, or will ask you to learn something different. So don't get too attached to any one program now when you are just starting out.

[Ged]

I think 3d coat 3.0 is probably gonna give zbrush and mudbox a run for their money when its released with voxel sculpting(no basemesh needed just mooosh primitives and sculpts together.)

[Codeman]

I own both and find ZB to be the superior tool at the moment. I think my biggest gripe about MB is the ugly interface and really poor materials. I also own 3D-Coat and think this will be really good one day.

[seven]

I'm a ZB man as well. I love how the brushes behave. It just feels right to me. Say what you will about the interface, I think it makes up for that with it's power.

I tried going to 3d-coat's website and it seems to be down... :think:

[janus]

I own both and find ZB to be the superior tool at the moment. I think my biggest gripe about MB is the ugly interface and really poor materials. I also own 3D-Coat and think this will be really good one day.


You'll find that although zbrush has matcaps but mud lit sphere materials are capable of the same thing (minus the cavity shading which your not going to need as its got a real time AO viewport filter), a very versatile default material, CGFX shader support and a nice simple blinn.....

I'd hardly call zbrushes interface the most attractive thing in the world to be honest...although beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Wayne...

[Parnell]

I've used them both. At first I was in love with Zbrush then I was in love with Mudbox. Now I'm dating Zbrush but I'm interested to see what the Mudbox has to offer in the future.
I like them both.
Mudbox for ease of use.
Zbrush for the fact that you can almost always find a work around to any pipeline problem IMO.
B

[MM]

currently i like them both i have to say.

like brian, i started with zbrush, then moved to mud and now i like both.

however, i disagree that cavity shading is not required. i find cavity shading quite important in zbrush.

but some of the hardcore sculpting i find more powerful in mudbox. the fact that mudbox has real surface proximity i dont have to use topological masking everytime i sculpt around close surfaces which are not touching each other.

[Marcus Dublin]

To use modeling_man’s analogy I would have to say that I’m dating both apps at the same time:D. In short, I use them both evenly and have come to appreciate their strengths and weaknesses.

So in your case it’s worth playing with both programs to see which one works best for you in the early going. When you feel that you’ve gotten pretty good at one tool try the other one, you may eventually find yourself using both programs regularly and loving it! Good luck.:thumb:

[Deto]

modeling_man : Infact I was in love with ZBrush too at first, but mudbox kinda dragged me in, even the older one which was way inferior to ZBrush. It simply was so easy.. I couldn't be arsed to do puzzle for every model even if it meant I could do more with it :D

But with new mudbox, it really doesn't matter which one to choose. Both can do almost the samething.

which has been said so many times my reply is kinda pointless :D

[Ged]

I like both zbrush and mudbox, I was really looking forward to mudbox 2009 but I dont know I just wasnt impressed with the way theyve made mudbox some kind of elitist app with silly hardware requirements. I reckon they should take on the competition(zbrush) head to head and try to create an application which runs on just as many systems just as well.

Still I like the progress made with mudbox and way prefer the interface over zbrushs workaround crazyness

[mr_ace]

i really can't get into zbrush, so i hope mudbox becomes standard so i never have to learn zbrush lol. i find the zbrush interface is so counter-intuituve, the meshes don't represent what they actually look like properly, and it seems the developers took every option or menu or shortcut we all know from other apps and thought 'wouldn't it be fun to put these somewhere you'd never expect them to be, and make ppl find them, you know just for fun?'

it's one of those things i guess you've just gotta sit down and get past all the initial gripes, which i guess was easy for all u guys, because wen zbrush came out and you all first starting learning it, you didn't have an alternative.

however, what are zbrushes advantages? zspheres and UV options etc are the only ones i can think of.

[Ged]

zbrush seems to run a bit better on older hardware in my opinion. It has subtools so you can create meshes using other meshes, it has zspheres so you can be free with your basemesh ideas and it has a more advanced painting system than mudbox as well as transpose tools to pose models and the ability to export a turntable animation and some really nice fast material rendering and the uv options and also retopology tools. So it is packed with more features but as you say they arent simple to use or easy to find in the interface.

really zspheres arent nearly as exciting to me as 3D coats voxel sculpting though, I really am impressed with the development going on there.

[jandaku cintaku]

right now i'm trying to get along with zbrush, i like zbrush appearance and how it interact with what i want...but as far as i can say it really depends on us the user...it pretty much like max and maya short of things ( and question )..i use zbrush since it the first brush software that i know..maybe in the future i'll flirt with mudbox and see how it respond....:D

[janus]

... and it has a more advanced painting system than mudbox


Sorry but that is way wrong..... zb is poly painting that is directly linked to your polygon count and as such cannot give you as chrisp a texture as mudbox can. Mudbox paints more map types than your ever going to need while allowing you to view them real time. Zb allows you to pain your diffuse map and if you use the bump shader a bump as well. So no zb is not a more advanced painting system.

