ZBrushCentral

Bob Arctor's Sketchbook

So this is my first posting here. I consider it done because I am awful at the whole model -> render process. I don’t know how to get this guy into Maya with maps and all that and then pose and THEN set up a nice looking render. With my career I don’t have the time to learn any of that. If there is a quick way please feel free to share. All I know is anatomy and how to produce it.

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Hello Bob,

I love what’s going on in the inner side of the forearms; all that bumpy modelling is well observed and difficult to research. However, the sculpt is let down by the cursory way you’ve finished the trousers; they look die cast moulded. The belt loops would benefit from being proper geometry, not just fuzzy deformation; and the ripped edges are begging for the treatment you gave the hair. Some frayed thread fibremesh magic would sell the jeans sculpt to me.

Should you wish quickly to improve the look of your render, go no further than ZBrush! The lighting and materials available to you here can produce gorgeous images very quickly. Have a look at LightCaps; they’re fun to play with and can set up very exciting lighting environments with a handful of clicks.

A trick I use to augment my first draught renders is to mask my model by ambient occlusion and by cavity, filling the unmasked areas with a darker/lighter, slightly hue-shifted version of the basic colour. This is not polypainting proper, but is a very rapid, semi-automatic first step in that direction, that has a big effect on the render quality. You might also like to go to Tool/Surface and put a mottling colour variation into the skin, to increase believability.

Cheers,

Rory

Thank you very much! I agree. I really wanted to make some detailed and realistic pants. After realizing I can’t pose this guy I decided to mess around with making pants anyway. I’m not quite sure how to make those belt loops pop out without the hassle of making separate subtools. I guess that’s the way to go. My biggest problem, though, was getting the texture for the pants. Without going up to 15mil poly’s I can’t polypaint realistic detail. Is there a trick around this? My only solution was making the very vague kind of dirt/grey look instead of jeans.
Anyway, thank you again!

Oh and thank you for that tip about AO masking. I will try that.

Stick a tiling cloth weave texture into the Tool/Surface/Noise interface. If you can UV the model so that the UV shell seams line up with the jeans’ seams you’ll get a decent result.

If you want proper, geometry belt loops that are part of the trousers subtool, you’ll have to freeze the SubDiv levels and add the loops to the base mesh. this’ll involve a bit of clean-up when you return to the highest SubDiv level, but it’ll be worth it! Alternatively, you could make those belt loops as separate SubTools, subdivide them to the same number of levels as the jeans mesh has, then merge the two SubTools together.

Cheers,

R

Sounds simple enough. I’m reworking my original idea (the one that won’t work with this model due to posing issues). I’ll use that idea, thanks for the tip.