Introductions

[scott-spencer]

Hi Everyone,

This is Scott Spencer. I am one of the moderators of this forum and I am excited to see it grow with new members. I used Zbrush heavily in commercial production at Pendulum in San Diego. I am now a digital sculptor at Gentle Giant Studios in Burbank. I have been a Zbrush user since 2.0's first day of release and I am a betatester for Pixologic 's upcoming additons.

I am glad that Will and the HighEnd3d team put this together. So spread the word and come on board. Share your experiences, problems, fixes, and successes. I am sure we can all learn a lot from each other. I hope we can build a great resource here.

Best Regards,

Scott Spencer

[wchamlet]

Hello Scott! I've just started working in the industry, and I'm pretty much using Zbrush exclusively, so this is the first time I've gotten to use it in any sort of pipeline. Right now I'm having so many issues I don't even know where to begin! LOL But there are workarounds, so it's not that big a deal. I'm pretty sure it's similar in most other studios.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw my hat in the ring.

Cheers,

Chad

[sickpixie]

Hi All,

Great idea for a board! I'm currently working as a character artist/TD in a mocap oriented studio that is in the process of integrating Zbrush into our production environment.

Can't wait to be part of some interaction

Cheers,

Phil Boltt

[mviton]

hey everyone

im currently searching for a job in the field. I love zBrush and its capabilities. have had some issues but nothing too big. Great to see this forum starting.

[scott-spencer]

Welcome!!

If we had a lot to discuss before, with the new plugin releases from Pixologic we will have all kinds of new options now. Check out the new Displacement Exporter from Piuxologic. Now you can export 32 bit floating point maps from Zbrush. I just finished some betatesting and experiments with it and I can say it not only simplifies the Zbrush to Maya workflow but opens up a world of opportunities for using multiple high res maps on a single mesh!

Welcome again and thanks for joining!

Scott

QUOTE(mviton @ 09/30/05, 07:24 AM)
hey everyone

im currently searching for a job in the field.  I love zBrush and its capabilities.  have had some  issues but nothing too big.  Great to see this forum starting.
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[ruffy]

Good to finally see a zbrush forum start up here. Hope this place thrives as zbrush does in so many places.

Rock on,

Kyph

[y030052]

OK, this isn't specifically production related but there isn't a general forum here and this might help get things going (?).

So I am currently giving myself a crash course in Z-Brush using the Gnomon DVDs. It's an amazing app.

I'm wondering, however, whether it is as buggy as it seems? I know it's pretty normal when learning a complex new program to make newbie mistakes with settings and the like that can often lead to confusion and make you think things aren't working as they should be when in fact it's because you've checked a box or pushed a button that you shouldn't have.

However, to give an example right now. I have initialized Z-Brush and have drawn a single Z-sphere onto my canvas. I should then be able to press "Edit", right? It's necessary to go into edit mode in order to draw further connected spheres. But "Edit" remains unavailable (T doesn't work either). I was doing exactly this a minute ago and edit worked just fine.

I've had numerous experiences like this, where things don't seem to behave the same way twice.

Like I said, it's probably newbie mistakes but I'm curious if Z-Brush is buggy like this....

Thx.

[wchamlet]

Zbrush is indeed a fickle beast. Little things can pop up that cause you to scratch your head from time to time. Things like you mentioned above are pretty hard to diagnose.

What I would do, is restart Zbrush completely. I've had times where icons would disappear in Zbrush, and for some odd reason I couldn't work with it. Restarting it completely, rather than initializing it usually does the best "reset" for me.

[scott-spencer]

Be aware that when ZBrush crashes it tends to leave it's tmp file in the Pixologic directory. These can easily be a gig a piece. You need to manually delete them.

Scott

QUOTE(WCHamlet @ 10/03/05, 01:07 PM)
Zbrush is indeed a fickle beast.  Little things can pop up that cause you to scratch your head from time to time.  Things like you mentioned above are pretty hard to diagnose.

What I would do, is restart Zbrush completely.  I've had times where icons would disappear in Zbrush, and for some odd reason I couldn't work with it.  Restarting it completely, rather than initializing it usually does the best "reset" for me.
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[wchamlet]

Zbrush doesn't crash that much. I checked my folder just now and all appears clear. Which folder does it save the .tmp file?

[scott-spencer]

stevedavy: The general forum is still ZBC. The best source for general info, tutorials, and information on Zbrush.

WCHamlet
I am not saying it crashes often but I have been in situations where I needed to up the max subdivisions in prefs to work a bit higher. I experienced crashes in thos situations as well as when trying to extract displacements from geometry that had the slightest overlap in the UVs.
Neither of these are Pixologic's fault but they are situations which come up from time to time.

