Blender vs Sculptris vs ZBrush?

Blender has the great point of being free. So I think it is best to try it and see if it vibes with you. Personally, the interface does not vibe with me.

Sculptris is no longer updated so it will eventually become incompatible or otherwise unusable.

Zbrush has the bad point of costing an arm and a leg. Zbrushcore is much cheaper, but it has fewer brushes and no Live Booleans the latter feature makes doll hollowing much easier. I personally like Zbrush's interface the most but other people find it unintuitive.

Whichever program you choose, watch a variety of tutorial videos because different teachers vary in how they explain things and sometimes finding the person who explains it in the way that works best with how you think is like the clouds opening up and everything becomes clear. I really hated 3D sculpting until I found a video that was like wow this is the least overwhelming walk through and things actually make sense.

I started with Blender and moved to Zbrush. TBH the most annoying thing about switching programs is that no one agrees on the button combos for pan-zoom-rotate.

 

I don't have much experience, but I do have several GBs of Blender tutorials I bought.. Send me a DM and I will give more info

 

I personally use Blender for my current BJD projects, but I also have some experience in ZBrush and Sculptris, so I'll try to list some of my thoughts abot them below.
Also, regardless of what program you'll choose, I would advise you to get a graphics taplet, if you don't have one already, (cheaper one without a screen will do!) it will make sculpting a lot more comfortable!

ZBrush:

ZBrush seems to be the most popular within the BJD-making community.
It is an industry-tested proffessional grade piece of software, which does also reflect on it's cost.
Because it's so popular, there's a lot of tutorials on YouTube and what have you, googling stupid newbie questions when you get stuck will also most certainly work.
For me, as a digital artist who've been working primarily in 2D art focused interfaces, ZBrush's UI seems to be very hard to adapt to and somewhat counterintuitive, even though it looks simpler (than Blender's) at a glance.
When it comes to BJD modeling specifically, you'll definitely have all the nesessary tools readily available in the program. ZBrush does not have any "proper" rigging tools within the software though, so, at the later stages, when you might want to pose your model, you'll most likely have to do it manually by switching between parts and rotating each of them individually.
There's also a fun function of colorizing your model without doing "real texturing" (PolyPaint), which is useful for visualizing. (I myself sometimes switch to ZBush just to play with faceups, because my weak PC can't handle Blender's version of this functionality.)

One month subscription to ZBrush will cost you around 40USD, however, you can try it for free for 30 days (only for non-commercial purposes, mentioning just in case).
Pixologic also has a cut-down version of ZBrush, ZBrushCore, available for ~10USD/month, but I would not recommend going for this option at least because most of the tutorials were made for the full version and you might find yourself in an unpleasant situation of not finding the button for the task because there's just no such functionality in the software.

Overall, Zbrush is a good choice for detailed and ready-to-slice (for 3D printing) BJD modelling. ​

ZBrushCoreMini aka Sculptris:

Sculptris was a sculpt-oriented cut-down version of ZBrush; it has been replaced by ZBrushCoreMini in June 2020, which has pretty much the same concept.
It's positioned like sort of transition media for traditional artists or a fun starting program for people who want to try 3D sculpting, but aren't really ready to commit.
The main thing is that you don't have to think about polygons and other "technical stuff", but just sculpt, pretty much like you would do with real clay.
CoreMini took the most intuitive part of ZBrush's interface and condenced it to a bare-bones minimalistic sculpting space that is very much newbie-friendly, but lacks majority of more specific, not-so-fun tools used for creating more complex pieces.
It wants you to create a sculpture like in good ol' times - no subdivisions, no subtools (ZBrush version of layers, which are absolutely needed), no reference images, no booleans in dynamesh etc.
You pretty much don't need to watch any tutorials because it's so simple.

It is free to use.

In conclusion, ZBrushCoreMini is suitable solely for drafting and experimenting with your sculpting. You can export an OBJ from CoreMini to another program and finish it there, but it is 100% a no-go as a standalone piece of soft for anything as complex as a ball jointed doll.​

Blender:

Blender is positioned as all-in-one 3D software, suitable for modelling, texturing, rigging, animating, etc.
It has a rather large and supportive community of people who create add-ons, tutorials and help to make Blender better with every update. You'll find a lot of tutorials on YouTube as well.
The interface may look scary for a total beginner, but I find it more intuitive and easy to navigate than ZBrush's. I recommend watching some beginner tutorials before you jump in though.
You will find all the tools necessary for modelling and finalizing your BJD available to you in the program by default and you can also use various add-ons to speed up some parts of the process when you grasp how it all works.
Because it's an all-around program, you can rig and paint your model there too. ("PolyPainting" shouldn't be a problem on a more powerful PC, I just work on a Pentium)
Blender has most, if not all, of ZBrush's functionality already implemented and they're constantly adding new features based on user feedback.

