ZBrushCentral

ZBrush 4R2 Beta Testing By Julian K

Here’s my first complete 4r2 piece. a lot of trial and error with this one, loads of fun and excitement over the new features. I can’t even begin to express how happy and proud I was being part of this. Pixologic rocks the house!

Solely done in Zbrush, started from 2 Spheres ( one for the body one for the head),insert and curve brushes, dynameshed, some parts group-split into subtools and finally subdivided for fine detail and polypainting.
of course it is rendered in Zbrush and might I add, there was almost Zero post-processing in Photoshop, other than a little exposure tuning and a very slight background gradient here and there. no separate render passes where needed.

Below the images are a few wip videos and at the very bottom is a quick tutorial about the hair creation.
If there is interest I can post my custom shader and the light setup for this one too.

wip videos:

[youtubehd]XYFHX1l7VeA&hd=1[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]V1GRHG9uZd0&hd=1[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]Pd3nnwG1Da0&hd=1[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]6yN8dutGYeM&hd=1[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]tSIcMvHOT30&hd=1[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]nkfIYK7beO0&hd=1[/youtubehd]

a quick ‘how to’ on how I created the hair:

[youtubehd]X2UDDClI2Jo[/youtubehd]

Attachments

Bunny_01.jpg

Bunny_02.jpg

Bunny_03.jpg

Bunny_04.jpg

Bunny_05.jpg

that’s the first quick test I did with Dynamesh. Just a little fun tribute to Zbrush :slight_smile:

I started from a shadowboxed version of the Zbrush logo which shape had inspired me for that guy.
I have a timelapse vid of 95% of the process on this one which I’ll post soon.

pixocompare1.jpg

time lapse :

[youtubehd]UykUCBusb4o&hd=1[/youtubehd]

Here are some tests of the new environment lighting and hdri map background features.

with the Zombie images I wanted to see how I can use it differently and use real world photo-realistic sources to create graphic novel style images. first I treated the background images in photoshop to be more cartoony and then used a new modified version of my toon shader to render the zombies.

I also reduced the lights which were created by the lightcap from the background image to a maximum of 4 and adjusted them to my needs, most of all focusing the aperture to get hard edged light and shadow borders.

and here I simply tried to get a sculpt somewhat convincingly integrated into a photo, which is quite a lot of fun :slight_smile:

and here just a quick sketch, testing some of new recent curve brush features and some messing around with shaders.

Insanely wicked! I…just don’t have the words yet, lol. Gonna be literally studying this thread of yours. AWESOME!

So here you’re.

Great testing Julian!
Most of all, great sculpting and wonderful images.
Now, I feel better knowing where to ask for help in a few days :lol:

Nice tests Julian!!

Oh my, Iam in love with that first creature! In fact, I might be in love with you too :o
Thanks for the How To on the hair! Really usefull stuff :slight_smile: Do you find it laggy to rotate on the screen when all thoose hairs are applied?

Thanks a lot guys. albeit unfortunately having very little and certainly not enough time during beta testing, I still had tons of fun and excitement.
I also must say this - without getting into any specifics ( which I won’t and can’t) the people behind Zbrush are amazing and deserve all our respect. Zbrush is a work of passion for art and artists.

hey michalis, yeah - I sort of vanished, life took over :wink:

Santis - I suppose that really depends on your machine. it wasn’t laggy on mine ( core i7, 12 gb), but I wouldn’t try to cover a whole grizzly with that kind of hair. haven’t tried to push the limits yet.
however, with 64 bit support on the way I think that method becomes an even more feasible way of doing hair in Zbrush. I personally like it because you see exactly what you do and what you get in terms of placement, you can alter on the fly between short and long. you can thin it out quickly with the smooth brush and further shape it with the move brushes. it gives you quite a lot of control, while being fast to apply. plus it casts proper shadows. what you probably don’t see in the vid is that I make it its own subtool for better memory/polycount management.
if a given model is already very high res, I make a lower subdivision clone of it and place that hair on that.
one tip - you can just grab and move single hair tubes with the topology move brush, without the need to mask anything :slight_smile:

Thanks for the answer, definitely going to try it out! :+1:

So THAT’S what you’ve been up to! :slight_smile: Great stuff!

Man you got a lot of solid stuff there! Thanks for the video on the hair, I’m totally gonna STEAL that! :wink:

Bravo! Amazing work! I have to go back now and watch your tutorials, thanks for sharing. :smiley:

Excellent work, simply stunning.
The bunny is amazing.

and yes,

If there is interest I can post my custom shader and the light setup for this one too.

there IS definetely interest.

Great work and great talent, I am impressed.

thanks a ton everyone. really very appreciated.

cherub - life has been crazy this year. if you would know what all I have been up to :wink: I am actually also waiting for a collaboration of Etcher and me to be released. I can’t say much, other than that I did a small contribute to one of his projects that neither of us would have expected :wink: hope it’s gonna be out soon- Geert - are you listening? :wink:

Marco - you are very welcome to “steal” :slight_smile:

Rastaman - I just wait until I get my final official 4r2 and then test if it all still all works. the I’ll post the stuff right away.

:+1:The bunny is amazing,cool~~~

Wow! That sounds exciting, please don’t let me miss on it guys :slight_smile:

great sculpts and renders Julian!! Superb use of Dynamesh and Mesh Insert in those Rabbit videos , love the hair technique too -> thanks for posting :+1:. Love the tribute & tribute vids! ttys - Geert

Thanks a lot Sir. you should carefully read to a reply I made on the previous page :wink:

I have attached the render setup for bunny here. material & lights. keep in mind, that if your model is not textured you might either want to turn the base color down in brightness or the lights. otherwise it’s all overbright. with texture the material is rather dark and needs a lot of light.