ZBrush usage with Blender

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Hi all,
I have mostly done hard surface modeling in Blender (which I love) and now I want to get into sculpting. I have been going through Zacharias Reinhardt’s Mastering Sculpting course and YanSculpts youtube page and they are so amazing and such a blessing to the Blender community. I have learned a lot and there is still so much more. While on youtube, I noticed ZBrush came out with ZBrush 2018. I started watching videos, especially Shane Olson’s character stuff. I want to try my hand at character models (possibly for games) and was wondering if ZBrush could be a better solution. The reason I ask is because of polypaint and the retopologize tools that seem to do it much easier than Blender. Retopology just scares me…lol. I say this having no real world experience, just watching others do it on youtube and going through the course “Pluralsight - Your First Day in ZBrush”.

I was thinking if ZBrush were used, I could bring the models back into Blender, where Blender could be used instead of KeyShot.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

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Hi Pesto,

(A disclaimer: English is not my native language, I hope it’s still legible)

TL;DR: Learn in Blender (sculpting and retopology), then think about ZBrush if you feel you have outgrown it.

I’m a newcomer to Blender (about 2-3 months), a beginner in sculpting (about 2 weeks, after watching YanScult videos), and a fledgling with ZBrush (bought it over a decade ago in a sale, but only actually used it for the past few days).

Thus, me giving uninformed advice is dangerous and probably unwise. So here it is.

Sculpting in Blender relaxes me. I gotten used to Blender’s UI and UX, and feel comfortable with it. YanSculpt’s results are without a doubt the proof that you can achieve awesome sculpts with Blender.

Very recently, I decided to give ZBrush a try… after all, I own it (thanks to their free upgrades, even from the time it didn’t actually cost much).

The variety of matcaps is refreshing. This might sound stupid, but Blender is really limited in that area, and matcaps can help a lot when sculpting. Eevee might change that.

You also have tons of brushes. For example, sculpting a rock feels easier because of the different “trim” brushes, making it much easier to get nice crevices (most of these brushes are hidden, not in the main palette).

In short, I feel ZBrush to be different, and offer more possibilities in some areas, which might help (or confuse). It can also handle millions of polygons, unlike Blender. But you speak of games, thus I doubt you’ll get to that point.

However, ZBrush’s UX is abysmal, and its UI is the most confusing I can remember (I’ve been in computers for over 30 years, on many different OS… I have seen weird stuff). As much as I enjoy swiping a pen on the tablet in ZBrush, everything else amply compensates in terms of stress.

You claim to enjoy using Blender, which means you are probably quite used to it’s interface, rotating the viewport and so on. Getting as comfortable with ZBrush might required a solid investment in time.

As for retopology… I don’t have much experience with that, but it is my understanding that you cannot get proper, game-ready, topology using (semi)automatic tools without first having a solid base of topology.

So my advice would be to first learn how to do topology manually, then integrate tools like Bsurfaces or RetopoFlow (free on github, and once you get awed by its awesomeness, you can buy it to help further development). There are many others, but RetopoFlow (2.0) seems amongst the best.

Then, you might have a proper look at what ZBrush offers, and you might ultimately decide that the tools in Blender are more interesting.

Or you might go for tools like Topogun or 3D-Coat, which seem quite popular amongst ZBrush users.

If most of your instructors are using ZBrush, obviously that might be enough to buy and use ZBrush. Using the same tools your teachers use can certainly make things a lot easier.

Personally, though, every course/tutorial I followed was easy to translate to Blender, once you get the hang of sculpting in Blender (YanSculpt’s daily tips helps a lot for this, although you quickly get to a point where you find the music annoying and repetitive!).

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SergeE - Thank you very much for taking the time to give such a thoughtful reply. I truly appreciate your opinion.

After a couple of weeks of playing with ZBrush I do appreciate its’ ability but I also found myself struggling with the interface. My thought is if it truly wants to be the artists’ tool it says it is, they would redesign the interface so it gets out of the way of the people using it. That being said, they have created an amazing piece of software.
For me, at this point anyway, I will be focusing on Blender, topology, and watching more tutorials by YanSculpts, Reinhardt, P2design, and CG Cookie.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply to my post!

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Hey Pesto,

You could think about perhaps getting a copy of ZBrush Core which is a stripped down and much much cheaper beginners version. But still offers full ZBrush sculpting and is highly useable. It also has limited poly painting too. But this is easily enough to get some good results that you can refine in a 2D painting app later.

ZCore is a really good way I think to get used to the ZBrush workflow and interface. It will also allow you to follow many of the ZBrush based sculpting courses on Youtube etc. The poly count is still pretty generous in Core. You still have ZSpheres, Dynamesh and the use of alphas for detailing.
And then Blender and XNormal can plug many the work flow gaps if you are using ZCore to try out games asset character modeling. Blender for re-topo and XNornal will bake all your maps, Normal cavity etc … including the poly paint color’s.

I have full ZBrush and just love it to bits. But I’m also one of those weirdos who has no big issues with ZBrush’s way of working. Once I started to see it less as a 3D app in the traditional sense I had no major problems. I think it’s best to see it as a 2D painting app that allows you to work in a 3D way. I have a long ago background in traditional clay and plaster sculpture and it really feels comfortable to me that way. Very Artist and traditional sculpting tools and methods orientated. Not in any way like a traditional 3D app though. Its very different in that way. But I find ZBrush a very relaxing environment to work in.
But I also think Blender has the best most comfortable and fastest 3D interface out there right now. And look at how many complaints Blenders interface gets.

ZRemesher auto retopo is amazing but not really recommended for serious character retopo work. It’s more there as an internal ZBrush workflow step. To jump quickly from dynamesh or now the new Sculptris dynamic subdivision free form sculpting to multi res and detail based sculpting.
If character assets is an area you are really serious about getting into then you really need to get to grips with manual retopo. It really isn’t so bad. Just monotonous if you have to do a lot of it. And the great news is Blenders retopo tools and abilities just out the box are some of the best out there.
If it’s a worry I would personally just sculpt up a quick abstract shape and start retopo on that to get used to the methods and workflows. The last thing you want as a beginner is to be worrying about edge loops around mouths and eyes. Just focus on the tools and workflow first. In Blender you can also use subdivision modifier for assisted retopo. So just block out the basic poly layout and flow and let Blender do the rest.

Theres a guy on youtube, GameDevFred who did a nice Blender and ZBrush comparison video around sculpting and modeling which might be worth checking out. I pretty much agree with most of what he says there. Blender sculpting is very very good now and can give you amazing results. But ZBrush is out on it’s own planet dedicated totally towards sculpture and with it’s own unique systems. There is nothing else really like it.

Basically Blender is by far my favorite fully featured 3D animation, VFX, poly modeller, etc … full on CGI project making app out there. But both ZBrush and 3D Coat and Substance make great workflow companions to it. As they also do to Maya Max etc … Because they are so specialized and highly focused in particular areas.

All the best.

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Toko - Thank you for the response. You bring up many interesting points. I will check out ZB Core for sure!

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I really enjoy switching between Blender and ZBrush (and sometimes MoI 3D as well, for hard-surface modeling).

I use Blender to quickly establish a base structure of separate, intersecting meshes, and for some elementary shaping in Sculpt Mode. Then I usually head over to ZBrush to blend the meshes together using Dynamesh or Booleans + Sculptris Pro, and sculpt, retopologize and polypaint (vertex paint).

For rendering I sometimes go back to Blender to use Cycles or Radeon ProRender, or I send the ZBrush scene to Keyshot, which works well using the ZBrush to Keyshot Bridge plug-in.