Saw it a few days ago and that's a really cool feature!

I tried the ZBrush demo some years ago but the GUI was too strange for me so I decided against it... but I might have to recheck...

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Proud Promotional Artist For
Aethereal-Dreams

Sounds cool, if I ever decide I need more than just Cinema 4D for general modelling, I think I'd consider that, but I'm in no position to buy any new programs

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*priteeboy - proud founder of ~The Worst Artists on dA club! - take a look, have a laugh

Damm thtas realy cool. I have used the Z-Brush demo for some Years (Z-Brush 2) Strange Progi for me...... damm I must have this new Z_brush

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The Dark Lord

Just the sh!t...that's all I can say. The strange thing is they're just rolling out bits and pieces now. I'm wondering what's going to be in the main Siggraph reveal...

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{Somebody's gotta be the HERO... Might as well be ME.}
"When a friend's in trouble, don't insult him/her by asking what you can do, think for yourself and start doing it." - Unknown

The main SIGgraph reveal? Another nebulous release "date".

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Commodore 64 @ 1MHz
64KB RAM
1541 Floppy Drive

"I am the Storm."

I'm really hoping GoZ works properly; Vue xStream for example promised the same thing, and has failed utterly in Maya integration. For the sake of competition at least, I hope Zbrush 4 actually makes it to shelves! Mudbox is plenty powerful for my work, but I respect Zbrush and what Pixologic is trying to do, and hope that Autodesk won't crush yet another creative company.

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Commodore 64 @ 1MHz
64KB RAM
1541 Floppy Drive

"I am the Storm."

Yeah... I guess they do have a history, but all tech companies run into slipping deadline issues when they start re-writing major chunks of underlying code that essentially represent the foundation of their bread and butter application. Most of them don't have to deal with the amount of public scrutiny Pixologic has, because they don't pre-announce release dates. People get mad at Pixologic for the seemingly illogical/unintuitive interface but there are just to many groundbreaking projects, in 3D in general, that wouldn't have been possible without ZBrush for me to stay mad at them for too long. No matter how angry some people may get with the company Pixologic always has one statement they can lean on indefinitely "...We're sorry you were disappointed, but look at the results."

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{Somebody's gotta be the HERO... Might as well be ME.}
"When a friend's in trouble, don't insult him/her by asking what you can do, think for yourself and start doing it." - Unknown

I've never really been "mad" at Pixologic for making an entirely pathetic UI, nor for the whole 2.5D BS. At the time, the only other 3D sculpting program around was Amorphium, which has gone the way of the platypus. But that was an even less functional program, although it was fun!

"but there are just to many groundbreaking projects, in 3D in general, that wouldn't have been possible without ZBrush"

I concur. Up until recently, Zbrush was the only sculpting app capable of high-quality, hi-poly results. This hasn't been the case for a few years now, and Autodesk's R&D funding really shows in Mudbox 2009.

When Mudbox hit the scenes it was obvious that it was geared towards high end 3D users (same controls as Maya, for example) and Mudbox 1.x was barebones but did what it was supposed to do, simply and cleanly.

Now with Mudbox 2009, there is no reason to suffer through horrible UI and not-quite 3D issues that plague Zbrush. I'm not saying Zbrush's workflow is "wrong", but I am saying that Pixo's attempt to reinvent the wheel could only end how it is now ending.

3D Coat and Mudbox basically make Zbrush obsolete; that said, I still love painting in Zbrush, and will likely keep it around for many years to come. Zspheres are pretty cool too, but don't replace actual modeling by a longshot.

The main issue with Pixologic's release strategy is that they simply won't be able to keep up with Autodesk in terms of features, funding, or programming potential. Mudbox 2009 equalized the sculpting battle, and 3D Coat matched them both, but by the time Zbrush 4 is released Mudbox 2010 will dominate the market and once again, AD will push a little company under the sand...

But for the sake of argument, I sincerely hope this prediction is wrong!

--
Commodore 64 @ 1MHz
64KB RAM
1541 Floppy Drive

"I am the Storm."

Personally I got used to the ZBrush interface and it's really not that bad as a lot of users would attest. The GoZ utilities finally deliver the level of interopability ease that MudBox has to get everything other than the basic geo into another app. Decimation Master looks to add more and add functionality that isn't anywhere else and ZBrush isn't dependent on the user's video card for high levels of performance (ie - billion + poly objects.) I've seen people using 3 and 4 year old laptops pushing close to a 100 million polys on a real work model like this situation: [link]

You can't do that with MudBox. The fact that you can't even make a basic sphere or cube in MudBox is a problem. Most people use Zspheres for a tremendous amount of setup even if they go back to a another app for basic topo reconstruction and then use that ZSphere skeleton as a posing character rig. MudBox can't do any of that either.

Like I said there are some people that are mad at Pixologic (ex. a person dreaming about a Pixologic demise scenario) Personally, I think it's much ado about nothing. When MudBox was in beta testing some people would talk about was how badly MudBox was going to tear ZBrush a new one. That lasted for all of about a month I think and then when ZBrush 3 was released it like a big ass helium balloon getting popped with a needle. Mudbox, 3DCoat, modo and Silo will all push ZBrush, but at the end of the day Pixologic is going to add some new "...Never though about that, but now I couldn't work without it" feature and stay on top. That's just how they operate.

Oh yeah, with the whole 2.5D thing at that point the entire 3D industry was still awkward. There was no real good way to get 100's of millions of polys worth of detail into a 3D app and expect it to render out. The Pixologic theory was to try to comp it in which was probably an appropriate solution at the time. When the technologies changed Pixologic adjusted accordingly. They didn't get it all right the first time, but they still innovated dramatically and moved everything in the right direction.

Also, it's interesting you used platypus since they seem to be on the mend and on their way back. Amorphium could be laying in wake for just the right opportunity to resurface and become a relevant piece of software. [link]

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{Somebody's gotta be the HERO... Might as well be ME.}
"When a friend's in trouble, don't insult him/her by asking what you can do, think for yourself and start doing it." - Unknown