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NP, Gedd. (I'm a she, btw. :) )
The layers with sculpting and painting is also very much a part of Mudbox. The main advantage to Mudbox (for the painting) is that it is set up very much like Photoshop and the files are easily bridged between the two programs. You can, as in ZBrush, strengthen or diminish effects of both scultping and painting. It is even stronger than ZBrush in that you can use the blend modes with these enhancements on the painting side. I find that every program does many things similar and each has strengths and weakness over other programs. This is why I aim for workflows that allow me to sample the strengths of each when working. I no longer work in just one program.
There are some really exciting things happening in the area of PBR blender shader presets for Blender
I've never used multires. I don't really understand what it does compared to subd modifier (which I use constantly for everything.) Also (maybe?) connected I have no idea how to make normal maps. It's something I keep meaning to explore.
So the impression I get is that Zbrush is more advanced in sculpting and remeshing, but these days you can do most of the things in Blender to some degree. For me, I rarely use sculpt except to maybe add a few details, because I prefer working by moving vertices around to 'painting' type actions. I wasn't particularly disappointed by Blender's sculpting tools when I was trying them out though. I'm going to take a guess and say that for me, it probably isn't worth the $800 (9,000 million AUD) despite seeing everyone and their dog putting "made in Zbrush!" on their products. As opposed to something like Marvelous Designer which so far as I'm aware nothing works anywhere near the same way (where are you Blender cloth 2015 guy.)
I wonder if PAs feel that "made in Blender!" would cheapen their products -random-
That brings me to a question.... about layers. I'm interested in knowing how to use these properly. Do you have a link or two to some vid tutorials that you liked Cris? Thanks! :-)
That's why I menteiond that Multires is specfically for sculpting.
Not comparing Blendeer to MD since that's a whole other topic, but Blender does have stitch.
Edit: referring to the cloth sim feature as shown by this CG Masters video, not the uv stitch Google search brings up. There are a number of tutorials that showcase the feature better and even multiple add-ons that extend the functionality but the examples I found had figures without starter clothing so I didn't want to cross any forum policies. If interested, just search on "Blender sew tutorials" But yes, from what I've seen the cloth sewing features lag much farther behind.
k thanks, I'll keep that in mind, and I really appreciate the input.:)
Here's another Cloth Simulation Workflow in Blender by Spring Box Studio. It's not to compare to MD, just as a reference for anyone who hasn't had a chance to play with cloth in Blender and might be interested.
I've played with Blender's cloth sim before and found it an exercise in frustration, but I also get the feeling I might just be missing some of the niceties of it since that video made it look much smoother than my slowly processing baking efforts. I didn't know about the sewing part though. Also the thing I was referring to was the 2015 Blender Conference video on cloth sim addon that you linked awhile back - it looked really impressive but I didn't catch a name of the addon to look for if it ever surfaced? I like the sewing pattern style of making clothing so much more (although honestly being able to mess with the dynamics as they're happening (grabbing and moving bits to interactively adjust) is my favourite part of MD. Would love to see Blender having that sort of functionality because it's so intuitive to use.
Her name is Cris.
Yes, she mentioned that.
I'm thinking it might be a while for Blender to have that level of interaction since there are so many irons in the fire with it, not the least of which is supposedly a good deal of rewrite which among other things should allow for easier customization of the interface.
Switching subjects for a minute, the whole custom interface concept does have some downfalls I don't think anyone has really talked about. Blender Sensei has put together a very nice and well thought out redesign of the interface. I purposely avoided it when he first came out with it because I realized none of the tutorials would match his very nice interface. I'm looking back at it again years later and am really impressed with a lot of what he's done. I highly recommend anyone using Blender to take a minute and at least look at his stuff. Not only that, but he put together an extensive tutorial series. I've only watched a bit of his tutorials but what I have seen has impressed me. However.... it still limits one to using his tutorials to get going.
Say we get the flexibility of redesigning the interface... While making it simpler and more modular definately has it's advantages and I think will bring much of Blender's functionality within the reach of a much wider audience, and I believe being able to strip it down and redesign it to serve various more specialized roles suited to individual needs will be extremely helpful, it's not without cost. That cost is tutorials and training. Luckily, there are more people putting out tutorials every day on Youtube now so perhaps the time is right for something like this now when it wouldn't have worked at an earlier time. I don't know, it's just some thoughts that occurred to me just recently.
It's funny how I see so many complaints about the interface / controls etc. by new users to Blender. For me it did look alien at first, but then I realised it was because it was following its own logic instead of doing what every other windows program does in terms of design. As soon as I grasped that and figured out how to rearrange+assign windows and save my own startup everything was great and I wondered why every program wasn't designed the way Blender was.
I guess that's not a very common reaction to the UI though?
