fun with zbrush

[michalis]

Great portrait! I love it.
Shirt, tie etc need some more love, subtools probably.

[chalkman]

Very lovely portrait ... quite painterly! Looking forward to more in this vein!

[kokoro]

thanks michalis, so glad you like it... yes, i know about "the need some love", but is not possible anymore on this model, since it is corrupt as a seem to have made a mistake while using layers (see the question section, if you are interested, i posted the problem, but noone could help). zbrush still lets me change materials and renders the model but i cannot edit it anymore usefully. so, i am glad i was able to produce this..
chalkman, thanks ... oh, yes, there will come more, afterall, portraits are my deep passion. and, i still have a long way to go to reach what i wish

[polaroid29]

Really cool render like the character a lot!

[kokoro]

thanks polaroid :-)

holiday fun, my first time to try fur in zbrush4... modling was dynamesh with tubes inserted for arms and legs and tail, and spheres for hands, feet and ears. then scaled them and made one dynamesh. this was a very quick way to get a rough mesh with the correct proportions... then a little modeling... the most time consuming was to find out what all the fur settings do, to get the look for the two different kinds of fur... all done in zbrush except a little post in photoshop that was just adding a very subtle lensblur...

[kokoro]

spent nice time on doing this. it has one basic fur and quite a number of of variations to achieve the look,, and the gras is fur too ..fun :-)

[kokoro]

ok, as many, i got bitten by the annoucement of the coming hair feature... so, i tried to use what i learned about doing fur in zbrush, to get the hairdo for this young man (and, i am trying to achieve the hairdo he really has, not something madeup ;-)) ... still very wip, head as well as hair, but i was in the mood to share the early stage...

[Eiad]

thanks for sharing. Yes I look forward to the new fibermesh too. Amazing!

[nicksc]

Your work looks great, enjoyed looking it over.

[kokoro]

eiad, nicsc thank you both :-)

another wonderful hour of playing in zbrush,,,and, then heavily postprocessed in photoshop...

[Bas Mazur]

Keep exploring. Look for the next step to expand your creativity!

[kokoro]

thanks bas mazur for the thumbs up :-) yes i explore, this time, i am trying to learn how to render in cycles... for that, i needed first learn how to do basic things in blender, like navigation etc... so, now i ran into a problem i cannot solve yet. it seems i do not understand the render settings, as i cannot get rid of the noise in the render. michalis, are you around, and could give me advise ? here is how far i got, i increased the samples, but going up from 100 to 250 did not seem to improve anymore ??

[kokoro]

in the moment my focus is to learn to use the cycles render... here is my attempt from tonight, the devil i sculpted earlier in zbrush, rendered with cycles. still not completely like i wanted it to be (i am hoping for suggestions how to improve the quality, as i still feel very clumsy in blender) but i like the mood i achieved with the lightning...

[michalis]

It looks good.
I need more information to help you on the noise issue. Light setup and nodes setup. Are you using emitters? How large? HDRI lighting? In general, if an emitter is close to a white surface it will produce noise but there's some advanced tricks that stop this. If hdri lighting, download the newer build from graphicall. Under the environment panel, check 'sample as lamp'.
Try to avoid a general cubic room around, two three planes are easier and less noisy.

[kokoro]

thanks michalis for coming with advice :-) ... generally i tried to follow what you described in your thread. i have however not yet found where i can put on environment light. so, instead, i deleted the default lamp, and put planes, put on emitter. i chose pale colors and different strong.and, different sizes of the planes. i have also a black plane, invisible for camera for shadow. i like that effect. also, i do not know yet where i can make hdri, so i cannot try this in moment. .. i have only made nodes for the texture, i copied basically what you did. so no uv, but from camera project. ... yes, it is not a room, but a floor plane, and a plane behind the bust. both with a material that has a slight bump and solid color. ... sometimes, i have the feeling "buttons are vanishing" in blender, i guess that is a similar noob issue like in zbrush "help i cannot edit my model anymore" ...lol... despite these initial struggles, i really enjoy the control i have over lightning, that i really can look at a scene from different angles to judge where the things are that i placed :-) i am looking forward to dive deeper into this :-)