ZBrushCentral

May 2005: ZBC Hits 50,000 Member Milestone

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[size=6]Happy 50,000 ZBC!

In the four years since it was first launched, ZBrushCentral has grown to be “Z” place on the web to come for all things ZBrush. Through the generous contributions of our members, ZBC is a community where all can come to share their ZBrush creations as well as to ask questions, share techniques, discover ZScripting and ZPlugins, and much much more.

What an exciting time it has been! And now we’re a thriving 50,000 members strong! Congratulations!

So first of all, we want to thank each of you for your participation in this growing forum.

Second, we’d like to invite all you “lurkers” to pop in and say hello – it’s okay, we won’t bite! :slight_smile:

Third, we want to open this thread to memories of ZBC so far. What’s your favorite memory since ZBrushCentral launched? Do you remember an outstanding tutorial, compelling image, inspiring tip, or just a really funny joke? Is there a particular member that you’d like to extend a special thank you to?

For the benefit of newcomers, here’s a little look back at the history of Pixologic, ZBrush, and of course ZBrushCentral.

Thank you for your amazing participation!

The Pixologic Team :slight_smile:


September 27, 1999
ZBrush demo .86 was released.

December 8, 1999
ZBrush Debut Version .90 was released. First version of ZBrush ever to be released commercially.

January 2000
ZBrush received the Editor’s Choice: Promising Beta Award from 3D Magazine. “It’s the freshest concept to come along in quite a while.”

January 2000
ZBrush received the 1999 Innovation Award from Computer Graphics World. “…create 3D content without calculations, wireframes or NURBS.”

July 2000
After attending our first MacWorld Expo, ZBrush was awarded Best of Show by Macweek.com.

August 15, 2000
ZBrush commercial version 1.0 was released.

January 2001
After attending the second MacWorld Expo, ZBrush once again received Best of Show recognition, this time from Digital Media Net. “I’ve been enthralled with the program’s novel approach to art through a combination of 2D and 3D tools.”

February 2001
ZBrush received the Golden Pixie Award from Animation Magazine. “ZBrush can do things no other paint program can.”

February 1, 2001
ZBrush 1.13 was released, introducing the Fibers tool and the 3D Copy function. 3D Copy would later become the core feature for TextureMaster and eventually Projection Master.

April 19, 2001
ZBrushCentral first launched, giving ZBrush users and Pixologic a place to share tutorials, tips, images and a few good laughs.

May 27, 2001
ZBrushCentral introduced the QuickLinks - a categorized listing of all the most important threads including answers to the most frequently asked questions as well as popular tutorials, ZScripts and other useful information.

July 13, 2001
ZBrush version 1.23 was released. This new version introduced a great many new parametric objects such as the Gear3D, Spiral3D and Helix3D, new brushes, the MultiMarker tool – and ZScripts! For the first time, ZBrush users were able to look over each other’s shoulders while they worked as well as create new utilities.

September 16, 2001
Just five months after its inception, ZBrushCentral achieved its first milestone of 10,000 posts.

October 1, 2001
ZBC reached another milestone with 1,000 members.

October 8, 2001
The first personal milestone of 1,000 posts by a single member was reached.

October 19, 2001
Pixolator released the first version of TextureMaster, opening new doors for texturing models. Rather than painting on unwrapped texture templates and having to manually compensate for UV distortions or seams, TextureMaster made it possible to paint exactly what you wanted to see while letting the computer handle all the compensations behind the scenes. Eventually, TextureMaster was replaced by the Projection Master utility and included with ZBrush itself, but the original TextureMaster was the first utility to truly display the power of ZBrush’s ZScript language.

October 2001
ZBrushCentral hosted the first Halloween Gallery, which proved to be so popular that it has returned every year since (2002, 2003, 2004). ZBrush artists from around the world participated by sharing their Halloween-themed ZBrush artwork.

December 3, 2001
MacWorld announced that ZBrush won the prestigious MacWorld Eddy Award for Best Illustration Software.

