Invasion of the displacement painters!

So what happened? Technology is starting to catch up with Zbrush... Yes it was ahead of its time, but it seems like the competition is appearing everywhere now... Cool :) The more competition the better! Prices drop and technology soars! Get ready to rrrrumble!

List of Contenders (in displacement painting only):

-Zbrush (for now, all time champion of the world. Links: http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/home/home.html ; http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/index.php)

-Mudbox (Still in Beta, but soon to be unleashed unpon the world. Link: http://www.mudbox3d.com/)

-Silo 2 (From the videos and the info, it's not quiet as fluid as Zbrush, but it's definitely heading in the right direction. However, I am only judging on the displacement painting here. Silo is an awesome, if not the best polygon modeler out there. (Some people may say Modo, I say... hhhmmm, nope...). Silo is not made for clay modeling, althopugh it seems like it also does a pretty good job of it. Link: http://www.nevercenter.com/silo/silo_20/)

-Hexagon 2.1 (Ok, I was amazed with peice of software! If you still havn't got a favourite, I highly recommend this baby! Great poly modelling tools, pretty good displacement painting and, to my taste, the realtime colour map, bump map and opacity map painting is THE SHIZNIT!!! To me, the displacement painting and the bump map painting combined, make it nearly as good as... dare I say... Zbrush! (very debatable argument). Very nice work to the team at Eovia! You guys rock!Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/hexagon/hexagon2.asp)

-Claytools (An old-schooler in this category, it has never won the hearts of the mainstream audience because of its price. It was marketed mainly as a tool to be used with high poly scans. Tghis is changing however, as the company starts advertising it as a Zbrush-like package... I have never touched it, but would love to check it out! Link: http://www.sensable.com/products/Maya/index.asp)

-Sharp construct (Sharp construct is open source and is nowhere near the level of the programs mentionned above. On the other hand it's amazing technology for a freeware and should be supported as much as possible by the community. By that I mean: Use it, play with it when a new release comes out and give feedback to the creators! That's all... They're not asking you to change your entire pipeline! Simply to spend a couple of hours every month or so, looking at it and noting where it could be improved. Link: http://sharp3d.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page)

-Pointshop3D (This little freeware is comparable to Sharp construct mentionned above. Link http://graphics.ethz.ch/pointshop3D/news.html)