ZBrush

The initial ZBrush download comes with thirty 3D sculpting brushes with more available for download. Each brush offers unique attributes as well as allowing general control over hardness, intensity, and size. Alphas, used to create a specific pattern or shape, and textures are also editable brush features.

Polypainting allows users to paint on an object's surface without the need to first assign a texture map by adding color directly to the polygons.

ZBrush also gives the ability to sculpt in 2.5D and comes with several brushes for that purpose. A pixol put down when sculpting or illustrating in 2.5D contains information on its own color, depth, material, position and lighting information.

ZBrush also has a feature that is similar to skeletal animation in other 3D programs. The transpose feature allows a user to isolate a part of the model and pose it without the need of skeletal rigging.[16]

A user can create a base mesh with uniform topology and then convert it into a sculptable model by starting out with a simple sphere and extracting more "ZSpheres", until the basic shape of the desired model is created.

GoZ tab in Autodesk Maya's shelf.

Introduced in ZBrush 3.2 OS X, GoZ automates setting up shading networks for normal, displacement, and texture maps of the 3D models in GoZ-enabled applications. Upon sending the mesh back to ZBrush, GoZ will automatically remap the existing high-resolution details to the incoming mesh.[12] GoZ will take care of operations such as correcting points & polygons order. The updated mesh is immediately ready for further detailing, map extractions, and transferring to any other GoZ-enabled application.[17]

Also included is a full render suite known as Best Preview Render, which allows use of full 360° environment maps to light scenes using HDRI images. BPR includes a new light manipulation system called LightCaps. With it, one can not only adjust how the lights in the scene are placed around the model, but also generate environments based on it for HDRI rendering later on. It also allows for material adjustments in real-time. Material properties such as subsurface scattering are supported as are environmental and scan-line reflections. BPR also includes a set of built-in filters that can be used in realtime to create dramatic effects and corrections without even touching another photo-manipulation program.[18]

This allows ZBrush to quickly generate a new model with uniform polygon distribution, to improve the topology of models and eliminate polygon stretching.[19]

Fibermesh is a feature that allows users to grow polygon fibers out of their models or to make various botanical items. It is also a way to edit and manipulate large amounts of polygons at once with Groom brushes.[20]

It is an automatic retopology system previously called QRemesher that creates a new topology based on the original mesh. The new topology is generally more clean and uniform. This is a process that also helps to reduce or increase the polygon count. This process can also be guided by the user to make the new topology follow curves in the model and retain more detail in specified areas.[21]

Shadowbox allows the user to draw a rough silhouette of what they want to model, onto the inside of a virtual box. In real-time, any changes to the drawings are applied to a 3D model, upon which further details can be applied. The feature can best be utilized for hard surface modeling.[22]