January 2002
Pixolator released the MaterialPack ZScript, which included 100 new materials for use in ZBrush scenes, all organized in a sleek selection browser. This pack is now being updated for re-release under ZBrush 2.

January 14, 2002
The first in a series of tutorials about ZScripting was published by davey, along with a ZScript Command Reference. This opened the door for ZBrushers to learn how easy it is to create tutorials and utilities with the powerful scripting system incorporated into ZBrush 1.23b.

August 27, 2002
ZBrush 1.5 was released for Windows and Macintosh. While the new version offered a great many new features and enhancements (such as PolyFrame viewing), the one that stood out the most was the powerful ZSphere modeler. This highly versatile modeling system makes it possible to easily create a kind of skeleton from ZSpheres, which ZBrush then uses to form a clean 3D mesh of evenly distributed polygons.

September 13, 2002
Thumbnails were added to the top of ZBrushCentral’s forums, automatically updating every time any member uploaded a new image. This made it easy for visitors to spot the most recent images. At the same time, a top row of thumbnails was added so that it would always be fast and easy to find the very best images, utilities or threads (those that would be beneficial to the majority of ZBC mambers). Eventually, so many threads became featured that we had to create a special page just to house all the thumbnails!

December 14, 2002
Pixolator revealed Adaptive UVTiles mapping - an evolution of the UVTiles mapping technology that was introduced in ZBrush 1.51. This new method of mapping offered the same one-click ease of use while expanding upon the pipeline when carried between applications. Both UVTiles methods of mapping are a perfect companion for ZBrush’s projection painting toolset.

January 29, 2003
ZBrush 1.55b was released for both Windows and Macintosh. The newest version of ZBrush broke ground in many ways by offering new interface customization options, alpha skinning, Attractor (magnet) ZSpheres, morph targets, expanded online help, a new refraction drawing mode, and much more. Many new features focused on enhancing ZBrush’s compatibility with other software packages, such as the Fix Seams and Adjust UV’s options, JPG import, Adaptive UVTiles mapping, etc.

April 11, 2003
The Quick Reference Guide first made its appearance, showcasing beautiful artwork by ZBC members and – more important – putting all of the most critical information about how to use ZBrush 1.55b in one place. The QRG proved to be a staple among even experience ZBrush users, ultimately being updated for ZBrush 2 and included in printed form as part of the boxed set. (It’s also available for download as part of the Learning Kit.)

April 21, 2003
Member Galleries were introduced to ZBC, making it possible to view every image ever uploaded to ZBrushCentral by a user, simply by clicking the UserGallery link at the top of one of his posts.

June 1, 2003
Pixolator released a QuickTime animation showing a dinosaur’s walk cycle. Created and rendered entirely in ZBrush, this was the ZBrush community’s first glimpse of the ZSpheres Pose-2-Pose feature which was included as a part of ZBrush 2 and makes it possible to repose ZSphere figures after they have been sculpted and textured.

June 4, 2003
ZBC reached another member milestone – this time passing the 5,000 member mark. Interestingly, the 5,000th member was none other than Meats Meier!

July 26, 2003
Pixolator posted an image that for the first time showed how displacement and normal maps could be created by ZBrush and used to achieve incredible levels of detail in many animation packages or game engines.

January 2004
Game Developer Magazine gave ZBrush the Front Line Award for Excellence and Innovation in Tools for Game Development, based on “criteria such as utility, innovation, value, and ease of use.”

March 30, 2004
ZBrush 2 was released for Windows. This newest version placed ZBrush firmly on the “must have” list of professional artists everywhere. Key to Z2’s success was the ability to work in real-time with meshes of up to ten million polygons and then output that incredible detail as either a displacement or normal map for use in animation packages.