Blender is open-source and completely free to use.

Overall, Blender has all the tools you'll need to sculpt, detail and finalize a BJD, with some additional fun options such as texturing, rigging and even animating.
​

TLDR, final conclusion:
Do not use Sculptris or cut-down versions of software.
I would reccommend you to try both Zbrush and Blender at least for a couple of hours before you make a commitment. Watch some tutorials on both first, just to see what is the workflow for each of the programs.
For general 3D ease-in, first learn about navigation, adding new meshes, modifiers and what they do, what are subdivisions and dynamic topology. (Don't stress it, just watch some vids to get the general terms) After that just dive in and try to sculpt a head, google the rest whenever you get stuck, watch more vids.

And a biased opinion - just use Blender, it'll do.

 

@Marredae - That's a wonderful overview of the various programs! I've had my heart set on starting with ZBrush (whenever I get time to actually start on a doll design) just because I see so many doll-maker professionals using it and I feel like it would be a waste of effort to learn one system and then move to another one later, but the rigging ability in Blender sounds incredibly useful.

Can you take a model from ZBrush to Blender and play with the rigging and make adjustments and then send it back to ZBrush?

I did a little Blender work back in my teens and found it fun, but I know the program has advanced a lot since then, and of course, there is the huge benefit of it being free.

Thank you!

And thank you, @ArtWolf, for bringing up the topic! I've been curious about this as well. I hope you share your experiments in doll-making (when you feel comfortable doing so).

 

@StellaMarigold
Most people work in ZBrush indeed, and the best thing about it is the fact you can actually find specifically bjd-making tutorials if you need everything to be laid down before you. (That said, you can still follow the same tutorials using Blender, but you'll need to keep in mind that some things are named differently between programs and, obviously, are not in the same places.) Rigging ability will be most useful at the later stages only, so, yea, you shouldn't have any isuues working pretty much exclusively in ZBrush!

Yes, you can easily export, for example, an obj from ZBrush and import it to Blender and vice-versa! There's actually a way to rig your model in ZBrush using Transpose tools, it may not be as precise as a traditional rig would be (no weights and additional bones and stuff), but it might actually work, idk.
Good luck! ♥

 

@Marredae - Thank you so much! That's very helpful. Just need to work up the courage (and scrounge up the time) to try it!

 

You can import/Export models to and from any package with Obj files. Zbrush only has rigging features for posing (TransPose Master) within the program and although I have never used it Zbrush now has Alembic file support to import animation. As far as packages it is all personal preference or what the pipeline uses. I agree that Sculptris isn't a good option and zbrush/Mudbox/Blender as more suitable.

 

I use zbrushcore. I just started learning how to sculpt as well. I used t use blender in the past but back then it wasn't very sculpting friendly- it may be different now. I have enjoyed zbrushcore so far but I am kind of upset I can't open zbrush files on it. I had a free zbrush trial (which btw lasts 2 weeks but you can get it extended up to 2 months if you would like to test it out) and I didnt save my projects to STL before the trial ended. Zbrush is pretty expensive so if you're not planning on using most of the brushes anyways you should just get Zbrushcore and update if you need to.

 

My two cents:

I've been working with ZBrush for YEARS, I learned 3D on ZB so I'm clearly biased. There's no other program that can touch ZBrush for organic sculpting. So if money isn't a problem and you're a fast learner go with ZBrush.
However Blender is free and you can do hard surface modeling better there than in ZB. The interfaces, hotkeys and mouse buttons are way different and require different muscle memory. Which probably won't be a problem for you since you're just learning and won't have ingrained habits.

ZBrush utilizes the CPU instead of the GPU which is good if your graphics card isn't the best.

There are a TON of tutorials, online classes, assets online for ZBrush and for Blender. If I were you I'd learn both.

Another option is 3D Coat. I mainly use it for topology, but they have a host of other useful tools and modes. You can get a perpetual license for an affordable price and they're having a sale right now. Not as many tutorials, but they put out a lot of content on their YouTube channel.

Good luck

 

Hi! This is an old post, but I also want to learn Blender. I wonder if there are still tutorials available.

 

Did they pick up Sculptris again? I thought the project was abandoned. Absolutely the most user-friendly sculpting program I've used! Blender is way too complicated if you're not a power user.

 

Blender is great because it's free, and for a free program, it has pretty much everything you need-so it's quite easy to use overall. The rendering features are also really good. ZBrush is very useful once you learn it, and there are many ways to use it professionally. The downsides are the price and the fact that the key controls are a bit different from Blender.