Total_beginner_to_Zbrush

“ZBrush’s brush set is arguably one of its most powerful features, along with its ability to handle truly staggering polygon counts”

For all of you out there who have heard of, but are unfamiliar with, ZBrush then this new 7 part tutorial series by Wayne Robon is for you. The Total Beginners Guide to ZBrush is an excellent starting point to get you into the world of ZBrushing

Zbrush The Total Beginners Guide to

Created In: ZBrush

Section Title In this series of 7 articles, I was asked to produce a beginner’s guide to Zbrush which assumed that the user does not know a whole lot about the program or how to use it. These articles aren’t meant to take the place of either the help files, or proper training, but should give you an excellent starting point to get you into the world of ZBrushing.

In this series we will be working our way through the basic process of creating a creature bust, taking it to completion by the last article (Fig01). We will be starting with a basic Zsphere base mesh that we will create ourselves and we’ll use this as our starting point for sculpturing and finally adding texture to. The reason I’m splitting the full project into 7 parts is that we can take it at a beginner’s pace and cover as much ground as possible for people totally new to Zbrush. (Plus you’ll end up with a finished digital sculpt that will give you the confidence to approach you own projects in a similar manner.)

I will be assuming that, at the very least, you have read the basics of navigating in ZBrush from the Zbrush help files. This will help us cut down the length of the series a little and will also make sure that as a new user you get the most out of these lessons. I would like you to practice what you learn in each lesson, either on the model we are doing, or on one of your own. It is important that you do this because the more that you use Zbrush, the more confident and at home with it you will become. Assuming you know how to navigate, we’ll start by covering the

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The Total Beginners Guide to

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basic concepts of some of the brushes etc that we will be using, before creating our Zsphere base mesh. In the next article we will start the sculpting ‘proper’.

Basic techniques Showing and hiding polygons There are many reasons why you might want to hide part of your geometry while working on it. These range from simply wanting to concentrate on a particular area you are working on, to wanting to improve the performance of your image at high polygon counts. To hide some polygons, first take one of the default models provided with Zbrush (a selection of them are available on the splash screen) to test with. Hold down Shift + Ctrl and drag over the area you wish to keep. This will then hide everything else on this tool. To remove more polygons from this area simply do the same as before, but before releasing your left mouse stop pressing the control key. The previously green selection box will now turn red to let you know that this area will be hidden. You can also have your selection changed from the default box dragging type to a lasso type. You can find this in some of the interface layouts and also in the Transform Palette. This then lets you select much more complex shapes than are available with the default box drag type (Fig02 and Fig03).

Masking off areas A mask can be described using a favourite analogy of mine: just think of them like the force fields on the star ship enterprise. When


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Zbrush The Total Beginners Guide to

you have an area masked off (or to continue the analogy, ‘shields up’), that area will remain unaffected by anything you do to the unmasked area. There are literally tons of ways to make masks in Zbrush, but the easiest is to simply hold down you control key and use your brush to draw the area you wish to be masked off. Masks are an essential modelling tool, as it can often be much easier to sculpt an area if other areas you do not want to be affected are masked off. For example, if you wished to close the top eyelids on a head model, you would simply draw a mask over the bottom eyelid so that when you used the move brush, the bottom lid would remain unaffected (Fig04).

Brushes ZBrush’s brush set is arguably one of its most powerful features, along with its ability to handle truly staggering polygon counts. There is a different brush for literally any job you might think of and many of them have more uses than they first seem to. Brushes are controlled by the ZIntensity slider - with 0 being no effect on the model and 100 being a massive effect on the model - and are used along with Zadd (this makes the geometry be pulled outwards) and Zsub (which pushes the geometry into the model). You can also change the way a brush reacts with your fall off, which is controlled by your focal shift.

Which stroke you chose from the Stroke menu can vastly change what a brush will do when you use it; as well as more standard stokes,


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there are also a selection of scatter strokes and a drag rectangle one. When used in conjunction with ZBrush’s different alphas, you can do just about anything. You can make and import your own brushes if you want to, but to be honest the ones that come with Zbrush are pretty damn good for 95% of the sculpting jobs you will do, if used correctly. I would recommend simply messing round with the brushes on a subdivided Polysphere for a while to get used to the feel. There are so many options that it is impossible to cover them all here, but as with everything in Zbrush, if you are not sure what something does just hover over it, press the Control key and a nice box will come up outlining what it is and what it does.

There are some brushes that it is really important to know about from the get go. The smooth brush is one you will use a lot; it smoothes out areas you are working on to help you get the surface to your digital sculpture that you want without any nasty bobbling on it. It smoothes the transition between adjacent polygons, but really that’s just a complex way of saying ‘it does what the name implies’. We will be covering the difference between some of the brushes as we progress through this series.

Move Brush Vs Move tool This confuses new users quite a lot, so I thought it best to cover it in this article. There are two sorts of ‘move’ in Zbrush: a move brush, which when selected will move areas of your model according to what stroke type, alpha ad falloff you have and a transform move, which uses action lines. There are also scale and rotate transforms as well, but we will go into those later in the series. For most sculpting jobs you

Zbrush, using Zspheres to quickly rough out a

block out your base mesh. They are also

will probably use the move brush found in the

basic base mesh that will give us somewhere

used for Zsphere rigs and are part of the core

brush menu, so experiment with it (like the other

to start. Although you could obviously import

concepts of Zbrush. A Zsphere is a two-tone

brushes) for next time and we’ll take things

a base mesh polygon modelled in a separate

sphere that is used in a few different workflows

further (Fig05 and Fig06).

package, it is important to get to grips with the

in Zbrush such as retopology and Zsphere rig

very basics of Zspheres early on if you are to

posing. Making a base mesh will save a lot of

The Birdman Project

gain total confidence in using Zbrush in the

time (as well as space in this series), so as such

Part 1 the sphere base mesh

long term. Zspheres are a special type of tool in

we’ll be using them (Fig07).

First we’re going to create a base mesh in

Zbrush that enable you to quickly and effectively


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Zbrush The Total Beginners Guide to To create our base mesh, pick the two-tone sphere from your tool menu and press ‘X’ to activate X symmetry (Y & Z can also be used to switch those types of symmetry on and off as well). Symmetry means that everything we do on one side of the model automatically happens on the other side as well, saving us time. As a symmetrical sculpture can often look characterless, we will be adding some asymmetrical detailing later to help to give the digital sculpture a sense of ‘life’ and ‘being’. However, at the early stages of this article we will be keeping it symmetrical to make our job of sculpting it a bit easier (Fig08).

Draw a Zsphere onto the canvas as shown. Then, by lining up the two brush icons at the top of it, draw another. You will notice that when they are totally aligned they turn green (you

in the image). Set your draw size very low when

when you move a Zsphere you will be affecting

can also use the move tool at this point to move

dealing with Zspheres as this makes things a

more than the one you may want to, so it makes

things into position so it matches what you see

whole lot easier. A larger size brush will mean

things less confusing to have a very small brush size (Fig09).

Now we want to draw another Zsphere on each side, but we only need to draw one because the X symmetry will mirror our actions on the other side. Next, draw in your neck sphere and use your move brush to pull it up a bit. By holding down the Shift key you will now be able to click on this neck sphere and add another that is the same size. After doing this, pull it up a little as shown before finally drawing one for the head (Fig10 and Fig11).

Save this, as later in the series we will need this rig to demonstrate one of the ways of posing our models using Zspheres (Fig12). If you now scroll down you tool palette, you can go down to the adaptive skin and you can preview the base mesh by pressing either ‘A’ or the ‘preview’ button. We can change the way that ZBrush generates mesh by using the settings below. (Be sure to experiment with this yourself to get comfortable with how they work). This will create an Adaptive skin base mesh that is no longer linked to our initial Zsphere rig. It is now a set of polygons and each set of Zspheres has been


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give its own polygroup that you can see using the ‘frame’ button (Shift + F also turns this on and off by the way) (Fig13).

