ZBrushCentral

Flamehair jester

Hi all,

I haven`t done much over recent days so I squeezed in an hour this afternoon to turn out Mr. Jester. The final render looked good but I decided to add a few hairs with a smudge tool in Photoshop.

S O U T H E R N

:slight_smile: 'Afternoon Southern…I don’t know if I’d want that Jester working for me. Jesters are supposed to make people laugh & he doesn’t look like he’s in a very funny mode!! Maybe he’s been working too hard lately & he’s just tired of trying to be funny, or maybe he’s just tired, period?? :rolleyes: Nice looking character!! Have Z good one… :cool: Mark.

PS: Southern, how much ram do you use on your system?? The reason I’m asking is I’m running 256 right now but when I start drawing a highly detailed model in ZBrush my system starts slowing down. So I’m going down to Office Max in a little while to buy another stick of 256 SDRam for $79.99 after a $15 mail-in rebate. This will give me 1/2 gig but, will also leave me with 1 more empty slot. Do you think 1/2 gig will be sufficient?? Thanks in advance.

Hey, this is really neat Southern!

Would you mind asking a few Questions for a ZBrush interview for newbies?

Questions:

  1. Do you have a set idea or sketch planned before you start ZBrushing? Do you import sketches into ZB for referance when building?

  2. How much painting on the head do you do before you snapshot it? How much painting on the head do you do after snapshotting?

  3. At what stage do you set up lights?

  4. Materials: how many presaved materials do you use in each painting. How oftern do you create your own materials?

  5. What’s the longest time you have spend making one picture?

  6. If you would like to see any outside influence incorporated in ZBrush what would that be? (Painter - Photoshop?).

  7. If you used ZBrush for commercial purposes, what would they be mainly for?

  8. Advice for newbies?

That’s all the questions I can think of at the moment. Anyone else have any ZBrush-method related questions?
Upham.

Hi Kruzr,

I have (until tomorrow) 128meg. I model with a document around 1000x1000 then use 1500x1500 to complete the image. My machine is slow with big models. If I initialize a sphere a set the subdivisions to 512x256 (max) I slow everything down but I need that level to be able to model effedctivly.

I just ordered a 1gig+ AMD Thunderbird with half a gig of RAM and a Geforce 2 GTS with DDR ram. I have been told that this will fly… I will let you know.

I take it the more RAM you throw at ZBrush the better it will perform but I think Pixolator may be the guy to answer that. I use photoshop a lot and I know that it eats my system resources. 512meg RAm should be ample, I hope. I ordered an ABIT KT7 RAID motherboard which has the capacity to take up to 8 EIDE devices (loads of drives)
and can take up to 1.5 gig of RAM in three slots. The 512meg I ordered is one stick and over here (UK) a 512 stick is about $190 (pounds sterling) about $250 (dollars). I never dreamed I would have that much RAM.

I still have an AMIGA harddrive that is only 85meg!!!

see ya,

S O U T H E R N

:smiley: Sounds like a power machine!!! I plan on putting together a new one SOON, so I’ll be anxious to see your results & opinion after you use yours for a while. “Hands On Advice”. I don’t want to spend too much on this system, being that I’m going to build a new one soon, that’s why I’m only thinking of going to 1/2 gig of ram. Ya know, I sold my whole Amiga system shortly after I built this PC, ( for only $200 ) about 4 big boxes of software & all. I remember upgrading the ram to 7 mgs with a 30 mg harddrive & a 68030 Motorola processor & a 14 in RGB monitor - I THOUGHT I WAS REALLY IN THE BIG TIME - Hahahahaha. Would have never believed I’d be where I’m at right now, back then. Z’ya a little later… :cool: Mark.

HI Upham,

Fire away…

Questions:

  1. Do you have a set idea or sketch planned before you start ZBrushing? Do you import sketches into ZB for reference when building?

I am always planning my next image (not just ZB). My brain ticks over with ideas 24/7. When I sit at the screen I will have at least three or four ideas that need to be realised. I usually just go for it on a blank canvas and build/draw/model/sculpt. I have imported sketches but with my tablet and 21" monitor it is easy to go straight to screen. In ZBrush I often put a 3d plane in a back layer and sketch on to it for guidelines

  1. How much painting on the head do you do before you snapshot it? How much painting on the head do you do after snapshotting?

About this much…

It`s different with each image and really depends on what sort of materials I intend to use. If it is just a basic material (or two) like the Jester, I do a lot of touch up work just after snapshot. And I always put my eyes and teeth on another layer. That was the best thing Pixolator ever taught me. That and the wet lip look.

  1. At what stage do you set up lights?

    Very last. I usually do two or three tests with different set ups. My favorite is 2 suns, 1 spot and a glow. I always lower the global ambient. I usually use at least one light from the bottom to give a slightly eiry look. In the Jester image i used an orange sun low down to the right.

  2. Materials: how many presaved materials do you use in each painting. How often do you create your own materials?

    Loads. I have tonnes. Split into metals, organics, liquids, tiles glass etc. When 1.2 is released everyone will be able to get ALL of my material collection from my Material factory. The average is about 5 or 6 materials for a head. I will make a skin material then save it. I load it back (into
    a new material slot) and make it more specular and use it for lips and wet areas. I always use a toy plastic type material for eyes and I usualy add a bit of reflection to the eye.

  3. What’s the longest time you have spend making one picture?

    2 days solid.
    Remember it???.

  4. If you would like to see any outside influence incorporated in ZBrush what would that be? (Painter - Photoshop?).


I want filters. I want lens flares. I want text. I want more time in the day :slight_smile:

  1. If you used ZBrush for commercial purposes, what would they be mainly for?

    I have done webpages with all ZB graphics. I think I would do book covers If I did it for a living.
  2. Advice for newbies?

    Practice and ask. I only started last November and I`m still learning. Kurisu and Pixolater have helped me at every stage. I use ZBrush more than any other application and I love it.

That’s all the questions I can think of at the moment. Anyone else have any ZBrush-method related questions?

S O U T H E R N

Well done. Thanks for your time.

I’m sure you have helped many newbies.
Cheers.
Upham.

Thanks for going into such depth. This is way beyond any info that I have seen so far!!!

Cool! Great tips Southern. Thanks. One more question. The hair. How’d you create it? Smudge brush, snake hook brush, or something completely different? :slight_smile:

Hold on, one more question ;): when you model your heads, do you keep on the mirror funtion the whole time? Another words, are your models perfectly symmetrical?

And anyway, great head. Especialy the eyes.

Muvlo, it would be a good idea to keep mirror on while your doing the basic modeling, and then as you go back and color and give character to the model you can selectively twitch an eye, raise an eye brow, or whatever. :slight_smile:

First things first.

The hair. I did most of the hair effect by masking the hair area (hold down CTRL and turn off Z whwn in TRANSFORM MODE), inverting the mask then adding noise. THis give the bumpyness to the hair area.

I then painted the hair and hairline in red. With the SMUDGE tool set to a draw size of about 3 and Z turned off. I pulled out bits of the hair line.

I only did minor touching in Photoshop for this image. The only noticable thing is the little flecks of hair around the outside of the head.

The modelling was done with symmetry on for the whole time. I usually turn it off towards the end to add some non symetrical features eg. lip lower at one side, eyebrow raised.

see ya,

S O U T H E R N

I’ll have to try that…(new image time? :D)