ZBrush vs Blender Sculpting – Which one you should learn

ZBrush and Blender both are industry-standard software used by professionals. ZBrush is sculpting software whereas Blender is 3d modeling software.

But ZBrush has 3d modeling tool and Blender has an awesome sculpting tool also.

So today I compare Blender 3d and ZBrush to find out which software is good according to your requirements.

Let’s dive right in.

1. 3D Modeling

ZBrush and Blender both software are easy to learn for beginners. ZBrush has great modeling tools but they are not powerful compared to Blender.

The Zbrush modeling tool is a little bit complicated for beginners.

I know ZBrush is great software but for 3d modeling especially for Hard Surface, Blender is better compared to ZBrush.

2. 3D Sculpting

Zbrush is a very good sculpting software because of awesome sculpting features such as dynamesh, poly painting, etc.

Blender is not a bad sculpting software but compared to ZBrush, ZBrush always wins.

For Organic and Hard surface sculpting and 3d Printing, ZBrush is better. If you aren’t able to afford ZBrush then you can use Blender.

3. UV Mapping

UV mapping is boring but creating the optimized UV mapping is necessary.

Zbrush and Blender have different UV Mapping workflows. Blender UV mapping is good whereas Zbrush UV Mapping is easy.

But wait, Zbrush UV Mapping is easy only for organic models. For inorganic models, Blender UV Mapping is good.

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4. Texturing

ZBrush has great texturing features such as poly painting, materials, etc. Polypaint is a process to apply a single RGB value to each vertex.

If you know the color theory then you should use poly painting for texturing, you will love it.

For example,  Hossein Diba is known for creating extremely realistic character modeling and texturing.

He uses poly painting for texturing a character. So, it’s clear that poly painting is good for character texturing.

Blender also has great texturing features such as materials, easy texturing process, etc.

5. Rendering

Blender use two render engine Cycle and EVEEE. Blender has more advanced rendering features than Zbrush.

Blender Cycle is a ray-trace-based rendering engine whereas Blender EEVEE is a real-time rendering engine.

Zbrush can render the scene but ZBrush rendering is not powerful compared to Blender.

6. Blender Voxel Remesh vs Zbrush Dynamesh

ZBrush best sculpting feature is Dynamesh. Dynamesh is used to regenerate the topology.

When you sculpt anything, the topology is stretched or distorted and Dynamesh fixes this issue by regenerating the topology.

Blender Voxel Remesh is a dynamesh alternative. Blender Voxel Sculpting and ZBrush Dynamesh Sculpting both are good.

7. Zremesher in Zbrush vs QuadriFlow in Blender

Most artists don’t like the retopology phase, but it is essential, especially for character artists. Manually topology is very boring and time-consuming.

ZRemesher is a great tool for auto retopology, it can retopology any models such as hard surface, character, etc.

You just need to adjust a few settings and you are done. Blender has the option to retopology mesh but it’s not powerful like Zremesher.

But if are a hardcore blender fan, you can buy an Exoside Quad Remesh add-on. It works the same as Zremesher because both tools were developed by the same person.

8. Subdivide in Zbrush VS Multityre in Blender

I don’t need to mention that subdividing is important for sculpting. Both software has these options, only names changes.

When you subdivided the 3d model in Zbrush to add higher detail, you don’t see any performance issue.

But in Blender, when you use this feature, you notice that some performances issue.

9. ZBrush Core Mini vs Blender

ZBrush Core mini is an affordable digital sculpting software for the artist who doesn’t have enough budget to Buy ZBrush.

ZBrush Core mini has great sculpting tools compared to Blender. So, I recommended using ZBrush Core for sculpting and Blender for 3d Modeling.

10. In a nutshell

ZBrush	Blender
It’s premium software.	It’s a free software
ZBrush is good for sculpting.	Blender is good for 3d modeling.
It handles millions of poly without lag.	Blender is not able to handle millions of poly
The famous production house, Big studio use ZBrush.	Startups, small studios use Blender.
It’s available for Windows and macOS.	It’s available for Windows, macOS, Linux.

Now It’s Over to You

ZBrush and Blender both are great software. ZBrush is known for sculpting and Blender is known for free and open-source 3d modeling software.

Which one you should choose, let me know in the comment section.