I started with 3D Studio Max 1.2 in 1996. 
These books were my bible:
I agree, that’s a weak spot of ZB.
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All fair points, and yes, this stuff is highly subjective. I’m all in favour of customisable navigation, but I was more referring to the genius of the way everything is designed to work around ctrl/alt/shift.
with right click nav you can orbit on the mesh, no need for empty canvas.
Yes, it happens, but…it’s not really something I lose sleep over. 
It’s very early days for you(this is your second day, I believe) so the frustration is understandable. We all went through it, but invoking the ‘but my 3D modeling program does it this way’ is a recipe for a lot of frustration when learning ZBrush. It’s highly unorthodox in comparison, but pure magic when you master it. Hang in there, mate. 
Also. The nav shouldn’t be an issue on Wacom because you can remap the buttons to whatever you like.
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Oh, that’s another issue of mine! I find the buttons on the wacom pen uncomfortable and not very quick to use. I have this kind of basic wacom pen:
…and the thing rotates in my fingers as I use it, so after a while I have to take a second to actually find and press the buttons.
I’ve never heard anyone having this issue, so I guess I’m some weird freak with slippery fingers 
but spacebar always seemed like the best key for navigation. Biggest button for most common action.
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Aye aye … dear me … oh yes. Twas Max 2.5 with me. The days when Character Studio and Biped were the only game in town on a standard Windows PC. Back when you could actually buy a battery powered musical Dancing Baby with a Kinetix logo on it in a London West End store. I remember the three big blue books fondly. Fundamentals, Animation and … what was the third one ? Lighting and Rendering ? Although they didn’t exactly feel to have been written by artists for other artists from what I remember of them. But they did the job with no scrolling through endless Youtube videos just to get one little bit of information.
About the earlier comment. I really think the List Controller is my favourite ever feature in Max. Talking of being an annoying fan boy. I used to hark on so much about how there was nothing like it in Maya. It’s saved me so many times and is so infinitely robust and adaptable. I was able to set up a whole last minute 11th hour bone facial rig system for multiple characters in the Cryengine once just by using Max dummy objects with the list controller. And it all actually worked ! Anyway sorry to drift so far off topic. Memorys an all that.
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I’ve still got a Discreet watch. Got it at a Dutch event (EUE) where I did a talk about V-Ray in 3ds Max many years ago.
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Hey brilliant. It looks a bit like a top secret briefing in the bunker. Is the watch still going ? Today of course we all have Blender Rockets. I wonder if they will still be working in … aargh … don’t want to contemplate the passage of time too much.
I used to also teach Max classes for a while. It was at media collage in London to majority complete beginners. For my first two lessons there I was told last minute that the machines and projector had not been installed yet. I had to do two long afternoon lessons drawing and writing 3D Max and 3D graphics principles out on a maker board from memory while everyone took notes. That was scary at the time but hopefully it worked out.
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Nice to read that you also gave 3ds Max lectures.
Yeah, it took place in an old bunker indeed. I used to give lectures to archviz freelancers next to my 3D jobs, so I was well-prepared. I knew Max and V-Ray inside out back then. I also wrote an automation script for V-Ray in MaxScript that became quite popular (to my surprise 
).
To be honest I never took it out of its box, haha. It’s still in mint condition, in a drawer somewhere.
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Aaaand what with MY PERSONAL experience, and experience with ALL OTHER old users?
Imagine that new Blender users start to nagging like you? Do you love to see all kind of ‘modernization’ all around Blender because some newbie to Blender find this or this or this or… ancient, annoying, etc?
Ewen worse you nagging because things which can be easy avoided. This remind me on people which want to remove 3D cursor from Blender… because he is annoying, ancient, etc. Instead to remove 3Dcursor once for all in preferences.
btw. you forget that you must zoom to make working space bigger
PS. Please don’t talk about “my way or the highway” here. I have long, long list of such stuff in Blender, stuff which can’t be changed, stuff which are important to me, stuff which make my Blender experience miserable.
