Mudbox vs ZBrush: A comparison

As mentioned earlier, the program I would use for creating and polishing my statue would either be Mudbox or ZBrush. I will have a closer look at some of the positive and negative sides of either programs in order to decide which would be more suitable for me to use in this project:

PRIOR EXPERIENCE

Mudbox: 
Whilst not getting taught to use the program, I did some research about it last year and used it for my final character creation project, where I learnt the basics of the program itself as well as some more advanced techniques, such as rigging and lighting, even though I didn't have time to make use of these properly in my project.

ZBrush: 
No prior experience.

INTERFACE and EASE OF USE

Mudbox: 
Since Mudbox is a part of the Autodesk range, it shares a lot of features and tools similar to 3Ds Max and Maya. The import and export between these programs is made very easy as well. The interface is very clean and easy to understand. The short-cuts and hot-keys are for most parts the same as in 3Ds Max, which I have worked a lot with before. If any of the hot-keys don't suit your needs, they are editable to the user's preferences, both for keyboard and tablet users.
The setup for the interface is very neat; you don't have to go searching for where to find certain tools, and all the options are easily displayed to the user. It is also very similar to some graphics programs, such as Photoshop, in the way that the brushes work and are laid out, which is a definite plus. All in all, the interface is very beginner friendly but still offers the range needed for more advanced use.

ZBrush:
At first glance, the ZBrush interface can be a daunting sight, especially if you have previously been working with software like Autodesk Maya or 3Ds Max. After a bit of research, it looks far more complicated than it is, but far from as neat or easy to use as Mudbox. Many menus you won't ever visit or need to use. The hot-keys and short-cuts are completely different to both 3Ds Max and Photoshop, which can easily get very confusing, and the name of many tools are also different.
The range of sub-menus and options, however, make ZBrush an excellent choice for very advanced sculpting. It just requires a lot of getting used to before the user can take full advantage of all the options available.

TOOLS, TECHNIQUES and FEATURES


Mudbox: 
Mudbox offers a wide variety of tools in the creation and sculpting process. The latest 2011 version includes a whole new range of tools to offer even more options for the user. With the latest version, rigging was also made possible without having to create a separate skeleton in 3Ds Max/Maya first by just clicking and dragging anchor points and falloffs over the model and commit them to a skeleton which can be edited and changed very easily.
Mudbox also features a very advanced Polypaint technique which allows the user to edit textures, create layers of paint and masks (very similar to Photoshop) as well as direct export/import to Photoshop for even more advanced painting.
Mudbox also comes with the handy connection of exporting models back to 3Ds Max or Maya after render. All textures and rigs will be saved and easily implemented to the model again as a lower resolution model, ready for animation or export to a games engine.

ZBrush:
ZBrush offers more advanced and in-depth tools and techniques for sculpting, whilst lacking in the painting area. With the use of ZSpheres and ZSketch, users can very quickly create the base mesh directly in ZBrush without the need of using a 3D modelling software first. There is also a far greater range of sculpting brushes available.
ZBrush also features something called 2.5D Pixol Illustration. This is essentially a 3D model (sculpted in ZBrush) blended with a 2D document, a hybrid between a painting and a rendering. You can place the 3D sculpture in the document space, light, shade, and render them as a 2.5d illustration. It's a tool that allows you to paint colours, materials and depth as a backdrop for your 3D sculpture. The document make use of layers as well as interactive lighting and rendering, but they cannot be rotated or edited in the 3D space as they are composed of pixols, which are special pixels that carry colour information as well as depth and material base.


SUPPORT

Mudbox: 
Mudbox has small range of online video tutorials that walk you through the program, from the very basics of importing your mesh to shaping, sculpting and rigging it. There is also an online library where users can share knowledge and resources with each other. The online community for Mudbox is still very small but growing.

ZBrush:
As ZBrush is more widely used than Mudbox, there's a lot more support out there for ZBrush users. A wide variety of professional and amateur video tutorials have been made for the program, and there's a lot of support both online on websites and in books. Since ZBrush has been going around for much longer than Mudbox, the online community is very large.

PROFESSIONAL USE

Most games companies work in either Mudbox or ZBrush, although ZBrush seems to be the leading one due to its independence from 3D modelling programs and more advanced features. However, a lot of artists and games industries use both programs nowadays, sometimes even entwined.  

CONCLUSION

Both programs offer a wide variety of tools that the user can take advantage of and create very life-like renders. However, both programs have both advantages and disadvantages compared to each other, and can be more specific for a certain type of render.

The interface war is won hands down by Mudbox. The interface in Mudbox is so much simpler and easier to use that most people new to the program have come up with some very nice "doodles" within the first 20 minutes. It takes next to no time to grasp the very basics of the program. With ZBrush, on the other hand, the learning curve is steep, and it takes a lot of time to get used to the almost alien interface, and you need someone to hold your hand with the program to begin with, so to speak.

On another note, ZBrush is more extensive and offers more variety to the tools available. It is more "mature" than Mudbox, and is undoubtedly the more powerful product of the two in terms of potential sculpting detail and overall features.

For the texturing process, Mudbox seems to be the one on top. The advanced layer features makes it easy to paint, edit and remove parts of the texture whilst still keeping others. The local subdivision is far more superior in Mudbox as well. Rather than tesselating border faces and creating unnecessary tri's like ZBrush, it locks the area outside of the subdivision and divides each face separately. This makes for a fluid workflow on high resolution meshes as you can locally subdivide area by area without destroying the geometry of the mesh.

All in all, ZBrush is like a Swiss army knife. It can do about everything, but you have to find where what is hidden first, and you have the impression there's always something in the way. With Mudbox, everything is laid out on display very nicely for the user to choose and pick from at will.

Because I'm already familiar with Mudbox, it would be interesting to give ZBrush a go, but for the moment, there is no software available to me. The computers at university already have the latest version of Mudbox installed, but not ZBrush. Whilst it would be possible to download a 30 day free trial, it wouldn't be enough for the whole duration of the project, and would be impossible to do within those 30 days only.

Reference: 
Spencer, S., 2008 . ZBrush: Character Creation. Advanced Digital Sculpting. Indiana: Wiley Publishing.