Pixologic ZBrush is a full-featured professional digital sculpting and painting software that allows you to use customizable brushes to shape, texture, and paint virtual clay in real time. You can create models and illustrations in a workflow designed to be fast and efficient. Thanks to the processor-based engine, ZBrush runs well on most modern computers regardless of their graphics cards. ZBrush is compatible with Mac and Windows and can be installed on both platforms at the same time so you can switch between them as needed. A graphics tablet is strongly recommended.
ZBrush adds a Dynamics system along with Controlled Cloth Sculpting and updates to the Dynamic Subdivision feature. The ZModeler has also been enhanced with new features, and new iMage 3D support now allows the ability to open native-format files created by ZBrushCoreMini. Additionally, enhancements to the ZBrush engine allows for more fluid sculpting and faster performance with tools such as DynaMesh.
New Features
Dynamics
Enhance your sculpting with a Dynamics system that allows any surface to be contracted, expanded, inflated, or draped with gravity. Use masking to pin a portion of the mesh to create a point of interest or use a mask to create a unique interaction that can allow the surface to be rolled on itself. Create realistic cloth folds, even on a low-resolution plane. Place your mesh, turn on the collision volume and any desired controls, then watch as ZBrush drapes the cloth mesh over any other visible meshes.
Sculpting
Special brushes have been introduced which use the Dynamics engine to give unique capabilities for interacting with the cloth surface. As examples, you can choose where folds will lay or simply grab the geometry to move it freely in the work space and create folds in real time. The ClothTwister brush simulates twisted cloth. ClothWind allows directional movement. ClothPinchTrails will create a seam with pinched cloth wherever your brush stroke takes place on the surface.
Dynamic Subdiv Revisited
Dynamic Subdiv provides a working preview of your subdivision levels without actually increasing the base polygon count. This feature is now taken a step further by allowing you to add an adjustable thickness to any single piece of planar geometry. A piece of geometry can also be added to each polygon as a completely interactive instance. Select from the library of presets to make a surface look like canvas or denim jeans. Even select a piece of armor to create repeatable chainmail.
SnapShot3D Additions
SnapShot3D will now transfer PolyGroups and color from the original texture to the generated mesh. This functionality allows for easy isolation of parts. When generating silhouettes of garments, color can be applied to the areas where holes would be needed to create an outfit. These areas can then quickly be hidden and deleted for processing with Dynamics to generate clothing. Segments can now also be added to the SnapShot3D mesh by using the SpotLight dial.
Performance
Even more performance enhancements have now been added to ZBrush. We revisited the systems behind the sculpting brushes along with many other popular features. Speed has increased across all sectors, including faster response time with high-polygon models, increased DynaMesh speed, and much more. In addition, a new Optimal option for smart management of multithreading will always maintain the right amount of threads ZBrush needs with your system for the best performance.
ZModeler Upgraded—Extrude Edge
It's never been easier to build a plane up into what you imagine or construct a completely new piece of geometry that fits into an existing sculpt. The new Edge Extrude feature gives you the ability to build with one edge, multiple edges, complete edge loops, and/or polyloops—with interactive edge snapping. Not only can you extrude an edge to snap to the adjacent face but you can enable SnapToSurface to allow the new edges to snap to an underlying surface.
ZModeler Upgraded—Equidistant Inset
With Equidistant Inset you can inset a single polygon or region of polygons and all newly created topology will be equidistant from the existing topology. The result is a perfect new set of polygons.
Nanomesh Modifications
Continuing to expand on the already powerful instancing system of NanoMesh, ZBrush now gives you the ability to edit the instance mesh while it is in place within the scene. Combining Split Screen with NanoMesh, this throws wide open your ability to create and adjust without adding unwieldy numbers of polygons.
iMage 3D GIF and PNG Formats
The iMage 3D format provides a unique way to share both an image of your work and the 3D model itself with others, all in a single GIF or PNG file. This file can be posted on any website where it will appear as a regular 2D image, and once opened in ZBrush the complete model with all its SubTools is ready to edit.
Release Notes
- Variable cursor size adjustment
- ZModeler set camera perpendicular option has been added to the Polygon options
- ZModeler additions to temporary white polygroup painting (while holding the ALT key in polygon mode of ZModeler)
- File extensions Collada (DAE), Alembic (ABC), and 3MF import/export capabilities
- Optimal performance enhancement has been added
- Gizmo precision movement addition
- GoZ update for 3DSMAX
- Several macro additions
- Spotlight Snapshot 3D will now process color as Polygrouping
- Jitter feature allows an alpha to bounce along a stroke path
- Imperfection feature applies a surface noise to the stroke
Other Features
Sculptris Pro
Ignore the constraints of polygon distribution and simply sculpt! Sculptris Pro will dynamically add (tesselate) and remove (decimate) polygons wherever and whenever needed. It does this during your brush stroke in a real-time process called Tessimation. This frees you to focus entirely on the look you're trying to achieve.
Dynamesh
DynaMesh is a perfect solution for free-form sculpting because it removes all need for focusing on topological constraints. Change the overall shape of the model by pushing or pulling, adding various pieces of geometry to combine into one, or even remove geometry in a manner similar to what can be done with Boolean operations. Where Sculptris Pro dynamically adjusts the triangles in your mesh as you sculpt, DynaMesh redistributes the model's polygons as quads on command.
ZModeler
While ZBrush is best known for organic sculpting, its hard surface capabilities should not be underestimated. The ZModeler system is designed specifically for low poly modeling with easily accessed and highly intuitive controls for creating holes, adding edge loops, extruding polygons, and much more.
