Quote the unbiased saint"…Anyways, the irony is that those who call the author biased are speaking from their own bias…"
:rolleyes:
->eyeroll deluxe.
I have a big fear…
You will destroy Blender…
Indeed.
One of the few times that you are so right!!!
Biased, unbiased… what are we talking about?
what this reviewer wrote is not fair. Can’t you see it?
He doesn’t even dare to seriously comment or even compare blender UI to the zbrush UI. Or the maya, 3dmax one.
Period.
Regarding pixologic. Do you think they care about critics on their UI?
No.
They have their reasons. It’s not a bad UI. It’s an efficient one. People are producing masterpieces, using it. So, obviously, it’s a good UI.
If we can do the same using blender, then, it’s a good app. If not, it’s a bad app, it’s a solution for losers only.
Recently, blender also became a fine app for digital sculpting. More and more new users will come and join their efforts with us.
The only against it, is some old blender users. Maybe Endi is among them, I’m not sure. Really, I wonder.
Key words are “speaking FROM their own bias”. Pointing out someone’s biased perspective used to criticize someone elses biased perspective is an objective observation written off as ironic. Its the pot calling the kettle black, as the phrase goes. I never claimed to be non biased, but I did claim to be software neutral. Being aware of ones bias is the only way to negate it. I dont think you undestood that, or maybe it didnt fit in with your confirmation bias. (see what I did there?)
Regarding interfaces, zbrush is probably one of the most important pieces of software (don’t respond to a straw man and try to argue it’s not the most important. No one can deny its importance in the field), but it’s interface is sooooo hard to learn and figure out. Seriously. The first time you ever use it… you draw a tool on the canvas and then go to move it and… draw another tool. The very first thing that happens is completely counter-intuitive. I’ve been working with it for 2-3 months and I am just now beginning to feel like I’m getting a hang of, not just the interface, but the entire LOGIC of the program. And yet, that doesn’t stop people from using this very extremely powerful program.
You would have a point IF and only IF zbrush didnt have a monopoly when it comes to sculpting software. I agree the UI is difficult and that its unnecessarily different…the guy who made zbrush is a bit…quirky from what I am told by pixologic employees that I know personally. I was at a user group meeting run by the heads of pixologic here in LA and afterwards via discussions, they simply admitted to being different for the sake of being different. This is back when Zbrush was a 2.5D application. Would they have been a success if they had equal competition with a more familiar interface? Probably not.
General 3d software is different… the market is over saturated with high quality and capable options, you have 3ds max, maya, modo, XSI, Truespace, cinema 4D, lightwave, Huidini, Carrara…ect With Zbrush, whats their competition? Which sculpting app can push way past 20 million polygons with ease? The reason Zbrush is popular is because its the only one capable of doing that kind of 3d sculpting…so next gen cg artist have no choice but to use it.
That fact is what makes your argument flawed, otherwise I would agree with you wholeheartedly on it. Blender on the other hand is one drop in an oversatured 3d market, it doesnt necessarily out perform any of the alternatives, nor does it underperform. So it doesnt have the luxury of being the only app to use for that kind of work, unless you are a poor student or someone who doesnt have access to commercial software. IF the commercial apps were just as accessible to youth and those without access to it, I can promise you blender would not be as popular as it is now. Back then, if you wanted to learn an autodesk product you had to pay $300+ just for a student license which would expire. It was stupid, now AD products are free for students. Even Modo charges for its trial.
The truth is that blender is not likely to be adopted for widespread use in the industry, but NOT because of the interface. It’s the same reason that open office will never seriously challenge MS office. Companies have already committed so many resources to other programs that starting over completely with a skill set not many professionals have mastered is kind of unreasonable. There are much bigger barriers than the UI. Again, if zbrush can be so widely adopted, it proves that an interface is not a serious barrier to adoption.
You cannot write off the interface as not being a deterrent…and I’m not talking about how the window system works but the actual process and visual workflow required. The learning curve and often unnecessary design decisions will keep it from being used widely. It cost time and money to train people to adapt to new software, the harder the software is the longer it will take the and more it will cost. The software also needs to be reliable and have the right support present. I think blender can get there, but its not at that point yet, nor helped when people attack the pushes for that growth.
Also didnt realize how old this thread was. Thanks Kilon! (sarcasm).
Which sculpting app can push way past 20 million polygons with ease?
Not zbrush of course, on a single mesh. I mean, not that simple.
On the contrary, spending some money to install 24 GB of ram, on a 64 bit app like blender (and not zbrush), well, I can easily sculpt on a 10M mesh. And in some cases, maybe more. I don’t think zbrush can do much more.
we both love zbrush SantHaven, but I don’t love it that much. Many ways to skin a cat, blender is another way. Closer to art, from a different perspective of view. My perspective, in this case.
Two points to consider…
ZBrush UI: Yes, it’s incredibly strange and (in some areas) flat-out awful. Artists actually DO mention this. Thing is, what it can do makes the pain worthwhile. ZBrush is most likely the best software on the market for digital sculpting. As such, even if the UI is non-standard, unintuitive, and hard to use - it’s going to be used and praised for it’s unique functionality/performance. Blender doesn’t have an area of excellence to balance the UI, so comparing the two is apples & oranges.