In the next article we will start to sculpt on our base mesh and begin the process of making it look more like a digital sculpt and less like a group of polygons. Your ‘homework’ before the next article is to mess around with your new base mesh and subdivide it a few times (found in the geometry part of the tools panel). Try out some of the brushes and hopefully you will start to feel a bit more at home in preparation for next time. But make sure that you keep your adaptive skin tool (by saving in the Tool palette) and also your Zsphere rig for later use later in the series.

See you all in Part 2!

Wayne Robson For more from this artist visit: http://www.dashdotslash.net Or contact: [email protected]

“When moving areas such as limbs and other body parts, it’s always best to use long flowing movements with your mouse”

For all of you out there who have heard of, but are unfamiliar with, ZBrush then this new 7 part tutorial series by Wayne Robon is for you. The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush is an excellent starting point to get you into the world of ZBrushing

The Total Beginner’s Guide to

Zbrush

Created In: ZBrush

Introduction In the last article, after giving a very basic overview of some of the main features of ZBrush, we made our basic Zsphere base mesh. So in this section we will continue with the project by taking this base mesh and starting to sculpt it. This part of the series will introduce you to some of the common brushes used in ZBrush for low and medium resolution detailing (Fig01).

Modelling First of all we need to make sure that we move some of the vertexes around on our base mesh. This will allow us to make sure that we have resolution where we need it, as opposed to where we don’t. As the polygon count increases by a multiple of 4 each time we subdivide our model, we need to bear in mind that it is important not to waste polygons where they

aren’t going to be needed. So we start off by moving some around the eventual eye area, using the move brush set to a size of ‘1’. It’s important to make sure that we do in fact have X symmetry enabled by hitting the ‘X’ key. This allows us to move the exact vertex we want, without having to worry about interfering with others that we don’t want to touch.

Next we move some vertexes around the shoulder, neck and sternocladomastoid area so that we have the geometry flowing in the direction that we need it to be as we continue with the digital sculpture. This is an important step as it stops us having to go into very high polygon counts where it’s not needed and allows us to save some of those polygons for the final detailing. We can also do some very basic changes to the shape of the head, and get things so that it looks at least vaguely human-esque (Fig02).


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At this stage I wanted to shorten the neck a bit, so I selected the Move tool (not the Move brush, the Move tool which can be found on your toolbar or in the transform menu), and with X symmetry still enabled, hold down the Shift key and draw in an upwards direction to just a bit above the collarbone. This will draw a mask for us on the area that we do not wish to affect. It will also automatically blur this mask to help smooth the transition of our moves. When moving areas such as limbs and other body parts, it’s always best to use long flowing movements with your mouse (where possible). The reason for this is that if you use a series of short strokes, you can end up with both an irregular looking posed area and loss of rhythm in the pose itself (Fig03).

Now we need our action lines to be in place before making any moves on our geometry at

the side) and hold Shift as you draw slightly

by hitting Ctrl+D. Make sure that you have

all. An action line has a line with 3 circles drawn

above the top of the head. Press ‘X’ to turn off

the Standard brush selected and the default

upon it; if you drag by the edge of a circle it will

your symmetry for a moment and, by clicking

‘Dots’ stroke type. Hold down Shift and draw

move the circle itself into a new position (moving

and dragging on the centre circle, move it so

in the basic shape of the eye holes in a human

the centre circle will move the whole action line).

that it is now in the very centre of the geometry

skull as shown in the image. As this isn’t a

If you drag from the centre of any circle it will

when looking from the front. You can now

human bust, we do have a certain amount of

affect your geometry using whatever transform

gently move the neck down a bit and press ‘X’

room for interpretation. However, I would say

tool you have active at the time. As such

again to turn symmetry back on. After making

that it’s always a good idea to have a number

you can use either the Move, Scale or Rotate

sure that you are satisfied, press the Edit button

of human references for both the skull and

transform tools with an action line.

on your toolbar to exit the transform tool.

muscles handy, as this helps to make your sculpt more believable. Just because we’re

So start by drawing your action line from just

We are now ready to subdivide our model

creating something from fantasy doesn’t mean

above your masked area (making sure the line

3 times by using either the Divide button in

that we should ignore the rules of anatomical

starts in the centre of the neck if looking from

the geometry section of the Tool palette, or

construction! (Fig04)


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Zbrush

Now click once on an empty part of the canvas to invert the mask, switch to the Move brush and pull the eye areas into the head a little. Once done, hold down Ctrl and drag on an empty part of the canvas to remove the mask completely. We can temporarily change to the Smooth brush when we have most brushes active by holding down the Shift key - do that and lightly smooth out the transitions around the eye areas a little. For those of you that find that the revised Smooth brush in ZBrush 3.1 feels a bit different to the older one in V3 and V 2, I’ll provide a link to my own version, which works the same as the old Smooth brush. To set it as your default, simply open it up (or put it into your Start-up folder in the Brushes folder, and hold down the Shift key and click on it from the brush palette in ZBrush). It will now be your default Smooth brush whenever you hold down the Shift key. Should you need to, you can add any number of custom, alternative brushes this way (Fig05).

Hold down the Ctrl key again and draw in a circle that will eventually become our eye holes. Don’t make them too big at this stage as we will be doing a lot of work on them in the following articles. Switch to your Standard brush, press the Alt key and draw to push the geometry inwards as shown (Fig06).

Now remove the mask you did before and gently move the eyes so that they are a little bigger. Again don’t worry too much about them at this stage as we will be working on them more as we progress (Fig07).

Having said that, you will want to move the centres of each eye now, so that they have a curve to them and the eyeball will be a better fit once we once we add it. You can do this best by holding down the Shift + Ctrl keys and dragging over the area you wish to keep around the eyes. It’s much easier to add a curve to the eyes by looking from the inside behind them and

Shift + Ctrl and click on a blank area of canvas

when you are done. If you find at any point that

above. (Do make sure that you have ‘Double’

to show everything again. Quickly mask off the

a mask has a little too hard a transition you

on in your Tools >> Display section by the way.)

eye area and pull the eyes further back into the

can further blur it by holding down Ctrl and left

(Fig08)

head (if need be). Be sure to clear the mask

clicking somewhere on the mask itself (Fig09).


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Zbrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to Now taking the Clay Tubes brush, start to beef up some areas such as the jaw bone, cheek bones and eyebrows by running it in smooth strokes over these areas. A ZIntensity setting of between 10-13 should do nicely; adjust your brush size as needed. Smooth these areas out using the Smooth brush before continuing - you aim is to keep the forms that you have just created, but lessen any sharp transitions between different areas of the face. For those of you with traditional sculpting experience, this stage can be thought of as similar to setting up the planes of the face, although in this case we are only adding flatter areas of digital clay where we need them to define our main forms. Holding down the Alt key, use the same brush to hollow out the cheeks area slightly and smooth this out a little again. We now want to beef up the nose and mouth area, as we will be adding a beak at a later point. As you will have no

Using the Move brush, make sure that the

flat. The human face is not flat! The mouth

doubt noticed by now, at this stage we are only

mouth isn’t flat from the side and he doesn’t

area is like a flattened horse shoe shape. While

concerned with getting our large shapes and

look like he has been hit in the face with a

it’s outside of the remit of this series to go into

forms blocked out in a fairly rough way. This

shovel. One of the main issues that people new

human anatomy in detail, I would urge those

enables us to go back over these areas and

to ZBrush have when doing a human-esque

new to ZBrush to (at the very least) have plenty

refine them later (Fig10).

head, is that they make the front of the face too

of references handy. This is also a good time to do some last major form changes, if need be. In the next article in this series, we are going to start making this model look a bit more pleasing to the eye and continue to block out the torso. Don’t worry if you find it takes you a long time to complete this section, getting your initial forms correct is the most important part of a digital sculpture because without it, no matter how hard you try later it will still not look ‘right’. Your homework for next time is to practise what you have learned so far in the first two articles of this series and try and find plenty of reference photos on Google of human heads and torsos. If you have access to an anatomy book, that is even better. See you all next time.



