New Works

[MealeaYing]

I have been enjoying the hell out of this too.
The bears have come a LONG way, I seriously love that series and have been getting a better understanding of the images you had me look at a while back.
The Persistence of life is fantastic and the one I affectionatly now call the Death of Bob Ross is wonderful.
That last one with the reflection trick is to put it Boston style "frikkin AWESOME"
I think Pixologic had you in mind when they came up with fibermesh.



Cheers Glenn, and keep at it!

[SpiritDreamer]

MAR. 20, 2012

Kokoro..Thank You ..Glad to know that it might be useful to other people in here.

Michalis..Thanks Man....I'm pretty sure that you can take it about a hundred steps further than I can, with your knowlage of rendering..Really looking forward to seeing what you evolve it into..

Kenny....Thanks Man...Glad to hear that it might be useful to you, in your upcoming project...A jungle shoreline with vine and tree reflections...should be a fun experiment to do I think...Looking forward to seeing what you come up with..

Hey Deke...Thanks Man...and I never was in the box to begin with,LOL...So I don't have to worry about breaking out of it..ever...

Arthaven...Thank You....Hope it will be useful to you..

Mealea...Hey there...Thank You....Glad you like those bear ones, and the other ones also..I'm starting to actually have alot of fun doing the kind of scenes that I really enjoy doing...Plus it relaxes me..and now I can also populate my scenes with some plant life..which always brings life and a little more pleasure to any scene......Hey,..The Death of Bob Ross..LUV IT.....Maybe the Rebirth of Bob Ross...

Thank Again for all the kind words and thoughts..Very much appreciated, and welcomed..
Glenn

Just a little FiberMesh / LightCap experiment this morning...Trying to figure a way to save a BPR image as a Document within ZBRUSH...Unsuccessful so far...I keep having to export the BPR Image into Corel Painter, and then Import it back into ZBRUSH in order to save the BPR effect...Kind of a pain doing it that way...plus the image looses alot of the clarity in the process...Would be nice to just press a button within ZBRUSH that says..... Save BPR Image as IS...WITHIN ZBRUSH...Pixologic Programer take notice..

[kokoro]

hi glenn,,, maybe what you want is this ? make bpr render, then click the texture icon in the left tray and there grabdoc. a new texture appears which shows the content of what is on the screen, then (hell, my message editor writes today black letters on dark brown background, i can hardly see what i write)...then you take the plane tool, initialize it to the width and height your screen document has (the ratio needs to be correct, not neccesarily the size), and then go and put the new texture on the planetool. there is your bpr render on the planetool, now you can draw the planetool to fill the canvas...and, of course, you can save the texture in anyformat you like, too...

[SpiritDreamer]

Hey...Thanks A Million Kokoro......I had a feeling that there must be a way to stay within ZBRUSH to do what I was trying to do..and that it was just me again not knowing how to do it.....You know, ..I read what you just wrote about awhile back somewhere along the line come to think of it...but totally ignored it because it mentioned something about the ratio haveing to be the same,..and my math is terrible, so I just shined it on..LOL...Now I will have to sharpen up on my math skills I guess.....Will be alot easier doing that, than having to keep going in and out of ZBRUSH everytime I want to save a BPR render that I like the looks of..Hey, Thanks Again Kokoro..Made my day...alot Better...
By the way, my type face is having the same problem this morning as yours is..keeps coming out black on dark grey...must be a fluke in the system somewhere...?

Glenn

[kokoro]

i am glad it helps... here a tip for getting the ratio easily ;-) ... always make your document size something nice, like for example, 1200 wide, 800 high,, then you can set the plane tool to 12 wide, 8 high and it has the same ratio (thus erasing the zeros at the end :-))

[Bonecradle]

Have you tried baking the BPR render? I don't know if it will work or not as I haven't tried, but back in the old days baking the (non-BPR) render, or parts thereof, was a common tactic. What it does is bake all the lighting etc. but keeps everything as 2.5D so you can use all the 2.5D tools on it, insert other tools into it, and also render other layers without affecting the baked layer's lighting and shading. I can't even remember where it can be found - probably in the Layers palette.

[Bonecradle]

So I was curious and just tried this. Works fine with BPR. The advantage is that the doc is still 2.5D. The Bake button is in the main Layer palette (not the Tool>Layers subpalette). Hands up anyone who didn't know this existed So much of ZB's old functionality is still there but alas often ignored or forgotten.

Note that you can do other things with the layers, like duplicate and flip. This was used commonly to fake reflections in water, for example - something I think someone else was trying to do on here recently? It didn't occur to me when I first saw their post, but the old memories slowly filter back

[SpiritDreamer]

MAR. 21, 2012

Kokoro...Thanks for the ratio tip......will make it easier for sure..

