Creating a Mask by Polygroup Toggle

Creating a Mask by Polygroup Toggle
Macros, Hotkeys and a Touch of ZScripting
ZBrush 3.5 Tutorial
by Ryan Kingslien

In this tutorial we will explore the following features:

• Macros
• ZScript

We will need to have a grasp of the following features to complete this tutorial:

• Hotkeys

For more ZScript Information visit the ZScript Command Reference Page.

ZBrush Tutorial: Submarine Hatch: Sculpting the Surface

ZBrush Tutorial: Submarine Hatch: Sculpting the Surface

Sculpting the surface of our hatch door showcases a few more cool tools.

In this tutorial we will use:

• Surface Noise
• Planar brush system

Lets start by creating the side of the door that connects to the wall.  To do this we will use the TrimFront brush.

Rotate the model to its side.  Turn on Y Symmetry from the Transform menu.  Make sure to turn X symmetry off so that it only effects one side.

Press ALT.  Click along the side of the model and drag up and down.  This will flatten everything under the brush and create a straight side that will connect with the wall.  You may also want to smooth this out afterwards.

We begin by brushing on some surface noise.  I do this in several layers.  First, select the Noise brush and the Spray stroke.  Set ZIntensity to around 4.  Turn on Brush: AutoMasking: Backface Masking.  Press very lightly over the surface.  This will create an good base for surface texturing.  Important: turn Spray stroke on or you may not see the effect of the brush.

Next, I turn on “By Brush” in the Brush: Surface tab.  If this is on then ZBrush will adjust the scale of the noise based on my brush size.  This will allow me to more easily replicate the complexity of real-world surfaces.

Then I clean this up using the HPolish brush with default settings.  If used lightly this brush can soften the noise and allow you to control which areas are smoother and which are rougher.

Lets, further adjust the surface of the hatch by creating a ChickenScratch brush.  Select the PenSketch brush.  Turn on ZSub.  Turn off RGB.  Also, even though the image doesn’t show it, turn Brush: Alpha and Texture: AlphaTile to 20.  Now brush back and forth on the model and you will get, hopefully, chicken scratch marks!

Finally, Lets create a weld line brush.  Select the Clay brush and Alpha 14.  Set Brush: Modifiers: Tilt Brush to somewhere between 30 and 50 and Lower ZIntensity.  Click in the space between the two parts you are welding.  Go slowly, just as if you were welding them.

Here we go.

ZBrush Tutorial: Submarine Hatch: Adding Valve

ZBrush Tutorial: Submarine Hatch: Adding Valve
by Ryan Kingslien

Now, its time to create the hatch’s valve mechanism.  We are going to use a simple wheel and spoke arrangement.

In this tutorial we will use:

• Primitives
• ZSpheres

We will need to be familar with:

• SubTools
• ZSpheres

First select Ring3D from the Tool palette.  Go to the Tool: Initialize menu and set SRadius to somewhere between 10 and 20.  Remember, you want a thin wheel.

Select the hatch door from the Tool palette, press Tool: SubTool: Append and select the Ring3D that you just edited.  Note, it will give you a choice to convert to a polymesh or keep it as a ZBrush Primitive.  You will want to press Yes to convert it.  If you don’t then you wont be able to sculpt it.

Use Tool: Deformation: Size to decrease the size of the SubTool.  Move slider to -100 a few times.

We will use zspheres to create the spokes.  Press Tool: SubTool: Append and select a ZSphere.  Press R and scale the ZSphere down to fit better.

Turn on Radial Symmetry as shown except you should work with Z symmetry.  Create one row of ZSpheres that will serve as roots.

Then click on any root, press CTRL and drag up or down to push the zsphere out along the normal.  This create the straight line of the spoke.  It is essential that you click on one of hte roots BEFORE you press CTRL.

Turn on Transperancy and make sure everything is sized correctly.  You may have to rotate the zsphere if you worked with X symmetry.  You can do this in the Tool: Preview window.  Simple click in the Preview window and rotate the model like you do in the ZBrush canvas.  Then press Tool: Preview: Store and the model on the canvas will adjust its orientation.

Press A to check the mesh.  This looks good.  Then press Tool: Adaptive Skin: Make Adaptive Skin

Append the skinned ZSphere to the model.  Press Tool: SubTool: Append and select it.