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“if it’s to look believable then it’s vital to get the forms correct before going anywhere near the detailing stage.”

For all of you out there who have heard of, but are unfamiliar with,

The Total Beginner’s Guide to Zbrush ZBrush then this new 7 part tutorial series by Wayne Robon is for you. The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush is an excellent starting point to get you into the world of ZBrushing

Zbrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to

Created In: ZBrush

Introduction Up until now in this series, we have been creating what amounts to a fairly generic medium-resolution sculpture that could be turned into a whole host of different creatures. The advantage of knowing h+ow to block out common forms such as these is that each time you sculpt something in ZBrush that is human or ‘human-esque’, you will be refining what you learned the last time you did something vaguely similar. It is in this way that we improve as digital sculptors. Making mistakes is a positive thing, because without them we would never learn and improve. So an artist who never makes mistakes is an artist who never grows artistically (Fig01).

Adding the Eyeballs… Making Eyeballs from a Sphere Primitive As we have taken this model about as far as we can in the eye area without the eyeballs being there, it is time that we added some (Fig02). These will help us when it comes to making sure that the proportions of the eye area correct, and they’ll also help us to sculpt the upper and lower eyelids correctly later in the series. To add our eyeballs we are going to use the default ZBrush


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Zbrush

sphere primitive that is available in your tools

separate SubTool. So look at the bottom of

will move, with the other end acting as a pivot

menu by left clicking on your current tool. This

the ‘SubTool’ section and click on the ‘Append’

point. By dragging by the edge of the centre

will bring up a pane that contains many other

button. Once again, this brings up your pane

circle you will be able to drag the whole action

primitives and tools (along with any others that

with the other ZBrush tools in it. You should

line itself into place. Clicking in the centre of

you have currently loaded into ZBrush at the

see your sphere polymesh on the very top line,

each circle works in a similar way. Clicking and

time). Select the sphere primitive and it should

so select that and it will then be added to your

dragging in the centre of either of the two circles

appear loaded into the viewport on its own. At

current model as a SubTool. You will notice that

on the ends of the action line transforms the tool

this time we can’t use this sphere because it is

the size and position is all wrong at the moment,

in a uniform way (depending on the whether

still a ‘primitive’ and not a polymesh that we can

but don’t worry as we’ll be sorting that out next!

the Move, Scale or Rotate is currently active). Clicking and dragging on the centre of the

sculpt (Fig03). Our next big job is to resize and position this

centre circle will transform in certain directions.

To make this primitive into a polymesh, simply

eye in the correct place. Before we continue,

So if, for example, you had the Scale transform

look at the very top of the tool menu and press

let us recap again on how the transpose lines

active with the action line vertically on the centre

the ‘Make polymesh3D’ button. This will then

work for our transformation tools, such as Move,

line of your model, and you dragged on the

generate your polymesh from the primitive

Scale and Rotate. At the end of each line you

centre of the circle at either end, it would scale

sphere and load it into the viewport in exactly

will see a circle with another in the centre of the

up or down the entire model in a uniform way.

the same position as the primitive was. So

line. By left-clicking and holding down we can

While dragging, using the centre circle would

it looks for the entire world as if nothing has

drag the transform line into position by doing

scale the model horizontally, but not vertically

happened! So now we have a sphere that we

so on the edges of any of the circles. If you

(Fig04).

are going to make into not one, but two eyes.

drag by the ones on either end then that end

You may have noticed that the main model that we were working on is also visible in the tools menu near the top. If you click on this now then it will once again become active in the viewport and we can start putting the sphere into the right place as one of the eyes.

Adding Them to the Main Sculpt First of all, go to your Tool menu and open up the section marked ‘SubTool’; this is where we will add the eyes, with each one being a


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Zbrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to Make sure you have the sphere polymesh as the active SubTool by checking that you have it highlighted in the SubTool section of the Tool menu. First of all, select the scale transform tool and then left-click and drag an action line outwards from the centre of the Sphere. (If you hold down the Shift key at the same time you can constrain it to the nearest surface and stop it whizzing off backwards in the Z direction in the viewport). Now, using the outer-most action line circle, left-click and drag in the centre of this circle and scale the sphere up or down, as needed, to an approximate size that looks right to you. it’s perfectly normal for it to take a little while for

eyelids into position over the eye. Use your

We now change to the Move transform tool.

you to get used to them. (It’s much the same as

painted masks (made by holding down the

You will notice that our action line stays in the

switching from driving a right-hand car to drive a

Ctrl key and painting where you wish it to be)

same place that we left it before we changed

left-handed one - it takes a little time to adjust!)

and get everything into the right place. Give

from the Scale transform tool to the Move

Once you have your sphere in the right place

yourself plenty of time; getting the eyelids into

transform tool – feel free to move your action

you may need to resize it again to make sure it

the correct position can take a little time when

line into a place that feels good to you. Now it is

fits comfortably into place.

you’re first starting out. Once you’re happy that they are in the right place, and the lids look

a simple matter of moving the sphere into place, as our eye. Be aware that when you’ve just

Using your move brush, and with your main

correct (as shown), make your eyeball the active

started using action lines and transform tools,

model active in the SubTool palette, move the

SubTool. At the top of the tools palette you will see a button marked ‘Clone’; press this to make a copy of the eyeball, which will now be in your tools pane but not active. Add this as a SubTool, again by hitting the ‘Append’ button. It will appear as if nothing has happened yet because both eyeballs now share exactly the same space. So open up the ‘Deformation’ panel and hit the ‘Mirror’ button to correct this. You should have two eyeballs in your sculpt now, so change back to your main SubTool again, ready to continue.

Continuing with Sculpting Holding down the Ctrl key, paint a mask for the clavicle (as shown), remembering that if you hold down Ctrl + Alt you can paint to remove an area from your mask (Fig05). Using your Standard brush (with the default settings), simply run it over the area to block this in. Then smooth the bottom area of this where it intersects with the chest area (Fig06).


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Zbrush

We now paint another mask, this time to define where the sternocleidomastoid muscle runs from behind the ear (on a human) to the ends of the clavicle beneath the bottom of the neck, as shown. Depending on how well-built and muscular your character is, you may also want to add a mask for the tendon running from the bottom part of the previous masked area to the end part of the clavicle as well (the sternocleidomastoid muscle splits into two parts where it meets and joins the clavicle). Now change to your Clay brush and select the first round alpha (alpha number 01) and run it over these areas with a ZIntensity of 50 and a size of 74 (Fig07 and Fig08). Hold down your Shift key to take away any sharp edges and lightly smooth the area you’ve just done. Remember the idea is to soften these areas, not to wash them out. Using the same brush, lightly build up the back of the jaw area (as shown) and remember to smooth things out again a little afterwards. If you spot any other areas that you feel could do with a very light touch, feel free! Just don’t go mad; we’ll be going back to the torso again later.

Blocking Out the Torso Again, I want you to mask off the areas shown, as these will help us to define where each muscle group will be and as such make the job of blocking the torso out a bit easier.


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Zbrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to Remember that because this is a series for

If you now flip to the underside of your model

beginners, I’ve somewhat simplified the forms.

and use the Move brush, you can start to add

The more advanced readers can feel free

some shape to the pectoral area and correct

to change this area on their own sculpts to

any mistakes before we continue onwards in the

something more complex if they want to (Fig09).

next part of the series.

