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Not all artists take the time to keep up to date to be honest, but I try to. Just reading various sites on the net (feed readers are very useful) and hanging around forums will keep you failry up to date with what is new out there.
As for actually sitting down and learning it, I occasionally do this at home, but to be honest I prefer not to since I work with art all day anyway. When we got Zbrush at work a few years ago we all just sat down and played with - looked at tutorials on the net and got tore it. We learned off one another.
You don't need to know a package inside out to use it - I don't know Maya these days, I've never used XSI, but if I got a job where I had to use either of those packages I'd probably be up and running within a few days. The only major difference is the interface, the rest is pretty much the same from package to package. When we got a trial of Mudbox, we were creating things in minutes because we knew Zbrush and Silo.
So yes, learning on the job is something that just happens as a matter of fact.
Now, if you are making PS2 assets, you wont be learning highpoly on the job, so to speak, and you'll have to put in the effort to learn it outside your normal daily tadks - thoguh you can easily hack away 30 minutes over a lunchbreak. If you don' t have Zbrush/Mudbox at work, and they won't buy it, consider buying a copy of Silo. It has excellent modelling tools and displacement painting, and will set you back about £80. You can also install it on 3 computers, and its Mac and PC compatible.
I'm considering buying an aircraft carrier now to host parties - I'll need another few clicks.
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