I have witnessed some impressive work with zbrush and I thought that maybe people here should know about it. Especially the function called zsphere.

Have a look.

http://pixologic.com/home/showcase15/zsphere_sample1.html

http://pixologic.com/home/showcase15/zsphere_sample2.html

Zsphere page (http://209.132.69.82/showcase/getthumbs.shtml?0_ZSpheres&linkall)

http://www.zbrush.com

Very interesting. Does it have exporters for HL formats and such?

I've played with this program before, and it is very good, it's like playing with clay. But i would not advise it for game modeling develoment, as it's very high polygon when you save out as a normal model. Hower there are tools to cut the polygons down, but all in all IMO it's not really suited to games, but more for renders and high poly animation work.

You can have highpoly. I havent tried it yet but it looks like you have excellent control over the mesh for subdivision.

That looks like some truly amazing software. I do admit that it does look alot like it would produce tons of polys, but if you have control over that, it could create some very nice models...

You can always block out the rough shape in Zspheres (instead of ugly boxes), use adaptive skin/unified skin with a extremely low resolution (eg. 1, or 2). Then export the resultant low poly model into 3dsmax for further reworking/retweaking (ie. removing unnecessary vertices, welding points, creating a more meaningful low poly mesh out of it) etc. As far as resultant polycounts go, it can be quite suitable for HL2. The thing is, such models (subdivision types that you see in Zbrush) consist of square patches, and that's what makes it kinda sucks....'cause most good game models don't use a series of square patches, but rather strategically positioned triangles to get a faily accruate form of the figure without having to waste 2 polies per patch..The fact is, after exporting from Zbrush and even optimising (with a filter), you still need to do some manual welding/snapping to reduce the polycount further and create a more meaningful assortment of triangles. Every triangle in a low-poly model has meaning and definition. The problem with optimise filters is that the resultant mesh consist of meaningless triangles. Your job is to determine which triangles are not needed and remove them and determine which triangles are not well defined (due to the subtlely of the previous processes of subtle modelling) and exaggerate them. So yea, not a very good tool for lowpoly modelling, but at least, it gives you a starting mesh to work with!

It's a great tool for creating graphics. So, it's a great tool for making textures. Here's an example created in 5 min:

Yeah, it's generally more of a program for creating high quality rendered images than for games. Although their method of modeling is interesting, I prefer to have more control in a poly-sensitive environment like games.

Also, from everything I've heard any modern game is using quads over triangles these days.

Also, from everything I've heard any modern game is using quads over triangles these days.
hum.... its fake. Remember, 3 points ALWAYS make a plane. Quads can make a concave plane. Having this in mind, your quad will be split in 2 triangles.
I work with 3dsmax, and sometimes this quad has the diagonal in the other side you wanted, making the mesh and light a bit weird.

Just a small detail. Hope you agree with me :)

I'm aware of the limitations of quads, I'm just telling you what somebody with 10 years experience in the industry told me, and frankly, I'm inclined to believe him. At any rate, quads are easier to work with when modeling that triangles, and it's easier to get cleaner geometry with fewer problems, for me at least.