The ZBrush Conundrum

Rarely has a piece of software’s UX been so haphazardly put together as Pixelogic’s ZBrush. There is no doubt ZBrush is a powerful creation tool with capabilities for 3D modeling at a granular level.

It also has a confusing, nonsensical UI that seems to go out of it’s way to bury options in weird submenus and sliders. In thirty years of writing code, graphic & 3D design and digital creation, there has not been an application that I’ve liked using less than ZBrush.

Tesselate, Decimate, Tessimate

My process for learning how to use the tool is a combination of Google & YouTube looking for the most understandable explanation & use examples. Inside ZBrush is a mode called Sculptris Pro, it is activated via a ‘S’ icon on the main UI bar and also lives under the Stroke menu for some reason. It adds or removes polygons based on brush size creating necessary vertices before moving them. You may find the menu option greyed out if the object you’re working on is not a polymesh.

Sculptris Pro Mode allows your bushes to dynamically affect the topology of the model as you sculpt it creating new topology as you adjust the form.

(A similar tool called Dynamesh redistributes existing polygons, operates with booleans, makes the mesh watertight and is better for blocking out meshes.)

Terminology like Decimate, Tesselate, and Tessimate can be confusing but what they mean basically is ZBrush meshes can have the number of polygons in an object dynamically change based on the brush or mode being used.

Unlike Maya, creation of meshes in ZBrush has a randomness of outcome based more on artistic approach rather than repeatable known processes. Exact size, locations and points can be dialed in using Maya whereas ZBrush relies on approximation.

I know I can bevel a cube to an exact spec in Maya, in ZBrush not so much. I am absolutely going to make the pieces of my creation in Maya first then import into ZBrush for tweaking.

I’m a technician, not an artist.

My goal is to make my startups AltervilleVFX & AltervilleGFX into places where contractors can do their best work for clients. At close to 70 years old working for someone else is the last thing I want to do after 50+ years being in the workforce.