I do wish rebinding keys was less of an adventure. I've rebound most everything I want to now but some of it involved looking up python code which is a bit silly. Then again with some effort you really can bind anything to any sort of combination and I think that's really cool.
Here's a good basic intro to layers in ZBrush:
I have wanted to try it out but was hesitant. Was it difficult to set up, Gedd?
I haven't actually played with it yet,. just going through the videos and decided I'll try it. Part of what convinced me was that s/he has a 'disable/enable' menu feature which sets all of one's settings back to the way they were prior to install (supposedly, haven't tested.) The install video looks very straight forward, no more complicated for the most part then any script although a little different in that the script has to be in .zip format when installing. And of course with Blender, we can dupicate the install folder so that any changes are localized to the one version and we have an original backup. That last part is something I think Blender doesn't get enough credit for. Since it doesn't put anything in the registry and is totally self contained, it's easy to make multple instances that can run side-by-side without interfering with each other.
I probably over answered your question but I was trying to cover any questions others might have along the same lines.
The other big issue I had was BS changes some of the shortcuts and I felt this would cause a lot of problems trying to learn. In the end I think that would have been a yes and no. There are a core set of shortcuts most of us use and changing those can be problematic but beyond that core, we are often going to menus or using the spacebar menu anyways. The w - specials menu key was changed to something else (forget what atm) and that might cause me a moment's hickup but that's the only one I remember jumping out at me. Oh wait, the d key is changed from draw to duplicate... so there are some that I think would come up when muscle memory went to do something and I didn't get what I expected, but guess the real answer is to play with it.
In the end, I've accepted I'll end up changing the interface drastically so I'm more open to trying someone else's interface that diverges from the norm, especially one that has such clear advantages in some cases.
All of this did make me realize something else though. I had hoped to create my own version of the interface and release it for others, and I still might. But revisiting all of this meant realizing that no matter how nice of an interface I might create, there is the whole "learning curve" issue. Blender Sensei has a whole tutorial series and a nice interface and I was hesitant to try it so I'm guessing that might interfere with custom interfaces across the board some. I still think we need to have changes to the interface and that opening it up to the larger public to try different things is the most efficient way of finding truly effective changes, just that there are speed bumps to overcome.
The fact that we can even consider this is pretty phenomenal since no mainstream product would open itself up to this type of flexibility at the moment. The makers of those products are too focused on a "standardized" version, and for some good reasons. Luckily, I think OpenSource software has an edige in this regard in that it is just naturally more flexible on average.
Well yes they can share user preferences, but they can also run with different user preferences. That part can get a little complicated for someone new and I would like an easier way of managing things like preferences among versions etc.. not totally intuitive as there is an intuitive way of doing it where one wouldn't have to think about it. It's just that no one has worked that out yet. ;)
Oh GOODIE. Thanks so much!
Just Tried the "Blender sensei"...I should have read all the problems reported in their forums over there!!!
Completely locked up my windows laptop with not even a curser visible when I tried to open a previous file
I spent a good portion of this morning restoring by Blender install back its previous state.
your milage may vary but proceed with caution is my advice.
Glad you brought that up. It is why I mentioned making a copy of Blender and installing it on that rather then the original install however. I hadn't been to the forums to see that latelly and I had forgotten that was the case quite a while ago.
It does bring up another important point in that anything that heavily modifies the base program through scripting such as Blender Sensei has the potential to conflict at any point since Blender is a constanty changing animal and no matter how well something is written, functions will break on updates. This highlights why I am looking forward to a version of Blender that actively supports interface modification rather then just saying "well you can do it all through scripting."
With add-ons we see this also, but any issues are usually confined to the add-on, or at least we can disable that particular add-on easily until any issues are addressed. With a whole interface redo this becomes much more complicated.
In the end, I'm still going to try it out but I will definately do it on a copy rather then my main install. Thanks again wolf359 and sorry you ended up having to spend so much time getting back to where you were good to go agian.
I'm actually working on some concepts in interface design, specifically as with Blender and have notes some might find interesting:
These are issues I see with the current interface:
* No keys/menu items, etc... should lead to a dead end that is not intuitive to get out of. Example, the alt+f10 key maximizes to full screen but leaves no visible way to get back out. If someone hits that key combination without realizing it, they are effectively locked. They may not know how to save their work even since there is no menu available. This should never happen.
* Shortcut keys should be reserved for functions that is consistantly common/repetitive, such as grab, rotate, scale, extrude for multiple reasons:
* Shortcut keys should follow standardized keys that have become universal. F1 is universally used for "help" not "open."
* Shortcut keys should not be duplicated. It only adds clutter and causes confusion. If a recognized standard such as F1 for help and ctl+o for open emerges, the keys should be changed to reflect that with an option to set keys to the old format or the updated format. Duplicating functionality is not an answer and will always lead to problems.
