I was looking at Z Brush 2, because it seems that a number of people have used Z Brush to create morphs for poser figures, and was wondering if anyone has tried the new upgrade? I have 3DS Studio, but seems like overkill for just making some poser morphs, and the learning curve is high.

I haven't tried v2. I find ZBrush (v1.32) great for making morphs for Poser characters. The interface is very unusual, and I found it almost imposible to understand, untill I stumbled across a tutorial "Creating Morph Targets in ZBrush - Glen Southern" at Poser Arcana. The Poser Arcana site no longer exists, but I think the content may have been transfered to the DAZ site. If you can't find it IM me with your email address, I may have some info saved to disk. There is some more info for beginers at this link: http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=9095

I used zBrush 2 to create 'Raquel' ( http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=775948&Start=1&Artist=twosheds&ByArtist=Yes )and I certainly couldn't have done it without zBrush. Creating morphs with zBrush for Poser is a breeze, it's just....silly how simple it is to create astonishing results. And the good news is that zBrush 2 has just come out for MacOSX too. But....you will need to curb your impatience, sit down with it for a couple of days and work through the amazing interactive tutorials, all scripted with the zScript language, and marvel as ghostly hands take hold of your copy of zBrush and show you wonders you didn't know home-computers could accomplish. When I first downloaded a trial copy of zBrush a year ago, I took one look at the interface and binned it. Very hasty. My desperate need for a good Poser morph-app bought me back to it and....the interface is utterly non-standard but if you give it a chance, you'll see there's method in the madness, and come to appreciate it -along with the rest of the program- as a work of genius. The online support and forums - www.pixologic.com- are really very very special, with frequent, daily intervention from the program's creators in forum threads to resolve difficulties, and countless free zScripts and other resources. If you have doubts about the software, check out the forums, it may convince you. You probably think I've got shares! I haven't, it's just good to see someone making a product this great and being so loyal to their customers.

I can back up what is said about the great support and loyalty to customers. I had had a lot of problems with the registration / unlock process, but they patiently walked me through it and never gave up on the situation.

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ZBrush is the future of organic modelling. I love the program. And if Poser 6 supports 16 bit displacement maps, we are going to all be using ZBrush in a few years time. PS. There is a workaround to get Poser 5 to support 16 bit displacement maps. PPS. Vue does not support displacement maps. Bummer.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

thank you for the comments - there is no better advice than user experience. I think I will get the program.

Agreed. An astonishing program. Version 2 has a more intuitive interface than previous versions. And despite being taken to the absolute limits by pro model makers, I haven't heard of any serious bugs or problems. Go to the Pixologic site as suggested above and check out the forum there .. you will wet your pants. It's truly humbling .. and look especially for Glen Southern's work. And never forget, a good deal of the modelling for LOTR was done using this program.

Yep, know that it's mentioned, ZBrush is the only (ONLY!!!!) program I have ever had that had no serious bugs, crashes, corrupted saves, desperate patches, updates, etc. It works, first time, every time, even with models of a few million polygons. Then again, it did win the world wide award for technical innovation in 3D, along with Massive, the program that made the crowd scenes in LOTR.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

As someone who bought ZBrush2 a few months ago and failed miserably to get into the interface the comments have given me a new incentive to re visit it. There is a tutorial on the DAZ site by Glen Southern http://arcana.daz3d.com/index.php?id=110 but it does not cover morph target production There is a chapter in the help files that come with the program (or maybe a separate download from the forum)