Simulated-Microphotography

[azerty]

Hello all zbrushers i have a little question,maybe for aurick i think.I found this old picture of pixolator but tell me how he makes a so realistic render with zbrush.Accept info or suggestions thx in advance bye!(Wonderfull material!!!!)
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200311/user_image-1069699791ivf.jpg
Someone can simulate this sort of render?
as always excuse my poor english but i don't want to speak french cause i risk to make a new topic!!!lol

[Washington]

Looks like Pix used only grayscale colors when painting.

Second for the realistic material. ZBrush have powerful material than I have seen in other 3D applications. It has all the scales; shine, noise, and etc.. It is in Material menu. Play with it little bit and you will discover it very useful.

Third for the realistic looking:
It is in "Render" menu
A) Enable Render Depth Cue
B) Enable Render Shadows
c) Enable Depth Adjustment
D) Enable Color Adjustment

Then click "Best Render" to have those functions to work

The backdrop/background really helped alot with the 3D or Pixols objects making it look very realistic.

[azerty]

many many thx Washington very useful explication
:tu:

[Washington]

Pix used "Snakehook" in Stroke menu. it was for pixols (you may risk losing your 3D objects into evil pixols). If I were you I would use ZSphere to make hairs like in microscope.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Azery
Zbrush is some magic :cool:
Just take time for all explore :)
It's a good idea sometime to read the manual in diagonal!
Some functions are appearing on the pages :)
Pilou

[Jaycephus]

The Anti-aliasing settings under the Render menu are also very important for producing clean, sharp renders. Notice the absence of 'pixol'-ation or jagged edges, or what is offically termed 'Aliasing', in Pixolator's picture above.

To greatly diminish this in a render, you have to tweak the Anti-aliasing settings in the Render palette. I also believe that you might have to turn on Color Adjustment in the Render palette. I can't remember off-hand if this is a requirement for AA to work, but it definitely changes the way that the settings work, so be aware of that.

I have found that there is no one perfect setting for all of my pictures due to the degree of fine detail that may or may not be present. Anti-Aliasing is trying to blur dissimilar pixols, like those along the edge of an object, with those in the background. The problem is that on some pictures you have very fine details, such as tiny bumps on skin, or the tiny sparkles and granularity of fresh snow. These details, often consisting of little more than one pixol each, are no different than pixols along the edge of an object. They all get blended and blurred into the surrounding pixols, and you lose your fine detail.

The best thing to do is to find the AA settings that are right for your render at the beginning or early on. The idea is that you want to create smooth edges on your objects. Then once you have the settings that look good on your objects edges, you can start texturing, or tweaking materials. With higher Anti-Aliasing, you will need bigger, bumpier noise settings, or bigger bumps on your rough objects in order for them to show up correctly once the Anti-Aliasing routine has run. Just don't forget to turn on all your settings, including Color Adjustment, and then do a Final Render or a Cursor Render to check the results. What you will see in Basic Render can be misleading.

Another, easier, but memory intensive technique is to use the AA Half function of ZBrush. Built into ZBrush is a special routine that automatically sizes your picture down to half its size and performs an Anti-Aliasing routine on it. You can press Control-Zero at any time to see this. Press Zero to go back to full size. If you plan to use AA Half, you need to start with a document size that is twice as tall and twice as wide as you want to end up with. A 1024x768 document with AA Half enabled will result in 512x384 output. If you do the math, this means that your base ZBrush document will actually take up FOUR times the memory that it would if you were working with a 512x384 document. However, the pictures generated by this method are very sharp, and except for memory usage issues, it is very quick and painless. Again, because ZBrush is sizing the picture down by half in each dimension, AND performing an Anti-Aliasing routine, you will lose detail that is visible at full size. This is not really a problem: just do all of your work while in AA-Half mode. As you adjust material noise and perform your texturing, you are seeing the detail that will be visible after rendering.

Of course, this means that bumpy or noisy materials that you create for AA Half mode will probably not look good in Full Size mode.

A final option is to use a mix or compromise of the above techniques. Create a picture that is 50% larger with perhaps some light Anti-Aliasing settings in the Render Palette. When the scene is finished, export the picture or capture it to the Texture Palette using the MRGB Grabber. Then resize it down 50% in a program like PhotoShop or within ZBrush by using the texture on a 3DPlane with the Flat Color Material. There is a ZScript available for this I believe. The upside of this technique is that you don't have to work in a document that takes up four times the memory, but the downside is that you won't know what detail you will lose until you reduce the size of the picture.

It is my guess that Pixolator created the picture above using the AA Half mode.