Zbrush is becoming a great tools, pecially with ZSpehere 2 !

But there are big activation problems with V3.5 R2 :
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=074958

So i have some questions :
Can we install Zbrush on several PC we own ?
Caus the last version checks your hardware, and won't install if the hardware changes too much !

That's stupid, caus when you upgrade your PC, how do you do ?

Remdinds me the problems of some EA games like Spore , with internet activation, you cold not re install it or if some peice of hardware changed !

If someone have a real version (not a cracked one) and know about that points ?

I activated ZBrush several times, once even without internet connection. I had to call a service. But it always works fine.

By the way. The latest version asks for a description of your machine you are using. So you can write "Desktop at home", "laptop" and so on. So they will see that you are the user and how you use it and that you use it on desktop plus laptop.
I find this ok. There are lots of warez copies of ZBrush and I would be happy if they find a way to stop this. If these warez guys have no money then they can work and sculpt freely with Blender.

no problems at all.. whenever i had such issues, i wrote them an email with my customer numbers and nearly instantly i could reactivate my zbrush..

havent installed 3.5 R2 yet, since i got the info about it just today

Thanks for precisions

@Frank_g :
For warez copies, people can not sell a product made with illegal version.
Im' not sure it is a problem for Pixologic of illegal versions :
the main Zbrush target is lot more game , video and other media industry than hobbists.
And in industry, they use legal software.

I own 3D Coat that is very good, but re tested once again from years Zbrush yesterday, and yes, it is really powerfull and very smooth and fast.
You can sculpt big volumes without performance issue (3D Coat uses Voxels that allow lot more things but asks lot mroe processing power) !
I perhaps gonna buy it these days (lot of money ) !

Yes, performance of ZBrush 3.5 is impressive. Yesterday I sculpted some objects. I had instant and fast response with all objects up to 10 million polygons.
I still could sculpt with 17 millions of polygons but then the real-time preview of the scaling of some brushes became a bit laggy.

Yeah performance is big on this tool.

Voxels on 3D Coat, allow to do any type of operation on volumes in real space, but Voxels are lot more slow, if you increase resolution of voxels to one or two steps, you can't use big brushes only small, or it's too laggy, too slow to be able to work correctly.

With Z Spheres 2 , you can now do any type of form, and with the new brushes and features, you can do easily hard surfaces.

Zbrush only needs the retopology and texture paint features of 3D Coat

Yes, I agree.
To me ZBrush has been and still is some kind of magic. It is so impressive how I just can paint new 3d geometry without thinking about technical details. I can add structures, muscles, volume just with a stroke of mouse or pen.
And then I add patterns, colors and holes in seconds. It is really fun to work with it.
And it automatically rigs and skins depending on these zSpheres. So you can change posings in seconds.

It is no wonder that the entire movie industry uses it just to save time during the creative process.

Yeah the ability to change the pose or bone dimensions/orientation is really great indeed.

3D COat and Zbrush have some lot of similitudes in brushes and system :

3D Coat RAsp File and Muscle

Hair from muscles

The new ability to cut by plane in Zbrush also like in their last video , allow now also creating hard surface fast and easily

Yeah , Zbrush with Zsphere 2 and it's big power to sculpt on high geometry even on simple PC are really atttracting me :
It's so smooth and fast , even to paint 3D patterns.
High Price, but top notch tool !

In one of the last videos of Zbrush , they show hard surface modeling ot make a building :
tutorial projection master

Frank_G :
With the new brushes allowing to cut planes and the new projection master of Zbrus , do you plan to use that sort of tools to make 3D assets/buildings or do you stick with traditionnal modelers ?

First I also thought it would be one of the last videos. But look at the right side, there is a slider at the webpage! You can scroll even more down. There are impressive tutorials from movie insiders and much more.


Yes, absolutely. I will do a lot of new stuff in ZBrush now, small props, rocks, ground, characters. And I found this idea to create high detail architectural parts in ZBrush very inspiring.
You can expect a lot of this next year.

@Frank_G :
Yeah good to hear that
This tool i think can really bring to reality in no time all your creativity.
Can we paint on texture, normal , specular maps on Zbrush ?
Not sure you can on normal map ?