Nothing amuses me more than when people fit perfectly into stereotypes. I love watching teen-age boys tear through their white-collar towns pumping angry, white-boy rap such as Eminem out of the pick-up trucks their upper middle-class parents bought them for their sixteenth birthday. I love watching twenty-something women dressed completely in black eat sushi and smoke long, thin cigarettes outside the independent movie theater after a screening of Amelie. I love watching disturbed artists as they rant about nothing, certain they understand life in a way we would never comprehend were it not for their sculptures, paintings, and/or photographs of nothing.

It's these disturbed artists upon which I'll focus throughout this review of Pixologic's ZBrush. ZBrush isn't a tool for these disturbed artists, it is a disturbed artist.

I try to picture the group of developers at Pixologic, and I keep coming up with the cast of characters in Douglas Coupland's "Microserf's;" a wild array of personalities and ideals all bound by the notion that the program upon which they're working is right, that we need it even if we don't. And they're probably right. What Pixologic has created with ZBrush is a painting program totally unlike any other in what it can it do, we want it to do, and how it does it.

Before I get into the review, I want to make a different analogy; I liken using ZBrush to learning karate. At first, it's a slow, painful process that makes little or no sense. The attention and patience required to get through the training are enough to send the less serious student scampering for the door. But if you stick with it, suddenly you're beating up 50 onrushing ninjas with nothing more than a broom. That's the power of ZBrush.

Okay, back to the disturbed artist. ZBrush, from the start, is a paranoid program. The process of purchasing, installing, and registering ZBrush should have its own manual, and the policy for pulling the program from one computer to install on another would make Bill Gates and the Windows XP staff blush. Don't install this program on a computer you intend to upgrade often, we'll leave it at that.

Like the disturbed artist, ZBrush is also eccentric in its methods. The user interface is downright bizarre, and is harder for Mac users to master than that of Kai's Power Tools. Entering the program is like entering an entirely different OS...which I guess we're all doing now anyway with OS X, so at least we're accustomed to change. But the interface serves its purpose, so I can't really fault it for not looking like the Mac. Just plan on taking some time to learn your way around.

The analogy to the disturbed artist ends there, however, because unlike with them, ZBrush actually produces some amazing results. Once you learn to think the way it wants you to, it learns to think the way you do, and the process of creating 2D and 3D art becomes a joy.

Understand first of all that I'm not a 3D artist. I never have been, and I most like never will be (of note, anyway). 2 Ds are all I need, I guess, or care to master, so I've never spent more than a few uncomfortable hours inside 3D graphics programs. ZBrush, however, is a peculiarly effective combination of 2D and 3D painting programs. It allows you to create 3D art without all the wire frame models and other rendering muck. Instead, you paint. With different brushes and tools, you just paint, and you suddenly have artwork unlike anything that can be achieved in normal 2D graphics programs.

This is achieved through "pixols," as Pixologic calls them, that define not only the standard 24 bits of color data, but 32 bits of data to record depth and 8 bits to describe surface materials. The tools required to achieve this are plentiful, yet complicated. Accessing them menus, sub-menus drawers and such can be daunting, compounded by the ability to adjust just about every setting along the way. There's a lot to learn here, with a lot of power being the trade-off.

This actually pulls me away from the disturbed artist analogy, because Pixologic, of course, wants us to understand ZBrush. They offer an extensive list of tutorials and scripts to help master features one at a time, and they provide artwork that inspires users to figure out how it's done. Indeed, the enthusiasm of the Pixologic community is not unlike that of Nisus Writer or even the Macintosh itself. ZBrush Central, their dedicated ZBrush users forum, is full tips, tricks, requests, and even threads on topics such as the Final Fantasy DVD and the next Wolfenstein game.

What's most impressive here, however, are the number of posts from Pixologic themselves. Whenever a new script is released, they'll post it with accompanying artwork (and a tremendous deal of enthusiasm, I should add). Soon thereafter, user artwork follows along with a deluge of compliments, tips, and words of encouragement. ZBrush scripting, or ZScripts, are not just for the program's developers, however. Creating them is simply a matter of recording actions and replaying them upon demand. But now let me contradict myself by pointing out that ZScripts are not simply macro recordings. It's a complete scripting language--not unlike AppleScript--that can be further edited by the user. They allow you to record any step of the creation process and replay them at will or share them with others. If one user stumbles across an amazing texture effect, he/she can record the script and make it available to all ZBrush users. Perhaps with no other program has participation in the user forms been more important than with ZBrush.

ZScripts are also used to create the tutorials that abound at ZBrush Central. Users need only view these pre-recorded script sessions to learn and master new techniques to enhance their creations.

You've no doubt noticed that, aside from the sample graphic above created by the Pixologic founder Ofer Alon, I haven't included the usual screen captures in this review. There are two reasons for this. First, only a full-sized screen capture could begin to display the complexity and power of the ZBrush user-interface. And second, the artwork I created pales in comparison to that on display in the ZBrush gallery (follow the "gallery link"), and I wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from this program with my feeble attempts. For although ZBrush gave me the tools necessary to exceed my artistic abilities, it didn't give me vision. But least now there's hope for me.

With no real detail on the tools and processes, this review has been unlike any other I've written. However, ZBrush is unlike any program I've ever used. Learning it takes study and patience--which I'm still applying--and mastering it takes practice and even more patience. The forums are incredibly helpful, but the lack of a printed manual is not. I have here the same complaint I have with Nisus Writer; if developers want us to learn a completely new way of working, they'd darn well better provide us with a printed manual to help us along. Not everyone can just hop online and visit a forum to get a question answered, and no one likes to print off 300 plus pages of a PDF (especially after spending 300 plus dollars on the program).

However, once you get over that hump, ZBrush is quite fun to play around with and can allow you to create artwork of which you may not have been capable before. Artists, game designers, hobbyests and more are sure to love this program if their schedules warrant the time necessary to grow accustomed to it. So, ignore this review. Instead, when you're sure you'll have plenty of free time, download the 30 day trial version and get busy. Go through the tutorials, visit the forums and start creating. If the learning curve doesn't prove too steep, you're in for a treat. If it does, well, you can always still visit the ZBrush gallery. Who knows, perhaps someday soon one of my creations will be up there. It won't be too long before I get to become a disturbed artist myself. Although I'll never wear all black, I'm fairly positive I could start ranting about nothing, certain I understand life in a way you would never comprehend were it not for my...uh, software reviews, Absurd Notion feature column, and...

Never mind.

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