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Author Topic: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?  (Read 2972 times)

Offline FramFramson

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Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« on: August 14, 2014, 10:11:22 PM »
Of our membership, I know Andrew Rae does his masters in 3D - but does anyone else? If so, what program do you prefer to use to make figures with?


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Offline Andrew Rae

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #1 on: August 14, 2014, 10:18:17 PM »
I use zbrush, though it's not a case of preferring it to anything else, it's the only digital sculpting program I've used. It does everything I need so rather than spend time learning the ropes on something else, I sculpt!  :)

Offline Connectamabob

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #2 on: August 14, 2014, 11:59:48 PM »
ZBrush is kind of the pro industry standard, and widely regarded as the most capable sculpting program on the market.

The problem is it costs way more than a non-pro can afford. Pros and students often completely brain-fart this "little" detail away and recommend it (and other similarly pro-priced programs) to everyone will-nilly as if it's something anyone can pick up. This is kinda a pet peeve of mine.

For hobby work there's a few more economical ones (like in the 100-300 dollar range), but the only ones I'm familiar with are the free ones.

Sculptris I highly recommend, though it's only for "pure" sculpting, and can't do many of the things you'd want for pro work. You can definitely sculpt printable minis with it, but you can't do things like retopographing and rigging a sculpt for reposing, or breaking down a sculpt for multi-part casting.

Blender can do almost as much as a pro industry program like 3DSMax or Maya, but it still suffers hugely from the Linux world's general passive-aggressive disdain for GUIs. I want to recommend it, but honestly can't on account of how you have to spend an impractical amount of time studying and memorizing crap up front in order to even start using it. Also when it comes to just the pure sculpting tools, Sculptris is still better.

Sketchup can do a lot of what Blender can do if you load it up with plugins, and is much, much more new-user friendly. You can use this to section sculpts made in Sculptris (though not retopo or rig them).

Avoid Poser and Poser-like apps such as Daz Studio. These can entice people with the promise of CG mannequins they can easily tailor and dress up into a character, pose, then print, but there are two problems: 1) the models aren't print-friendly at all, needing at the very least lots of mesh editing and retopoing, and 2) the models still don't bend like real people in a lot of ways, and so need a lot of very careful posing and resculpting after posing just to get rid of the wonky marionette-ness. I've seen some unfortunate models printed from these, and even cleaned up, they don't look right. Sort of one of those things that makes things easier for the layman at the cost of also making screwing things up easier, so Sturgeon's Law has a field day.

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Offline Lovejoy

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2014, 07:09:44 AM »
ZBrush is kind of the pro industry standard, and widely regarded as the most capable sculpting program on the market.

The problem is it costs way more than a non-pro can afford....


Surely that depends on the non-pro in question... it's about £500, and let's be honest, have any of us here spent less than that on our wargaming hobby?

£500 isn't too much for a toy - people spend more than that on ipads and phones! It's not something I'd do, but then I don't really want to do digital sculpting. And for a pro to recommend it is perfectly correct - zbrush is really the tool you need to buy, and you need a machine good enough to run it well. All businesses have some form of entry costs, and for digital sculpting, that's it.

Oh, and a pet peeve for the OP - it's digital sculpting, not 3D sculpting... all mini sculptors are 3D sculptors!  :D

Offline Relic

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #4 on: August 15, 2014, 07:12:34 AM »
Sketchup!

all you need to make good quality printable models. I've done a lot and printed / molded / casted so I know what I'm talking about. Blender and Rhino might be ok, but the learning curve is higher. Also you can sculpt with sketchup and do almost whatever you want, if you just get the right plug ins and take time to learn.

-M

Offline OSHIROmodels

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2014, 07:17:15 AM »
I would recommend Rhino for hard line work as it's what I'm used to, not an easy buy at £900 but still one of the cheaper main packages.

You're probably best of with Sketchup and the plugins though  :)

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Offline zemjw

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2014, 08:18:25 AM »
zbrush is expensive, but to date, every update has been free, including major releases.