Spend some time cleaning up the polygroups so that all spokes share the same group.  This makes life much easier down the road.

Here we go.

ZBrush Tutorial: Submarine Hatch: Group Loops and Mesh Extraction

Working with Your Mesh
Group Loops and Mesh Extraction
ZBrush 3.5 Tutorial
by Ryan Kingslien

In this tutorial we will explore the following features:

• Mesh Extraction
• Group Loops

We will need to have a grasp of the following features to complete this tutorial:

• Transpose
• Masking

We begin in Photoshop with an alpha that is the shape of our object.  In this case, a door hatch for an old submarine.  This was created in Photoshop and is perfectly centered on a 1000×1000 pixel image.

In ZBrush, we want to select a PolyPlane and press Tool: MakePolymesh.  I also subdivided the resulting mesh to around a million polygons.

Import the hatch shape as an Alpha.

Press Tool: Mask by Alpha.  This will apply the image in the alpha palette to the model using the model’s UVs.

We convert this using Mesh Extraction in the Tool: SubTool menu.  Set Thick to 1.  If you object is too thick then lower this number.

Divide this once to give us some extra geometry to work with.

Get ready paint the porthole pattern by turning symmetry on for both the left and right of the model as well as the front and back.  In my case, I turned X and Z symmetry on.  You will also need to turn on L. Sym to line everything up correctly.

Select Alpha 14 and Drag Rectangle.  Press and hold CTRL and Click in the center but near the top and drag out till the hole is the size you want.  You may have to turn Focal Shift to -100.

Press Tool: Polygroup: From Masking Convert this to a Polygroup.

Repeat the masking and polygroup steps above to create groups for the hatch’s valve.

Delete Lower Subdivision, then press Tool: Geometry: GroupLoops.  Note, this creates a softer version of our model with new edge loops around our groups.  These edge loops will help us create cleaner edges when sculpting.  To smooth the model out less you can decrease the amount of Polish.

Its wise to clean up the new Polygroups.  I prefer to keep the groups specific to side plane, front place, etc.  This requires a good bit of time pressing CTRL+SHIFT and clicking on your model but it pays off in spades in the future.

Isolate different Polygroups and push and pull the forms to create the basic shape of the hatch.

Remesh All Tutorial – The Broken Wall

Remesh All Tutorial – The Broken Wall
Union, Intersection, Subtraction
ZBrush 3.5 Tutorial
by Ryan Kingslien

In this tutorial we will explore the following features:

• Remesh All
  • Union
  • Intersection
  • Subtraction

We will need to have a grasp of the following features to complete this tutorial:

• Transpose
• SubTools

1. We begin in ZBrush with a PolyCube.
2. Use the Transpose Move function to make the wall thickness.
3. Press Tool: Clone to duplicate wall in Tool palette.  Then Append the duplicate wall by pressing Tool: SubTool: Append.
4. Use Transpose’s Rotate feature to Position the side wall.
5. Append the Wall again and use Rotate to position the ground floor.  Note, you do not need to press Clone again.
6. Append the wall again and then use Move to scale the sides non-uniformly inwards.  Also, use Move to make this window thicker than the wall itself.  This will give us the window frame.
7. Clone the window you just created.  Append it to it back to our Walls and use Move to scale it smaller and thicker than the window.  We will use this SubTool to subtract out the window area.
8. Turn Subtraction on in the SubTool palette for the window area.  This is the last SubTool we created.  For this to work properly it must be the last SubTool created.
9. Turn off X symmetry and press Remesh All in the SubTool palette.
10. Here is our finished result.  For straight edges try setting Polish to 0.

ZBrush 3.5R3 Tips for Environment Artist

Creating A Cliff Wall

by Ryan Kingslien

In this tutorial we will look at how to use a few well-suited tools in ZBrush 3.5R3 in the creation of a cliff wall.  We will cover creating the basic shape, the natural striation and surface texture of a rocky surface.  We will use the Clay Tubes brush, hPolish brush, PlanarCutThin brush and Surface Noise.  We will use most of the tools at their default settings with one exception, the PlanarCutThin brush.

We begin with a basic poly sphere.  I use a PolySphere because its there when I start ZBrush and because I prefer working with closed surfaces.  If I was to use a plane then I may end up having to deal with the polygons on the outside edges of the surface which always behave differently than other polygons.

