Why i quit Zbrush for Blender as professional 3D Character artist? 

Blender is definitely one of a kind. It's completely free, yet the devs still make decent money through donations. I've donated to them several times. This is how it should be.

I first started using Zbrush in 2019 and you were one of the first Zbrush channels I saw. I was so inspired by your high level skill set, I bought your course on Udemy. I support you no matter what platform you use, As a 2D animator trying out 3D for the first time, I couldn’t believe how the hell you made such phenomenal and detailed character anatomies. You’re incredible, sir.

I use both, Zbrush for sculpting and Blender for everything else, perfect combination.

Zbrush is no longer an option for freelancer, hobbyists and small budget artists. I have a perpetual license and love it even if it doesn't update anymore (thank you very much Maxon), but I know eventually I'm gonna need to move on to blender.

The Blender community is huge and highly interactive

Advantage to blender for sculpting: viewport that matches other applications and rendering so you actually see what you are working on in an actual context with real light and materials.

Wow! So full of HONESTY! straightforward talk! Kudos

Sad to see what a greedy company like Maxon can mean for the industry. When they bought Red Giant (plugin for After Effect) they started to flush out their former customers. When they then bought Z-Brush I knew it was time to look elsewhere. Thanks for sharing your experience with Blender. I'm seriously considering switching from Maya to Blender, but haven't quite had the guts to switch yet... have tried Blender a bit. What appeals to me most about Blander is their community and their willingness to share knowledge, something that all the other players don't come close to.

Every release of Zbrush used to be exciting. Haven't felt that way once since Maxon bought them out. The program is still full of a ton of features, but I feel other sculpting companies can surpass them over time. Even VR sculpting apps are starting to become usable.

Speed char is the most transparent and honest 3D artist and tutor I know. The guy is just too real lol

Open source is the future. It really is amazing how much easier it is to learn these programs when there's just such a vast amount of people creating and teaching online

I think this is the best marketing-video for Blender I have seen. An obviously very competent 3D-creator who has worked with many different 3D-SW-program is saying that Blender is good, and even really good. And remember, it is the skills that matters, not the tools, so if you have excellent free SW like Blender, nothing can stop you!

I ditched ZBrush for Blender after forking over the big $ and then less than a year later they sold out and started charging for updates. I could kinda deal with ZBrush's terrible UI, but for indie GameDev work, it's nice being able to use as few apps as possible (free is great too). So now it's just Blender and Substance Designer (ditched Substance Painter for Blender as well). Keep the Blender tutorials coming!! :)

I cant even think of going from ZBrush to Blender. I feel too comfortable in ZB, my nerves and time have a price too :D BUT I agree with Nico 100%. Specially if you are barely starting - no need for ZBrush. Besides - like Nico said - sculpting itself, anatomy - all that is the same no matter what software you are using. I am still watching Nico sculpting in Blender even if I am not using it because techniques apply to any software. Also Nico - props for saying openly that one of the reason is popularity of Blender and fact that you can sell more tutorials on it. Its not something people would openly say - they would rather hide it behind "because Blender is so AWESOOOOMMEEEE!! And FREE!!!". blablabla. Youre a great guy. Hope to see you coming back to ZBrush one day - because mate, they are adding some pretty cool things (and I dont mean Redshift hahaha). So maybe in a year or two you will have plenty of reasons to check it out. Much luck and thanks for great videos. My characters got WAY better since I found your first video on YT ages ago. You thought me a lot and you keep on doing so. Greetings from Mexico!

I'm not following Maxon down the subscription rat hole, but in my view when it comes to sculpting, Zbrush is just better. I do think however, that as time goes on and Blender improves while my 2022 perpetual license gets outdated I will eventually move to Blender permanently. Today every time I try working with Blender I eventually go back to ZBrush.

I learned Zbrush from your courses, and later on Blender on my own. Zbrush is extremely powerful... but Blender is way WAY easier and faster to use, that won me over. While Zbrush is industry standard, Blender has the potential to be as powerful in a few years.

Blender is a jack of all trades. With some addons (free and paid) it has incredible potential.