* Like shortcut keys, menus and menu items should not have functionality duplicated to accomodate older ways used in the application and a newer more universally adopted standard for the same reasons mentioned with shortcut keys. Again, there should be an option to keep an older menu format or the newer more universally accepted format.
* Menus and dialog boxes should be tiered. Putting every option available on the same level of a menu or dialog box creates visual clutter and takes mental resources that should be dedicated to being creative and finishing the task at hand rather then sorting through the menu/dialog box. Anything that is not of primary importance and/or changed constantly should be in an advanced button or sub menu with the option to 'show always' (on a per item/menu basis) for those that prefer everything on one level. The reason this should be an option rather then the default is that anyone who is comfortable with that level of visual impact will be easily able to change to the more complex setup whereas anyone who gets easily disoriented with that much visual information is not likely to easily strip it back to something manageble
* Menu items, shortcut keys, etc that a relatively small % of the users might use should be available as "more options" for the same reason as tiered menus. Having separate menu items for zooming at 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc... on a menu that has other more important options will visually distract from the more important options. For many people, a simple zoom function will suffice. If keeping zoom levels, they should be moved to a submenu. Keyboard shortcuts for something like this should be manually set up as there are only so many keyboard shortcuts (even Ton mentioned this) and only a portion of the userbase would care to have shortcuts for this functionality.
* Having functionality duplicated in multiple locations should be very carefully thought out and there should be a very specific reason for duplicating it that takes precedence over the cost that doing so has. Duplicating functionality has shown to have a very noticible cost in various areas including extra clutter in the general interface which is disorienting, inability for new users to get used to a repeatable way of doing something as they root around and find a function in different spots, as if it kept moving, and tutorials/help from others that use various methods of doing something for no good reason often other then that was the way a given person settled on/learned, which makes the whole learning process more difficult then it should be and drains mental resources from being creative.
* What gets placed in window menus, popup dialog boxes and context sensitive menus should be well thought out and follow a consistant format that is easily discernable by anyone coming at the program totally new. If a new person can't make sense of what is where, it is an indicator that most people using the application are dedicating resources to just getting around that they could be using to being more creative and efficient.
In the documentation I'm putting together for my project I also have a common gotchas section and this particular one is something many might be interested in, either for themselves or for remembering when working with other less experienced Blender users:
Here is an example of the type of functionality I would like to see Blender move towards:
The idea is, it's intuitive, standards based, and is extremely functional for the majority of users (based on my interactions with Blender users, new and experienced.)
Interface Notes Addendum:
* Shortcut keys should not be assigned by default to something that could inadvertently do damage if accidentally hit. Example, ctl+u will save the startup file. This type of functionality should be more manual so that someone is very well aware they are changing their startup file. It is not something most users should have as a default.
Does anyone know what this is?
ALT-CTRL-T. TimerMenu. This menu offers access to information about drawing speed. The results are displayed in a pop-up.
* Names of menu items, modifiers, etc.. should be as unambiguous as possible. Having two items which basically do the same function for different applications should indicate both their relationship to the similar function and what differentiates it from the other. An example of this is the Subdivide modifier for modeling and the Multires modifier for sculpting. They are almost identical but have different purposes. Naming one "Subdivide for Modeling" and the other "Subdivide for Sculpting" would make more sense. It's very easy for someone learning a new task/function to confuse it with something else they are familiar with such that they keep going down a wrong path not understanding why it isn't working.
In the previous example, someone sees a tutorial on sculpting, the demonstration shows using the Multires modifier but the person using it is already familiar with the Subdiv modifier. The way our brain works is that it 'autocorrects' and optimizes what we remember so the individual keeps trying to apply the Subdiv modifier without realizing what they are doing, often even after watching the tutorial multiple times. Conversly, two very different functions with simliar sounding names can cause just as much confusion at times.
Hmmm...looks like it is for working with a type of constraint.
Edit: Well, looking further, once I saw the menu, found this, though it pertains to the older 2.4 system. https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?5984-Ctrl-At-T-is-10-Timer-What-is-it
ZBrush does have some cool customizations you can do. This is a menu with subpalettes I created that I keep in the left-hand drawer. While many customize the center region, above and below the document, I chose to make this menu because then I can keep everything else as default when I do training or tutorials. My menu consists of these customized subpalettes:
http://prnt.sc/c3onng
http://prnt.sc/c3onvi
http://prnt.sc/c3oob4
http://prnt.sc/c3oohg
They are the tools I most often use. On the right hand shelf, I dock the various default menus I normally access. It has been very successful to my workflow. That's the key to almost any customizable program; find what works for you.
To make sure I don't stray too far from the Blender topics which should remain the focus of this thread, there are several addons that have come out recently for adding customization functionality to Blender. There is a great Asset Library addon and a Pie Menu addon worth looking into.