Ok day one first thoughts zbrush is hyper loaded /// procreate style … will be high learning curve / wild thing is … it feels like forger on steroids … I’m so used to nomad that zbrush feels clunky
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coming from a background of Zbrush for a few years you’ll get used to the quirks. im super happy have zspheres again
So ive been on the beta for zbrush on ipad for a while, a few of us were sent it at work (i work for Industrial Light & Magic).
And its been quite clear that there has been a lot of effort by Maxon to create an intuitive experience for zbrush on the ipad. Much like i have seen here with nomad.
One thing i notice with nomad is that there are certain key features that are sometimes buried one level down, beneath a menu to access when the user would like to access them while sculpting.
The biggest one we talk about is the ability to go up or down through subdivision levels.
I know there is effort to not clutter the interface, one that i think we all appreciate. But to not have a button to go up or down at the viewport level means that the user would need to either use nomad with keyboard bindings to quickly go up or down in subd’s or pin the menu open which covers quite a lot of viewport.
I bought up this topic a few years ago on the forums here, and bumped it a few times over the years but it’s one of the key features that i feel can slow users down.
One user had a nifty solution in the form of a two button approach but i think whatever the solution is, its about bringing a key feature of sculpting to the surface and if the fear is worrying about cluttering up the workspace then i would say to make it optional.
One other massive feature i feel the need for in Nomad compared to zbrushForIpad is transpose masking. Thats another huge one.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, rooting for nomad to succeed!!
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They made a lot efforts on ipad UI, still the gismo buttons design looks a little odd. No layers for now? Or maybe i don’t found them. The mirror fonction is difficult to acces. Isaw they keep the “3 pyramides” on the bend curve modifier. It always makes me remember me of the “3 shells” in Demolition man movie:) I would love to have thoses kind of modifiers too but with the lovely crafted UI attention we already have in nomadsculpt. I still prefer the UI render and brush feeling of Nomadsculpt and the rendering options in Nomadsculpt is addictive.
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I wonder why they went with the historically rooted terms like “DamStandard” and “subtools” instead of starting over.
“snake hook requires sculptris pro” will just confuse new users.
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I tried downloading Zbrush on my 6th generation iPad from 2018 with the latest iOS installed, but I still couldn’t get it to work. I’m super happy that Nomad works well on it, unlike Maxon, which doesn’t seem to care about users with iPads using the A10 Bionic chipset. I really hope Nomad continues to be accessible to everyone as much as possible. 
In Brazil, buying an iPad is very expensive, it’s like paying 4 or 5 thousand dollars for a mid-range iPad in the US. The taxes here are very high. Thank you, Nomad team!
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Downloading now. Hate subscription model tho.
After playing around (with free version) I have to say they did fantastic job of porting it to iPad Pro. Also, it’s extremely polished release (thanks to beta I assume).
Still, not supporting Adobe approach (subscription) so I’ll stick with Nomad for now.
p.s. I own Pixologic desktop license (from 2020) so iPad version is not included, as you would’ve guessed.
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So how disturbed should I be that Z Brush for iPAd has not real time rendering.
What does this mean in terms of porting finished 3D art to say Procreate?
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Both apps has things than can be done faster than the other. For example, I prefer switching the add and sub function of the brush using the double tap function of the apple pencil instead of pushing the left button like in zbrush
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Always will be faster working with a keyboard than an ipad. In my pc I assigned shortcuts to switch quickly between my most used brushed in zbrush. Personally, I don’t care if I miss 0.1 seconds for not having the buttons that you propose, it`s the same time that I miss switching the brush for not having a keyboard.
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I tried the zbrush for ipad, both has the strengths and weakness, for most of what I do when sculpt on the go nomad is enogugh, only when I really need some zbrush features like vdm brush or the posing tool I will pay the subcription of the current month
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Everyone complaing about tools that are heavy to find: just bound it to one of those custom menus and you have quick access ^^
Took 5 minutes for me…
Some thoughts about the price/subscription: you pay 6$ for a coffee at starbucks. If 10 bucks are too much…then i don’t know. Of course, a one-time-payment would be better.
I would suggest, that you do so,e cool stuff, upload it on CGTrader and make some money to pay the 10 $ ^^
As long as Nomad keeps updating and steadily keeps adding more features to the app it can compete with Zbrush.
Does anyone use Nomad professionally for work i know some companies would prefer you to use a specific software I know Zbrush is one of those software.
