For the flseh/armature, you can put volume with voxel sculpting, i don't know if you are really aware of the voxel
aspcet ?

video voxel

Well it would make sense if you animate your model, but Zbrush is not an animation tool, finally you will deliver a static model, so until they add animation features on Zbrush, i don't see it like an incredible thing

The day Zbrush will put :
- animation (they could , caus you make the skeletton and put volume on it with Z spehers 2
- Add hard volumes sculpting : create simple 3D meshes, with standard extrude face tools , cut etc ...
That day Zbrush will be the ultimate tool !

We will see what happens for ZBrush 3.5 and 4.0
I dont know the road map of it.

And you can believe me: I am excited about voxel sculpting. I am a licensee of the C4 engine also and we can sculpt the terrain with voxels there. The whole 3d-space around a terrain is divided into a big data matrix and can store information of the terrain (collision data, geometry, texture data and position of the triplanar mapping). So you can even carve a cave into the terrain or bild bridges between 2 hills.
This is not much different than these modeling tools work. I believe this will be the future of modeling and rendering.

For modeling it's the present

For rendering , C4 , do a great job !
For terrains you can do complex one without putting additionnal meshes on top of it.

Jhon Carmak talked about Voxels for rendering today games ?
I don't see the advantages over polygons, and for storing characters perhaps it will take lot lot more data.
Another thing : how will you have shadows and shaders with voxels ... Well , we can wait , that's not for tomorrow

Yes, J. Carmack also mentioned that characters will have polygons for a while (especially with animations in mind). He also talked about some technical aspects I don't understand in every degree. But he wants to have some kind of sparse octree data combined with ray-tracing. Upcoming technology with multiple cores will be perfect for it (e.g. Larrabee).

The current C4 solution uses voxels for editing and as a data structure. But it also converts the renderable data into polygons in the end. So your graphic card still renders polygons. This way you have no problems with shadows. The standard shadow mapping applies at C4 terrain.

The advantage of such a system is: You can simply scuplt your terrain. You dont have to care about texture-mapping, you can paint textures on top of the geometry and you can have steep walls without distortions. You are simply faster as if you drag every polygon around. You dont have to care about polygons at all.
That is why ZBrush and 3d-Coat became so successful. They simulate the real artistic workflow (clay modeling) at our pc. They dont care much about polygons (at least not for the detailed object, we game developers still have to create low poly meshes).

And this is what the future will bring: more artistic freedom, faster workflow and thus more details in less time.

For realtime 3D, i thought of real voxels, caus using polygons it's already what we do.
We already use voxel to create incredible amount of details : and make polygons and normal maps from that.
There some example on the net using real voxels, but there is also problems like the resolution and smoothing of the scene, that can't perhaps have hard edges.
But it consumes lot more power than polygosn i think ,and don't know if voxel can have better culling or scene management methodes ?

And you would need an entire new tools fro modeling if voxel would be in real time, something like
Z brush or 3D Coat, with standard software you would have to find plugins to convert scenes to voxels
And what would happen to 3D engines, they would have to redevelop all from ground with voxels !

Well ... not for tomorrow !



faster workflow and thus more details in less time.


I assure you that you already can really go fast to add impressive amount of details with scultping tools
The voxel scultping is not new, old modelers also had some similar features, like nurbs volume sculping and others.
With Voxel sculpt or Z Sphere 2 , you have already a big freedom , what is missing is mixing standard hard modeling in 3D coat,Zbrush, or any others ...

Some worflow :
A 3D coat example , you select a part of an helmet by painting a square , in it you use a brush simulating some fiber clothes,
you don't waste time with a pencil tool, but just use the fill tool (like in 2D editors) , you just fill you square selection , and it is ; you have a detailled square on your helemt in some clicks .

You can make your own brushes : from a 2D paint tool, or use directly imported 3D objects as brushes, or create your brushes in 3D coat, or copy some part of the model you sculpt, to use them as brushes !
I like that a lot !

You can after that copy and paste over a round close spline with spacing your new detailled square with it's normal,specular color etc ...in some clicks !

Check that :
some workflow



Well Frank_G, i think you should play with sculpting tools , you 'll have fun and perhaps you'll make incredibl characters packages

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=495318

look at this it's realtime shading on voxel engine working on ogre. And it's maybe two year old.
also physics are working with that.

Cool videos on the link


Year, but like he said , for the moment he could only disapear or create, but not move voxels for deformations !
And you need deformation for animations, sor simulate deformable things.

Like he said, in the final he still generates polygons and UV at beginning and when changes happens to the scene.

hm,

3D Coat looks nice. But with wich Tool I can animate the Model after the Birth ? 3D Coat comes without Animation capabilities right?

,gri

Exactly!

I already use it. As I mentioned, I am a licensee of ZBrush and I also have license of Modo. Both can paint in 3d and do sculpting. I made some nice ZBrush objects so far.

When I start to make characters and monsters for the shop then they will go through this for sure.

Gri:
For animation you should bring the model into another software. If you are new to animation then Fragmotion is an alternative. Otherwise you can check Blender. It is a good animation tool.
But the expensive tools like Lightwave, XSI, Max and Maya can do it as well. Maya is told to be very intuitive in terms of animating.

@Frank_G :

I just suggest you to doawnload 3D Coat Trial, go directly in Voxel Mode , and try the Voxel tools ; i think you'll see the difference with traditionnal scuplting :

With voxel, you can cut, add volume : not just a push of pixels a reeal addition of volume , do booelan operation on volumes etc ...

For it's low prices, before prices increases, it's really really cheap compared to Z brush and it has top notch things like painting directly on 3D model or texture : the normal map, specular , diffuse , you can adjust the % of each one and you can paint better with a pressure tablet indeed

Give a try at voxels !