Once the masked areas for the deltoid are

In Closing…

drawn on your ZBrush sculpt, use your Inflate

Now we have our digital sculpt looking a bit

brush with a ZIntensity of 10 and a size of 54

more interesting (Fig12), in the next part we can

to increase the volume of them. For any areas

start to refine him to some degree. Although it

that require a lot of volume to be added, such

can be tempting at this stage to go crazy with

as the back where the shoulder blades are, use

alphas and add masses of detail, I would urge

the clay tubes brush and smooth the area out

restraint (using a straight jacket if need be!).

afterwards. This will save considerable time

The main reason is that, as I’ve mentioned

when blocking out (Fig10).

before in this series, if it’s to look believeable then it’s vital to get the forms correct before

Next we need to add some volume to the

going anywhere near the detailing stage. For

pectoral area of the chest, so for this we will use

next time, practice all that you have learned so

a new brush: the ‘Magnify brush’. The magnify

far and make your first sculpt of your own design

brush will magnify an area under the cursor

using the things you have learned so far from

to help us add volume. In this case, we want

this series. Catch you next time!

a ZIntensity of 25 and a size of 84 and a very light tough. If you have too heavy a hand he will end up looking like he’s taken way too many

Wayne Robson

steroids, so be careful and remember to use the

For more from this artist visit:

undo button! Smooth this area out, as shown,

http://www.dashdotslash.net

and make sure that there is a slight indentation

Or contact:

next to the upper part of the deltoid/clavicle

[email protected]

intersection area (Fig11).


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“The head is not a beach ball! This may seem an odd thing to say, but beginners usually treat the head as a large rounded shape with the face put on the front, looking far too flat!”

For all of you out there who have heard of but are unfamiliar with ZBrush, then this new 7-part tutorial series by Wayne Robson is perfect for you! This complete Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush is an excellent starting point to get you stuck into the world of ZBrush-ing.

This month Wayne brings us Part Four – enjoy!!


ZBrush

Created In: ZBrush

Introduction By this point we’ve got to the stage where we have the more important things, such as the head shape, eyes and part of the chest, blocked in. So now it’s time to start the process of pulling everything together. Hopefully you have been practicing the steps that we’ve done so far and have created your own characters, so you should start to be feeling a lot more at home with ZBrush by now. There is literally hundreds of direction this model could take from this point, from a design point of view alone. The beauty of using such low resolution bases, such as the one we made using Zspheres, is that we aren’t walled into any decisions made during the polygon stage of modelling.

We need to start moving on towards the back

medium resolution forms. Any corrections I

area of the sculpture and start to roughly block

leave towards the end, once the main design

in the forms we need, before adding some

and character has been nailed down. If any

details to make him look a little more like our

areas are hard for you to get right then don’t

final character. You will notice I don’t go into

worry, as at the end of this series 3DCreative

fine detail at this stage as I’m basically only

will be making a free video of the modelling

concerned with the main forms, masses and

sessions I did on this character available!!

Back to Modelling Pick up your clay brush with no alpha active and Zadd set to 50. We’ll be using the ‘Dots’ stroke type and I’ll be stepping the brush size up and down as I need to. Let’s start this session by adding some mass to the shoulder blades. As this sculpt doesn’t have the benefit of arms to tell us where they should be or orientated, we’ll start by making them fairly neutral and we can change the latter once he’s posed near the end. Once you’ve beefed this area up, as shown, it’s time to beef up the area between the shoulder blades running up the neck and round to the front. The Trapezius can be tricky to get right for those without some anatomical understanding, as it inserts into the top of the shoulder blade and runs in a diamond-like shape up to the base of the skull, and also wraps around to the front of the Clavicle. I would strongly advise having some sort of anatomical reference handy when doing anything human- or animal-based. You


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ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to cannot make up anatomy without some basis in reality; if you do, it’s going to look bad! Every monster or creature, no matter how fantastic or ugly-looking, must have some basis in real-life anatomy!

Beef up the Trapezius in the diamond shape leaving a notch just below the neck for the 9th vertebrae. Run your clay brush around the shape of the Trapezius and make it attach to the front of the clavicle. Add some mass to the very base of the skull, just above where it meets the neck, and follow this around to the sides of the skull before smoothing the areas out a little (Fig.01).

Back to the Front The head is not a beach ball! This may seem an odd thing to say, but beginners usually treat the head as a large rounded shape with the face put on the front, looking far too flat! The sides of a human skull are pretty flat indeed, so as our creature has a basis in human anatomy we must make sure that those areas are flattened. In this case I also hollowed them out with the clay brush, as shown, to add a less human feel to

him. Also add more mass to the arches, running

out of shape. This should run from behind the

the length of his skull from the area where they

ear (if he has any ears, that is!) to the end of

intersect the brow part of the skull. As a result

the clavicle in the centre, below the neck. These

of changes to the head, pay attention that the

basic landmarks help to keep your ‘human-

Sternocleidomastoid muscle doesn’t start to look

esque’ digital sculptures looking a little more realistic, although no one expects you to make a masterpiece first time out (Fig.02)!

Facing Up Add more weight to the cheekbones, lower chin area and the fold of skin between the chin and base of the neck. You ideally want him to look almost as if he has a larger lower jaw than upper one, as shown. Let’s isolate the head area to make it easier for us to work on it undisturbed. So, turn on the frame mode (a shortcut of Shift + F toggles it on and off, by the way!), press down Control + Shift and left-click on the head area of


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the mesh. This will hide every other part of the mesh (although it doesn’t affect other subtools, such as the eyes). If you do the same shortcut again, only this time outside your model, it will reveal the previously hidden areas (Fig.03).

Using your Standard brush with its default settings, carve a line into the face that will make our mouth area and then start to build up the lips. Add some mass to the upper and lower eyelids and, to help make them look less like ‘holes in the mesh’ (although we’ll address that a bit later), paint a mask by holding down your control key near the outer edge of the bottom lid and then adding some mass to the top lid over this, to give us a nice demarcation line. Do the same with the inside of the lower lid, near the nasal, until it looks as shown in the image (Fig.04).

Let’s use our move brush now to change the shape of the head a little, especially in the mouth area. Step down a few subdivision levels and pull the edges of the mouth outwards a bit. Then, from a side on view (remembering you can hold down the Shift key to snap it into a

(You can also blur the mask from the masking

proper side on view), pull the mouth edges back

section of the tools palette.) Using the move

a touch (Fig.05).

brush again, pull the brows into an angry-looking

Again, paint a mask over the eye socket area

position, as shown before unmasking the area.

and then invert it by either going into the

Step back up your subdivision levels again and

If you find the transition of the brow to the upper

masking section of the Tool palette or by holding

paint a mask over the eye socket areas, then

eye area a bit too harsh, use your smooth brush

down the control key and left-clicking outside

blur this mask by holding down the Shift key

on a lower subdivision level before stepping

your model. Then, using a smaller move brush,

and left-clicking on part of the masked area.

up again and smoothing out any areas that still

start to pull the eyelids into a more pleasing


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need it (Fig.06).

Issue 033 May 2008

ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to shape. We are looking for realism but also something that helps the model to have some personality. Smooth the transition from the lower lid to the cheekbone out a bit, as skin stretches over this area and the fat there. We want some definition in his anatomy, but we don’t want him to look anorexic (Fig.07)!