I use blender more than anything these days, used to be a 3dsmax user+ maya+ zbrush( 20 years +) I haven't quite got in to the blender sculpting yet, though have done a few head sculpts. But yeah Blender is perfectly fine for nearly every aspect of 3d these days. all the models/animations/characters on my channel are done in Blender

Keep doing your work, you don't even know how much you helped me to achieve what i achieved. Maybe Im now frustrated with proper face texturing, but I think that I'll learn it as time passes by (and Im still pretty new in Sculpting and 3D overall... maybe little more than a year). You are a great teacher :D

it is always about where you are beter, faster more variable etc... doesnt matter if you use blender maya z-brush. if you can deliver final product use what ever you want to .

Great to see you transition to Blender. Showcasing that you're a great artist no matter what software you use.

The reason I made the switch was the cost, but also it's so much easier to do things like add new geometry and modify the texture, light, and render. It will also look more accurate to how it will in the software you render it in because it doesn't have matcaps ingrained. You have so many more options including geometry nodes, easy, non-destructive hair, shader editor, animation and rigging, and not to mention rendering stills and animation. I think ZBrush is best if sculpting is all you ever will do, but Blender is such a blessing to artists because it will always be free. Thanks for being transparent about this - its something not everyone will admit because they get bullied into paying for ZBrush by its user base.

Dear Niko, thank you for your sincere explanations. While learning Zbrush, I mostly benefited from your content, although I used blender before you, I still learn from you. I'm so glad to have you..

i love your energy!! you have great charisma

I am not a pro in character design, I do landscape design, but I tried to sculpt in both software. ZBrush can handle huge amount of polygons smoothly, blender can’t. UV maps sucks without plug-in in Blender, ZBrush no, same for remesh. The only true advantage is it’s free, and this is the reason why Blender Tutorial sell more. As pro you don’t pay subscription in ZBrush, Client pay it, it’s charged in the price. Of course you can achieve same things in Blender, but it has a lot of issues again and at Pro level I’d use the best. I love Blender and it’s growing in an incredible way, I use it daily, it’s just my idea about the topic.

we're going the right way friend

I've been wanting to ask you this forever! Thank you for addressing this.

i agree with you electroboom brother. blender is more efficient if you understand the shortcut, unlike zbrush which is very hard to find one specific ui button. but zbrush is more better when sculpting high poly model, for me blender will just crash when too much polygon. I love blender but the software can't process high poly model.

Zbrush is godlike for sculpting!

For many years us old timers had a great price range on Zbrush with free updates, before they began to up it and charge for updates as well, which is fair enough. Alas now they, as many others, got sold and ended up in subscription hell which will definitely scare new potential users away. From that POV it makes total sense to take on Blender, it's an awesome package.

That's why i'm using blender. Most people want the best, but actually don't really need the best. I'd rather have something really good that i can use for everything instead of having to learn a new user interface for every new tool. And i've worked already more than 20 years in 3D. Is it perfect? Hell no, it's just another buggy app like all the others. But the blender team has convinced me they are actually about cleaning up their shit. They overhauled blender majorily already two times despite the danger of pissing off their fans, which earned my deepest respect. 2.5 was great, but 2.8 was a milestone that kicked the butt of every competitor and changed 3D graphics forever.

And the best part is that Blender is evolving much faster than the competition.

i followed a lot of your tutorials, and since we both from the Balkans, I was always very sympathetic to the mentality. Most importantly, I learned that you don't have to take everything so damn seriously. Names don't count, because at the end of the day, it's the skills and the tools that count. Sadly, my transformation in sculpting is not finished, so I need zbrush still for high density concepts. But I am working on it. Especially now since they joined the dark side. Thank you for your honest video.

Great talk, very interesting. Bought a number of your courses, appreciate your humour and skill. And your head is perfect for the Zoom blur filter! I watched another video a while back by a ZBrush character artist trying Blender discussing something she found to be a game changer; she set up lights on a virtual turntable so she could test the contours more easily as she worked! She reckoned while ZBrush is better for details, Blender is better for the initial sculpting up to the high-poly work, partly because it is true 3D, not 2.5D, and can have proper perspective and lighting. And there’s been a significant upgrade to the sculpting tools since, inc the hair system.

