Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 Posted by Jim Thacker

Pixologic ships ZBrush 4R2b


Third-party developer Verold’s homepage, showing what we believe to be QRemesher, its forthcoming commercial add-on for ZBrush, announced by Pixologic as part of its free ZBrush 4R2b update.

Pixologic has released ZBrush 4R2b, its free update to ‘polish the rough corners’ of ZBrush 4R2.

The developer had previously previewed its new FiberMesh hair and fur system, included as part of 4R2b, but the update also includes a number of new material and mask-handling features:

  • FiberMesh
    Create true 3D fibers, fur and hair which may be sculpted, painted, UV mapped and exported to other apps.
  • New set of dedicated FiberMesh Groom brushes and corresponding Brush settings
  • MicroMesh support to render fibers or single polygons as another 3D object
  • New set of BPR filters and operators
  • BPR Global Shadow and Ambient Occlusion settings to simplify shadow management
  • New Cavity Mixer
    Define different material shaders based on the mesh cavities
  • Improved small details creation through Alpha and Mask
    Alphas may be placed using TransPose
  • Surface Smoothness feature
    Detects mesh curvature for Mask creation
  • New global deformation with Transpose Curve deformation and UnClip
  • Improved Mask operations with Shrink and Extend
  • Topology editing additions: Group Mask and Edgeloop Mask Border
  • New JPEG Exporter with Crop, Preview and adjustment settings

But most intriguingly of all, the official announcement notes: “In Z4R2b you’ll find two palettes that require the use of a plugin. One of these plugins, the NoiseMaker, was previously announced and will be coming your way within a couple weeks. The other is now being announced for the first time and is code named: QRemesher.”

There is no further information about QRemesher, other than that it will be a commercial add-on, and that it is being created in collaboration with an external developer, Verold.

Visiting Verold’s website brings up a holding page, and what looks tantalisingly like a retopology system. Could ZBrush be getting 3D-Coat-style autoretopo tools? Stand by for QRemesher’s alpha release in February…

Read the full ZBrush 4R2b release thread on ZBrushCentral
(Includes download link)

Visit the Verold website