Mask off the lower jaw and make sure you are totally masking the lower lip, and then pull the upper lip down to meet it. As we are closing the mouth he’s not going to need any teeth. Then start to pull the almost-beak shape of the

a lot at this stage in the modelling process. It’s

more interesting until later on. Start by carving

front of his mouth area out, as shown. Do this

not as harsh as the square-shaped clay tubes

the area in and then add mass between these

in a combination of a side view and a ¾ view

and less washed out than no alpha set at all,

carved in areas, as shown, and smooth things

(Fig.08).

as in the clay brush (when its set to its default)

out as they travel towards the deltoid. Taking

(Fig.09).

the Slash1 brush, carve in some lines, as

Back to the Chest

shown, beneath the deltoid where the Pectorals

Select your clay tubes brush but change the

Use this to beef up the front of the Deltoid and

intersect under the deltoid (again, as shown).

alpha from its default to Alpha 01, which is the

carve some indentations into the Pectoral area.

The Pectoral muscles are in 5 strip-like sections,

1st round alpha. I save this out and have it set

These striations aren’t technically “correct”

and I often pull a line in near the armpit on

as a custom brush on my set up as I find I use it

but they do help the chest area to look slightly

the Pectoral area to help add a bit of interest. Smooth these out a fair bit once done (Fig.10).

The nest bit is hard to describe but it will make total sense in the video when you see it… On the front of the chest and shoulders, carve some light lines in using the Slash1 brush and then smooth them out about 90% until they are barely visible. These help the process of detailing later on to look a little more real, and are done “by feel” to a large degree. Go to the face and do a similar thing, only this time you are carving in


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stress wrinkles where the skin is stretching or regularly moves. Only smooth them out 50% this time. Use the images shown as reference to see where I’ve added them and try to work out why each set is in the place that it is (Fig.11).

The wrinkles and stress lines on the brow area are worth special attention as they will change from person to person, creature to creature and from expression to expression. In some ways they are a bit like a fingerprint. If, for example, you put the wrinkles from Yoda’s forehead and put them onto another creature, it not only would look strange but it would also be obvious hair to clothing folds to adding some harsher

more closely than he did at the start. As ever,

defining areas as these are best to sculpt to fit

fine detail (as we are about to do) (Fig.13)!

practice what you learned this session and the

the character or creature that you are doing and

Take it down in size till it’s fairly small (there’s a

previous ones on models of your own design to

not a “one size fits all” approach. If you do then

certain amount of trial and error to this part so

get as comfortable with them as you can. We’re

it will only end up with a string of fairly identical

have your Control + Z undo keys ready till you

going to do a lot of work next time so make sure

looking models with very little variety (Fig.12)!

have it set the way you want!) and start to gently

you are comfortable with the tools we’ve used

carve in fine lines over the top of the ones you

so far before next month (Fig.14). Catch you all

Slashing Away…

previously carved in, using the Slash1 brush.

in part 5!

Change to your Slash2 brush; this brush is

After carving in each ‘group’, smooth them out

rather special in that it not only slashes like the

towards the ends until they fit in with the forms

Wayne Robson

Slash1 brush but also makes one side of the

of the model correctly. The effect is subtle but


slash protrude while the other stays level. So,

will help our end result a great deal.

http://www.dashdotslash.net

they were Yoda’s wrinkles. Such character

Or contact:

as such, it’s a very versatile brush that many overlook – I use it on just about every model

We’ve done quite a lot this session and he’s

and never cease finding new ways to use it from

starting to resemble our final sculpt quite a bit


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[email protected]

Issue 033 May 2008

“…the better you know your anatomy the more you can use it to bend and shape it to your will and create believable-looking models!”

For all of you out there who have heard of but are unfamiliar with

The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush ZBrush, then this new 7-part tutorial series by Wayne Robson is perfect for you! This complete Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush is an excellent starting point to get you stuck into the world of ZBrush-ing. This month Wayne brings us Part Five – enjoy!!

ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to

Created In: ZBrush

Introduction Now that we have our forms blocked out from the previous articles, we can now move onto adding some finer details to help bring this bust to life! Load up the model that we’ve been working on so far and set the Slash2 brush as

at least in passing for those of you unaware

stress so that we can add folds in these areas.

your active brush, with the dots stroke selected.

of it, is the pectoral muscles that fan out in 5

This isn’t a simple concept to grab at first and

sections from the clavicle (collar bone), all the

comes with practice and observation. There’s

A Short Anatomical Diversion

way down the sternum. In our model we will be

no “short cut” to be totally honest and it’s

exaggerating these quite a bit to give a more

something every organic artist is always striving

It’s time to start taking into account human

interesting look to the chest area. As mentioned

to improve (Fig.03)!

anatomy now, especially now that we are in the

before in this series, the better you know your

detailing stage. While you can use a selection

anatomy the more you can use it to bend and

So start to hunt out areas where the skin will

of alphas on your model to give it some skin

shape it to your will and create believable-

stretch from one area to another, or be under

detail, the problem I personally have with this

looking models (Fig.02)!

stress, and use your Slash2 brush to add some

is that anyone with the same set of alphas as

stress wrinkles to denote stretching skin. Areas

So I prefer to detail by hand and use only default

Abreast of the Situation

alphas available in ZBrush itself, for a couple of

With your Slash2 brush active, start to make

together, where the skin stretches near the

jobs here and there. The plus points of this are

some very light lines where these 5 sections

sternocladomastoid, and the centre of the neck.

that you end up with a unique look to your skin

join to the sternum. Once done, wash them

Now make some deeper slashes to show the

texture, and it’s also very good practice (Fig.01)!

out again about 70% by smoothing out, holding

different sections of the deltoid muscle. In most

down the Shift key. We need to start taking into

humans this isn’t very visible, unless they’ve

account where the skin will fold and be under

done some quite heavy training. But in this

yourself will have a similar look to their models.

One area of anatomy that I do want to cover,

that I added these wrinkles to include the area where the 2 sections of the clavicle come

case, as it’s a creature we’re making up, we are allowed to go as nuts as we like! After essentially ‘dividing up’ the deltoid, smooth things out again a little to help the forms to work together (Fig.04). Add now some slashes on the back of the neck to help us give the impression of folding skin under compression. We can work on these further, although in the case of this model, as it’s meant to be seen front on, we’d be doing this only for practice. Add more light slashes to denote the stretching and movement of the skin down the spine area and around the shoulder


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blades. Try to imagine where the skin will be compressed or stretched. Feel free to stand in front of a mirror and see how your own skin moves as your body is in different poses. You may feel strange doing it at first, but it’s surprising how often your own body can give you more information than any anatomy book. You are your own ‘life model’ that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (Fig.05)! Continue to work your way around the entire torso and neck area adding these stress wrinkles until you’re happy that they look ‘right’. Take special care in the area where the pectoral feeds under the deltoid, as you can add some nice wrinkles and folds in this area.

Heads Up! Now we’ve started to add some early details to the torso (and are by no means finished with it yet!), we can also make sure that the head area is just as detailed to keep things in balance. I personally prefer many times to “nail” the head area – personality and looks-wise – as it gives me lots of ideas and information as to what sort of look the body area needs. But keep in mind that every artist works their own way to achieve the look that they personally want as part of their style (Fig.06). The first area I want to address to give the character… well, more character, is the eyes. At the moment they are a bit too wide open and surprised, so use masks (as detailed earlier in the series) close the eyes a bit to give him more of a mean look. One of my “secret tips” is to not only take inspiration for eyes and ‘eye poses’ from humans, but to also be sure to look at animals... You’ll be surprised how much more ‘human’ an animalistic eye pose can make a character! Hold down Shift + Ctrl and left-click on the head area to isolate it (thus making things easier for us to work with). Right now the face is still effectively just a number of sections that do not meld into one another at all and needs a fair bit of work to tighten it up. So take your clay brush with alpha 01 and start to melt the lower eyelid into the cheekbones area a little more. Far too often, sculpts (including my own) can end up looking as a collection of facial parts taken from a shelf, and not like a living breathing being. This is often due to them not working in unison and no effort being made to working out how one part would affect the skin in another part. So in this case the cheek bones have rather


