Tree Dragon. Updated October 15,2002

[Rafael Hernandez]

Single Mesh from zshperes. No post work. I know that the hands need more definition but this was an exercise in producing detail with the minimum amount of polygons possible. Also disregard the fact that it's floating above the plane.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1034609579zyr.jpg

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1034609624goj.jpg

Now a question to those who have used other modeling programs. How long does it take you to make a similar model in Maya,3ds max or whatever software you use?

[yahroon]

did you use 1.5???????

nice modeling!!!!!!! and nice pose! :D

[Pixol Pusher]

Excellent modeling Rafael!
The answer to your question is it takes too long to waste the money on said programs. ZB is the answer to all organic modeling and a whole lot more. Albeit lacking some essential modeling function, I haven't any doubt that Pixologic will fix this. Besides, what it is lacking in those functions (boolean...nurb), ZB makes up for it 10 fold and then some :D :tu: with its 2.5 brushes and well too much to go into now, but you all know all too well what I mean.
Once again Rafael, beautiful modeling! :)

[Jaycephus]

Great modeling :tu:

I own Animation Master and LightWave, and I have Maya LE. However, I am not expert at polygonal modeling. I think I am just good enough to do what you have done with this, but I am NOT quick. This could also be done with Animation Master, a NURBS-like modeler (Hash Patches), but it would be slower than ZBrush or any other polygonal modeler. In fact, one of the techniques that some AM users utilize to speed up modeling in AM is to model a polygon version in another modeler with resolution similar to, but a bit lower than your model above, and then bring a .obj or .dxf into AM, converting it to a Spline-based model. However, within Animation Master, the resulting model could be animated much more easily and with greater realism in much less time than any of the other packages, IMO.

[rhom]

Rafael-that is some fine modeling-I for one would be interested in seeing what the actual ZSphere object looked like-you know before you skinned it.thanks

[Rafael Hernandez]

Thanks for the responses.

Yahroon: Yes this was done with 1.5.

Pixol Pusher: I'm also hoping that we get more control of the mesh. I would like to be able to delete edges and vertices(lines and points).

Jaycephus: I still would like to know how long it takes you even if you think that you are slow. I did this model over 3 days working a couple of hours here and there ( 6 to 10 hours all together). Animation Master sounds interesting and is not that expensive. I might check it out.

Rhom: Here is an image before being skinned.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1034614898bey.jpg

[banez]

Looks Real Good :tu:
add it in the Tool Thread :: http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008532
if you would Like ;)

[Pixol Pusher]

To be honest, his would take me about 30 to 40 hours of nurb modeling in C4D and that is being conservative. On a more liberal side, ah, about 60 hours.

[JOLA]

I see I will have to learn a lot,
I love this strange animal!! :) :) :eek:

[Rafael Hernandez]

EZ: I posted the tool in your thread. Keep those tutorials coming.

Pixol Pusher: Thank you for being so candid. I really appreciate your input. The reason why I'm asking this is because I'm not a profesional so I don't have idea what's a decent speed when creating a model

Thanks for the comment Jola.

[banez]

thank for posting that in the tool thread :tu:
do you have any Tips on the prossess of making that far as Resoulution when skinning and Lighting ect ect.

[Pixol Pusher]

I am a 2d professional..not a 3D one. My modeling experience in the other 3D programs is very limited. It isn't because of the realization of object structure in 3D but the lack of understanding in the program's tools and learning how to use them to their full potential. ZB however, is easy to understand right off. The rest is like playing around.

[TVeyes]

That is indeed a sweet looking model. Great work tweaking the model after skinning it.

[drjjwow]

looks really good, i would love to play with this one.

[Jaycephus]

(EDIT: I had to up my time estimates after seeing the difference between the original mesh and the current mesh.)

