Butterfly LandZcape (second butterfly pic)

[aurick]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1002092341gel.jpg

Another one of these was requested, so here it is. This time, I decided to put a Pixolator-style landscape in the background (the clouds are not a photo, by the way -- all ZBrush). Once again, there's no post render work other than a slight sharpening in Photoshop.

The species represented here is the Tailed emperor butterfly (Polyura pyrrhus sempronius), if anyone was curious enough to look up the original. :)

[Dragonlady]

thoose pictures are truly amazing....

[banez]

thats a realy good picture aurick
that one i like.
good detail work :tu: :tu:

[aurick]

Thank you, both! :) This and the other butterfly pic were a lot of fun to create.

By the way, if anyone is curious, here is the landscape that was used as the background. I was especially pleased with the sky, which was created using a noise material, an applied color gradient, fog modifiers which included both texture and alpha map, depth cue, and a glow light. It sounds like a lot of work, but was probably the fastest part of the whole image to create. LOL

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1002093205ubp.jpg

[drjjwow]

hey matthew i said it before and ill say it agian wow and double wow.. but can you please tell us is the butterfly a ztool or is it painted thanks and hurry up with another picture ok.... zya

[Kaz]

Beautiful!

[Digits]

A extremely satisfying image, every aspect of color, the plant and incect life and background is just beautiful :tu: :tu: :tu:

[juandel]

this is a superb multiple :tu: masterpiece, aurick!

though i have an idea or two on how you accomplished to do it (esp. since your reply on mapping textures in this thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001799) in combination with a lil searching the web for depictions of the tailed emperor (http://www.butterflyencounters.com.au/html/species/tailemp.html)) i’m sitting here awestruck by the pure magic this painting has. wonderful! the sky is absolutely gorgeous as are the colors, lighting and the plant. top-notch, amigo!

- juandel :D

[Kathy]

These are incredible. Just INCREDIBLE.

Those red leaves take my breath away.

Can I see how you attained this????? :)
PLEASE :) :)

Pretty please, with sugar on top???? :D

[Hansi256]

WOW. Superb image ! I really like the Texture and the model. The leaves are cooool. :eek:

[The Saint]

Beautiful!

I like both your insect pictures..

Great work!

[Nikko]

Awesome! Truly outstanding leaves, the best I've seen yet with ANY program, let alone Zbrush. That's a great technique you've mastered, Aurick. The butterfly and the bacground are also awesome. Beautious clouds. :tu: :cool: :tu:

[Jaycephus]

:tu:

Excellent.

I know how the background was created. I did the tutorial for Zbrush landscapes and came up with this as I was experimenting with moving a volume of pixols on one layer in relation to a landscape on another layer:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1002130612fqm.jpg

and

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1002135845gqr.jpg

Notice the noise (cloud or smoke) textures in the RENDER:FOG panel.

My question is did you create the leaves by the same method you used to show Christos how to map the Bad Moon to a disk?

Thanks,

Jay :tu: :ex:

[filament9]

aurick, this is true artwork. Deserves a print run, poster size. It is beautiful and I for one would be proud to frame it and display it. Nicely done :tu: :tu: :tu:

[cneofotistos]

people in this forum are becoming experts in different parts of the animal kingdom. aurick, this is truly artful! thanx for paying heed to my comment on the border colour. I knew you'd want me to notice ;)

:tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[aurick]

Yikes! I'm amazed and even a little embarassed by all the attention that these two pics have gotten. Thank you, everyone, for your warm feedback.

Dr. JJ: The leaves and butterfly wings are currently in the form of ZTools. The butterfly bodies, though, are not. Each butterfly family has a unique body shape, and each species has its own coloration. There is even a wide variety of amounts of hair on the body, even within a family. So I just modeled my bodies on the fly and hand painted their coloring.

Juandel and Jaycephus: Very good. You get an A. :) Yes, the technique for the leaves and the butterfly wings, both, is the same that I described to Chris for the Bad Moon. I knew at the time that I was giving my secrets away, but it was fun while it lasted. :D

Kathy (so you don't start threatening me the way you do poor Mark ;)), and anyone else that's interested, here's how I do thin objects such as leaves and butterfly wings:

:b2: First, you need to acquire the texture that you'll be applying to the object. Thanks to impending, who provided the creative spark for developing this technique, I begin by scanning an object. For the leaves, I picked them from the landscaping around my complex (while dodging the roaming maintenance staff). For the butterfly wings, I'm a collector. I just put the item on the scanner bed and have at it.

:b2: For the next step, I take the scan into Photoshop. Initially, I use the magic wand with the highest threshold I can get away with to select the background, which I fill with black. I then crop the scan as much as possible and resize it to something larger than I know I'm going to need (usually about 800 along one dimension). I try to get a square if I can, but that's sometimes more bother than it's worth thanks to ZBrush's initialization settings. More on that in a minute. I save this image with a name that tells me it's the texture.