I know that. And subdivision usually make better job than if you try to manually resolve N-gons. Like I say, this is old reflex. In Zbrush you don’t have this possibilities.
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I was talking about the new user experience, are you a new user? Everyone with experience makes their own startup project and never has to deal with that initial 2.5D weirdness, so what is the point of having it still there?
Speaking about the 3D cursor… I actually do think it’s an ancient, annoying thing that definitely needs improvements, like making it useful in sculpt mode similar to the gizmo in Zbrush, or giving it advanced snapping options instead of the basic “surface project” it has now.
The “my way or the highway” comment was about Zbrush navigation. Are you going to tell me that it is as configurable as Blender is? Because right now I am considering using Autohotkey scripts to just brute force the keys I want to have.
And I still haven’t found a way to disable “classic navigation” and get rid of that rotate-on-empty-space feature…
2.5D is confusing for beginners, but it’s useful to create insert brushes.
If you fing yourself stuck in 2.5D by mistake just CTRL+N will clear the canvas.
But simply clicking on the basic sphere from lightbox or tool palette is the way to go.
It’s not an easy, immediate program, but considering how powerful it is, that’s expected.
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Now I’m starting to think you’re one of those people who won’t eat a sandwich unless it’s cut into triangles…
I’m sorry, I have no human motor function advice for you, other than buy a more ergonomic Wacom pen.
Because everything you do in Zbrush is on a 2D document, like Photoshop. It isn’t a 3D environment so you can’t just create primitives as you would in 3D space. The ability to work on a 3D mesh was only added later, so the entire core of the program is designed with that 2.5D document as the working space. They can’t just get rid of it. It really isn’t that big of a deal once you understand it.
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That’s not something you can disable, unfortunately…
There are only workarounds…
There’s a Blender add-on for ZBrushers missing their navigation in Blender.
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I talk about your attitude toward software ( and I guess all other stuff in life ) you barely scratch. But you have idea how this must look.
So I compare Blender ( as whole ) to C4D… which unfortunately have some sense these days.
Y’know, you ranting, so I have my rant time too. After all navigation in Zbrush is at least usable, which I can’t say for many Blender ‘features’.
When I finally start to use Blender I was literally shocked when realize how he is messed. Then I remember that guy which make most influence to me about Blender… was Max user 
I mean he use Max in studio job, has Max in home because private work ( ‘industry combability’ ), but prefer Blender. Yap, former Max users, although Max is beast, he lack so many stuff which make life easier.
And if you are overwhelmed with all Zbrush features, maybe you can try Zbrush core. I see people which use Core with Blender. In fact for pure sculpting you mostly don’t need all features of full version.
btw. I’m fine with both, Zbrush and Blender navigation. There is always minute or two confusion when switch software… but this is not big deal.
Core is a great way into ZBrush and has been developing into a great little well rounded app all of it’s own. It felt to me like Pixo really wanted to broaden out the brand and workflow and make ZBrush more accessible to a widest number of users. I kept expecting a tablet version of some kind to be announced. Now I most hope ZBrush will not turn onto an exclusivist rarefied studio tool. Although it’s been speculated here that ZBrush will most likely keep on keeping on but possibly shed a few of it’s more individualist artist’s crafts people and freelancer user base along the way. I think this will be very sad.
ZBrush is not at all an orthodox 3D app in the traditional sense. I get the impression that initial way it opens with the infamous 2.5 D canvas is there so it’s true character and inner workings is never hidden for users. Although admittedly CTRL N was one of the first keystrokes I learned with it and I had my own WTF ??? initial experiance too. ZBrush has also got an incredibly wide remit and needs to cater for a wide variety of different users and user cases. It’s simply no good anybody coming into it fighting with it and wanting it to be another way. This is the way it was made and what makes it what it is. To really utilise the power of ZBrush and have full creative freedom within it you really need to take the time to know how it actually works. And this of course goes for having full creative freedom in any other complex application. With Blender it’s the same.
