Artist in Action: Creating a Better Demo Reel with Steve Warner

[aurick]

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One of the single most important things you'll ever do as a professional digital artist is to create your demo reel. After all, if you can't land a job you can't put your mad skills to work! Business cards and resumes are all well and good but prospective employers want to actually see what you can do. Galleries are great for this, but they lack the impact of a well constructed demo real. They also can't show nearly as much information in a limited time or present your work in an entertaining manner that really grabs the viewer.

Not only does ZBrush provide a powerful suite of tools for creatingdigital assets, it also has incredibly useful features for presenting your best creations in an attention-grabbing demo reel. You can get amazing results in very little time.

In this "Artists in Action" entry (which is also featured in the current issue of Imagine Magazine), Steve Warner takes you through this process by sharing five techniques you can use to harness the power of ZBrush 4 for creating demo reels that pop:



Easy Wireframe Renders
Easy UV Renders
Easy Posing
Easy Animations
Easy Multipass Rendering

Whether you're a new grad trying to get your reel out there or a seasoned professional looking to streamline your post-production techniques, you'll find an essential resource in this in-depth step by step and video tutorial!


Click Here for the Article (http://www.pixologic.com/interview/artist-in-action/demo-reel-with-zbrush/1/)


Be sure to also check out our many past interviews, which can be found in the ZBrush Artist Interviews (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/forumdisplay.php?f=88) forum and the User Stories (http://www.pixologic.com/interview/) page at the Pixologic website.


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[cherub_rock]

Some nice tips here, especially for UV map render as far as I'm concerned. Thank you :tu:

[arun nagar]

Cool one.:)

[nordin83]

Awesome, really helpful and well explained!

thanks!!

[Arthaven]

Amazing information Steve.

[boozy floozie]

Fantastic - many thanks Steve and Pixologic for creating and making available such a wonderful tutorial reference resource.

[Sparky3d]

amazing :D thank you

[yellehs]

Fantastic! Thanks Steve and co for all your efforts :tu:

[shrikant09]

Nice tips.Thank you

[dirkrulz]

Thanx a lot, i was just looking out for this and voila..... :D

[InkySpot]

This is very Helpful for me as I am currently working on putting a modeling reel together for work.

Thank you very much.

[Santis]

This looks interesting, thanks a lot for sharing! :tu:

[SolidSnakexxx]

Very cool...this is very nice and useful!

[Etcher]

Great! :tu:

[DLangley]

Thanks Steve, extremely helpful.

[Bas Mazur]

Thanks, great tutorials :tu:

[hemin]

wow!!! great work Steve very helpful thanks a million... :)

[crumbaker]

thanks a ton, wish more tutorials were laid out this way. Straight to the point of what needs to be done and never missing a step.

Now if I could only find something like this for a udk importing from zbrush

[xexex]

thank you very much!

[IanTJamison]

Excellent.

[jimmyLev]

Sweet, I wil try it out soon :) thanks!

[duhex14]

:D
Thank you~

[Dagonet]

Thanks men :)

[hemin]

Hey! Steve great tutorials many thanks! one question is it possible to render out depth pass quick time movie? will appreciate it if you can tell us how if so.....!
Thank you

[cheynecg]

Great Tutorial! Bookmarked! :D

[Steve Warner]

Hey! Steve great tutorials many thanks! one question is it possible to render out depth pass quick time movie? will appreciate it if you can tell us how if so.....!
Thank youThanks, Hemin (and everyone else!) for the kind remarks. As for rendering out a depth pass as a quicktime movie, it is possible, but you have to use an old 3D trick to get it done.

As you've probably discovered, the Create Maps feature only stores still images, not quicktime movies. Therefore, you can't use the Depth pass from the Create Maps feature to save out your movie. (You could manually render out each frame and save the results, but that would be a major pain.)

To create a depth map that you can save as a quicktime movie, simply use the built in Fog feature. Fog allows you to create a linear gradient based on depth and to assign colors for the near and far distances. If you open the Render menu and then open the Fog submenu, you'll see two depth sliders. Drag the first slider and drop it over the near point on your model. Then drag the second slider to the far point on your model. Then set the first fog color to white and the second fog color to black. Finally, set your object's material to the Flat Color and enable the global Fog setting so you can see the effects in the viewport. If needed, you can readjust the fog distance sliders, the fog intensity, or the fog falloff to get just the effect you want. When you're finished, do a BPR render, then save out the Quicktime movie. That's all there is to it!