Open Office: Might want to look into that one again. Governments and businesses around the world are switching over and, whilst the PR campaign is fierce, there are reports of the savings it offers around the world. The main reason for Open Office not being adopted even faster than it is would be similar to why most old studios will stick to old software: file compatibility, training costs, existing plugins/macros… not the fact they’ve paid for the old software.
When you have gigabytes of old files and you are not sure (or know outright) you cannot open them with the new software, it’s the lack of access to old files (not software expense) that is preventing you from switching.
When you’ve trained a large number of staff in the use of one particular software application and are considering moving them across to another, it’s the time/money cost of training staff (not software expense) that is preventing you from switching.
When you’ve built up a workflow/process involving a large number of custom macros, purchased plugins, and custom scripted “glue” and they won’t work on the new software platform, it’s the time/development/money cost of replacing the support software/addons (not software expense) that is preventing you from switching.
People claiming that complaints about Blender’s interface are coming from a bias due to having paid for more expensive software are simply talking from ignorance or dishonesty. There is far more to switching software than an interface and, frankly, as ZBrush proves - if the software does something you need, you get over the bad interface. Blender does somewhat to slightly (depending on comparison) less than the commercial applications.
The interface is a negative (less so than it was, but still not a positive) for which there isn’t a balancing need to outweigh it’s inconvenience. It being free doesn’t negate the fact it doesn’t do anything BETTER than the others. THAT is why people don’t hold back from criticising it, not because their choice cost them more
Not sure what your computer specs are but for me it is that simple. With a 6 core CPU and about 16 gigs of ram 20 million polys is nothing. I got higher on better built computers in the animation lab at a nearby film school (one of pixologics designers teaches there). In fact everything I know about zbrush comes directly from pixologic employees. Higher polycounts can happen in localized areas as well which can be masked out and detailed before being hid again.
I honestly have trouble believing you can get a decent 10mil sculpt out of blender, I dont think the app can handle it regardless of computer specs. I tried pushing Blender with the same system and it chugs with just 2 million polys…and it still looks like arse. Never the less, I am impressed with what you can pull out of Blender but it seems like you have to use a process of tricks and desimations to make that happen. Thats not very artist friendly, where as with Zbrush its far more free form to just sculpt whats needed without tricks. That said, I dont like the interface much either… Mudbox feels the best but capability wise its not there… projection painting however its one of the best.
I look forward to seeing improvements in Blender as far as sculpting goes but I dont think most artist can say its a good high poly sculpting tool that can replace zbrush by any means for the serious work. Not yet anyways.
I am with Michalis here: on my machine I can sculpt details smoothly at 25million faces. Grabbing stuff with a radius of 160, for example, is still smooth (though not ultra-smooth). At ten million polys it is smooth sailing all over, no question. Sculpting is excellent at that amount of polys. No tricks required on my machine - it just works well, I can attest to that.
And as you can tell from my sig, I do not have the newest machine on the block: just lots of memory and a amd 7970. And by now most people seem to be aware of the fact that Blender’s opengl works arguably better in high poly scenes on an amd card than any nvidia card (same holds true for Cinema4d).
Anyway, sculpting is great on my machine. And with the new dynamic topology we can add more detail where it is actually needed, and that really adds a boost to the sculpting experience on my machine, allowing me to go into insane detail at extremely high poly counts in specific areas.
I would have to add though, that using a matcap does slow down sculpting mode - it taxes the GPU quite a bit.
On Zbrush: on my Asus epe121 tablet with 4gb and a puny intel gpu, I can still go up to 8 million polies while sculpting - very impressive, and with the wacom digitizer a lot of fun. Zbrushes software renderer is really something.
6GB, 12GB 16GB or 64GB will really make naff all difference with the poly count per tool you can get with Zbrush (unless you use HD geometry which is a pain in the arse to use). When ZBrush 5 comes out you’ll then be able to use more than the 4GB maximum you’re currently limited to, no matter what spec machine you use.
PS what made this thread be regurgitated ? I thought the article had been beaten to death months ago.
Not sure Richard, Kilon brought it back up and not checking I assumed it was a new thread.
@herbert, Do you have any video footage of such smooth sculpting in Blender, with 10 or that 25 million polygons you mention? I really find it hard to believe. As for the EP121, Im amazed it handles sculpting as well as it does, I wont doubt you on that one…as I have seen it in action myself. Purchased a Microsoft Surface Pro instead and regretted it, theres no damn pen pressure atm for major art apps (outside of sketchbook pro and art rage).
If I can find the time I’ll record a video sometime this upcoming weekend - and I seem to recall Michalis mentioning he has an ATI/AMD card installed as well in one of his posts - which would explain why he has no performance problems with sculpting. But honestly, I am not lying or exaggerating here - sculpting is completely smooth at 10 million polys, and slightly less smooth at 25 million. Of course, setting a brush at 200 size while covering the entire object is laggy since it is affecting millions of polys simultaneously, and for larger shapes we should be working at a lower multi-res level anyway. But for medium and detail work it works more than fine.