Select the ClayTubes brush and change the stroke to Spray.  Using Zadd and Zsub block in the general shape of a cliff wall.

Next we will smooth out our polygon distribution using Reproject Higher Subdiv.  Lower the resolution of the PolySphere and smooth out the areas where you want to adjust the polygon distribution.  Then press Tool: Geometry: Reproject Higher Subdiv.  Please note that you must press Reproject before you change the subdivision level.

Our next goal is to refine the planes of the cliff wall.  Select the HPolish brush and use it to establish strong planes in the cliff.  Note, the HPolish brushes uses the normal of the surface you first click on to orientate the rest of the stroke.  Choose the angle carefully and you will be able to create natural striations in the surface.  Selecting an area that is perpendicular to the rock wall will work best for this.

Another tip when working with HPolish is to set the orientation of the brush manually.  Open the Picker palette, click on the arrow next to Once Ori and drag it to a blank spot on the canvas.  Rotate your model so you are looking at it from a three quarters perspective and establish more planes. 

To further the natural striation of the rock wall we will use the PlanarCutThin brush with the Spray stroke.  It is also useful to adjust the Outer and Inner Depth slightly.  In this case I have adjusted them to .5 and -.5, respectively.

Be careful of the direction of your brush stroke and the orientation of the surface your brush strokes begins on.  You may also want to set Stroke: Placement to .9 and Stroke: Flow to .1 to spread out the striations.

Finally, add some surface texture using ZBrush’s new Surface Noise feature.  Try to match the curve you see in the image.  Note, NoiseScale is set to 80.

I hope you enjoyed!

How to Sculpt Face Anatomy in ZBrush 3.1

[from Gnomonology’s blog)

Hello! I have created a new tutorial that I have uploaded to YouTube the shows me creating facial anatomy using a base skull from Freedom of Teach and ZSpheres. I used the Clay Tubes Brush and masks for sculpting.

The movie is sped up and there is no audio at this time. This movie builds on the process that I developed in the Sculpting Facial Anatomy post at Sculpt.Paint.Create and in Scott Spencer’s book ZBrush Character Creation

New ZBrush Sculpting Book!!

Recently I had the oppurtunity to tech edit Scott Spencer’s new book, ZBrush: Character Creation. During the process Scott featured two workflows I developed in ZBrush while working as Product Manager for ZBrush 3: Constructive Anatomy and the Rake Brush.

The Rake brush is one of the things I am most proud of contributing to ZBrush 3. It is a fantastic brush for building on the power of the clay brush but it is important to bear in mind that it IS a modification of the Clay brush.

The amazing development team at Pixologic did the artistic community a world of good when they developed Clay brush and many of the custom brushes that ship with ZBrush are simple modification of it. The Rake is only one example.

Having studied traditional sculpting I was always looking for ways to incorporate traditional clay-based workflows into my digital art workflows and once they handed me this beautiful gem of a brush I was able go in, make several modifications and come out with some really cool brushes.

Recently I upped the anty on the Rake brush by increasing its alpha repeat and lowering its Brush Mod slider to give it a sandpaper like behavior. Check out the new Rasp or Sandpaper brush.

For more info on the Constructive Anatomy workflow visit Sculpt.Paint.Create.

Scott Spencer’s Constructive Anatomy (link)

Congrats to Scott and Sybex on the new book!

Sculpting A Female Bust

I have created a tutorial on sculpting a beautiful female head using ZBrush 3.

There are 4 chapters to this tutorial as well as the final ZBrush model.

Chapter One: Blocking in Your Model
Starting with a simple ZSphere base, chapter one focuses on blocking in the main forms of the shoulder, neck and head. Using SubTools, the hair is also added and blocked in. The following tools are demonstrated: Clay Brush, Standard Brush w/ Pinch, Reconstruct Higher SubDiv, EdgeLoop, SubTool, Transpose

Chapter Two: Massing Internal Forms and Sculpting Features
In chapter two, we focus on massing the internal forms, sculpting the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and the basic anatomy of the shoulder girdle. We also spend some time discussing the difficulties of sculpting beautiful women. Then explore one way to help us the softness of the feminine form without losing structure. The following tools are demonstrated: Clay Brush, Masks, Standard Brush w/ Pinch