Live Boolean
Many models are really nothing more than a set of shapes that combine to form a more detailed shape. Live Boolean takes this concept and runs with it, providing a way to easily add models together, subtract one from another and more. What makes the system in ZBrush unique is that this operation happens in real-time, letting you see exactly what you're going to get before committing to the actual merger. This provides both exceptional ease of use and unprecedented control.
ZSpheres
If you've ever added clay to a wire armature then you know exactly how ZSpheres work. Draw a simple skeleton/stick figure and ZBrush will then flesh it out with actual topology.
ZRemesher
Explore and just let your imagination take you where it wants with the knowledge that once you have your design ZBrush can nearly instantly convert its polygons into a usable base mesh with clean edge loops and polygon flow.
Mannequins
An evolution to ZSpheres is the Mannequin system. With a wide variety of both humanoid and animal figures in the library, Mannequins are an easy starting point as you explore the scene that you wish to create, before even beginning modeling.
ZRemesher
As you have read through the features listed above you may have found yourself wondering about the kind of topology that is created. The beauty of ZBrush is that you don't need to worry about that! Feel free to explore and just let your imagination take you where it wants with the knowledge that once you have your design ZBrush can nearly instantly convert its polygons into a usable base mesh with clean edge loops and polygon flow.
Multi-Resolution Mesh Editing
The inherent problem with traditional 3D modeling methods is that once you divide your mesh you are locked into the design thus far. There is no way to go back and make changes at the macro level without sacrificing everything that has been done at higher resolutions. ZBrush does away with that restriction through multi-resolution subdivision editing, the feature for which it received an Academy Award. With this system you are free to move between subdivision levels at any time, making changes wherever they are most appropriate. Those changes then automatically ripple across all other levels of your model.
Sculpting Brushes
The main workflow for creating with ZBrush is based on a system of brushes which can also be modulated using pen pressure from a graphics tablet. ZBrush will reproduce the natural feeling of a real paint brush or sculpting tool, using the pressure applied to the pen tip to transform your digital stroke in a variety of ways. There are brushes to pinch, move, build up the surface, chisel into it, slice through the model, and much more. You can even use other 3D models as brushes, inserting their geometry into your surface.
Noisemaker
In addition to being able to add detail by hand, ZBrush provides a system for procedurally generating surface detail through noise patterns. Choose a detail type, adjust a few simple parameters, then apply that pattern to your model in its entirety or by restricting it to a certain region. You can even combine different noise types to create highly complex effects. The Noise system is ideal for both hard surface work and organic details.
HD Geometry
ZBrush is easily able to handle models in the range of 20 million polygons on most computers, and up to 100 million on a high end machine. That is more detail than can be held by an 8K map. But sometimes you want even more, and this is where HD Geometry comes into play. With this feature, ZBrush can work with models of up to 1 billion polygons.
PolyPaint
Because ZBrush works with tens of millions of polygons in real-time, you can paint directly on the surface of the model without first assigning a texture map or UVs. This offers significant advantages compared to a standard workflow. The resolution of the texture map does not need to be decided in advance. This is particularly valuable if you find you need more detailing on an area than you thought you would. Instead of repainting a new, larger texture map you can simply transfer the existing surface detail to that larger map without any reworking. You don't even need to do UV unwrapping before you begin this painting. In fact, thanks to the way that ZBrush can project details (both sculpted and painted) from one model to another you can have a fully painted model before you even have a finalized animation mesh. Instead, you can copy everything to the final base mesh once it has been signed off on.
UV Master
In order create or use a texture map, a model first needs UV's. These are 2D coordinates that tell all 3D applications how to apply a texture to your model. With most programs, creating those UV's has been a time consuming challenge that requires a high level of technical expertise and has little room for creativity. With UV Master you are able to create very efficient UV's for your model, in most cases with a single click. If you need more control over this automatic process there are features that refine where seams will be placed or increase the amount of pixel space given to certain regions of your model. It's both intuitive and fast, letting you get back to being creative with minimal fuss.
Rendering
Whether you are using ZBrush by itself as an illustration tool or as part of a production pipeline for animation, you will at some point want to show your work to others. ZBrush makes this possible through a powerful rendering system called BPR (Best Preview Render).
Environment Maps
Use your favorite panoramic images as a background in ZBrush and integrate your model into the environment's lighting and coloring at render time. Whether your image is 8-bit or full HDRI, using it as an environment is one click away.
BPR Passes
ZBrush has a wide variety of filters that can be added to a scene after it has been rendered, changing the way that the image looks without needing to wait for another render. All of these filters can be mixed and matched, instantly adjusting your rendered image without needing to use an external image editor. Adjust sharpness, depth of field, shadow colors, and much more.
BPR Filters
ZBrush has a wide variety of filters that can be added to a scene after it has been rendered, changing the way that the image looks without needing to wait for another render. All of these filters can be mixed and matched, instantly adjusting your rendered image without needing to use an external image editor. Adjust sharpness, depth of field, shadow colors, and much more.
NPR Renders
An evolution of the BPR Filter system, NPR is a suite of special filters designed specifically to make your render look less like a photograph and more like an illustration. With this system your model can look like it was hand-drawn on paper, taken right off the page of a comic, or even appear as a blueprint.
Difference Maps
While ZBrush is able to be used from start to finish, in most cases it serves as part of a pipeline. This means that you'll need to be able to get all of your details out of ZBrush and into another program, such as an animation package. To accomplish this, ZBrush makes it easy to create normal maps and or displacement maps (including 32-bit maps) which can be exported together with your base mesh.