ZBrush 2 had been extensively beta tested by Weta Digital during their work on “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, and Matt Aiken (Digital Supervisor for Weta Digital) stated that “it quickly became one of the key software components of our modeling pipeline. The revolutionary nature of ZBrush leads to Weta Digital creating a new approach to modeling hero creatures, digital doubles and props for film 3 in the trilogy. Throughout our work on “Lord of the Rings” we have been extracting displacement maps from highresolution geometry. For films 1 and 2 we were obliged to use 3D scans of physical maquette to obtain this high resolution geometry, a time consuming and expensive process, because software didn’t exist that could sculpt geometric detail to the level required.”

“Now with ZBrush that software is available and in many cases we are replacing the maquette scan with a “digital maquette” that is sculpted on the computer. With support for interactively updating (ultra-high resolution) models, we are now able to add details such as muscle and fat definition, skin and cloth wrinkles, and surfaces such as rock, cast iron, and weathered timber.”

Without the delay and cost of sculpting and scanning a physical maquette we have more time to refine the look of our models, and the software has the necessary flexibility to work in a production environment with changes to art direction and the level of detail required.

April 2004
Pixolator made available a model of a head in OBJ format along with a displacement map. ZBC members were encouraged to download the model and map for testing in their various rendering engines, demonstrating the extreme versatility of displacement mapping technology. Later, Pixolator added another model and map to the thread: the sword that ZBrush 2 users see on the splash screen every time they launch the software.

April 11, 2004
Pixolator posted an image made with several test models that he’d created during the development of ZBrush 2. The image was rendered with ZBrush 2’s new Unified Shadows feature, giving many users their first glimpse of this very fast and realistic lighting technique.

May 2004
ZBrush received the Technological Innovation Award at the International 3D Awards, which is given each year to “a technology that has proven itself in advancing the realm of 3D animation, gaming or digital visual effects.”

May 11, 2004
Martin Krol released a twenty minute QuickTime movie to showcase many of ZBrush 2’s exciting new features.

May 17, 2004
Pixolator released a QuickTime movie demonstrating how he used ZSpheres and high resolution modeling to create an angler fish. The incredible detail in the model and the chance to watch Pixolator work helped inspire countless ZBrush artists to use these techniques in their own projects.

June 2, 2004
The Topic Gallery was introduced to ZBrushCentral, making it possible to see all images from a thread as a gallery. This was later carried over into the new ZBrushCentral as a ThreadGallery link (in addition to the UserGallery link, which shows thumbnails of all images uploaded by a particular artist).

July 2004
Computer Arts Magazine awarded ZBrush five out of five stars along with the coveted “Computer Arts Recommended” status. The awards article went on to state that, “ZBrush 2 is a stunning 3D modeling package, and should be on every character artist’s list of products to buy… it sets a standard for high-detail polygon modeling. ZBrush is the single best organic 3D modeling system yet invented.”

August 3, 2004
ZBrushCentral got a facelift and a wide variety of new features such as faster and more robust searches, polls, sticky and favorite threads, viewing preferences, new forums and much more.

September 8, 2004
CGTalk launched its ZBrush forum, forming a partnership with ZBrushCentral.

September 20, 2004
The first ZBrush User Group Meeting was held at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Los Angeles. Guest speakers Bay Raitt, Meats Meier and Taron Baysal all shared ZBrush techniques before a packed house of CG professionals.

October 2004
ZBrush 2 was released for the Macintosh platform. As an extra bonus, enhanced skinning routines were added for ZSpheres as well as the ability to sculpt a model with perspective distortion in the viewport. These new features will be made available to PC users as part of ZBrush 2.5.

November 12, 2004
Digital Tutors released the first ever ZBrush training DVD.

November 27, 2004
Pixolator posted the first preview of features that will be included in ZBrush 2.5. Illustrated using three QuickTime movies, these new features expand on the versatility of ZSpheres and open up entirely new ways for modeling figures or morph targets.

December 16, 2004
Gnomon Workshop released the first in a series of training DVD’s by Meats Meier and Zack Petroc. Aaron Sims and Alex Alvarez have since expanded on the series, providing the most complete selection of ZBrush training on DVD anywhere.