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So far super happy with zbrush app since its the first 3d program that got me started since a dekade 
(stuff isnt that hard to find with a bit of searching. i might incite the wrath of Cthulhu but first impression is it feels nicer and smoother than the desktop thing)
though i think nomads ui looks still generally more approachable and pretty.
One thing i apprecchiate with zbrush ui atm is that i dont accidentally switch tools with my knuckle though. Im sure both apps can coexist just fine 
now if uniform would be at least half that easy to understand id use it a lot more 
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This may not seem like a big deal to some. But the latest update has a really amazing feature. You can customise the toolbar.
@stephomi you keep surprising me. This is insane!!
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Hello,
I was a Nomad Sculpt user when I learned that zBrush was brought to the iPad. I had never used zBrush, but I was very excited to check it up on iPad and decided to give it a try. And I did, for a few months. I do not regret it as it was a very interesting experience. I still have a subscription, waiting in particular to see what I will get with zModeler (planned in april), but I have got back to Nomad Sculpt for several reasons.
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Yes, the ergonomy of zBrush for iPad is probably the best they could manage. It is really a good job they did. But… it is so packed with myriads of features you will probably never use, dozens of menus and submenus, and hundred of parameters. The one features you are looking for are just a couple of trees in a large forest. Most of the parameters for each function are very hard to understand, and, same thing, you only need to know a few of them.
The result is that you spend a lot of time finding the functions and the parameters you want to access.
You can make up your own menus, but after some time of building them, you end up spending a lot of time finding what you are looking for in your own menus !
More over, there are quite a redundancy among all the features, and a lot of ways to do similar things, but not exactly the same ones :). Take as an example the numerous deformers. And you struggle to know what would have been the best way to solve your problem.
I understand that when you have spent several years to master all the features, this can be hard to hear and you do not see why you would use another software, but why bother if you are just a hobyist.
Compared to that, everything is so logically presented in Nomad UI. Every thing is easy to access and easy to undertand, always at the right place which you can memorize. The recent additions fulfilled a couple of missing things in the early UI : specific brush palettes and customization of the Bottom bar. I also appreciate that you can subdivide in subdirectories the alphas, materials, and so on. -
The curves in zBrush are IMHO an abomination. It is so hard to make them go where you want with the shape you want, and so easy in Nomad with Tubes. And in Nomad, all the tube options are grouped in one place. You would need many Tools in zBrush to do the same, each one hard to find (look above).
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The rendering engine is not enough for my taste, and it is not real time like in Nomad. I understand the logic of maxon promoting other pieces of software for rendering, or adressing professionals who have third party software for that. But it means more money, and very few of them if not any are available on iPad.
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You can not put a reference image in the background (at least with the iPad version). As simple as that. Yes, you can set reference images on each perpendicular plane, but your reference is not necessarily a blueprint with perfect axis projections. Plus, the Ipad screen is not very large, it would be painful to sacrifice a part of the screen to maintain another window with your image, next to zBrush windows. And even doing so, you could not put your model over the reference to compare the proportions.
Nonetheless, what I like in zBrush :
- the zBrush deformers (and Anchor brush as well). It would be nice to have them in Nomad, but not always necessary (for example, as long as you don’t validate a Tube, or keep a saved unvalidated version, you can deform it). Maybe Nomad will provide them in the future (but easier to use than in zBrush I hope
). - the extensive brush set. Most of them are missing in Nomad. This is not really a drawback if you import a free brushset provided by Yatskin Vitalik on this forum, who I thank a lot by the way. RaZum sells a clay brush set that is interesting too.
Some features are equivalent between the two apps : dynamesh (voxel remesh), subdivision, zremesher (quadremesher),…
I don’t do UV mapping for now, but the IPad version of zBrush does not do much better than Nomad at the moment.
So far, I have absolutely no reason to leave Nomad. I also want to say that I like the growth of this app which never cease to improve.
I am sorry if my words hurt some people. It only reflects my perception and be sure that it was not intended to hurt anyone.
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I forgot to mention simple things you can do in Nomad that you can not in zBrush (at least the iPad version), and that makes your life so much easier when sculpting :
- voxel remesh while a part of your model is masked. It remeshes only the unmasked part, and you can keep the mask on to do further things. In zBrush, you have to remove the mask first before zremeshing.
- when using the mask selection tool (for example lasso), you can decide to affect only the faces that are oriented towards you, and not the back of the model.
Sure, you can find workarounds in zBrush but it is annoying and a little time consuming.
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