ZBrush 2027: Sculpting on the Train

For those who don’t know the tool: ZBrush is Maxon‘s digital sculpting and painting application for characters, creatures, props and detailed 3D assets. Its desktop edition runs on Windows and macOS, while ZBrush for iPad takes sculpting into rather less desk-shaped locations. Release 2027.0 improves both, although with different feature sets.

We recently spotted someone using ZBrush on an iPad on the train. This was already an exciting enough development to distract us from the traditional railway activities of watching the departure board, questioning the timetable and quietly judging the Wi-Fi. We didn’t interrupt. The person appeared rather occupied, and we were hardly in a position to offer an impromptu masterclass ourselves. Still, seeing ZBrush out in the wild, between commuters and coffee cups, makes the iPad version feel considerably more real than another product render.

And now ZBrush 2027 gives that travelling sculptor more to work with. Four years after Maxon completed its acquisition of Pixologic in January 2022, development looks busy. The old ZBrush numbering system sometimes seemed to require an archaeologist, a calculator and a little faith; at least the year-based releases are straightforward to recognise. More important than the number is what is arriving inside the software.

The sculpting studio takes the train

On the iPad, the headline addition is Spotlight. This brings ZBrush’s image-based reference and projection system to the tablet: you can keep reference imagery in view, paint or sculpt through images onto a model, and generate mesh geometry from images. References no longer need to reside on a second device or in a mental image that is rapidly being replaced by thoughts of the next station. Maxon’s iPad documentation also describes Spotlight file management and access through the bottom toolbar.

The second important addition is 3D Layers. Sculpting detail, Polypaint and masking can be recorded separately, then shown, hidden, blended or baked into the model. This is useful when comparing expressions, surface detail and character variants without immediately committing every exploratory change to the base sculpt. Bake Current affects the selected layer, rather than forcing a decision about the entire stack. In practical terms, the iPad becomes a much more credible place to continue actual character work rather than merely producing an inspired lump of digital clay before returning to the workstation.

ZBrush has been filling out the tablet edition step by step. We previously covered ZModeler arriving on iPad; Spotlight and 3D Layers continue that trajectory. ZBrush for iPad can exchange ZTool and ZProject files with the desktop edition, but that doesn’t make the two feature sets identical. The dedicated new UV Editor, for example, remains desktop-only. You can sculpt on the train. You cannot yet take every desktop operation along for the ride.

And yes, ZBrush finally gets a proper UV editor

The desktop edition gains a dedicated UV Editor built from Cinema 4D’s UV technology. Launched from Tool > UV Map, it accepts all, visible or selected SubTools, provides unwrapping, UV editing and packing, and returns the result to the model in ZBrush. Supported workflows include UDIMs, texel-density control, trim sheets and unwrapping by PolyGroup. The UV Editor is a dedicated companion interface launched from ZBrush, rather than an excuse to export the mesh and start negotiating with another DCC application.

For production artists, those details are not decorations on a feature list. UDIMs organise texture space across tiles; texel-density controls make resolution allocation deliberate; and packing and manual seam work help turn the sculpt into a texture-ready asset. It is a surprisingly practical use of technology already living in Maxon’s portfolio. UV editing still requires judgement, of course. Even in 2027, no algorithm is contractually obliged to understand where you wanted that seam.

Selection Sets remember what you were doing

Also on desktop, Selection Sets save and recall different versions of a SubTool’s Polygroups, masks, Polypaint, UVs and morph targets. These are not merely stored face selections: the feature can preserve the associated data itself. You could keep one Polygroup organisation for posing and another for UV preparation, maintain several paint alternatives for review, or blend between stored morph targets. Maxon documents the controls in its Selection Sets guide. It sounds administrative until you have spent twenty minutes reconstructing a mask that was perfect before somebody requested one tiny change.

Mudbox exits while ZBrush keeps moving

There is also a curious bit of sculpting history in the background. Autodesk’s Mudbox, once a serious rival in the digital-sculpting conversation, is on the way out of commercial sale. DP reported Autodesk’s end-of-sale timetable in August: three-year subscriptions stopped being sold on 7 August 2026, with annual and monthly subscriptions scheduled to follow on 7 November. That does not mean every installed copy stops working that day, but it certainly isn’t the trajectory of a product gearing up for a renaissance.

ZBrush is going in the other direction. We have a long-established sculpting application picking up serious UV tools, useful ways of recalling complex working states and a tablet edition that is becoming progressively less of a companion sketchbook. Maxon’s ownership does not magically solve every workflow problem, and an enthusiastic release cycle is not the same as a benchmark. But it is rather pleasant to see the software acquiring useful new limbs instead of being placed quietly on a shelf labelled “legacy”.

Availability and the small print

ZBrush 2027.0 was released on 14 October 2026. The iPad edition has a feature-limited free tier and a paid subscription; Maxon also includes the paid iPad edition with ZBrush and Maxon One subscriptions. Spotlight and 3D Layers are part of the paid iPad feature set, so the free tier should not be mistaken for an unrestricted copy. Current prices depend on the plan and region; as usual, test UV round-trips and layer-dependent project files before upgrading an active production asset. Preferably at a desk, though we are no longer insisting on it.