Like others have said, yes, you need that many polys to get a high level of detail. I bought into ZBrush in order to achieve that level for 3D printing. My printer (4k SLA) can handle some pretty high level of detail even before I’d have to start adjusting layer height to smooth the surface more. That said, once I start painting a printed model a lot of that fine detail just disappears, even under an airbrushed primer.
Consider the end goal. A good example to look at are Lord of the Print miniatures. Absolutely gorgeous sculpts in their promo renders…but all that fine detail gets lost when painted. If one were using a filament printer or printing at an increased layer height with resin that detail would be lost in the print stage. If one wanted to sand the model beforehand, again, that detail would begin to get lost.
So I’ve gone back to Blender for most of my sculpting. While ZBrush has some tools I like, like their remesher, Blender (for me) is just an overall easier piece of software to use.
