1. #1
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    Smile My 'How to Sculpt' skull... 1st Z3 model

    Z3 is just awesome. I followed the skull tutorial with the only reference being the X-plane pic included with the tutorial, and came up with this:

    ZBSkull.jpg

    (I wish I had had one of Rick Baker's skulls as a 'live' reference. The guy has shelves of them. I also wouldn't mind having Rick Baker's skills... ha, ha.)

    Rendered in ZB with Best:

    Lights:Shadows set to:
    Intensity:100
    ZMode:ON
    Uni: about 50
    Dist: about 128
    Rays: about 90
    Aperture: about 50

    See the wiki page: http://www.zbrush.info/wiki/index.php/Learn_to_Sculpt

    I started with a polysphere and considered retopping it and breaking it out to several subtools to make the jaw and teeth really look like separate pieces, but with the ability to go to millions of polys on multiple subtools simultaneously, the only reason to do so would be if I wanted a versatile tool on which I could hide teeth or the jawbone.

    I did the main sculpting, including teeth at 90K polys, before I realized the X-Plane reference was at 2 million polys. So I upped the skull to 1.5 million, ZProjected the RGB from the X-Plane ref tool onto the skull (poly-painted), Masked from intensity, and quickly pushed/pulled some fine detail into the mesh. Also spray-brushed pits all over. Even though I was really working fast and rough at this point, it really started looking very nice. There is no way my current PC could have handled these poly-counts so painlessly in Z2.

    Put my shinyOldSkull MatCap on it and did a best render.

    Below is a flat diffuse with texture on the left, and a no-texture Mat-only on the right. The render above is the Mat with texture turned on.

    TexturePlusMatCap.jpg

    You can see the texture is really very rough, and grayscale only!

    Realtime Preview Render using Mat, poly-paint texture, and a slight Render Adjustment to increase brightness/contrast:

    ZBSkull_Realtime.jpg

    UPDATE: MatCap zip now includes the light file as well:
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by Jaycephus; 06-05-07 at 06:04 PM.
    Jay

    "Talent and all that for the most part is nothing but hogwash. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude might very well draw better than I perhaps; but what he most often lacks is the tough yearning for realization, the teeth-grinding obstinacy and saying: even though I know I'm not capable of it, I'm still going to do it." -- M.C. Escher, in a letter to his son Arthur, 12 February 1955

    http://www.ejectejecteject.com/

  2. #2
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    Outstanding work!

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    Looks fantastic! How do you remove X-plane? I couldn't do it?

    Thanks!

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    Thanks guys!

    Cole, you can hide a subtool like you hide a layer in Photoshop. Click on the eye icon. You can also delete the X-plane subtool if and when you are done with it.
    Jay

    "Talent and all that for the most part is nothing but hogwash. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude might very well draw better than I perhaps; but what he most often lacks is the tough yearning for realization, the teeth-grinding obstinacy and saying: even though I know I'm not capable of it, I'm still going to do it." -- M.C. Escher, in a letter to his son Arthur, 12 February 1955

    http://www.ejectejecteject.com/

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    That turned out excellent! Am gonna have to give that tutorial a go I think.

    Nice to 'see' an old face return for a visit. Learned alot
    from your posts of long ago. Thank you.

  6. #6

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    This is the best human skull i've ever seen lately
    Stunnig work and 5 stars!

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    Aminuts: Thanks, there's a lot of ancient buried treasure in ZBC. Maybe the new Wiki will help organize the info once it gets going.

    Leshiy3d: Wow, thanks. I really like your Native American bust.
    Jay

    "Talent and all that for the most part is nothing but hogwash. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude might very well draw better than I perhaps; but what he most often lacks is the tough yearning for realization, the teeth-grinding obstinacy and saying: even though I know I'm not capable of it, I'm still going to do it." -- M.C. Escher, in a letter to his son Arthur, 12 February 1955

    http://www.ejectejecteject.com/

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    Awesome mesh. Just a quick crit: The eye cavity has a really low res texture which kinda detracts from the work as a whole for me. Btw take anything I say with a grain of salt because I'm pretty much a ZNewb.

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    Yes, I had only a little time last night and wanted to take my model all the way to a finished, painted state, so it was definitely rushed. Consider it still a bit of a WIP.

    I'm going to jump back a step and tweak it a bit. I'll add some resolution to the eye-sockets this time.

    Thanks for the input.
    Jay

    "Talent and all that for the most part is nothing but hogwash. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude might very well draw better than I perhaps; but what he most often lacks is the tough yearning for realization, the teeth-grinding obstinacy and saying: even though I know I'm not capable of it, I'm still going to do it." -- M.C. Escher, in a letter to his son Arthur, 12 February 1955

    http://www.ejectejecteject.com/

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    I updated the MatCap zip file to include the Light setup used in the Best Render above.
    Jay

    "Talent and all that for the most part is nothing but hogwash. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude might very well draw better than I perhaps; but what he most often lacks is the tough yearning for realization, the teeth-grinding obstinacy and saying: even though I know I'm not capable of it, I'm still going to do it." -- M.C. Escher, in a letter to his son Arthur, 12 February 1955

    http://www.ejectejecteject.com/

  11. #11

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    That is one of the best skulls i've seen yet

    And lighting setups/materials are always welcome thank you!

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    This looks just amazing! I've only been using Zbrush for a week now and have been following as many tutorials as I can find and I'd love to see the processes involved. Especially the projection of the skull pic onto the model. I've followed the original skull tut and the projection tut but I still need my hand held a little. Any extra info you can provide will be greatly appreciated. And thanks for the inspiring post!
    "...and how was I supposed to know the Wacom wasn't Jell-O proof?"

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    Wow J, that is startlingly real. I wonder if it might not help to do a second material for the teeth? Thanks for the ShinyOldSkull mat file. It tweaks into a passable Netsuke material, too!

    Sven

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    Nice sculpting!

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