Hi all. I am new, and impatient. I love this forum so far because of all the talent - we're all alike here and it feels great to be among other creators

I have started this journey first with 3DS Max, simply because that was in my mind, sort of the "Grand Kai" of 3D, the one I remember hearing about first anyway. I remember taking a 1 year course in high school junior year and starting with AutoCAD, then moving into 3DS Max, but I hardly retained any of what I "learned". So I'm starting fresh. But I plan to learn some of the others - mainly, ZBrush comes to mind.

With something like ZBrush or Mudbox, it seems to really exceed in the goal of allowing one to forget about lines and vertexes and truly sculpt FIRST, and then worry about the technicalities and geometry later, that's what I see when I look at such software - and I find it AWESOME!

The only thing is :

1 : ZBrush runs a bit slow when I zoom into the mesh and begin to rotate around, frame-rate seems to drop. I am trigger-happy when modeling as far as rotating all over the mesh goes - I do it a LOT, so this is kind of a problem.

2 : ZBrush seems an awesome tool. When I look at the kind of models people create with it, my mind is blow. The skin on the models is amazing (how do you do that? more on that later). Anyway, I do not have a tablet, which is how I think Zrbush is meant to be used and is probably how most creators use it.

For the time being I won't be able to get my hands on a tablet, so I was wondering : Does anyone recommend I use the mouse for now or just wait until I get a tablet?

These are my other questions :

1 : I have a quad core phenom II, 8GB RAM and a GTX 260 - is this enough for ZBrush and if so, why the slowdown in frame-rate when I zoom in?

2 : Am I the only one experiencing that problem as far as the frame-rate being a bit choppy when I zoom in and begin to rotate the view?)

3 : How can I make it run smoothly (note that Mudbox 2012 doesn't do this on my system)

4 : This question is about the eye-candy ;) - All those beautiful details on characters made with cool software like ZBrush like the tiny skin wrinkles and such - do people sculpt all of that into the skin manually or are there tools inside ZBrush for that part?

5 : Is 3DS Max capable of such character detail?


I'll have more Q's later and I hope this isn't too much. Just answer freely and when you have time, I would really appreciate the enlightenment

huh, seems like people didnt decide to answer, so i'll do my best

1: the framerate drops because the polygons are being scaled up. basicly in 3ds max / Maya / others, you dont Scale you just Zoom out, but in this case, instead of zooming out, retaining the size of the object, it Scales the object up and down, requiring more of your pc.

2: it happens on most pc's. Try updating everything driverwise, close background programs and such. Theres nothing to do about it really, as of reason 1.

3: reason 1.

4: there are different brushes / alphas you can use for that, alot of the detailing is made with Masking and then Deformation, some with Shadowbox and then MultiMesh and some is just basic carving.

5: youtube my friend, it hold many answers

about tablets: i am currently searching for one aswell, tho i have so far used a mouse, and i am happy with that, it just means you have to use smaller strokes...

Well Deras answered everything pretty much. So the fps drop is explained to ofcourse with stronger system you have less trouble but thats to be expected i think.

On tablets: I did order mine. Got a good offer on a wacom intuos4 m. I just like how that works and yes i think you can work more precise with a pen then a mouse. I would start with the mouse now though. In the very least you get to learn the ui layout and all the hotkeys etc. Hmm hope i make any sense here haha (been a long day).

You might want to look into wacom Bamboo or Intuos models, depending on what you can afford - any tablet is going to be HEAPS better than using a mouse in Zbrush.

regarding skin etc, there are lots of ways details can be added to models, and tiny details aren't really hard to do, they just take a bit of time and thought. The hard part is creating your main forms, as for anything humanoid you need understanding of anatomy, which from what I gather takes a long, long time to learn. Character art is pretty much a discipline of its own.

Also zbrush is 32bit so it can only use 4gb of ram I believe. 8gb is plenty, I've only ever maxed it out a few times.

If you're sculpting in Zbrush get a tablet. If you're going to put in the money for Zbrush you should at least be using it well with some kind of tablet. Bamboos are good enough if you're on a budget, no need for a giant one, just about any size is an improvement over a mouse (bigger isn't necessarily better anyway). The navigation and process of using Zbrush lends itself to tablet use.

Your rig should run fine, I use a crappy laptop when I'm mobile and it works out. Keep in mind that you probably won't be using your high-poly sculpts in a modeling application like Max, at least not directly, so as to the question about getting Zbrush level detail in Max, it's a yes and no, depends on what you're going for (if you're doing games, there's a process of making a low-poly version of your model based on the sculpt and baking the details to textures; for film, anything goes really, you could look into proxy stuffif that's what you're aiming towards).