Chapter Three: Sculpting Flowing Hair
In chapter three, we focus on massing and detailing the hair. We utilize the Move brush to establish the overall shape and then refine that shape by modifing the Slash 2 brush and utilizing the Clay, ClayTubes and SnakeHook brush. We spend time The following tools are demonstrated: Clay Brush, ClayTubes Brush, A Modified Slash 2 Brush, Standard Brush w/ Pinch, SnakeHook

Chapter Four: Details, Details, Details
In chapter four, we finalize the details of our sculpt. We further refine the features and spend some time texturing the hair. In this chapter, we look at how you can use the morph brush to bring back form that you have previously erased. Our goal, at this stage, is to make sure that our sculpt has a combination of hard and soft edges that guide our audiences eyes around the model. The following tools are demonstrated: Clay Brush, ClayTubes Brush, Rake Brush, Slash 2 Brush, Standard Brush w/ Pinch, Morph Brush

Sculpting a Female Head (link)

Topology for Sculpting

(from Gnomonology Blog)

A Topological Problem

Recently while working on the sculpture to the right I ran into the one obstacle that we, in the visual effects and games industries, waste millions and millions of dollars in lost productivity, frayed nerves, sick days, dwindling eye-sight and murdered inspiration: TOPOLOGY.
Those people who have taken a class with me know that I loathe Topology right up there with Peanut Butter. I mean Peanut Butter isn’t butter and its no longer a peanut! How can you trust something so openly dishonest about its true nature?!
Well topology is right up there with it. First, topology is something that has been foisted upon us by the limitations of those who make our computers and the software running on it NOT necessarily the hardware or software itself!
If ZBrush 2, proved anything then it was that the book is not closed on innovation and new ways to think outside of the box and by box, I mean box modeling!!!!

Imagination Runs Free

Let’s imagine that we were given this amazing, shiny plastic box by an alien society. In this box, we could paint and sculpt anything we can imagine. In fact, all we had to do was think about it and it would appear on the box.

If we had this kind of power then I ask you, “Would you spend your time thinking about topology?” Would you sit there and visualize arbitrary lines all over the thing you just imagined and try to find ways to connect the dots like some 3rd grade picture book?

I wouldn’t!

Think Outside of the Box

Well, ZBrush 2 was from an alien society. Everyone knows that the main visionary behind Pixologic is actually from the future. How do we know? Meats Meier told us, of course, and if you have seen Meat’s work then you know that he alone is able to see the future!
Is Pixologic the only company capable of thinking outside of the box? Well, first, I admit that it is not an easy problem to solve. I have researched the problem myself and poured over many thesis filled with mathematical symbols that looked more like Mayan writing than the math I remember from College!
A quick google search reveals Afra Zomorodian’s Computing and Comprehending Topology: Persistence and Hierarchical Morse Complexes and Robert Glenn Scharein’s Interactive Topological Drawing thesis for a sense of the complexity behind it all.

A 3D Artist Charter

All of the above said, however, it must have been a touch more difficult to get someone to the moon, no? I know I risk sounding like a naive 3D artist to all the software programmers out there but I have been in the development community. I know it is possible to automate topology. It is simply a matter of will power meeting resources.
To date, resources have not been meeting with will power. So I propose that all 3D artists join me in creating a charter, based on the UN, for all digital artists!

WE DIGITAL ARTISTS HAVE DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of inhumane technology, which many times in our lifetime has brought untold workarounds to artists, and

to reaffirm faith in humane technology, in the dignity and worth of digital art, in the equal rights of all software applications and of artists large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the perspectives and humane workflows of all artists can be maintained, and

to promote humane technological progress and better software standards for the larger artistic freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

to practice tolerance in all forums and live together in peace with all 3D and 2D application as good neighbours, and

to unite our strength to maintain inter-application peace and security, and

to ensure, by the acceptance of univeral hotkeys and the institution of humane technology, that work-arounds and insanely complicated technicalities shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

to employ inter-application machinery for the promotion of the artistic and personal advancement of all digital artists,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS.

Till Then

Till then, I have created another free tutorial on how to adjust the topology from a sculpting perspective. This tutorial shows you how to use ZBrush 3’s topology controls to adjust edge-flow for your model and recapture difficult areas.

Sculpting Topology (link)