Ghoul: First ZBrush Project

[CD3D]

Hi, I've had ZBrush for a few weeks now and have been reading and working and learning as much as I can.

I gotta say if I knew how great this app was, I wouldn't have waited so long to get my hands on it. Now I wouldn't want to work on any project without it.

This is my first test of modeling and exporting maps to an external app, in this case LW. It has a lot of flaws and I learned a lot by doing it. My next plan is to do an anatomically and structurally more sound full-body model of this creature. And push texturing and modeling much further.
Ghoul_8_Test.jpg
The model began as a rough, low-res model created in Modo. Teeth were thrown in from another project, not created for this head. The image is rendered in Lightwave 8 using Displacement and Color maps from ZBrush, with procedurals creating extra fine bump, etc. Sweetened slightly, but not painted on in Photoshop.

Clyde

[SolidSnakexxx]

Reallynice ghostly model :) I love the teeth Very beautiful indeed

Yong

[CD3D]

Yong,

Thanks very much for the kind words. ZBrush has me more inspired than I've been in years in 3D. It's hard for me to stop even to sleep, so hopefully I will have more ZB work coming soon.

Clyde

[SolidSnakexxx]

I know :) ZBrush is such a great program that it allows us to freely create 3d objects with little restrictions :) It's quite amazing that the program even exists in real world and at affordable price too!! Do you have a website with your artwork?

Yong

[Aggel]

Mmm... Nice, really nice udead fella %) Nice texture, but more wrinkles would be great, I think %) Make for it a kick-ass body! ;)

[Frenchy Pilou]

...his dentist :D
Cool modeling! :cool:
Pilou

[CD3D]

Thanks everyone for the comments. This forum is an inspiring place, filled with incredible art by many talented people. I've been looking in for a little while, and now want to get involved myself.

Yong, I have only a very old website that I don't give out right now. I admit I've been slacking on the web aspect of my art, but expect to do a new site soon.

Thanks again. :)

Clyde

[Atomicdog]

Really Great Head!!! Scary and very nice detailed. The teeth are amazing!

How do you want to combine the Head later on with the full body? I've got a head as well (completely done in Zbrush, started with Zspheres) and now I decided I want to extend it to a full creature. How can I do this (easiest way)?

[Psygnosis]

possibly using the merge vertex tool in Maya, make the head, then the body and combine both and start attaching vertices.. ahh but im probably wrong.

CD3D, awesome awesome stuff dude :tu:

[Atomicdog]

And in ZBrush? Is it there possible, too?

Actually, I see it as very difficult to do it in Maya, since you probably use the low res object and maps. therefore I could imagine that it is quite difficult to line up everything.

[CD3D]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. :)

I can't say I know what the best way to transfer the detail from a finished head to a new full-body model. What I did was simply export the low-res head and attach it to a blocked in body that I built in Modo. I then saved the low-res full body as OBJ, imported into ZBrush and then remodeled the detail.

Clyde

[dmg3d]

How does the Lightwave/ZBrush combo work right now? I know Newtek has said LW9 will be ZBrush friendly... but how do you feel the mapping is working out? Did you have any problems with things not matching up?
I would imagine once you've created morph targets in LW you couldn't bring it into ZBrush to add more geometry at that point, right?

Great ghoul BTW!

Dave

[CD3D]

Dave,

Actually the pipeline between ZBrush and Lightwave works pretty well, although I am using Modo, which natively uses and saves both OBJ and LWO as an initial modeler and and a file translator.

Also, I am using a freeware 3rd party replacement for the Normal Displacement plugin in LW. Not only is it somewhat faster, but it allows you to set a 50% value as zero displacment, which is correct for ZB displacement maps.

As long as the maps are flipped in V, they line up fine in LW based on my experiments so far.

The only negative with LW is that it is pretty slow when tesselating and displacing a sub-D mesh to the subdivision level required for decent detail, particularly on a full-body mesh. This makes renders and test renders take longer than they should.

I'm still using LW 8 at this time. Perhaps version 9 will improve things?

Thanks for your comments. :-)

Clyde