The big Blender Sculpt Mode thread (Part 1)

Danny has been using Blender for quite some time already. I reviewed his Eye Designer add-on more than a year ago.

I agree with his conclusions: most ZBrush brushes ─ especially the smoothing algorithms ─ still feel better than those in Blender Sculpt Mode, but the convenience of being able to do everything from A to Z in Blender wins, including the possibility to have multiple camera views on screen while you work, to name just one example.

There are also Blender Sculpt Mode brushes that are better than ZBrush equivalents. I love Sculpt Mode’s Kelvinlets-based brushes such as Elastic Deform and the Elastic mode of Snake Hook. And I adore the Pose brush.

I also think polygon modeling in ZBrush sucks a bit. ZModeler is an interesting approach, but poly modeling in Blender is easier and more powerful in combination with modifiers.

To name another example, instancing of an object in ZBrush is cumbersome: you need to use a macro that initiates Nanomesh on a plane, then you need to position the plane, sometimes flip edges for the right orientation, it feels like a forced workaround when compared to Blender’s linked duplicates.

And one of my biggest complaints about ZBrush is the lack of a solid GI renderer. You need to keep buying Keyshot upgrades for that, and the scene update connection between ZBrush and Keyshot breaks when you quit either ZBrush or Keyshot.

So there you have it: I’m not an unconditional ZBrush fanboy, but I’m not an unconditional Blender fanboy either. I just keep evaluating the tools that are available, and making deliberate decisions based on their progress. For example, MagicaCSG might become a really useful sculpting tool within a few updates.

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