In Production its still zbrush mate believe me as far as sculpting is concerned...its strides ahead so to say focus on that as its core strength is moot as thats what they are already doing. As I said previously Mudbox textures are brilliant, 32bit in and out. Whereas Zbrush has issues getting 32 bit images to import.

I believe Zbrush 5 will be 64bit so they are catching up....but I dont think they are concerned really otherwise it would have been delt with already. The HD mesh is awsome so if you want more polys then thats the way to go, and also dynmesh...so cool...the mesh rebuild system it uses is super fast.

Layers...I see where you are at but the strength of those sliders is very good especially for those that do concept art in 3d. If the client is present its just a case of dial back, forward, just right....to get the model looking exactly as required. Same with subtools.

As for crashes...Ive not had any as yet with map extractions at all or spotlight.

Fibremesh is okay, its fun...I think it needs another version to go yet before its useful generally in production or game, someone will figure it soon.

As for MARI, one word....AWSOME....add PTEX to the mix and you are laughing

J