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ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to taught skin, so this will naturally pull the skin a little tighter over the bottom lids. This way we won’t have as big a chance of large, droopy eye bags (Fig.07)! Switch to your elastic brush with alpha 27 selected and switch on “lazy mouse” by hitting your ‘L’ key. Start to draw a line (while holding down the Alt key) around the insides of the upper and lower eyelid. We do this as a sort of an illusion, to add some shadows and highlights to simulate the look that you get by the many complex forms in the eyelids. As this is a beginners guide to ZBrush (added to which an in-depth study of the eyes and eyelids would take a long time and a lot more space!), on this occasion we’ll use a number of optical illusions and shortcuts. As you learn more about ZBrush and digital sculpting, you’ll use these less often, unless you are speed sculpting (Fig.08). Drag some lines out from each corner of the eye as this is always an area where skin is under stress. We blink and move our eyes a lot in a single day, so as a result the area is one of the first to form wrinkles. Add a few lines above the eye to let us make them into skin folds later on in the sculpting process. This time we’re going to use an alpha to help us – it’s one we’ll be using a lot in the rest of these tutorials and one I find very useful for skin detailing! Alpha 58 is simply a number of wavy vertical lines, but combined with the Freehand stroke type and any of a number of the brushes, and you have some instant fine wrinkles! So set your ZSub to about 54 on your elastic brush and start to drag out some fine wrinkles. Start with the eyes before moving on to the area where the brow meets the nasal area (Fig.09). Please make sure that you follow the direction of the skin. Skin, like a tree, has a “grain” – go against it and it will give you nothing but badness! However, work with the flow of the skin and the anatomy and you’ll get mush better results each time. Work between the brow on the fine folds there, as well as the main folds on the brow itself.


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The details we’ll be adding from now onwards can be hard to see in a screen capture, so I’ve again changed to my favourite ‘B+W’ matcap I made an age back. (I’ll make this available along with the video once the series is complete. One word of warning is that all Matcaps can exaggerate the forms, so take care not to rely on them too much for your sculpt to look good!) When using Alpha 58 and a freehand stroke, try to very slightly change angles and go over the same stroke again. This gives a wonderful celllike, almost cross-hatching effect to the skin that is easy to do and looks much more impressive than it actually is to do. Later, we’ll go over the entire sculpt’s head using this same technique, so bare that in mind for a later article (Fig.10). Mask off the nasal and mouth area and slightly inflate around it to add more of a feeling of skin folding over the edges of it. As he is a sort of a ‘birdman’, my idea was that this area would still

be somewhat hard, like the beak on a bird, and so skin would fold around it. Using the Standard brush, carve out some very wide and very shallow curving lines to help with the main form of the ‘beak’ area. These will not be very visible in the images as I am talking about a very subtle (but very important) look. Unhide the rest of the body of the model and, using the smooth brush, start to smooth out any areas that you feel need either to be merged in better with the surrounding anatomy, or that do not work. Be ruthless: sometimes you have to give up some part you like for the good of the model (Fig.11)! Now that we are getting towards the end of this section of The Beginners Guide to ZBrush, let’s make those spheres we’re using for our eyes look a little better, eh? Take one of the eyes and subdivide it to level 4 to give us enough polygons. Then select alpha 12, which is a sharp-edged round alpha, and the


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Drag rectangle stroke with the Standard brush

outlined what amounts to (for me) 38 minutes

selected (you can also use the layer brush for

work. Although the parts we are to do in the last

this turned very low down). Using a ZIntensity

two articles take up the same timeframe, they

of 14 and in ZAdd mode, drag this circle out in

are much more repetitive and hence a lot easier.

the centre of the eye. I should warn you that the

So practice what we’ve done so far and keep

chances of you getting this bang on the money

experimenting!


first time are slim, so have your Ctrl + Z undo shortcut keys handy! This gives us a nice effect on the shape of the eye itself and provides us with some nice highlights. Like a lot of things in digital sculpting (and traditional sculpting), subtle things can really help with the look of a sculpture. You are now free to either mirror it across using either the method we used in one of the earlier articles or even the subtool master plug-in that is available free from Pixologic. But if you are more confident you can simply ‘eyeball it’ (pun intended!), and do it by hand on the other eye (Fig.12) Now that it’s time to wind up another section of this beginners guide, I’ll point out that in the next (and last) two sections, this model will suddenly get a lot more detailed. So far I’ve


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“Pay particular attention to areas with a lot of detail, such as the eyelids; if you feel that a fold, crease or wrinkle needs to be added then go ahead and do it, using the same techniques that we’ve used up to this point in the series. ”

For all of you out there who have heard of, but are unfamiliar with, ZBrush, then this new seven-part tutorial series by Wayne Robson is perfect for you! This total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush is an excellent starting point to get you stuck into the world of ZBrush-ing.

This month Wayne brings us Part Six – enjoy!!


ZBrush

Created In: ZBrush

Introduction In the previous articles in this series we have gone from a very simple base mesh generated

Tidying Up

from ZSpheres, to the stage where we now

Before we start the skin detailing in earnest, I’d

need to start adding some fine detail. Although

like you to go over all of your medium resolution

this takes the most time by far, for the most

forms and make sure that they are tightened.

part it is very repetitive. I’m not a big believer in

Be sure to sharpen them up and make sure

simply dragging out alpha with detail already in it

that they look correct to your eye before

all over the model, as this does not give you the

continuing with this tutorial. It’s a lot easier to

required amount of control. It can also end up

do this now than to come back later (although

giving us a very “samey” look. So to help further

not impossible). So please make sure that you

your ZBrush skill set, we are going to add the

are happy with the direction that your model is

skin detailing by hand in this article. This is by

taking, and that you feel you have gone as far

far the most rewarding way to do it, and gives

as you can in the time that you have allowed so

the added benefit of letting us add the detail that

far. Pay particular attention to areas with a lot

we want (rather than the detailing that we may

of detail, such as the eyelids; if you feel that a

be “stuck with” from a set of alphas) (Fig.01).

fold, crease or wrinkle needs to be added then

go ahead and do it, using the same techniques that we’ve used up to this point in the series. (Fig.02)

Using the Displace brush, with the freehand stroke type selected, add in some finer wrinkles between the eyebrow in the forehead area and under the eye bags, as shown. This is your final chance to get things as you want them before moving onto the final stages of detailing. (In the last article in the series we’ll then pose our model and set it up for rendering!)

Detail Pass 1 Select your Inflate brush with ZAdd set to a ZIntensity of 10, alpha 58 active and the freehand stroke type. We are going to use this


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ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to brush to add our first pass at the skin detail. I find it best to add high frequency skin detailing in a number of passes, as this allows me to create highly complex skin effects easily by mixing simple default ZBrush alphas together (it also shows that custom alphas aren’t a requirement to add this sort of detailing as it can be done using ZBrush “out of the box”) (Fig.03).

Our technique for this first pass at the skin detail will be to drag across our model to create a sort of “cross-hatching” effect. My approach is to do a stroke from one angle and then, starting from a similar place, drag out another stroke with maybe a 5-15 degree difference. A light hand is needed to do this; it gives a wonderfully good effect very easily and provides us with a fantastic base detail to work with (Fig.04).

So start with the mouth and cheek area and drag some lines out as shown - although don’t do the cross-hatching just yet. It is important to make these lines go with the flow of the skin, and remember that wrinkles most often go against the grain of the muscle flow. A good example of this are the horizontal lines on your forehead; while the muscles flow up towards the scalp, the wrinkles on your brow go horizontally. Try to work out where the skin would be pulling and stretching and in which direction it would be travelling. This allows us to make sure that our skin detail always goes with the flow of the skin in a believable way. Do not simply drag some random lines out and hope for the best, as 99% of the time this isn’t going to look right. To detail skin of any type right, it’s worth putting the effort in to make it believable.