Well, what I meant by that is that I don't think I'm a good enough polyonal modeler to give you any meaningful data. However, you said this took you 6-10 hours. If you lost the file and had to do it again, I bet it would take you no more than 6 hours. I think it would take me at least 20 in ZBrush at my current skill level, and longer in LightWave. I would estimate about 30-35 man-hours in Animation Master, unless I did a low-res version in ZBrush, and imported the .obj mesh into AM. These estimates are more a reflection of my skill level, than what the different applications are capable of at best in highly skilled hands.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1034621890izm.jpg

According to the times of the ztools that I saved as I made this, this took me about 3 (EDITED: not 2 -- I mis-calculated.) hours from a shpere to the current state. This is only my second attempt at a head in ZBrush, and my first attempt at low-polygon. I used a 'lillehoff' shpere. The problem with this shpere is that I can't increase the resolution by Doubling without creating triangular polygons. However, with subdivision smoothing, it looks pretty good even if the base polys get pretty rough. I don't know that tri-polys are all that bad, and after looking at yours and Ken B's meshes, I noticed you both have tri-polys showing up after increasing mesh resolution in certain spots. I would want to minimize these, or eliminate them entirely if I was going to export the mesh to Animation Master. It can work with 3 or 5 sided patches, but it looks best with 4-sided patches, and a smooth model with all 4-sided polygons would require the least touch-up after importing.

I'm sure I can get a lot farther along with the model in the same amount of time as I learn polygonal modeling in ZBrush a little better. I'm still pretty 'green'. ;)

[Jaycephus]

I was wondering what the mesh looked like after skinning but before you started editing it, so I downloaded your ztool and skinned it. I'm sure some others would like to see it too (I hope you don't mind):

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1034624971adg.jpg

Rafael, is this pretty close to what you started with when you started editing the mesh? That is a lot of good work to go from this to what you have so far.

[NOITAMINANIMATION]

Well here is a character that one of my Animation Artisits did in 4 days (fresh out of school for 8 mnths), textured with Zbrush, modeled with Nurbs (very few pieces). However Zbrush is really starting to sway us, and as soon as we can move the polygons to NURBS easily, it will have our full attention.

NOITAMINANIMATION (http://24.192.23.249/Jason/dragon3.jpg)

[Jaycephus]

Hey Noit, I went to your company site, and there is no webmaster contact address. I noticed that you do not say what plug-in you use to view your clips, and there was a plug-in error in Internet Explorer when I tried to view them. There are also several still pictures that do not display. Otherwise, it is a great company site. :tu: I would like to see the clips you have, though. :(

[rhom]

Thanks for showing the ZSphere object Rafael and Jay that was a good thought you had to show the unedited skinned object-my question now is this a unified or adaptive?-I can't tell.Another question: by editing do you mean pushing,pulling,dividing and smoothing
etc.Thanks for the info.

[Jaycephus]

Hi Rohm,

FYI, my pic of Rafael's tool is done with Adaptive, Cskin ON, Density: 3, Ires: 7, and Mbr: 1. I just played with these settings until the resolution and shape was as close to Rafael's finished mesh as I could get it. You may notice that the head in the finished mesh has some higher resolution areas, so I assume that he started with a mesh similar to the one I posted, and added polygons in key areas, like the head. I am curious if I have assumed correctly.

Obviously, a lot of work went into the head and hands/feet. Of course, with X symmetry on, you are only having to do one/half of the mesh.

[Grub]

Nice Modelling Rafael! :tu: :tu: :tu:

[rhom]

Thanks Jay.I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.

[Aine]

Looks really good.

I took me over 3 weeks to create a basic dragon, working it about an hour a day.

Rather new to modeling, just over one year into this; I was using Carrara at the time and working in vertex. This same dragon in ZBrush can be turned out in 10-15 minutes (even going slow to teach someone else here.) Fleshing it out about an hour to ready for exporting.