The tmp file is in the root Zbrush2 folder. ZBrush creates one at startup and removes it when it finishes. make sure you dont have file types hidden in your view preferences if you dont see one there.

Scott

QUOTE(WCHamlet @ 10/03/05, 01:15 PM)
Zbrush doesn't crash that much.  I checked my folder just now and all appears clear.  Which folder does it save the .tmp file?
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[shadowfiend]

A big hello to everyone

Hi Scott and thank you once again for inviting me to this board.

I have been dabbling with all things 3d and graphical for years, I made a face in VU 3D on the ZX Spectrum! Then I got an Amiga 1200 with Lightwave and real 3d and about 7 years ago built myself a dual Pentium 3 system that I am still using.

A coupple of years ago I spent a short time as a computer animator in a very small company using 3d Studio Max before switching to Maya. I then learned of ZBrush 1.5 from a banner ad and looked into it. I was simply blown away as I think anyone who uses the program was when they first saw it.

I hope to get into the industry some day soon and I am in the process of putting together a new showreel.

Ok so thats the edited highlights over with we can now get creative.

P.S. did anyone else have an Amiga?

[visualboo]

Hey guys. I'm not sure if this place is still hoppin but I thought I would say hi. Steve pointed me to the new displacement plugin and I saw the link in his sig.

I've been using zbrush in production since launch day of v2. Glorious app indeed, minus a few quirks here and there.

[sbroumley]

OK, to make it official.

I've been a Z-holic since just before 1.5. The very first version, I tested with my business partner back then and we had a great laugh. However Pixologic knocked on our door again and we were quite impressed, dropped several production processes and replaced them with Zbrush. I think we bought 25 copies back then.

Now that I'm with another group it is one of my primary tools at nearly every step of the pipeline except animation/rigging/rendering.

Other than that I've been around the industry for ove 20 years. Those looking for work, bug me regularly, I'm always looking for new talent for upcoming projects.

jasonbelec@rogers.com

That's my good deed for the day.

Keep this forum production oriented, everything else Zbrush is at ZbrushCentral.

[scott-spencer]

Hey Jason,

Nice to have you aboard!
I agree, I definitely want to keep this production and cross application oriented. Things that dont get a lot of play on ZBC. General Zbrush info is best found on the central site, hense the link at the top of the forum : )

There is a world of information on getting work from Zbrush into other applications that the guys at Pixologic just wont be able to support on their own forum.

Best Regards,

Scott

[-leigh]

Hi everyone,

Some of you may know me from CGTalk, where I am an administrator. I was invited to participate in this new ZBrush forum so here I am!
A few months ago we started using ZBrush at work and I've really caught onto using it for texturing. I am lucky enough to have the crazy Kris Costa as a co-worker, and he's taught us a lot of cool ZBrush tricks.

It is now a regular part of my workflow, and with the new ZApplink, it's just getting better and better! Texturing crazy creatures is definitely more fun now

[antropus]

Hey! I am the crazy Kris Costa that Leigh is talking about!
Good to see you here Leigh

Hi everybody. My name is Krishnamurti Costa and Will invited me to be one of the moderators for this forum. I'll try to help in some way and surely learn a lot from you guys. I've been a ZBrush user since version 1.55b and I was beta tester for ZBrush 2. I work with Maya and Zbrush in the pipeline both at CafeFX and in my personal work. I use it for textutes, to generate displacement and normal maps and sometimes to produce the final piece (still images for fun).

To know more about my work, please visit my website @ http://www.antropus.com

Cya,
Kris

[ricardoariza]

hello everyone,

my names ricardo im another zbrush addict. ive been using it in pipelines for commericals, games cinematics, games, etc. ive only been using it since 2 but ill try and find any excuse to be on that software. www.scottspencer.com thanks for inviting me onto this forum and for being my comrade in 3d!

cheers,
ricardo

[ryankingslien]

Very cool stuff guys! I look forward to all the information that passes through this forum. I have been Director of Training at the Pixol for about 10 months now. I have seen many people go through the learning curve of ZBrush. I am really interested in seeing people share their information about other software packages here and the connections between ZB and them.

Ryan

[andrew-raz]

hello everyone

i just wanted to send out a how-do-you-do to everybody here in the forum. i'm a week away from graduating from the same school Scott spencer graduated from a few months ago. i've just recently begun delving into the ocean of Zbrush, but i'm loving every minute. well, almost every minute.

glad to be on board here!