Like my Blender Rocket. Safe in it’s original little plastic bag in a little tin. I did take it out initially and try it out. I couldn’t get the top off at first and didn’t have the confidence to force it until I saw the video of Ton struggling with it too. The original eevee scenes don’t work anymore in current Blender. It’s fast rocketing it’s way into the past and becoming a part of history already.
We have been talking a bit on here about earlier days. I still remember my first direct encounter with the mysterious exciting world of 3D CGI. It was when I was very young and part time jobbing around a little as a traditional storyboard artist. At the time I was working on a CD ROM game mixing live action actors as green screened cut outs within a CGI 3D environment. I vividly remember the big SGI workstations purring away there all squeezed into that little cramped top floor Soho office space and even bigger CRT monitors. Absolutely huge montors that were so weirdly angled and perched on their little swivel ball bases they looked like they were about to all fall off the backs of all the tiny little desks. They were running a magical program then called Softimage. It was the same software that was used for Jurassic Park.
It’s incredible thinking back how limited all of these legendary apps were then compared to something as powerful as Blender is today. Mind boggling.
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Ahh, yes, Softimage on a Silicon Graphics Indigo. Those were the days. I used to work for a large multimedia company in the mid-1990s, where they had an SGI Onyx. That thing was so big that the (not-so-tall) mechanic simply opened it and went inside for repairs.
The very first 3D editor I ever used as a youngster was also one of the first-ever 3D editors for consumer-grade computers: Sculpt 3D on the Amiga in 1987. The first time I saw a demo rendered with that, I had to pick up my jaw from the floor. The demo was called The Juggler and featured a short animation cycle with ray-traced spheres.
Too bad this animated GIF doesn’t loop seamlessly like the original.
Sorry for the off-topic deviation guys. I’ll stop reminiscing now. Back to ZBrush.
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Speaking of offtopic looks like Modeler beta is out…
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB0wXHrWAmCw1S03zZJPAo_6qIIp4hcgD
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Hey I think that might still be very much on topic and it’s your thread after all.
I m still not totally convinced of the real day to day working value of VR sculpting yet. I always would have thought for any creative work on a computer it’s very beneficial to constantly look away from the screen to the world outside to help keep a sense of balance and proportion. As well as protecting the eyes of course. Same as looking away from the paper or the clay while drawing or sculpting. Then I have never tried this, but normally if I have tried to focus too hard into something in VR I feel a bit sea sick. But it does give an amazing sense of scale and weight and mass.
Amazing story’s and examples here ! Yes … I remember this too and the early days of 3D art on the Amiga. Although I only had an Amiga 500 and just played games on it. Lightwave was the first 3D app I started dabbling in but 3D Max was the first I properly learned and worked with.
Another one to look at perhaps for a bit of a time and perspective deep dive is Bingo The Clowno. To those who don’t know it. This was the original experimental film project that was created to help develop and stress test the first ever release version of Maya. Exactly how the Blender open movies have worked.
It’s great and surreal although this is not the greatest video quality. But then compare this to Sintel for instance for character animation TD work, 3D VFX and pure cinematic story telling. Not even the most recent of the Blender open movies. It shows where we have come to. The flexibility limitations of the NURBS patch system they were promoting at this time in Maya then for character and facial animation is really clear here too I think. There was a detailed section about the making of it in one of the first Maya guides I had called Art Of Maya. That was a hard book to get hold ofl but it was an amazingly designed visual and text guide book to understanding Maya. I never saw anything else quite like it. It must have been very expensive to produce and was certianly expensive to buy.
Maya 1.0 or at least version 2.0 at the latest was what D Neg used for all of the CGI and creature effects animation in Pitch Black.
Edit. Sorry about this I will get back to ZBrush too.
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