Now add your cross hatching at a slight angle (between 5 and 15 degrees or so seems to look best for me). Once you’ve done this, the skin in that area shouldn’t look as shiny and boring as it did a moment ago. But, rather importantly, the detail is still flat. There’s no life to it at all because real skin isn’t uniform in nature, nor does it have all wrinkles of the same depth. It varies and it’s that randomness that helps to give it a sense of realism. It’s that random nature of raised and recessed areas of varying depths that we need to capture in any high frequency skin detailing. So to do this, change the alpha on your Inflate brush to alpha 35 and turn


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the ZIntensity of your ZAdd to 13 or so. To add a little sense of life into the skin detail we’ve just added, use your Inflate brush to add mass, of varying depths, between the wrinkles that we’ve carved in. Take you time with this and keep a steady hand; concentrate on each stroke and area on its own. This not only helps to stop you from getting bored as you detail the whole model, but also reminds you mentally of the importance of this step. After doing this, select your Slash1 brush and lightly carve in some very, very fine wrinkles - again between these inflated areas. This helps to tighten the detail up a bit as we go. This technique is one that we’ll continue to use over time to cover the entire model for our first detail pass. Use your Inflate brush now to add a sense

Up until now we’ve kept the clavicle very visible

detail to the neck, use your Displace brush and

of stretching skin running from the back of

to act as a reference point, but now, using our

draw out a few lines running towards the deltoid

the cranium towards the top of the back and

Clay brush and Inflate brush, we can get the

and clavicle (Fig.06).

shoulders. As you will have guessed by now,

pectoral muscles to run into it a bit better. Keep

digital sculpting isn’t just modelling something

smoothing and stepping down the subdivision

Now work over the entire model and tighten up

and adding detail, but rather a process of

levels if you need to. This will suddenly help to

every line and medium resolution detail. This is

continual correction and refinement. If you feel

pull the design together a whole lot more. Again,

actually easier that it sounds; it’s just a matter

you can improve an area, do it! If you feel it

go in and tighten the skin folds that run from

of taking areas that have become washed-out-

needs to be further tightened up, then again,

under the deltoid to keep all the detail in synch

looking and sharpening them a little. Due to the

go and do it! That’s what digital sculpting (and

with each other. We are aiming for the model

length of this article I can’t cover every single

traditional sculpting) is all about – this search for

to have detail of the same density all over, with

line, although the free video released in the next

the elusive “perfection” (Fig.05).

a few spots having tighter detail. To add more

article in the series covering the whole workflow will help you if you find you get stuck!

Using the cross-hatching technique again, start covering the entire model, beginning with the throat area and making sure that the detail you are adding is in scale with the area you are detailing. The biggest problem many newcomers to digital sculpting have is that the fine detail they add at this stage is all the same size. They make the wrinkles, which should be finer in areas such as the covers of the eyes, end up the same size as larger areas, such as the neck. So try to keep the scale of your detail consistent with the size of the feature that you are working on. This is another way to assure that you produce believable-looking, high frequency skin details (Fig.06).


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After you have covered the entire torso with this cross-hatching effect, it’s time to go in with your Inflate brush again. Start to inflate and add mass between these wrinkles - being careful not make each one identical. This is going to take you a bit of time, but the final effect is worth it and it’s also great practice to get used to the feel of the brushes in ZBrush. We will go back over these again to add mass to the very small wrinkles once the model has been posed in the next article, so for the moment don’t go into too much fine detail with your Inflate brush (Fig.07).

Detail Pass 2 This is where we add the important second layer of skin detail to really help the model to look better. So take your Displace brush, with the

Now use your Slash1 brush to tighten areas up again, especially on the

DragRect stroke type and alpha 22 selected, and start by dragging a

front of the torso. I know this can get repetitive, but it’s important not to

couple of areas out on the brows. The ZIntensity of our ZAdd is set to 11

leave the tightening stage out after each set of detailing, otherwise the

for this. Now start to spread this detail back (making it smaller as you do

mode will end up looking washed out and the details and forms “muddy”.

so) towards the back of the head (Fig.08).

Finish off the pectorals by going back over with your Inflate brush and the “lines” alphas from before, and drawing some very fine (almost invisible) details on them (Fig.09).

Turn the ZIntensity down to 4 and drag some larger areas across each deltoid, as shown. Then continue to add this detail all over the back of the torso and back of the neck (if you find you lose some definition after this,

Once you’ve used these techniques all over the model and taken it to a

feel free to add it back in again).

level with which you’re happy, we can call this part of the modelling done. In the next article (and the last in this series) we’ll pose our model and then correct the anatomy to better fit the pose before rendering it out. Remember to keep practicing what you’ve learned and try to apply it to your own models (Fig.10).

If you want to try another style of skin detailing for high frequency skin details, take a look at my site (www.dashdotslash.net) and you’ll find a two-part video on a different type of detailing that you can do. It’s approached in the same two-layer way, but with a totally different skin texture. See you all next time (Fig.11)!

Wayne Robson For more from this artist visit: www.dashdotslash.net Or contact: [email protected]


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Issue 035 July 2008

“everything from humanesque monsters, to more warped and strange ideas, can be created using this method ... there’s no limit to what you can make – the only limits are the ones you impose on yourself!”

For all of you out there who have heard of, but are unfamiliar with,

The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush ZBrush, then this new seven-part tutorial series by Wayne Robson is perfect for you! This total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush is an excellent starting point to get you stuck into the world of ZBrush-ing.

This month Wayne brings us Part Seven – enjoy!!


Created In: ZBrush

Introduction Well here it is: the final part in the ZBrush series for beginners. It doesn’t seem too long ago that we had part one, does it? In this series so far, we’ve taken a very low polygon base mesh, made with ZSpheres, and turned it into a digital sculpt that is within the reach of most people starting out (although I have made the model a little bit of a challenge, too, so that it helps push you to your limits as a new ZBrush user!). In this last article we will be taking the sculpt that we completed in the last article (Fig.01) and

of it. The knowledge within the seven articles

posing it. After we’ve done that, we will need

in this series contains everything that you need

to fix the anatomy a little to help it flow with the

to know in order to create your first completed

pose. Once that’s done I’ll then give you a quick

digital sculpture. I hope that you’ve enjoyed

outline on the theory behind the preview panel,

following this tutorial series as much as I have

so that you can export out some nice renders

writing them for you.

Posing the Model We are going to pose the model using the “Transpose Master” plug-in, made available for free by Pixologic. If you haven’t got it already, just head over to Pixologic’s website and download it (it comes with full installation instructions). Transpose Master, by default, steps each subtool in your model down to its lowest subdivision level to enable you to pose the entire model, including its subtools at the same time (Fig.02).