Blender is future . More and more people use it. Soon a lot of companies forget about Zbrush in pipeline . Thats all. As Duck Hutson said : "You wanna know when you need to live? Newbies will tell you"

I recommend to use both

I need my clay buildup brush translated into blender (working just as in zbrush... Clay strips is garbage at least for me) and I'm willing to migrate 100% to blender. Some minor things I don't like much on blender (vs paid programs) but definitely not deal breakers are: •Retopology: way easier in maya •UV: again maya wins for me, but the king would be rizomUV if it wasnt another ultra expensive tool •Adding displacement: Zbrush is just like press 2 buttons (new texture or load texture, load displacement map), blender you have to do a slight ritual to setup •sculpting layers: this may probably be a unfair comparison but when dealing with realistic characters there comed the time to break symmetry and it definitely helps you handle things non-destructively... Probably im missing more from blender sculpting mode but only alternative in blender i can think of rn is just git gud. •Hair system: i know geometry nodes were a game changer, but comparing strictly blender particle system vs maya xgen I'm more used to xgen On the good side its really monstruous that blender can do basically everything in one software: sculpting, modeling, retopo, uv, texturing, rigging, animating, etc. and all for free! Also seeing how d-bag Autodesk as a company is i really prefer to encourage people to use blender than giving the greedy autodesk more money (not talking about the Jack Sparrow alternative here *Wink wink*), in the end the absolute best selling point i can talk about blender is addons, there are really few things you are used to in other software that doesnt have an addon (although some are paid, but most of the time its cheaper to pay for a blender addon than the software that created that specific workflow).

Great ! I sculpt in Blender an find it cool. I tried using Zbrush but haven't gotten used to it. This reassures me that I should probably stick with what I know and just hone the sculpting fundamentals.

Finally, the Original Niko with the blue t-shirt is back

You can't go wrong with learning Blender! It's free AND highly capable. I moved from working in a VFX studio using Maya for 5 years to running a tiny (1 person) animation studio for the past 4 years. I haven't missed Maya at all and using it would have cost me almost $10k by now. But, I did have to set up hot keys similar to Maya because Blender's default controls are atrocious. Also, the community Addon support is incredible and a total lifesaver for a small studio where I don't have time to build everything from scratch.

Niko let me tell you a story, each time when I see your videos and close my eyes I can hear arnold schwarzenegger talking

zbrush is still top tier, blender feels like sculpting in mudbox or 3dcoat..which is not a bad thing! especially with that physically accurate camera! that maxon subscription paywalled a lot of artists, so blender is a great choice for sculpting especially for those starting out.. but if you can and if you wish to fit in a studio pipeline, learn zbrush or whatever tools they use!

Agreed, I have your Zbrush tutorials, and I can still learn everything and port it to Blender, I swapped 2022 from Maya/C4d/Zbrush so glad to see you did the same I can catch up on sculpting again. Plus Zbrush is very different workflow than normal 3d whereas Blender isn't. Plus it's free, great when I'm not earning!

The real answer is "because i make tutorials and theres way more potential buyers of content for 0$ software than for 1200$ software" :)

Ya, for most things Blender isn't the best possible tool available, but with that said it is still a very capable tool at pretty much everything it does - well beyond the minimum necessary to do professional work. And there is some knock on benefits to having nearly everything in a single package and not having to mess around so much with export/import and switching gears in your mind to match the conventions of different tools.

I love both blender and zbrush but the fact blender crashes on me with high poly models also is very gpu dependant, and zbrush has dynamesh, not having to get worried about poly count is the reason I use zbrush for making characters ,but every thing else I use blender( texturing, animation, rendering,etc..) it's a great beginner program ,the UI is simpler and the add-ons are very useful,am able to use both and i like them for different purposes.

I've been using Blender from 2004 and I bought Zbrush not long after it first came out. I think it was about £350 at the time. The problem with Pixologic is that they were too generous, which is crazy compared to Autodesk etc. I and I'm sure most others would have happily paid an upgrade fee for the milestone releases, now instead we have Maxon taking the piss. Meanwhile, Blender has improved consistently year after year to the point where I don't need an external render engine, the UV workflow is great and there are hundreds of great plugins. The sculpting isn't quite on par with Zbrush but I imagine it will be in 2 or 3 years. I'll use my last free upgrade of Zbrush until then but honestly I could also switch now without much hassle.