December 2004
CG Networks published a retrospective of the most important events or developments in computer graphics over the 2004 calendar year, which were voted on by the entire CGTalk membership. ZBrush 2 ranked as second only to Pixar’s “The Incredibles”, eclipsing every other software package released that year. (Image courtesy of CGSociety)

January 10, 2005
The second ZBrush User Group Meeting was held, this time in San Francisco. This time, the featured artists were Ken Brilliant, Meats Meier, Zack Petroc, Bay Raitt and Taron Baysal. This meeting was also the first time that audiences were given the opportunity to see Taron’s amazing “People” video, which showcased the incredible power of animated displacement maps.

February 4, 2005
Pixolator released the ZTimeLapse plugin, which automatically captures thumbnails of a ZBrush session and allows the artist to output them as a kind of contact sheet showing their work. Many artists have since shared their ZBrush techniques via ZTimeLapse images.

July 18, 2005
Kris Costa won his second CGNetworks Challenge with his entry in the “Master & Servant” competition. Like Kris’ previous winning entry, ZBrush was used extensively in the creation of the scene. This time, however, Kris shared the entire creative process in a thread at ZBrushCentral. In addition to Kris, three other ZBrush users were runners-up in the competition, a fourth received Honorable Mention, and many more participants used ZBrush in their own entries.

July 29, 2005
George Lucas’ special effects company Industrial Light & Magic announced that they had adopted ZBrush into the studio pipeline. Cliff Plumer, ILM Chief Technical Officer stated that, “Integrating ZBrush into our modeling creature pipeline has allowed us to take our models to that next level of believability and close the gap between concept and production. Its ability to handle millions of polygons has enabled us to move more of our sculpting to “digital maquettes” and collapse the pipeline between our physical sculptors and our digital modelers.

August 2005
Attending SIGGRAPH, Pixologic revealed three upcoming plugins for ZBrush and also demonstrated features that will be incorporated into ZBrush 2.5. Adding to the already considerable excitement, the Pixologic booth featured guest appearances by four top digital artists: Meats Meier, Aaron Sims, Rick Baker (winner of six Academy Awards), and Taron Baysal. Meats, Aaron and Rick also signed prints of their ZBrush artwork.

August 2005
The first ZBrush in Action post was made at ZBC, featuring a commercial made by Radium for Renault. “ZBrush enabled us to eliminate a costly sculpting and scanning process and the feedback was impressively fast. Considering the tight production schedule the clients were extremely happy and impressed with the result.”

August 2005
The first Artists in Action post was made at ZBC, showing the texturing techniques of Caroline Delen while she worked on the image for one of the two banners that was featured at the Pixologic SIGGRAPH booth. The two QuickTime movies are not only educational, but also show the new ZAppLink plugin at work.

August 2005
For the first time ever, ZBrush was published as a boxed set. The more than just a pretty box (featuring artwork by acclaimed artist Meats Meier), the boxed set was created to be a quality package with Welcome Guide, Quick Reference Guide, a full color printed Practical Guide, and DVD-style case to hold the ZBrush 2 CD. In addition to making the boxed set available for new users, Pixologic also made a version of the box available without the CD to all existing ZBrush users.

September 2005
ZBrushCentral revealed the “Roadmap to ZBrush 2.5” and gave the first official time frame for the new version’s release. The announcement also gave dates for the release of the ZBrush 2 Demo, Displacement Exporter, ZAppLink, and ZMapper.

September 8, 2005
The ZBrush 2 Demo was released for Windows and Macintosh. At the same time, the ZBrush Classroom and Learning Kit were made available at www.ZBrush.com in an effort to bring together some of the most valuable resources for mastering the power of ZBrush.

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October 8, 2001
The first personal milestone of 1,000 posts by a single member was reached.

Hey! that was me:sunglasses:

“What a long and strange trip it has been”

Looking forward to 10 years from now when you can zbrush with your brain with a hologram, then you press a button and out pops a flexible and poseable 3D model in your hand.

Thanks for all the mammarys! Pixologic team

Congratulations folks. You all work hard and deserve a lot of credit.

Top row for this thread?

