I must respectfully disagree with my peers. ZB excels at hyper realistic 2D page and interface design…I don’t actually think theres anything better for it on the planet, in the hands of a knowledgeable user. As always, ZB works best alongside a traditional modeler, for precise, mechanical shapes…but you can get really far in ZB “2.5D” mode using alphas, stencils and precise brush operations, bypassing most modeling altogether.
For your needs, for the simple types of mechanical objects you need to be precise, and can’t be achieved with an alpha or 2.5 D effect in ZB, I would recommend Wings3d…Blender is way more software than you want for that job, and not nearly as accesible. Wings is also freeware. Silo is great, accessible, and pretty cheap, and I would recommend it as a great pairing with ZB, but it’s not free. It depends on the length of the commitment you require…for a few knobs or minor elements for a single project, use Wings.
Even if you need to go outside ZB to model a precise object, you’ll definitely want to assemble the pieces and render in ZB, as opposed to some bloated animation package, or traditional renderer…here’s why:
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If you take your elements into a full blown animation renderer, you must map and texture them, which is a much more complicated process than in ZB, where you can just position your object, slap a couple brush strokes overtop of it, and boom, you’ve got basic material and color, that can be detailed just as painlessly.
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Quick Lighting is similarly painless in ZB, and well suited for this type of thing.
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Since its going to be a more or less straight on view, you’ll find that creative use of stenciling, alphas, and 2.5D brushes will save you the trouble of modeling any geometry in many instances, with no discernable difference in the end result. Once you know what you’re doing, you can knock out stellar results infinitely faster and with less effort than in some traditional 3D animation-centric bloatware.
I’ve been using ZB for Page(print) design and interface skinning for years now. Here are some quick examples I drudged up. Less than 20% of the elements in these images represent any actual geometry…it’s mostly ZB 2.5D functions and photoshop post processing. More “painting” than modeling. Please forgive the notations…most of these were for client approval.
Of course, for interface skinning, you couldnt do anything as elaborate as the above, because any portion of the interface that has to scale with resolution needs to be bland and homogenous, so it can tile seamlessly. Individual elements that don’t have to scale can benefit from ZB.
Some caveats:
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Some types of elements, like those impossibly shiny “web 2.0” buttons are simply better done in photoshop, as they are more “ideal”, than realistic. Some things are always easier done in photoshop.
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Everything Ive said here is from the point of view of static imagery. There are no precision operations in ZB for “animating” components. To get mouseover or rotation steps, you would have to reposition the elements manually for each version of it. I think this would be fine for your needs, but I could be mistaken.
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Zbrush on the one hand, and 3D modeling in general on the other hand, both carry “not insignificant” learning curves before you’re going to be able to do anything worthwhile. If all you’re after is a few minor elements for a single project, it’s hard to not look at this move as a bit of overkill. I would recommend ZB to any designer, wholeheartedly, to incorporate into their workflow and arsenal of tools… but for a single project, I’ve got to believe you can find some way to get the effects you’re after with photoshop, with which you are already familiar.
If I can just create more realistic looking knobs for the GUI I will be satisfied (these are pretty basic shapes). A lot of the static background stuff I’m confident I’ll continue to evolve those using photoshop.