At one of the schools I teach I tested Blender on HP workstations with Quadro cards installed: the performance in Blender was (very) underwhelming.
Currently almost everyone seems to be purchasing Nvidia cards for the sole reason that those work with GPU rendering in Cycles - but this comes with a caveat attached: in my experience, even with double-sided lighting turned off for all faces, raw opengl performance in Blender just isn’t that great compared to AMD. At this point perhaps the best solution is to have two cards installed: AMD for viewport performance (and sculpting), and a Nvidia card for GPU rendering.
I think its funny its like saying black beard didn’t like blender, wtf, lol , rolling on the flooring laughing.
I can’t find a way to sculpt smoothly over 1.5million, tried with various method of mutiresolution/matcap/VBO etc. (no offense meant but you guys sure you reading the number correctly??)
Using hd 6970 + i7 + 16gb ram
It seems very touchy if some are really able to get 15-20million, others barely 2 million.
Herbert, I would be glad to see this.
Though I think you are confusing how the sculpting works…it has nothing really to do with the GPU. It should be entirely based off the CPU. The GPU will deal with the real time rendering aspects or maybe cycles processing if set, but that shouldnt be what makes or breaks the sculpting performance in Blender. That said, I did test out the sculpting on my ATI FirePro (which is the high performance ATI card for CG work) and performance didnt change one iota.
I went back and checked the dynotopo thread and Michalis is working on a mac laptop and from what I read he and others were struggling to go past 700k polygons, unless thats changed since they last posted in that thread.
Again I am truly amazed at what some can pull out of Blenders sculpting but its really not doing well on the poly front what I can see and I really doubt you are pushing 10-25 million. That would be 25,000,000 polygons. This could be mistaken for say maybe 2.5 million polygons which is 2,500,000 or 250k polygons which is 250,000.
I am on windows 7 32 bit, gts 450, 2GB of ram and can sculpt with blender past 5 million polys easily. I have gone to 7 million but can’t go higher because I run out of memory. As you can see my hardware sucks so I am sure someone with half decent hardware can get to 10-25 million…
My computer doesn’t even run hard, GPU at like 30%, CPU just popping up and down doing hardly anything. But framerate is unusable past 2million.
Some sort of bottleneck not all user’s appear to have to the same extent.
@Rhys I don’t know what voodoo is at work that gives some guys with shitty hardware like me okay multi-res performance, and guys with better hardware like you can’t sculpt over 1.5 million polys.
If you have already tried the usual tricks VBO on, turn off double sided, lower or turn off undo, no mat caps, didn’t use a base mesh that has too low or too high a poly count, close outliner.
Than I honestly wouldn’t have an idea as to what was up.
Right, had enough of this:
http://www.estructor.biz/testje/Clipboard01.jpg
That’s Blender running at 2560*1440, and unless the rest of the world has gone insane it says 25165824 faces, more than 50 million tris.
Check the strokes: how on earth could I have drawn those without a smooth running viewport and sculpting experience?! I did not even have to switch to a lower multires level, all running smooth, hitting <alt> a gives me 24fps.
How can you say that?
Of course it has something to do with the GPU: an intel onboard chip just does not have the poly rate to deal with high amounts of polygons. The GPU drives opengl, which drives Blender’s viewport, which can have a severe impact on the sculpting performance in Blender. The reason Zbrush doesn’t care about the video card, is because it is not opengl driven, but using Pixologic’s own software based approach. On my intel baked epe121 tablet sculpting in Blender is absolutely horrid, and I reach the ceiling very fast. But Zbrush works quite well on that machine too. My old 5870 had great sculpting performance as well - compared, the newer 7970’s poly fill rate is not that different, I believe.
CPU performance is undeniably just as important of course, since the internal data to deal with millions of polys counts for something as well - it is an interplay of both, and both CPU and GPU are taxed to the max at higher poly counts.[/QUOTE]
Uhmmm: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=25165824
Sigh… If people still don’t believe this (I could have added a digit in post to this screenshot!) - well, I don’t think a video would persuade those skeptics either.
After experimenting I’m sculpting nearly smoothly with 50million tri’s.
But I don’t know what’s different… why is it touchy like that
I was initially surprised to see your ati card and you struggling - see? It does work. Nice that I am not the only one here.
Oh, and after doing some research, it seems Zbrush cannot really go beyond about 20million polys due to its 32bit architecture. Which means my and Rhys’s sculpting outperforms Zbrush in “raw” performance. Kinda interesting.
This will all change when the 64bit version of Zbrush comes out, of course.
As I alluded to in my earlier post ZBrush can go to hundreds of millions of polys per tool if using HD geometry but it’s a pain to use. While you can only really get approx 20M polys in zbrush, that is per tool. You can have many many tools at this 20M level in a scene without much impact on the whole viewport.