I always felt blender had everything 3dsmax 5 and 3dsmax 8 had but without the cost (I'm old, yes). It's all about which is most comfortable in the end.

I'm glad to hear that, hopefully see a tutorial of female and man sculpt in blender

I switched from 3ds to blender. When blender 2.8 was released. I thought i really want to give it a try. I was absolutely surprised. The speed. The workflow the technique the placement of buttons and shortcuts all make much more sense on blender. 3ds max suddenly felt old out dated slow and buggy. I never looked back. Super excited to use it every day for work. Lucky to be able to work with blender everyday.

Not bad, but to me it's like trying to cut through a steak with a spoon instead of a fork and a knife, as much zbrush is intuitive, cheap and available for most users on budget, and it's like eating through a decent fork and a good knife.

Zbrush is a great tool. But the acquisition of Maxon and the prices to upgrade year to year for those of us who have a perpetual license, was what has made me move from Zbrush to Blender. Zbrush 2023 now becomes a hobby tool, and blender a work tool... which was the other way around a few years ago.

You look like you could take on a Megalodon

I have to agree. After using zbrush for many years, I started using 3dCoat and fell in love. Now I jump between 3dcoat and blender. Nothing can compete with zbrush when it comes to bad UI. It just killed my love for sculpting.

Nomad has entered the chat

You are totally right, the best thing about blender is that blender tools are evolving fast and getting more and more reliable. So blender is slowly entering industry stantard mode. I use it for VFX last 3 years

Very useful video. Thanks, Niko!

I absolutely despise zbrush’s interface. I have your latest blender character course too so I’ll be trying that out soon thank you!

i went from sculptris to zbrush core and then down to meshmixer when i couldn't afford it any more, and now blender. i'm very happy with it. wish i knew blender could do sculpting earlier.

Super nice to get the perspective from someone as experienced as you on this topic.

Brilliant video. Subbed. Just REALLY hoping they continue Pablos work in sculpting, and increase the poly count, to a level closer to Zbrush.

It didn't take me a week to move all my workflow from 3DS Max/ZBrush/RizomUV to : 100% Blender. Best decision of the last 20 years. Blender is super impressive. Insanely good UI. A pure gold mine. Things I still miss: proper vertex painting (Polypaint is really a killer tool), and ZSpheres (that was really amazing for any organic blockout). But all in all Blender blew out of the water ZBrush forever as far as I'm concerned (and Maya, an Max, and 3D-Coat for that matter ;) ).

Very well. I'm still going to ask this question every 15 minutes on your livestreams though.

Wow I never thought I would see the day. I've never used ZBrush but I've heard a lot of people prefer it - or at least they did just a few years ago. By the way, I love your demon huntress course!

I use freeform , but blender is getting so good . Love free riging in blender .

we're just talking about sculpting here, you can also do so much stuff in blender from animation to special effects and procedural generation. It has everything.. yes its not the best at everything but your skills make the results not just the tools

Blender have also the huge advantage that it's not backwards, weird and illogical. I have been in the CG industry for almost 20 years now and have tried Zbrush a few times and I really just hate how weird it is to use that I never manage to get in to it, but Blenders sculpting works just like Mudbox, ie it's intuitive, easy to understand and mostly just does what you expect. It really feels like it was some guy being both drunk and stoned that developed Zbrush.

Very glad you are using Blender, its nice to see good artist's processes in programs I use. Zbrush is too "unique" in its work flow for me. The only thing I really miss is its ability to work with more "polygons" though the way it accomplishes this does have downsides too, like lighting and camera limitations.

Ffs all his point is - MONEY!

I love you so much my man. Keep spittin truth!

