Zbrush From Pixologic

 
Zbrush a breakthrough indeed, developed by Pixologic it is a must have tool for any digital artist. Zbrush deals with 3D in a totally different perspective and is primarily used as a sculpting software application that allows artist to add mind-blowing amounts of detail to their models. 

ZBrush has a 2.5D environment it is not 2D and it is not 3D, it is based on pixols, a pixol is similar to a pixel but with the added property to depth, this amazing technology allows the software to handle models peaking at millions of polygons and still be able to give real time viewport feed back as the model is edited.

The main limitation of that arises when using ZBrush is when you have edited your model and it's time to take it to your 3D application for rendering, the meshes that are produced in ZBrush are so dense and heavy consisting of millions of polygons that the 3D application crashes 8 out of 10 times, to combat this limitation a technique called normal mapping is used, a map with all the depth and height information is calculated by ZBrush and spat out, the map can then be applied to a low res 3D model in the application and get a detail that was made it ZBrush without going through endless crashes.
 
ZBrush is also used as a texturing application due to its powerful painting tool set, artist can texture their models in a way similar to coloring in a coloring book, ZBrush automatically makes a map for your model and that can be used for rendering later on.

ZBrush has support for Wacom tablets and tablets from many other brands, if ZBrush is going to become a part of your workflow then I recommend that you use a tablet as it greatly increases the interactivity and productivity as it has support for pressure.
Overall ZBrush is an extremely powerful application with powerful painting and sculpting features, but at it end of the day it is even more fun to use and play around with and my personal favorites.

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