An interesting comment about ZBrush on another forum

[Nikko]

I'm not yet sure of this but I was perusing another forum and ran across this comment by "Sammy", concerning Gollum and the LOTR movie...

"you folks might also be interested to know about the neat approach WETA used for modeling and animating Gollum - as well as many other characters.'

'Apparently they took a polysmoothed Gollum into ZBrush and painted in all his surface detail. What comes out the other end is pretty unbindable ... however, the solution is to create a WRAP deformer of the lowrez cage mesh OVER the 'messy' high definition ZBrush geometry ... a pretty awesome workflow if you ask me ..."

-Sammy

Here's the link http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55262&perpage=15&pagenumber=2
Lots of professionals participate in this forum, including at least a couple that WORK for Weta.... :D

[Nikko]

Well, it's been disproven. One of the guys from Weta posted in that thread and stated that ZBrush wasn't even "out" when they were working on Gollum's skin. Oh well :rolleyes:

[aurick]

You can expect some members of Weta Digital to drop by ZBC in the near future and talk about their "ZBrushing Experience." ;)

[skycastle]

To second what Jason said on cgTalk. No Zbrush was not used on Gollum.

But I will say that Zbrush is an extremly powerful production ready tool. And I can tell
you that it will get even more powerful!!

I would also like to mention a bit about how displacement mapping can improve
the quality of your models ( nothing new here). Most CG models have this "slick" quality
to them that makes them look fake. Displacement maps help to break up the silhouette of your
creations and take away the "CG" look. Displacements can work well weather your going for
a photo real or non photo real ( displacements with a toon shader! ) visual style.

So how do you go about making these displacement maps? Well most people out there like
to paint them as 2d greyscale images that are applied to a shader and when you render your
surface is displaced according to the map.
The problem with this is that no matter how exp. you are at painting these maps you have to guess
at what the final rendered image will look like! Good surface detail should be sculpted, intetional and NOT be just treated as "texture".

I like to consider my character models at three diferent levels:
1. The LowFreq level. This should be the base poly cage or set of Nurbs patches that make up your creation. This level should have the intended proportions, correct dege flow and interesting graphic shape.

2. The MedFreq level. This model should include more detail that would include things like Bone that shows at the surface, undulations within each muscle mass, fat and larger wrinkels in the Flesh. ( you cant paint FATTY TISSUE! )

3. The HiRez level This level could be painted and should include any of the traditional surface texture that we observe in the real world. Things like dino skin, pores in the skin, scratches, bumps, etc...

Mosts models, weather done at home or at big shot studios fail at this second level of detail ( This is when you compare the model to a 3d scaned object or traditional Sculpts ) . In my opinion this is because most CG artist focus on Levels 1 and 3 then forget about 2. Or because people dont have 3d scaners to see the detail at level 2!

If you dont have a scanner or time for scanning use ZBRUSH to create this MedFreq detail!
The workflow is this.
1. Make your LowFreq model.
2. Then use Zbrush to make the MedFreq detail.
3. Next use a surface compare plugin to capture the detail into a 2dmap http://www.drone.org/tutorials/displacement_maps_mental.html.
4. Apply the map to a shader and render the displacements in your favorite renderer.

Some examples here: http://cube.phlatt.net/forums/spiraloid/viewtopic.php?TopicID=581


Dave Cardwell
Modeler haveing fun working on the Rings flicks

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Sky
Your creature (http://ambient-whisper.cgcommunity.com/images_dump/DaveCardwell/chestB.jpg)is astonished, Bumpous :)
Pilou
Ps You have a little point "." at the end of your "drone.org" link so you obtain a 404 :)