Welcome to the B community Brother :)

I think Blender is unbelievable. Not only is it free and has the same capabilities as ZBrush and Maya, it feels like a Swiss army knife for making 3D. Sure, you can use a chef's knife to cut your food and an electric screwdriver to build things, but you can do the same thing with something that can fit in your pocket. I've studied animation and have worked on year-long student projects with both Maya and Blender and have only found one single feature in which Maya was better than Blender when it came to working on animated films. It's the "reference" feature, which allows you to import models and rigs into a Maya work file while retaining the ability to make changes to them through another file. This feature is very important for pipelines that involve a lot of different people collaborating on a single project. But, other than the feature mentioned above, Blender proved to be better, more comfortable, faster and less demanding than Maya in every way. I've never used ZBrush, I may have played around with free sculpting tools, but never the big name. As long as channels like yours or Yan Sculpts exist, I just see no real reason to ever use ZBrush. Lastly, you've mentioned that more people buy Blender lessons and it just makes so much sense from an economic perspective. When people don't have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for their software, they can spend more money on their education. Blender is truly a miracle, it's not just a good piece of software, by being free it also heavily reduces the barrier of entry into the world of 3D CGI. Anyone with a PC (Even relatively cheap low spec PCs) can just download a piece of free software, watch a few free tutorials on RU-vid and start making art. Blender to 3D art is what a pencil and paper are to drawing.

Well...technically blender isn't free. It's community supported so anyone who use it daily and makes money should consider donating to the developers. Minimum is 5$ or euro for EU countries. But yeah it's free to use and I personally think it's a great start for a beginner in sculpting.

Blender might require a higher end PC for complex sculpts but is free as you say. Most would be better off upgrading their PCs imo.

Nope i prefer to ditch maya and work with zbrush and blender, in my experience blender is way way behind zbrush (some of my models have much more than 21 million polys, and blender CANT HANDLE that much polys), but is better than maya in some things and if i have to choose to ditch one license this would be maya for sure, blender need way more work to be as good as zbrush in terms of sculpting but has some pretty nice features PD: Oh and blender is ""free", but then you need to add the cost of the NECESSARY plugins, plugins coded by someone in his house wich maybe tomorrow decide to not continue adding support... and that in the middle of a production is quite a pain in the ass...

Just an info the programmer who developed Zbrush is the same person who developed it for Blender.

You got to try SDF modeling too! they are adding in Blender as well! plus Conjure SDF Add On for Blender is coming up too! I personally use Made In Dreams and Unbound! I will try those for Blender once they come out! but mixing SDF with Polygon is the most fastest and easiest way of working! you can even texture with SDF too! can be used as a base!

Blender is quite fun and capable for what I need but I've never tried the sculpting. Looks like I should give it a shot.

My favourite tutor on the internet💯

there still some function on Zbrush like radial multi symmetry brush or Zsketch, that i can't replicate on Blender and it help me a lot, especialy for making roots on tree or very organic stuff, on the other side, Sculpt mode is phenomenal on Blender, also Geometry node, but need a lot of time consuming to achieve similar result. Blender is my main render and animation and particule FX tool of choice of course, but when it's about sculpting fine detail Zbrush with Substance Painter is my main combo.

I have a similar story. I've been an environment artist in the games industry for ~20 years, using Max, Maya and Modo. I wanted to try Blender so when I got an environment brief across my desk I decided to learn Blender while doing the brief. I haven't opened Maya, Max or Modo since and I very rarely use zbrush now. Yes, you need some 1-time-payment paid add-ons to really make it sing... but Blender is getting better with every release. I would never go back to any 3D software I've previously used.

Zremesher and unified skin would be nice things for me to have in Blender

Well done bro. I began transitioning out of ZBrush when subscriptions started- screw Maxon

I actually love using both software as ZBrush feels like I'm sculpting with Clay, whilst Blender felt more artificial, which I love for making hard surface models and environments, but for softer models like Humans, Animals, plant life, etc, I prefer ZBrush as it gives me a more organic feel. However, both work so well together with Blender being my Retopology tool, whilst ZBrush is my Sculpting and Modeling tool, Houdini is basically my VFX tool for animations. I'm always software Agnostic now a days

Gameloft Alumni. Nice. I am just starting to learn blender and like knowing I picked a good program to put my faith in

Hey Niko, Just wanted to say, you have a perfect temporal line, the plane change looks so good as if you used trim dynamic and hpolish then zremeshed.

