Short film

[hitch]

Hi all


I am currently making a short film for my advanced diploma in animation, which
will be completed in Novemver. The film will be predominantly done in 3ds Max, but
I will be using ZB where ever I think it will save time, which will be quite a bit (I used ZB
for a small number of things in the last film I made, and It saved me a whole bunch of time.)

Some of the areas where I will be putting it to use are

Concept Art

Story Boarding

Organic Modelling

Texture Mapping

Character Modelling

And of course Displacement Maps

There will be stuff added every week as I want your opinions and I also want to use this thread as part of the production management aspect of the film,

also if anyone would like to critique my short film, I don’t mind if you don’t have script writing experience send me a PM, as I would love some external feedback

[BWayneO]

Awesome! This is exactly what I am interested in using ZBrush for, can't wait to see how you do!!

Thank you for taking the time to inform the ZBrush community! :D

[hitch]

:b3: Stage One Concepts:b3:

Concept Painting for My main character: Pencil sketch, painted in zb

concept_donald_01.jpg

[Jason Belec]

This is good news.

I will help in anyway possible as I have and do use Zbrush in production pipelines.

I am also very happy that you posted this to aid others, as you are starting slightly different than say a studio - you are doing it all! :))

This should be a rather lively and informative thread.

[hitch]

:b3: Animatic:b3:

Just Completed the animatic for the film. I used ZB to enhance the look of the animatic. The first aspect was trees that will line the road of the main scene. They are very important for the style or the film so they needed to have a little more shape than just a couple of boxes thrown together. I think they took around 5 mins to make with z spheres, at a poly count of 288(which was reduced further in max). The second part of the animatic was the main character, I wanted to get a good feel for his proportions so my timing will be spot on in the final animation. Again made out of Z spheres,with a few edgeloops added in in ZB after he weighed in at 946 polys, The way that Zb distributed the polys around the shoulders and crouch was great and saved me alot of hassle when it came to rigging. I didn't even have to re initialize, took around 25 mins from start to finish, and I spent around 11 seconds texturing it



animatic-process.jpg

[Giantsun]

Coming along nicely aint it.
Keep up the good work. :D

[hitch]

:b3: Character Modelling:b3:

finaly got around to the fun stuff, The first part of character modelling. what I can do at the moment is pretty limited as my computer is too slow to handle anything at the moment (p3 450 mhz:evil: ) should have a shiny new dell by the end of the week though, can't wait to properly put zb through its paces:D . I was able to start on my fellahs hands though, which are very important to the story, as there are a fair few close ups for them, they are almost done, just have to make a nice zb bump map with for them. here is a pregress shot. Thanks for the encouragement people:)
hand copy.jpg

[Ron Harris]

looking good Hitch. I envy you in your endeavours here on this project...I am glad you have gotten the knowledge to pull forward in such a fashion. Love those hands. Cant wait to see more on your project.
Ron:tu: :cool: :tu:

[Mahlikus The Black]

Wonderful stuff hitch!
I am really excited about your project.:D

[hitch]

:b3: CHARACTER MODELLING:b3: - the head

weird working on this one, I wanted to try some thing different with this, don't like to do the same thing over and over again:evil: , anywho, before I started this project, I had spent a fair bit of time on a max face that was going to be a woman, but I hadn't given it much personal characteristics, so I roughly altered the base mesh in max so It was the same size as my character, then ported over to zbrush, to give him all of his character, all the editing tools worked better than I expected with the low poly mesh(the nudge brush rocks:tu: :tu: :tu: ), I finished it off in max adding a few edge loops for wrinkles, gonna Z the heck out of it next for displacement map

TIP: I got stuck a bit, couldn't get the shape I wanted, so I divided him a couple of times, worked on that a bit till i got the look I wanted in high res, when I went back to the base mesh, it was still in the look I wanted, this feature has come in handy a couple of times for me

head_ZB copy.jpg
left:mesh as it was imported from max. mid: after zsculpting, extra edge loops added in max, smoothed in zb
head_turn.jpg
mesh as it looks in max

[aminuts]

cool so far!! Thanks for sharing your project so far!!

I have a question.....why not use the edgeloop function in Zb as opposed to the one in max......does zb execute them differently than max does? etc etc etc. Just curious:D

[hitch]

thanks Mike and Ron for the support:)

aminuts: I tried very briefly with zbs edge loops, umm i really suck at using the edge loop feature:confused: If anyone knows how to use it well, i would greatly appreciate it if any one could show us how you would make a complex edge loop like the one here

edgeloop.jpg

[Thomas Mahler]

aminuts: I tried very briefly with zbs edge loops, umm i really suck at using the edge loop feature:confused: If anyone knows how to use it well, i would greatly appreciate it if any one could show us how you would make a complex edge loop like the one here:


Don't bother with it. ZBrush EdgeLoop Feature isn't really the greatest thing on earth, just use Max or any other specialized lowPoly Modeler for things like that. You'll be faster and get better results. Let's wait for a ZBrush Topology Brush! ;)

[hitch]

hi all,

been wrapped up with getting fancy new computer, but back on track now with
project, started on the background modeling, with this tree
tree wip.jpg

[tdrs]

:D cool tree ***65292;i felling there is a kind of magic :tu:

[dan59314]

As for the eye socket, there is another way you may know already. Personally think it's easier than Edge Loops.:p

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=20600

There is a ZTL file, face.txt, you may want to try some. Please rename the *.txt to *.ztl.


Thanks for sharing your project.:)

[starkilla]

:D max and zbrush what a rush