:b2: The next step is still in Photoshop. ZBrush can use textures transparently, to hide parts of the object. The problem is, what if your texture has black in it? You don't want to have that part of the object disappear! My solution was to create an alpha mask from the texture. I do that here by selecting my background area again, then inverting the selection. I fill this with pure white. Next, I invert the colors for the whole image, so that I have a black shape on a white background. This I save with "alpha" in the name.

:b2: Finally, in ZBrush, I load the alpha into the Alpha palette and the texture into the Texture palette. I note the dimensions of the texture, then select the Plane3D tool. In Tool:Modifiers:Initialize I change the horizontal and vertical division values as high as possible to give a very dense mesh. I also change the plane width here to be in proportion with the texture. (Let's say the texture was 500x600 in size. Dividing 500 from 600 tells me that the width is 83.33% of the height. Since the max size in the Initialize options is 100, that means that I just set the horizontal size at 83.33. Easy!). It's important to do this if you plan to save the tool, since any width changes that you make through Transform:Size only affect the instance of the tool on the canvas. They don't affect the tool, itself. I now draw the Plane3D on the canvas, and of course it no longer draws at the default square shape (unless your texture is square, to begin with, and you didn't need to change the initialize dimensions other than to increase the mesh).

:b2: Moving right along, it's time to enter Edit Mode. I now make sure that my special alpha is selected, and go to Tool:Modifiers:Selection. Click on the button to make a mask from your alpha, and then click Hide Points. Your plane now instantly transforms into the shape of your scanned object. Now you can click the unmask button -- the hidden points will stay hidden. (Two notes here. First, if I hadn't maximized the mesh before drawing the plane, the mask would have turned out very jagged. Second, the object IS still a Plane3D, and if you export the object as an .obj, all you'll get is a planar shape -- the hidden points export along with the visible ones. If you plan to use the object in another app, you'll have to invert your alpha again and apply it in the other app as a transparent texture to once again hide the same points.)

:b2: In the Texture palette, select your matching texture. You now have a photorealistic duplicate of your original real-life object, regardless of how much black was in that object! If you use Edit Mode, you can alter the shape of the plane to give realistic bending to leaves and such. You can also use material modifiers to add color bump to very good effect.

:b2: That's it! Save your tool, and you can include the texture as part of the tool, itself. Now you can take it into an image of any size to have fun with.

For the leaves, I used a Basic Material with all kinds of modifiers to get the right light interaction for each type of leaf. The maple leaves, for example, had a higher specularity, while these red ones had some color diffusion going on to give them just a bit of a velvety feel. For the butterfly wings, I used the Intensity Metal, modified. Butterfly wings, in the right light have a metallic sheen to it, and this duplicates that. If anyone wants it, I do have that material saved.

Hope that helps anyone out who wants to try similar stuff. Have fun with it! And once again, special thanks to Joe Dorsey (impending) for getting the ol' gray matter working. :)

[Stonecutter]

Wonderful explanation, Aurick...Thank you for sharing a fantastic technique. :tu:
You're one of the reasons I hang around here!!!
:tu: :tu: :tu: :D :D :D :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Kathy]

BOOYA!!

Thanks aurick.

It's sooooo nice to know I have struck terror in here to the point where people give up their secrets! :D :p :D

But truely. Sometimes the best is the simplest. This series is enchanting and absolutely perfect. I'm so impressed with your technique and it's outcome.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom. :)

[Muvlo]

Another great butterfly image Aurick! :)Again, fantastic detail and color. The sky is really cool, and I did take it for a photo-texture until I read the text! :D
Of course the butterfly is great. As is your vegetation. :tu:
:b3: Edit: Thanks for the tips!!! :)

[Tag]

Aurick, both of your butterfly pictures are beautiful! Had some DSL probs, so I'm a bit slow in responding, but I wanted to let you know they were great. They turned out so realistic looking, you expect them to start flying any time!

[Rembrant]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1002229780ayu.jpg Hear is a flower for the beutiful butterfly. I like . :cool:

[william]

WOW!!! Outstanding image. :tu: :tu: :tu:

Thanks for the details of the image! :)

[Hawkfyr]

Very comprehensive tutorial aurick.Even a newbie like me can have a try at this.
Thanks

[r tyer]

Was doing a bit of research and found this by our moderator and was wondering if the technique for creating the wings etc, would have changed after the 1.5 version was released?
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200402/user_image-1075818368fku.jpg

[scotty]

Very newcomer question, how long would it take to do something like this?
Are we talking days, weeks, 5 minutes.
Worth the time, in any case.

[sadicus]

Thanks for the awsome Tutorial !! :)
Great work, as always!

[SpaceMan]

One word
WOW! :eek: :eek: :D :eek: ;) :) :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: