ZBrushCentral

Topology, Topo-Rigging & more (Tutorials by Rastaman)

Hello,

these are my tutorials about the new ZB3-features ‘Topology’ and ‘Topology-Rigging’.

You also find more informations from me and others in Plakkies Topology & Flow Lab -Thread:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=44876&page=1&pp=15

Because of discovering all few hours some new features, I decided to place them all together in this new Thread for making it more easy for me to handle the updates.

Check out frequently for new updates.:wink:

Enjoy,
Ralf Klostermann
www.rk-art.de

[attach=57993]Jana-posed.jpg[/attach]

Ah, one further note.

In Europe we don’t care or even think about this, but I have been told that it is a theme in some US-countrys. (?)
Some of my tutorials uses for demonstration Jana, a female nude character which is build ,so to say, very ‘complete’ in all major aspects.

So be informed that these tutorials contain nudity.
Please choose by yourself if you want to read them.

Appendix

As you might already noticed, so easy and fluid the work with low-subd-models goes, posing high-subd-level-models can be a hard thing depending on the power of your system.

Pixologic officially doesn’t support Topo-Rigging yet and prefer the Transpose-mode , therefore the algorythms of the topo-rigg for calculating the changes of the pixol-positions when you pose your model seems not to be as elaborated as they are for the transpose-mode.

So you have the problem of a more or less significant delay in the display of posing high-subd-models that you don’t have when using low-subd-levels.

I tried some ways to bypass this , but didn’t come to a result so far, unless Marcus_Civis posted a good solution for that:

  • First make sure you rig a copy of your model.
  • Create your rig at the lowest subdiv level; bind and pose the rig.
  • When your happy with a pose, create an Adaptive Skin, making sure that the Adaptive Skin: Density slider is at 1, so that the resulting mesh has the same number of polys as the lowest level of your model.
  • Select the new Adaptive Skin posed version and export as an OBJ.
  • Switch to your original unrigged model (remember, you made a copy?) and import the OBJ at the lowest subdiv level (you can create 3D Layers for importing multiple poses).
  • Go up the subdiv levels and admire your work.
With that, you should be able to easily and quickly pose your model in a low-subd-level and change it later into a high-subd-level.

Thanks to Marcus for this great help.

The topo-rigging-tutorial includes now this Appendix and is updated.


Today is the day of updates.:laughing:

Again, [color=red]Marcus_Civis posted on page 3 something very usefull, not more and not less than a way for IK-Posing.:grimacing:
FK-Posing is already descriped by me, but IK-posing with topo-rigs is brandnew.

The technique (with a big credit to Marcus :wink: ) is updated in the new version of the topo-rigging tutorial.

Check it out, we are close to a nearly perfect to use rigging-system. (Only a few handles for rotation-control and joint-movement-limitations are missing)
:laughing:

Attachments

Jana-posed.jpg

The hidden-secret-guide has a small update (actualized some links)

Nice work, and thank you for it.

Happy Pfingsten :slight_smile:

Great idea to make a cleanup thread!
Thanks for the pdf.
Andreseloy

Thank you too.:smiley:

Unfortunately I had to reupdate all Tuts again because this server-system fooled me with a wrong link that referred to Plakkie’s Thread instead of this site.:rolleyes:
So now are all updated with the right links.
Sorry.:o

Argghhhh, again.:mad: :evil: :evil:

The links that I put in my Tutorials that should lead you back to this site lead instead to Plakkie’s site No.10.

Would anyone be so kind to try if it works right with you or could tell me what’s wrong here ?

Thanx,

Ralf

Just downloaded the tutorials,they look fantastic…

Thanks

Great work, thanks!! :slight_smile:

downloaded as well…excellent work on this, Rastaman. :slight_smile:

You have my thanks for your effort and sharing!

The Hidden-secrets-guide and the Easy-rigging-Tutorial are updated.:smiley:

Some new features and notes are added (not so many, but truly worth a shot.:lol:
Also Crusoes ‘painting topology’-post is included in the Guide. thanks to him.
A very cool new found feature.:cool:

thanks alot, Rastaman! :slight_smile:

WailingMonkey

Thanks Rastaman and the ZBC-Community for your effort creating this fine Z3 Topo-Tutorials :+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

Vielen Dank!
kel
.

Added my new Tutorial about adapting existing riggs to other meshes.:smiley:
You find it im the first topic.

AverageMan_Rigged_Composition.jpg

Looking pretty good. Nice action pose. :wink:

Thanks, Jason.:o :lol:

My bad ! Wrong thread :wink:

Here is another one.
Posing only takes seconds with topo-riggs, and this is only an early evolution-state of this rigg. I will refine it when I have the time.:rolleyes:

So far, I had my guerilla-war with mostly all existing rigging-systems, mainly C4D and even the famous messiah (beside the fact that they (PMG) are since several months and two updates not able to solve an essential problem between messiah and C4D so I cannot use messiah within C4D…:mad: :evil: ) made me mostly headaches. I siimply had and still have major problems with these totally overcomplicated and hard to control rigging-systems.:rolleyes:
So far.:smiley:
Beside the fact that unfortunately ZB has no animation-feature, a better material-system and a more advanced renderer (whishlist :smiley: ), this is by far the easiest to handle rigging-system.
As like modeling with the new Tweak-brush combined with the new red-clay-material gives me for the very first time an absolutely smooth feeling like modeling with real clay, the topo-rigg is like working with a smooth wire-puppet.
Only a few handles that would pop up over micro-zspheres to ease contolling the rotation around the length-axis of a zbone are missing.
Beside that it’s absolutely perfect for me. Simply activate ‘Rotate’ (I use mostly only Rotate) and drag your zbone where you want it to be.
Also complex positions are so easy to archieve and to control.
Perfect.:lol:
I hope and wish that Pixologic will keep it mainly just right as it is now and will not ‘improve’ it to death by overlading it with handles, sliders, angle-schemes and so on.:wink:

AverageMan_Rigged_posed.jpg

Attachments

AverageMan_Rigged_posed_1.jpg

@ joebount: please move this to Plakkies Thread, I will answer you there, because the others can’t follow this now anymore and it’s for all interesting.:wink:

The Easy-topo-rigging-tutorial is updated.

Thanks Ralf! This is highly valuable info and great of you to share! It will undoubtedly come in very handy and saves a lot of time experimenting. Keep it up! You have my undivided attention!

Grüße aus Berlin!:smiley:

PS: Falls Du es noch nicht selber entdeckt hast und es Dich interessiert, es gibt ein brand-neues deutschsprachiges Forum rund um CG, welches sehr von deiner Web-Präsenz profitieren würde. http://www.pixelplausch.de/ Alles aber noch in den Anfangsstadien, also noch nicht viel Betrieb.