[hitch]

very nice model, you will be abel to produce that in double time when the new displacment map feature comes out. If I'm trying to model somthing that organic outside of zbrush, which I rarely try, i usualy go for cinema 4d's hyper nurbs they are a fast alternative because you can model with very low poly counts, but it would still take me all day to get the same amount of detail. alot of tweaking involved with hypernurbs. Truespace's subdivision surfaces are pretty much the same deal. Modelling with 3d max nurbs takes alot of skill and a hell of alot more practice than it takes to lean zbrush modelling.

[Rafael Hernandez]

Jaycephus, I like how you tried to understand how I did the model just by looking at it and playing with the zsphere. I do that all the time with other people's work here at the phorum. I know some people complain that some of the more advanced users don't share their secrets but believe me you can learn a lot just by looking at the end result and trying to figure out how they did it. Having said that I must steer you to the right direction( or at least to the direction I took).

I started by creating an adaptive skin(Ires=6 ,mbr=0,density = 1). That gave me the first mesh you see on the picture. I molded that mesh until I got the shape that I wanted ( the second picture). I then divided everything but the hands and did further modeling(third picture). Finally I divided the body once more and further refined the model. I had to divide the legs further to give them more definition and that got me the final product. You all can get the zsphere from EZ's thread. So go make some more tree dragons. It ain't as hard as it looks. I hope this answers some of your questions.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1034702070xby.jpg

Jaycephus: You might want to try making heads by using Grub's zsphere method. Check his link here: Grub's thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=007969). If you want to check my efforts with this method go here: My thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008288). This is by far the best method that I've tried.

Grub: Thanks for the comments. By the way people. You should check every post that Grub makes. He's the master, I'm merely the student.

Noit: Thanks for the input.

Rhom: By editing I mean just what you said: pushing,pulling,dividing and smoothing.

Aine: I would love to see your efforts with the dragon.

Hitch2: Thanks for the info. I'm also waiting to try the new displacement map feature.

[Jaycephus]

Thanks for the information and the links! When I was trying to figure out what mesh you might have started with, I forgot to consider the possibility that you may have divided the entire model once or twice along the way. It makes a lot of sense to start at the lowest number of polys and then divide everything at least once along the way.

Last night, as I was checking out EZ's zsphere hand, I was trying everything to get a realistic hand as fast as possible, and the first mesh you generate is critical. You can get 50% of the way immediately with a Unified mesh, and then spend all your time editing hundreds, if not thousands of points. Or you can use a low density Adaptive mesh and start with only 30 or 40 points total that might have to be moved a bit. Then you double, and edit some more. That is a pretty neat way to do it, and I will be practicing some more with this technique. Thanks for showing exactly how you progressed! It helps me a lot.

As far as the head, I had not realized how much roughness subdivision can hide, but after modeling for a bit, I realized I could have started with a sphere of much lower resolution, and now that I've seen Ken Brilliant's progression from a low density ZSphere model to a fully modeled head, I am all into roughing out the shapes with ZSpheres.

[Stargo]

Great model, Rafael :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

stargo

[banez]

here is the hand in a ZScript BabyHand.txt (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1034726752pdk.txt)
when saving a Z Sphere it allso save Data with it like irs mbr ,denisity.
if you interested on how to model in low poly count go here LOWpOLY.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_file-1034727014mfn.zip)

[Grub]

Rafael, you are doing just fine compadre, keep it up :tu: . EZ, great minds think alike - I too have done a hand. Jaycephus, I have created a zsphere hand tool that has a very clean mesh (no overlaps) when adaptively skinning. You can check it out here...
Handtool (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008553&p=2)
It may be of some use.
:)

[banez]

looks good grub i just checked it out :tu:

[Jaycephus]

Hi Grub and EZ:

I did not see these posts until this morning, so I just 'happened' to go get EZ's baby hand zsphere tool last night, and start trying to generate a good Adaptive mesh from it. I did ok, as you can see from the Power Boarder thread where I posted the results right after Grub's hand. So that was pure conincidence, and I will check out the resources you two have provided here tonight or tomorrow. Thanks! :) :tu:

But it is an iterative process to figure out what exact zsphere configuration generates a good mesh. And if you want to figure out the absolute best ZSphere model and settings, you need to work on that mesh, taking it as far as you can in order to find its faults. Last night, I went through the whole process twice before I came up with the hand that I posted. And I am thinking of starting a third version because I made my fingers a little too long, and that requires a little extra work to shorten them in the intermediate mesh. I made my thumb start way out of position in order to get the polygon configuration in the mesh that I thought would be good, but I am thinking that the extra row of polygons between the thumb and the first finger is not really necessary. I am also considering using more zspheres in the fingers for the extra polygons at the intermediate stage, and making the finger zshperes even fatter than they are now, because you loose a lot of volume in the fingers when you divide. (I had to inflate the fingers and thumb a little after dividing. I see really thin fingers in everyone's meshes all the time.)

The downside of this is that you have to start from scratch each time you do a body, or you have to use the old 1.23b method of joining your perfect reuseable hands to your model. Often, clothing makes this very feasible, but not always.

Is there a way to add Zsphere models together and then generate the mesh? I hope that the next version of ZBrush has ways to edit two different meshes into one by welding points together or something like that. I'd also like to see something like bones for the meshes, which would allow us to pose a mesh more easily, and get a lot more reuse out of it. :)

[Rafael Hernandez]

Jaycephus: I'm also hoping for far more control at the point level. I want to be able to delete and add lines at will. I know that you can export the mesh into other programs(like 3ds max) but I'm broke (poor student syndrome). I would also like more control in the subdivision; I mean that some sections of a mesh to be subdivided and others not. Bones would be nice.

Grub: I got your hand tool. Thanks, compadre.

[banez]

hay jay on your last question was you refering to this.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1033619900awh.jpg

[Jaycephus]

Nice. How did you smooth between the hand and the arm?

[Digits]

Hi Jay

Using my Zsphere widget you can join the parent of the Child model to any node of the Root Model as shown here

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1032355414fqv.jpg

Might be just the thing you were looking for.

[Jaycephus]

I am going to try this tonight! I thought I remembered something about joining differnt zsphere models. :tu:

[Sotharon]

Wow, modeling seems sooo much easier with 1.5.1. I really wish I had it..

*save save save* I will soon!

[cake]

Not to rain on people's parade, but basically the zsphere's thing is just Sub-D surfacing, in a really cool interface. I could however do EXACTLY the same base model in maya in an hour. The sculpting is where zbrush kicks MAJOR butt. I have yet to use any 3D program that can work with the number of points that Zbrush handles with ease. but... in all fairness, with the level of detail, it could be done in sub-d's at least as fast, in Maya.

Add some scales and details, and make a displacement map... texture it etc... that's more fun in zbrush ;)

[Ron Harris]

You are answering a post that is like about 2 years old. LOL....but if you can model high end fastly in Maya or just as fast, then why use $$$Maya? If a lesser expensive program does that type of thing for you why not do it all in that program? Especially if you are going to base model then sculpt? I bring this up because I hear comments, like Cake's and others that workflow their modeling outside of zbrush and bring it into z to further enhance their models. I don't understand the reasoning behind that. I will pit speed modeling in zbrush against most any other program and I think zbrush would get the work done expotentionally faster. I hear of people working days and weeks on one model in other progs like maya....zbrush, one good evening and a strong computer can produce a highly polished piece of work. Maybe I put too much stock in Z2, just prove me wrong is all I ask. If you as an artist learn the program here, you will have a new artistic extension of your body and mind. It may not be a traditional 3d program, but apparently it has something good going for it or we wouldn't be having this conversation :) I have been using this program since v1.0 so I get defensive a bit. But then again I do want to rain on everyone outside of the Zuniverse's parades either. (ok...sorry bout that..I will get off the soap box now)

[cake]

:D sorry... duh, wasn't paying attention to the date. Just a modelling time thing. Im actually in awe of this software. It is pretty freakin' amazing. I didn't mean to make anyone defensive... :D