In regards to the hardeware, the service pack open up alot more hardware to mudbox that wasn't able to be used...although dont expect it to run on a very very old machine.

Wayne...

[devoid]

Might as well throw my two cents in here as well. I have/use them both, but i prefer zbrush. Originally couldn't grasp zbrush at all - when mudbox came out i loved it till zbrush3 came out. At work we got zbrush, so i tried to learn it. For some reason my second time around with the program there was an epiphany moment, everything just clicked. All the issues with the interface went away after my first full model. Highly recommend zbrush character creation by scott spencer book. The other real reason i find zbrush superior is the community over at zbrush central. The amount of user created tools and tutorials is really incredible.
In the end though they are similar programs doing the same thing, and as with all of these debates whichever one you end up using more will become your favorite.

[Ged]

Sorry but that is way wrong..... zb is poly painting that is directly linked to your polygon count and as such cannot give you as chrisp a texture as mudbox can. Mudbox paints more map types than your ever going to need while allowing you to view them real time. Zb allows you to pain your diffuse map and if you use the bump shader a bump as well. So no zb is not a more advanced painting system.

In regards to the hardeware, the service pack open up alot more hardware to mudbox that wasn't able to be used...although dont expect it to run on a very very old machine.

Wayne...

I didnt mean technologically advanced sorry for the confusion, I just mean the way you can paint in zbrush feels more expressive in its options in my opinion, the brush in mudbox 2009 feels very basic but I think your definitely right the technology in mudbox 2009 being more useful, still need to play with that more with mudbox 2009 but it didnt run very well on my work pc. It was just my opinion after my first impression of the toolset.

[kongni]

Great to see such a lively thread without anyone getting flaming mad :D

I'm using both right now and together they make a great package.

The strength and weakness of Mudbox I'm finding is that I can push more polys on a single mesh than in ZBrush. The downside to that is that when I want to bring my pretty high detail mesh into Zbrush for rendering, ZBrush runs out of memory. I then have to break up the mesh and bring the pieces in as subtools. Boo!

I'm really enjoying the ease of sculpting in Mudbox. I miss the pretty ZBrush matcaps though.

Painting on your high detail mesh in Mudbox is really nice but BOTH programs have the crappiest color pickers EVAR!!!

Mudbox claims to have an occlusion masking workflow that allows you to paint an occlusion mask based on the fake occlusion filter they provide. I got terrible results. You're better off baking everything through a program like XNormal.

Also, if you don't have qualified Autodesk hardware and a dual monitor setup running Mudbox and Maya at the same time, don't be surprised if you start getting all kinds of rendering artifacts that will drive you crazy. Yup.

Also, Mudbox claims to have a WYSIWYG display of your realtime model so there is less guesswork on how your textured model will look like in-game. However, I'm finding that the normal maps look terrible compared to Maya, Max, or ZBrush...

Also, has anyone gotten a CGFX shader to work in Mudbox?

[garethcowboy]

I'm new to both softwares but I have to say I like zbrush more. It's hard at the beginning no doubt, since I came from conventional 3d package,
but once I got a hang of zbrush I found it actually took a new way of treating 3d, instead of following old perspectives, and the result is despite downright confusing for traditional 3d users at first, it offers some really intuitive workflows for non traditional 3d users like traditional artist-and I dare say when oldschool 3d users got used to it it's great for them too-and some fairly strange but really powerful ways to manipulate meshes, some functions I would never have dreamt to have in a conventional 3d software, like mudbox.

but there're some serious design flaws in zbrush too-at least to me, some are rather basic functions that it lacks, and the software itself is not really well documented-to me the zbrushCental's forum search is the only decent way to get info. And like MM said you have to use topology mask when dealing with close surfaces..

mudbox rocks when u want to paint texture in different layers-it's just easy, and powerful, zbrush doesn't even handle real texture painting. but you have other options in zbrush that give u texture and they are cool too. Anyway to sum up my opinion zbrush is a new idea, there're a lot of new possiblities growing in it's environment and it definitely worth spent some time reading tutorials and try it out.

[Blenderhead]

Pretty unanimous Z-Brush verdict. I would be interested to know if this is just because people scult in Z-Brush, but don't try to take anything back out of it, either for low-poly or just rendering. I think it is the least user-friendly program in the universe in this respect. You need to shell out so much cash to get a definitive workflow, as far as I believe. Mr.Dublin's PDF tut is great in this respect, but Z-Brush is what, a decade old now? They really should have gotten their act together by now.

Any mudbox tuts I have seen make it look like a piece of cake compared to Z-Brush. However, the guys who created Mudbox figured nobody actually does 3D on a laptop; apparently my 3 year old laptop's video card doesn't play nice with Mudbox and every time I try to make a stroke, it actually happens an inch higher than I drew on screen. So I will have to wait till I buy a new laptop to use it, because I have tried numerous driver updates, all to no avail. :brick: