NEWBIE CHALLENGE #3 EYES
Time to resurrect the Newbie Challenge, methinks. Thanks go to aminuts and Adreseloy for all their previous work, and their on-going help and support. Cheers guys.
There will be a fresh challenge every couple of weeks or so. But it won’t be an aimless meander through the tool palette. Oh no. We, my fellow newbs, are going to teach ourselves the techniques and skills required to create a realistic human head. Or fail miserably. Probably the latter but hey … I’m prepared to let you die trying!
The Eye
Eyes are pretty easy, quick to make and any good ones can be usefully stored away for future projects. I’ve attached a zip file with a three-part set of eye tutorials. Unzip the txt file into your ZScripts folder and load it from within ZBrush 2. The Play buttons will appear at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes ZScripts don’t show all the actions clearly, so I’ll put a few notes below.
The Challenge
Make one (or more) human eyes. Post renders in this thread. Tell us how you did it, if you use a different technique. Feel free to post Zscripts or the finished tool, if you like. No pressure. In the next challenge, we’ll be placing eyes into heads, whilst keeping everything editable!
Tutorial 1. We’ll just colour in some of the polygons using the ‘Colorize Mesh’ option. It’s a handy technique to learn, though pretty rough. The ending isn’t very clear … after painting the mesh, I select the pupil (hiding the rest of the mesh) and mask it (Mask All … this just masks visible parts). I then make everything visible again (Ctrl+Shift+Click away from the model). Then I apply a small Noise deformation (which doesn’t affect the masked pupil). Finally I remove the mask from the pupil (Masking > Clear).
Tutorial 2. I use Projection Master and one of the default textures applied with the roller brush. The script doesn’t make it clear when I’m in Projection Master (PM) … but whenever I’m applying a texture to the eye, I am in PM. Trust me.
You’ll notice the texture gets darker rather than lighter, when I use the Highlighter brush. To do this, hold down the Alt key whilst using the highlighter. Notice, in this script and the third one, how painting over the edge of the eyeball results in streaks and marks.
Tutorial 3. We make our own iris texture first. This is a brilliant opportunity to experiment with the 2D and 2.5D tools. Projection Master isn’t used for this. The texture is made seamless by moving it. On most keyboards, just hold down the tilde (~/#) key and drag. I have a UK keyboard … on mine it’s the ‘at’ (@/’) key. Use the GrabDoc button in the Texture palette to add it to your texture list.
I made all the pupils and irises over large, so things are easier to see. In human eyes, the iris diameter is between 33%-50% of the eyeball diameter.
Good luck! No prizes, just kudos and learnin’.