Z brush

I thought id do a post on one of the 3d tools thats made the biggest impact to the character modeling/design industry in recent years. Pixolgic's Z brush is a digital sculpting software that came out in early 2000. The tools major advantage to traditional subdivision modeling methods. Their propitary method of subdividing lets the user work on a mesh in the millions and move through multiple levels of subdivision with ease. The user is able to move from their base mesh of mere hundreds of polygons to a million and still be able to sculpt directly onto the mesh without decreased performance. The program does this so well that you are able to sculpt skin details onto a character such as scales or pores. The program's other major advantage is the intuitiveness of the program. The tools relate more to traditional sculpting or painting than to computer based hard surface or nurb modeling. The system also allows your to "paint" details onto a mesh using alpha maps that you can make from any 2d program like photoshop. The system pairs very well with other programs like maya or 3dsmax, thereby improving the pipeline and streamlining workflow.