For any of you Carrara users who feel more comfortable sculpting clay rather than polygons, check out ZBrush at pixologic.com. I watched a demo of this groundbreaking program at Siggraph and was blown away at its power and speed. WETA Studios (the guys responsible for all the special effects on all the Lord of the Rings movies) have worked with Pixologic to create the new release due at the end of March. It's a 3D modeling/3D painting program that I think will change the way 3D artists will work dramatically. The attached image was modelled and textured in Zbrush and rendered in Carrara.

looks awesome...ive been wanting to check it out..the price is the one thing thats kept me away from it..

The current version is $399 with a free upgrade to 2. After the release it goes up to $489. Not cheap by anybody's standards but consider this: WETA is a company with huge resources who can not only buy any program they want but could probably just hire programmers to build their own custom programs and this is what they chose. The organic modelling power of this program looks so much better than the mega-buck competition (Lightwave, Maya, Softimage, Studiomax) that I can't possibly see the other big studios not following WETA's example. AND it seems to play well with other programs. Just imagine modelling something like the above image in a relatively short time that would take a monstrous amount of man-hours normally and then rendering it in Carrara. Yeah, I know. I'm gushing. And no, I don't own stock in the company, yet.

You can use the demo for quite sometime, if I remember correctly. I guess you managed to transfer all the shader information? Does that incorporate a lot of tweaking? I used ZBrush and fell in love, but I thought it would be very problematic to combine it with my favourite 3D app. Very impressive image!

Looks sweet to me! I had no idea you knew what I looked like! I love the coy smile. -Kix

curses..wish this would have come my way friday..lol..id just gotten a bonus at work and would have just bought it without a 2nd thought...now ive spent most of my money and gettin it now would put a strain on my finances...decesions, decesions..arrgh...lol..

i have emailed them about a possible cross-platform upgrade to other 2d/3d users to maybe get some sort of discount..ill let everyone know what i find out..:)

Ah! Ken Brilliant work. Good stuff maynard.....he's been using ZBrush for sometime. Another view of his zombie: http://www.brilliant-creations.com/zombie.htm I can attest to the fact tha Z and Carrara do play very well together in the build workflow. It's saved me some time in generating a nice starter mesh to import into Carrara, texture, render, etc.

ok heres the skinny..i just got off the phone with them about the 'discount'...he said there wont be one cuz its more of a complimentary program than a replacement program...so..outta luck there...and like robertz said, the new version is coming out at end of month and theyll give the upgrade free..and the price is shooting up after the new version..crafty bastards..lol..damn..im gonna be hungry..lol

i love zbrush,im using it for additional modeling and it is very good for making morph targets too.great tool and very easy to understand.i cant wait to get the zbrush2 upgrade,so many new and useful features.and yeah,zbrush and carrara are working good together.

very cool..im playing with the demo version now..its not as intuitive as they led me to believe..lol..intuitive to me is Adobe...im still trying to figure whats what...tho i do like the fact they have all the tutorials and help files...

check the zscripts.go to www.zbrushcentral.com and check the quicklinks.you will find some good tutorials and other useful things,check www.3dbuzz.com you will find video tutorials for zbrush there(you have to register).

I've been looking for awhile to replace Amapi Designer 7 to do better organic/face modeling. I just ordered ZBrush 1.55b online. Thanks for the heads up! I also bought TransPoser, so now I'm broke again.

lol..i hear ya...ive got to wait a couple of weeks, but im going to get it too..

At some point, one has to jump in and get ZBrush. Now that 2.0 is coming out and it's way more than just a 3D paint program from years ago (and it's still under $400), it's a necessary jump.

buy it before it is version 2.0,cause it will cost 489,-us dollar when the new version comes out.you have time till wednesday 31 of march. i want to have transposer too,but i will buy the upgrade from amapi 7 to amapi pro first and then im broke too.

I'll get Amapi 7 Pro if it fixes the bugs in AD 7.1 and is a cheap upgrade from it and it works with Carrara 3.0.3 or higher.

i think you are right,i should wait a bit longer and see what other users saying about the pro version when it is released.anyway,nurbs are more for product design and im modeling more organic things.