Bonecradle..Hey, Thanks Man....Trying it out this morning, with some interesting results..I must be doing something wrong...when I render with BPR,.one tool on canvas,.it comes out fine...but when I add another tool, and render again,..the first tool disappears..Not sure what i'm doing wrong, but i'll figure it out sooner or later..maybe

Some more experimenting with FiberMesh and LightCap this morning.
All ZBRUSH
Glenn

[MealeaYing]

MAR. 21, 2012

Kokoro...Thanks for the ratio tip......will make it easier for sure..

Bonecradle..Hey, Thanks Man....Trying it out this morning, with some interesting results..I must be doing something wrong...when I render with BPR,.one tool on canvas,.it comes out fine...but when I add another tool, and render again,..the first tool disappears..Not sure what i'm doing wrong, but i'll figure it out sooner or later..maybe

Some more experimenting with FiberMesh and LightCap this morning.
All ZBRUSH
Glenn

[EDIT] Ignore this, I misunderstood what you were doing. [/EDIT]
How are you adding the other tool?
If you are using Append in the Subtool Pallet you should be ok.
If that is what you are doing look at the Eye Icons in the Subtool Pallet, they tend to turn them selves off with out asking.
Also if you are using more than one tool make sure you Clone all of them at least once in the Tool Pallet or they can vanish never to be seen again (saving a .ZTL and cloning is even better). Do the cloning BEFORE you go stacking things up in the Subtool Pallet.


These reflection things you are making are fantastic by the way, I love this idea of yours.

[Bonecradle]

..I must be doing something wrong...when I render with BPR,.one tool on canvas,.it comes out fine...but when I add another tool, and render again,..the first tool disappears..

Yes, you are right - BPR does not seem to work with 2.5D. But here is a sort of workaround: before adding the second tool, create a new 2.5D layer using the main Layer palette (Layer>Create). When you do the BPR again the first layer will not show in the render, but when you bake the second layer it will reappear. You can of course still use the normal best render, although this was never too hot with correct shadows. Also remember that once a layer is baked it will receive no more shading or shadowing. This will still answer your original question: how to save a BPR as a doc within ZB (if you save it as a ZB doc (zbr) file, it has the added benefit that it is 2.5D and can be worked on as such).

[MealeaYing]

Yes, you are right - BPR does not seem to work with 2.5D. But here is a sort of workaround: before adding the second tool, create a new 2.5D layer using the main Layer palette (Layer>Create). When you do the BPR again the first layer will not show in the render, but when you bake the second layer it will reappear. You can of course still use the normal best render, although this was never too hot with correct shadows. Also remember that once a layer is baked it will receive no more shading or shadowing. This will still answer your original question: how to save a BPR as a doc within ZB (if you save it as a ZB doc (zbr) file, it has the added benefit that it is 2.5D and can be worked on as such).

OOOOH!
I see what he is doing now!
Thanks Bonecradle.
I thought it was something totally diferent.

[SpiritDreamer]

MAR. 22, 2012

Hey...Thanks a million Bonecradle...That last method you wrote about works like a charm ..The right combination in the right sequence...like trying to open a combination lock sometimes with this stuff....Need to have the skills of a safe ******* to figure this stuff out sometimes I guess....Anyway,..Really appreciate the help...Thanks Man

Mealea...I keep having trouble moving the FiberMesh ZTL subtools around when I append them..Acts like something is masked in the sub tool...but even if I press clear mask in the masking section,..it still stretches and deformes the subtool when I try moving it using the MOVE feature next to Draw at the top of the sceen...I've never had this problem before when moving subtools...must be something to do with the FiberMesh ...will have to figure out how to solve this problem..really annoying..

Anyway, Thanks a Million for the suggestions and help guys..Really appreciated, welcomed and very useful..
Glenn

A little FiberMesh / LightCap study this morning...All merged as one tool with a BPR render applied, and then saved it within ZBRUSH as a 2.5 document using the method that Bonecradle wrote about and posted above.

[SpiritDreamer]

MAR. 22, 2012
A little more experimenting on and with this piece this morning.
All ZBRUSH
Glenn

[voodoodad]

Glenn, you can move the fibermesh subtools by going to brush>automasking and uncheck automask fibermesh. Then you can move the whole section around like normal. I guess this needs to be on for the grooming brushes to work properly, so turn it back on once you're done moving things around. I found this hint somewhere here on ZBC, but I can't remember who it was, so kudos to whoever originally pointed this out.

Keep up the great work. Gary

[SpiritDreamer]

MAR. 23, 2012

Hey Thanks Gary.....I probably would never have found that.....well maybe a year down the road..Maybe.....Alot of little hidden features stashed away within this program, and so much to learn with each new update...But a major part of the fun is in the discovery of the unknowns, and the new possibilities that they create..I know it's that way for me anyway, and Always has been that way..
Glenn

Some more experimenting with this piece this morning..FiberMesh / LightCap
All ZBRUSH