I bought zbrush 2(*) many moons ago and they've just announced 4R7. I've lost track of the number of updates, but it's been at least half a dozen. As far as I'm aware, nobody else does free updates - and nobody's quite sure how pixologic do it. There's also a huge number of free tutorials in the zbrush classroom.

There are plenty of general modellers that also do sculpting (eg Modo), but check for update pricing. Autodesk have started to go subscription only, so that's also something to consider.

3d programs are very complicated, so it's also worth checking out what tutorials are available for whatever you choose, and how much they cost. If you thought wargaming was an expensive hobby, you could be in for a nasty shock o_o


(*) despite having owned it for a number of years, I've never actually produced anything with it. I still live in hope, however, so have avoided selling my licence, despite the fact I'd get more for it secondhand than it cost me when I bought it :)

Offline Vermis

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #7 on: August 15, 2014, 12:02:16 PM »
I recently downloaded Sculptris and Blender to have a go. I can just get the hang of pulling voxels(?) about in the former, but the latter's a complete mystery to me.

Surely that depends on the non-pro in question... it's about £500, and let's be honest, have any of us here spent less than that on our wargaming hobby?

In one go? And in addition to that £500+ of hobby stuff?

Offline Andrew Rae

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #8 on: August 15, 2014, 12:35:42 PM »
The problem is it costs way more than a non-pro can afford. Pros and students often completely brain-fart this "little" detail away and recommend it (and other similarly pro-priced programs) to everyone will-nilly as if it's something anyone can pick up. This is kinda a pet peeve of mine.

At least no one has suggested Freeform.

And the question was what we prefer to use after all.

Offline Lovejoy

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #9 on: August 15, 2014, 01:38:49 PM »
In one go? And in addition to that £500+ of hobby stuff?

Why does it have to be in addition? You just don't spend on minis for a while, save up, and buy the software - if that's what you want.

Sure, £500 is a lot if you are just messing about, but as a serious tool, it's not expensive. After all, Tom Meier suggests buying 3 grand's worth of magnifying gear to improve putty sculpting... next to that, zbrush is a bargain!

Offline obsidian3d

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #10 on: August 15, 2014, 05:04:19 PM »
I started out with 3D Studio Max around v2.5 and stuck with it until 6 or 7. After that I couldn't afford the upgrades for hobby-use and switched to Blender. My current job doesn't afford me a lot of free time for 3D work, so sadly I'm a few years out of practice at this point.
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Offline Nysse

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #11 on: August 18, 2014, 09:29:11 AM »
I've mainly used 3DS max as that's what I got started with back in the days and during my studies it was available for free to students through my University. Tutorial wise it's probably one of the best available. Cost wise far from the best.

ZBrush is pretty good from the little that I've used it when it was still a quite new product. And cost wise it's still within reach of normal mortals. Basically the price of a decent GW tournament army :)

For vehicles etc. I like to use engineering software, mainly ProEngineer. Parametric modelling is nice if you want to do a few different variations of the same kind. Plus it's what I use for work so it's what I'm used to using on a daily basis. Once again this is professional stuff so doesn't come cheap. Though at least previously they offered a student version which was more limited and you didn't even have to prove you are a student. Not sure how it is now.
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Offline Sangennaru

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Re: Dear 3D Sculptors - what is your favourite program to use?
« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2014, 04:30:30 AM »
Sketchup!

all you need to make good quality printable models. I've done a lot and printed / molded / casted so I know what I'm talking about. Blender and Rhino might be ok, but the learning curve is higher. Also you can sculpt with sketchup and do almost whatever you want, if you just get the right plug ins and take time to learn.

-M


Well said!

Sketchup has a terrible mesh creation, wich is a big issue if you are planning to do rendering and even worse for videogames. But when you're only after the voxel shape, that's simply perfect.

of course, that's not so great for "organic" modelling. But there are some free alternatives to zbrush, not at the same level of course.

 

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