With our model this would give us a problem; as it stands at the moment, the lowest subdivision level of the bust itself is too low to pose. If you take a look at the image provided, you can see that, although subdivision level two is better, it still lacks some geometry around the neck areas to enable it to deform correctly. So step up to subdivision level three and then delete the lower subdivision levels. We do this so that we aren’t going to have any issues when Transpose Master steps each subtool in our model to its lowest level (we can always get these subdivision levels back again by hitting the Reconstruct Subdiv. button in the geometry section of the Tool palette) (Fig.03 and Fig.04). As a habit, I always step each subtool down to


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its lowest subdivision level by hand anyway,

geometry), left-click and drag it by the edge of

intensity either for that matter), or we can use

mainly because I’m a big believer in “helping”

one of the circles. If you do this with either of

topological masking to help us move faster.

a computer out by not making it work too hard.

the end circles, then that end will be moved as

Go to the ZPlugin palette and open up the

you drag; however, if you left-click and drag the

Topological Masking

Transpose Master section, and then hit the

outside of the centre circle then the entire action

Simply put, a topological mask is a type of

“TPoseMesh” button.

line can be moved (Fig.05).

mask that we can create in ZBrush that will follow the topology and edge flow of our model

All of the subtools have now been temporarily

Action lines are used with masks that mask off

as we create it. To create a topological mask,

grouped together in one mesh for us to pose,

areas we don’t want to be affected by whatever

simply hold down the Ctrl key while in one of

and this does have a particular quirk that I’ll

transform we do on our mesh. These can either

the transform modes (move, scale or rotate),

outline in a moment. Transpose Master makes

be masks painted by hand (or from a texture

and drag along the geometry (Fig.06). You will

use of the transform functions (move, scale and rotate); by using topological masking we can mask off, along the polygon flow of the model, different sections and then pose them. You will notice that Transpose Master also puts your model in orthographic mode, instead of perspective. For some models this can be a good thing (for example, when you need to line up a full body pose), but for our model it’s no big deal, so we can turn perspective back on again by hitting the “P” key.

Action Lines As actions lines are the one thing we must know how to use in order to pose our model, it is worth covering them briefly in this tutorial. An action line is a line with three circles on it and two of these circles act as a sort of pivot point. To move an action line itself (as opposed to the


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ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to see (and this is especially obvious if you turn your PolyFrame on by pressing Shift + F) that it follows along the topology of your model (hence its name “topological masking”).

Posing the Model With all that theory out of the way, we can finally start to pose the model. We will start off by posing the head in a two-stage process. In my experience, rather than simply “going for it” all at once, breaking down a pose into two or more parts makes it much easier to get something dynamic. Drag your action line from the base of the neck to up above the head, as shown. Now drag a topological mask by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging it until it’s at the base of the neck (Fig.07).

We aren’t ready to roll just yet, as right now we have two action lines and we’re only going to need one of them. So go to your Transform palette and turn off the X symmetry (or hit the X key to toggle it off). The rest of our work will all be asymmetrical, so we won’t need it again. Now that we’ve got only one action line, we need to line it up with where the vertebrate

eyeballs are still masked and so are not affected

drag in the centre circle (not the edge, but inside

would be in our model; this will create a realistic

by the action lines. Why is this? Well, as they

the circle this time). This will allow us to make

pivot point. Hold down Shift and snap your

are separate geometry (and by this I mean no

the head look to one side. This will also throw

model to a back view. Press Shift + F to turn on

vertexes from them are attached to the other

the alignment of the action line out, so drag

the PolyFrame and drag the centre circle by its

subtools), the topological mask has masked

each end into place again, ready for the next

edge, moving it into the centre line of the model

them off. To unmask them, simply hold down

part (Fig.09).

(if you have trouble, the PolyFrame helps a lot

Ctrl + Alt and drag over where the eyes are, as

with lining this up) (Fig.08).

shown.

While the head looks OK in its current pose, to my eye it doesn’t really say anything or convey

If we were to rotate our head right now, we’d

We are now finally ready to pose the model.

any emotion or feeling from within our model.

hit that “quirk” that I mentioned earlier. The

Making sure that you are in rotate, left-click and

So hold down the shift key and drag your model

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to get it into a front view, and then just rotate the head to one side a little, as shown. This gives a feeling of puzzlement/thought to the pose, as anyone who has ever owned a dog can probably confirm (Fig.10).

Press Ctrl and left-click outside the model in order to invert the mask so that we can start to

pose the torso of our model. Rotate it to one

sculpture in a front facing pose, some parts

side from a front view a little, before aligning

of the anatomy are now “off” after the posing

the action line along the spine and left-clicking

(Fig.13 and Fig.14). A good example of this is

and dragging in the centre circle to finish off our

the trapezium; at one side it is slightly bulged

pose. Go back to your plug-in palette and hit the

out when it would actionably be extended. So go

“TPose > SubT” button, and ZBrush will do all

to these areas and put things right to match the

the work for you and will put each subtool back

pose itself. Work out if each muscle should be

into its own place – posed and ready! Step each

extended or contracted, and correct accordingly

model up to its highest subdivision level and

(Fig.15, Fig.16 and Fig.17).

take a look at the pose (Fig.11 and Fig.12).

Correcting the Pose

Setting up a Nice Preview Render

You will notice that, as we modelled our digital

The model is finished now, but you can refine it further if you wish to tighten up any areas that you feel need it. Now there’s not a lot of point making a nice digital sculpture if no one can ever see it but you, so let’s set up a quick preview render and explain how the settings for them in the render palette work (Fig.18).

While this is covered in detail in the video that is now available free to accompany this series (more of that later!), I’ll cover the basics for you now. Open the Preview Shadows section of your render palette, as this is where we will set


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ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to the look of the preview render (all Matcaps have lighting basked in, and as such, although you can use “best render” most times, it’s best to set up a good preview as this makes best use of them. However, beware of mixing Matcaps as the lighting baked into each matcap can be very different!) (Fig.19).

Length: A longer shadow is softer; a shorter one is harsher and doesn’t have the same length. So for outdoor-type lighting, set the length high; for indoor lighting set it low.

Slope: This controls the angle at which the light is perceived to be coming from. So a setting of “0” is directly above and arches lower the higher the number, as shown in the images. Depth: How far away is it? Lower means closer; higher means further away (and hence more in shadow/dark).

Anti-Aliasing To get a good quality render, exit the edit mode and clear the canvas by hitting Ctrl + N, then double the size in your document panel (assuming you want a render at the same size that you’ve been working at) (Fig.20). If you

want one that’s bigger, adjust this accordingly.

Once you are happy with your render, export it

Draw your model back on the canvas and

by going to the document palette and hitting the

position it (after making sure you’ve pressed

“Export” button.

the edit button!). Now for the important bit: hit


the AAHalf button and this will reduce the size

The Video

of your render by 50%, and the anti-aliasing

As I’ve mentioned a few times in this series of

will make the whole thing a lot smoother and

articles, while working on this model I recorded

of a higher quality. You may notice that it also

the process directly after the creation of the

softens the details; this is one of the reasons

ZSphere rig to the text that you see above. It

why I sculpted a bit deeper and harsher than

seemed a great shame for this to stay on my

you may have expected at the time. It’s a simple

computer, eating up space and gathering dust,

way of compensating for the anti-aliasing effect!

so the guys at 3DCreative have kindly agreed

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to host the entire video for free. So if you’ve had problems with any part of the workflow in these articles, then there are no more excuses (joke!). It’s one of the longest free videos there have been in quite a while, so make sure that you download it and I’d like to thank everyone at 3DCreative for making it available for those starting out in ZBrush!

Inspiration So is this technique any good for other models, or is it simply a “one trick pony”? Well, to answer any niggling doubts you may have, I’ll close this series with a couple of speed models that I’ve done using the exact same base mesh and workflow. Neither of them took more than two hours from beginning to end, and hopefully they’ll show that everything from humanesque monsters, to more warped and strange ideas, can be created using this method (in fact, there’s no limit to what you can make – the only limits are the ones you impose on yourself!) (Fig.21).

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and if so I’d

surface sculpting to organic and environment

like to plug my book Essential ZBrush, which will

sculpting, so please support an artist today

be available soon from Wordware Publishing,

and buy a copy for yourself (maybe even two!).

and will be found in all good book shops (it’s

Many thanks! (Fig.22).

also available on pre-order from Amazon). It


covers the creation of an entire scene using

Wayne Robson

ZBrush, along with how to get your model,


normal and displacement maps etc. into Maya

www.dashdotslash.net

and 3ds Max, as well as covering ZBrush from

Or contact:

the ground up. There’s everything from hard

[email protected]

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