Had Blender installed for over a year and kept meaning to learn it. I think the difficulty is that navigating on the default is not the same as Maya, 3ds Max, and Zbrush which I have used for so long. I kind of feels like starting over each time I open Blender at the moment.

very important point of view , i am also migrating to Blender

I'm not gonna lie, I love how smooth and fast Zbrush is due to its 2.5D technology. The masks, retopology, layers, and many other features are soo useful and I would love to see them in Blender. Still, I think it's a pain in the ass. The UI is so disgustingly terrible that I just have seizures just looking at it, even though I customized my UI and removed a lot of junk. The fact that Blender is not just a sculpting program but a full fledge 3D software... And a very good one... That... Sorry Zbrush. I might not be able to sculpt a 100 million sculpture but I don't need to in most cases, and I also think that in a couple of years Blender is gonna be even more optimized and computers even better that it's just a matter of time until you can sculpt with such dense meshes. Zbrush is slowly losing its main competitive advantage.

I also have been using Blender recently for Rendering my sculpts and it's damn good. I am encouraged by you to use it for sculpting too. Will sure make a move. Thank you

If we're talking how much Blender should cost, if it was a commercial program ... 500 dollars would not be enough, especially if ZBrush is 1000 dollars. Blender can do tons and tons of other stuff that ZBrush can't so it wouldn't make any sense being cheaper than ZB. Luckily this is all a moot point 😀 Great video and I agree, Blender sculpting is great!

True im interested in blender stuff the most! Everyone should donate some money to blender for respect they give it away for free!

Ouch, I buy Zbrush when I see your Work and discover your tutorial on Udemy. I love your video and your tuto. Thank you to share your knowledge.

Thank you Niko!

I would say Blender as a tool was a little stale at the start for me, coming from 3d max (5years) and I was jumping into 2.7 > 2.8 (transition) so it was even uglier due to all tutorials using an ugly, outdated UI, making it hard to follow. I decided just to customise it from the inside out (gut it) and make it my own. All hotkeys are void of the norm, I'd say 90% are custom. What really opened the doors was blender market, slowly downloading assets to mould the software to my needs, over the course of 5-ish years it's evolved into something insane. A beautify 3D application working almost like magic. I have over those 5 years spent £2000+ on assets, though it seems insane! I pretty much gave up drinking and smoking to pay for my little venture :D I'm about to embark in sculpting, hence I'm here, and I've been watching yourself for about a year now! great talent. I'm making the bold move of given up drawing (2D as a matter of fact) and just focusing purely on 3D. Blender being free is the reason it will win, and if I am too make any mass money in the future, I would happily donate money to blender for support, due to helping a starving 3D artist get a equal footing in the field. Much respect to that!

you brought back the blue shirt!

Keep making tutorials, I love them and buy them

Thank you very much for sharing your insights , considering all the experience you have this is very valuable information for someone like me who doesn't have the budget to pay for a Zbrush subscription and would like to get into 3d modelling and sculpting.. Merci

Another consideration, although conjectural, is that the Blender development pace far outweighs the "professional" applications. You're more likely to see bug fixes and upgrades over shorter periods of time. Compare Blender and 3DSMax feature sets over the last decade, as an example.

I would not agree with this opinion. As a character artist you would anyway need Zbrush skills to find a job, because big studios do not work with Blender like they work with Zbrush. You can do the same things in Blender when it comes to sculpting but you will have to use multiresolution for it not to freeze, meanwhile in zbrush you just work using dynamesh and it works very fast.Or you have to hide one part of the mesh to work on the other part to make it easier for your computer. Zbrush has a lot more functionality other than just basic sculpting tools and so much more brushes. Zbrush can handle much more than 20M polygons and in blender it is already very bad when you work with such amount of polygons. If you make models for 3d printing and you need to remesh all parts in one mesh it can take a long tyme in blender, but in Zbrush it is very fast by using dynamesh. Even if you have a 10 years old computer with very bad hardware and without a GPU it will still work better when it comes to sculpting in Zbrush then your new computer with a good GPU in Blender, because Zbrush is very much optimized for such things and blender is not. Maybe Blender is a more popular program for beginners but I think when it comes to sculpting Zbrush is more popular then Blender by miles amongst professionals. The fact that you can sell more courses in Blender does not mean that Blender is more popular than Zbrush in sculpting. There are so many professionals who work in Zbrush but not blender and they just do not need to buy courses,because they already good in it.