Real-time-depth.jpg

If you'd like to see this in action, just download the following file:

DogDepth.zip (http://attachment.php?attachmentid=259752&stc=1)

The enclosed ZBrush Project uses the default Dog object and has the fog already set up for a depth map. Load it, then drag the time slider to the beginning of the animation. Do a BPR, then render the animation and export the results.

Once the Depth pass is finished, simply simply switch back to a standard material or matcap, turn off Fog, do a BPR render and rerender the animation. Save this as your color pass. You can then use the Lens Blur filter in After Effects to create a depth of field effect just as you would in Photoshop.

Cheers!

Steve

[hemin]

Thanks a million for your effort!! it worked beautifully five stars all the way buddy.. :) :)

[neil77]

:tu:

[FishMan_RussianVersion]

2 Steve Warner
Hi there, Steve...
In your tutorial you was talking about the rule calling the "Rule of Three". Please can you tell what do you mean saying "Rule of Three"? Can't find anything that can explain this rule to me Oo Thanks.

[Steve Warner]

In your tutorial you was talking about the rule calling the "Rule of Three". Please can you tell what do you mean saying "Rule of Three"?The "Rule of Three" is a guide for low-poly modeling. It describes how to place edges around joints to ensure proper deformation. It's especially important for new modelers to understand, as they tend to place a single edge at the point of deformation which yields poor results when animated.

In most cases, objects coming from ZBrush (especially those built with ZSpheres) will observe the "rule of three" as ZBrush meshes favor even poly distribution over polygon economy.

Here's a simple image to help illustrate the concept.

Rule-of-Three.jpg

[tomfogo]

thanks a lot!!! very helpfull tips!!!:tu:

[Yonito]

This is so usefull for me
Thanks :)

[Dagonet]

thanks for all, great tutorials

[cresshead]

excellent training videos, many thanks

steve g

[jamezsor]

This is exactly why I love Zbrush. Magicians revealing their magic tricks. There's no place like Zbrush planet. :cool:

[siyukalebtao]

hi, there! Thanks for your works, it's very useful!
But I have some problems that I'm sure I did what you do in the Multipass video, some passes could not coincide together(in the same frame the rendering from the same angle is different).
Do you have any idea about this?
Thanks!

[siyukalebtao]

hi, there! Thanks for your works, it's very helpful!
But I have some problems that I'm sure I did what you do in the Multipass video, some passes could not coincide together(in the same frame the rendering from the same angle is different).
Do you have any idea about this?
Thanks!

[siyukalebtao]

Sorry for clicking twice;)

[RoyHatcher]

Banner.jpg

One of the single most important things you'll ever do as a professional digital artist is to create your demo reel. After all, if you can't land a job you can't put your mad skills to work! Business cards and resumes are all well and good but prospective employers want to actually see what you can do. Galleries are great for this, but they lack the impact of a well constructed demo real. They also can't show nearly as much information in a limited time or present your work in an entertaining manner that really grabs the viewer.

Not only does ZBrush provide a powerful suite of tools for creatingdigital assets, it also has incredibly useful features for presenting your best creations in an attention-grabbing demo reel. You can get amazing results in very little time.

In this "Artists in Action" entry (which is also featured in the current issue of Imagine Magazine), Steve Warner takes you through this process by sharing five techniques you can use to harness the power of ZBrush 4 for creating demo reels that pop:



Easy Wireframe Renders
Easy UV Renders
Easy Posing
Easy Animations
Easy Multipass Rendering



Whether you're a new grad trying to get your reel out there or a seasoned professional looking to streamline your post-production techniques, you'll find an essential resource in this in-depth step by step and video tutorial!


Click Here for the Article (http://www.pixologic.com/interview/artist-in-action/demo-reel-with-zbrush/1/)


Be sure to also check out our many past interviews, which can be found in the ZBrush Artist Interviews (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/forumdisplay.php?f=88) forum and the User Stories (http://www.pixologic.com/interview/) page at the Pixologic website.



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Hey man thanks for the vids but I have a question. I tried doing the shadow pass light you described and no matter what I did I can't get any shadows to show up on my model after I use the Flat/White fill you say to use. I have 4R2 so i don't know if anything changed since 4.0 and your video, but when I render the image (BPR) it takes just as long as it would if it had shadows but none are showing up on my screen...accept when I go to the BPR Render Pass menu and look at the render icons...there is one that shows shadows...but how does that relate to what you are telling me to do? Yours are showing up right on the screen! Not to mention it is taking for ever to render and I only have the one default light set up.I don't know how that could be an issue since I can render it BPR with my original textures and get nice shadows to show up on screen. Can you give me some pointers please?