[Half Life]

3D coat would probably be the easier of the 2 to integrate as the developer seems more willing to adjust what he does... Zbrush people are stubborn about certain things -- but would be a potentially huge market for Next Limit to tap.

Either way it would open a world of possibilities for texturing in Maxwell.

The workflow could go something like this:

1) In Maxwell Studio select the object you want to work with and select edit in Zbrush/3D Coat.
2) Dialog comes up asking what you want to edit ie: UV's, Normal Map, Bump Map, Disp Map, Diff Map 0, Diff Map 90, etc.
3) Object is exported to app and relevant maps are loaded for editing.
4) After painting/sculpting/laying out new UV's you export back to Maxwell
5) A dialog pops up asking what resolution you would like to export the new maps at.
6) In studio a new material pops up with the new maps replacing the old maps.
7) Hit render and enjoy


Best,
Jason.

[brodie_geers]

Sounds pretty sexy. More/better UV options are always good in my book.

-Brodie

[Chris Krüger]

That is an excellent idea Jason. +1

Chris

[Half Life]

With the advent of GoZ support in the latest alpha of Sculptris I'm leaning more heavily toward ZBrush/Sculptris/GoZ as the most flexible solution.

Best,
Jason.

[Hervé]

speaking of 3D coat, it should then support Ptex....

[Polyxo]

With the advent of GoZ support in the latest alpha of Sculptris I'm leaning more heavily toward ZBrush/Sculptris/GoZ as the most flexible solution.

Best,
Jason.

With all respect - but how would you build a Scene in Zbrush, Sculptris or 3DCoat?
I love Zbrush but it even has no proper 3D-Viewport!
One can of course bend every App to do something it wasn't designed for. I think however it's very
obvious that all these mentioned programs are optimized to hold single parts or small assemblies.
So I'd say optimal support was crucial, Ptex an absolute Must but a Plugin?
That makes no sense at all to me. Instead the Blender-Guys better should get hooked up.

[Half Life]

Obviously you didn't read the workflow I outlined in my first post -- but the problem with the Blender thing is ZBrush has a huge paying userbase which Blender does not... and not to be too harsh about it but ZBrush is an industry standard software and Blender is not even close. It's growing yes, but it is nowhere near the level that ZBrush has attained.

MARI would also be an acceptable tool for this workflow as well.

Best,
Jason.

[Polyxo]

Obviously you didn't read the workflow I outlined in my first post -- but the problem with the Blender thing is ZBrush has a huge paying userbase which Blender does not... and not to be too harsh about it but ZBrush is an industry standard software and Blender is not even close. It's growing yes, but it is nowhere near the level that ZBrush has attained.

Best,
Jason.

I actually read the first post some time ago but forgot about it in the meantime
What you are suggesting here is actually not a "typical" Maxwell-Plugin which makes a Program a Host for M~R.

Indeed what you want is something new: It's a Bridge between one of these Sculpting Apps and Studio.
When just reading the the last entries, thinking how Maxwell Plugins normally work (=rendering inside the 3rd Party App)
I could not help scratching my head...

Btw: Zbrush for many years had been as free as Blender - also the upcoming R2 is already announced to be free.
There's people who haven't payed a Penny for Zbrush-Updates for nearly a decade.
I don't think that people who like Open Source Projects are generally hesitant to spend money on Software.
But I am sure that almost 100% of people who own Zbrush or 3DCoat have a fullblown Maxwell-supported Modeling App.
They are complimentary apps.

Holger

[Half Life]

Yeah, I was thinking something akin to what we have now with the HDR Light Studio plugin for Maxwell Studio

I actually pursued getting the GoZ SDK to try my hand at it, but Pixologic declined to give it to me...

I don't have a ZBrush compatible app (except Studio) and there is at least one other here who does not... but again it is not about geometry at all -- it is about editing Maxwell Materials (diffuse/bump/normal/displacement/specular/AO/Cavity/etc.).

I'll base my stance on a very simple number 88,332 on the blender forum vs. 307,507 on the ZBrush forum... that says the user base is roughly 1/3 the size of ZBrushs... and yes at some point along the line people had to pay for ZBrush and that means something (in just the same way Sketchup Pro users had to pay and it means something).

BTW Sketchup Free has over 1 million unique users per month, but Maxwell does not support the free version...

Best,
Jason.

[Hervé]

well the thing is simple... Maxwell has to support Ptex natively first (multi maps for a single T)... then we can maybe talk about a bridge.. period