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
:+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:
:sunglasses:

Congratulations!!! This boar dis so great, it’s the first thing I do check…everyday (Even before I do my daily email checking) Keep up the great work!!

you guys just set the mark that all the other platforms must aspire to. keep the bar raised:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

Yea, start to make a big party! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[color=indigo]wow, what a mile stone zbc…
:smiley: [color=black] lol Digits on the first ever zbc 1k posts… It feels good to know that I apart of history as well with the 2k posts and the 3k posts. Back in the day where we were stars :lol:

Many Congrats!
to all the team for all their hard work, and of course the participating members
who all go to make this the most friendly and informative place to be :smiley:

100, 000 after the release of version 2.5 :stuck_out_tongue: ??

congrats! and thanks for all your work - zb is hands down my favorite software! wish i played with it sooner!

Congrats guys, you are amazing!!!

50000- ZB-Lovers- Great Comunity - l love it - THX to all5oooo.jpg

very cool

You missed a milestone …or maybe I did that I think is worthy of mentioning and that is

Frenchy Pilou’s 10,000 th post. May not be a big deal but 99% of those were to help a fellow zbrusher and he set the standard for the rest of us posters.

I can remember looking at the member totals about the time Z2 came out and it was around 9000…i remember wondering how fast that would rise after it’s release. Quintupling in a year and a half …not bad guys…not bad.

I can only imagine what 2.5 is gonna do;).

… seems to be sp4rk3r :smiley:
That a very mysterious nickname :smiley: (It’s not a joke by me)
Have happy Zbrushing to him and the other! :sunglasses:
Pilou
Ps @aminuts : thx for the remembering :smiley:

not be a big deal
More 300 images of a great artistic qualities ! :smiley: (you can see it in my gallery in my signature)
More 100 tuts of priceless interest ! :smiley: (see it in my signature)

Pss What a speedy exponential story :grimacing: :grimacing: :grimacing:

Psss My only regreat is not to be at the first beginning days of Zbc!
I had one year late :frowning: That explain my relative not modeling experiment :roll_eyes:
My first image posted I believe was thisthread of Anthology :roll_eyes: :laughing: :smiley:
(it’s for that I was going at Zbc, I had wished that Pixo can made this prog for his relaxing, but it’s seems some busy, so I will make it by myself :wink:

Pssss I remark that we have not yet the member’s number visible :question:
You can see it at the adress’s line of your navigator when you ask the “Profil member” (see the Pixolator number follow)
Mine is 1589 ( a not so younger ) :smiley:
Aminuts 8205 a midle aged :smiley:
Juandel 234 The landscape’s Master Where are you ?
Digit’s 67 The Mad scripter :wink: (I have a lot of sripts late to test :roll_eyes:
Aurick 15 (I am jealous) :laughing:
Davey 2 i love his Inbetweener :+1:
First is of course Pixolator :wink: The number “1” :slight_smile:

made with the number 50 000 & Zplace by Cameyo (the more useful script for me after Texture Master) Thx again! :sunglasses:
Frame is not Zb :wink:qq.jpg

oops!:roll_eyes:

Sorry Frenchy that was supposed to be…

may not seeeeeeem like a big deal but…

sometimes these old fingers can’t keep up with the even older brain.:lol:

sometimes these old fingers can’t keep up with the even older brain

… it’s sometimes these old eyes can’t keep up with the even older brain :smiley: :wink:
Have fun! :sunglasses:
Pilou

on to 1 million :+1:

Congratulations one and all.

Too many happy moments to differentiate.

Special thanks to Matthew(Aurick) for doing a brilliant job wherever and whatever he does.

Cow eyes for Ofer(Pixolator) and all those determined to assist him.

Shoutouts to Digits, Cameyo, Frenchy Pilou, marcus_civus, Pusghetty, TVEyes

ROCK!

Pilou: 1589!

You right, but that’s curious, in the the old time search was made by the number member
I believed that mine was 1565 !
Maybe a time’s hole displacement :smiley:
Thx for the precision, I have rectify :sunglasses: