Among the product's strongest attributes are its graphically appealing and accessible menu bars, which run along both sides of the screen. The menus are highly configurable, so users can keep the tools and palettes they use most often at close range.
Graphics artist Peter Kim, who develops video games for Electronic Arts, is an early user of ZBrush. "The materials editor, which lets you paint textures on objects with a brush, is really intuitive, and a timesaver." He says that before using ZBrush, he used Photoshop to apply textures to objects, "which works well but is labor-intensive." Other 3D paint programs he has used require fewer steps, but are not as precise as Photoshop. The alternative, ZBrush, "could be the texture-painting product for the videogame industry."
ZBrush was scheduled to ship in Q4 of 1999 at an introductory price of $300. A demo version is available on the company's Web site. Pixologic recommends a Pentium III and 128mb of RAM to run ZBrush. The company plans to release a Mac version in 2000. (Pixologic; Los Angeles; 888-748-5967;
www.pixologic.com)
-Jenny Donelan