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Better late than never - Scarab model

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#1

Hi all. I’ve really enjoyed reading through the various posts and seeing all the wonderful things people have been doing with ZBrush over the past couple of months. I’ve been playing around with ZBrush a little when I can but mostly just minor experiments and watching alot of scripted tutorials up to now.

I first started dabbling with the demo version a bit around 3 months ago out of curiosity because I had heard alot of people mentioning it on the various forums out there. That early trial compelled me to go without groceries for awhile so I could get the money together to buy version 2. That’s alright, I needed a diet anyway. I’ve been chomping at the bit to really jump into the program but up until now I’ve had too many other tasks taking precedence.

I’ve been busy getting my website portfolio together and am now in the process of hunting down another job at a video game studio somewhere. I did that already for about 7 or 8 years and have been freelancing in the video game industry for the last couple years. I’ve learned the idea of freelancing for a living really isn’t for me so I’m planning to jump back into the field again fulltime. Being your own boss isn’t all it’s cracked up to be at least not for me.

Anyway, this is a model I did of an Egyptian Scarab Beetle I did recently. A little too late for the Insects Monday Night Challenge but better late than never as they say. Now that I’m starting to get a little time to finally do some finished pieces in ZBrush I figured it was time to start displaying what I’m doing. Plus, I’d like to get some feedback from the community to get better and hopefully be a help in turn to other artists here.

Sometime in the next few days I’ll be texturing the Scarab. I’ll be sure to put the textured version up as soon as it’s ready along with a view of the ZSphere stage then. It’s got a heck of alot of magnet spheres all around to deform it. Looks like a Chia Pet in the ZSphere view. They did most of the contouring work. I didn’t really need to do very much in detailing it with the Alpha and Inflate brushes. Just a little mottling up of the surface with some various Alphas in Projection Master. I didn’t want to go too crazy with that since I wanted the carapace to remain relatively smooth - just enough to breakup the highlights a bit once I apply the final shader.

By a wierd coincidence I just got contracted to do a concept painting for a company in Texas the other day that requires a bunch of scarabs in the picture around the central figure. I just got the assignment a couple days after completing the untextured model. Convenient that I already have something to use for it, eh? If they give me permission to post images of the piece I’ll be working on, I’ll try to post them on this forum so you can see how this Scarab is going to be used. I usually do these kind of illustrations I get contracted for in Photoshop and Painter but this time I’m thinking of creating alot of the elements for it in ZBrush. I already have a headstart with this Scarab for it.

#2

Hi and glad you posted this…Great modeling!! Would be very interested in seeing those attractor spears and of course the final with all the texturing! Congrats on getting to use this one so quickly!

wenna

#3

Yeah, the modeling is great! And… I would be intersted in seeing the zsphere view as well :wink: keep it up!

so long
marc

#4

Excellent Scarab, David. Very Cool modle…then again I’m biased as I love bugs of all sorts…Keep up the great work…

Dickie

#5

lovely :slight_smile:
I assume there is no script?
it would be nice to see the zsphere model, and the final textured one.

#6

#7

the last images arent showing up…

#8

Let me try that again:

#9

Damn, not sure what the heck is wrong. Tried posting some new images but I’m having some kind of difficulty. From what I can see the image URL is being entered correctly and I did double-check to be sure the files were in the correct place online. Not sure why these aren’t working but the first one did. I can’t see anything different in what I’m doing. It’s got to be something simple I’m missing that I’m just not seeing.

#10

Ah. I think I see the problem. A minor tweek to my last edit on my site messed things up a bit.

#11

#12

The shaded view is just and early shader test for now. Just an experiment with a semi-translucent material and some different colors assigned to the spec, ambient, diffuse and cavity colors to try getting the iridescent beetle shell look I want. It’s just a quick early experiment for now but seems to be getting close to what I want for the main shell. The legs and head will be a bit different and I’d like to do something for a lighter underbody material and paint in some specific details.

#13

Sorry kobi1kobi. I didn’t save a script of the modeling session.

#14

Polyframe view.

#15

OMG that’s a LOT of zspheres!!
really makes me wonder how you handled that, considering how tiny/huge some of them are and how much fiddling with zsphere resolutions and rotating those nasty things to avoid twists and turns they usually mean to me.

amazing model and and awesome job, congrats! :slight_smile:

#16

Very nice work. That is a lot of Zspheres!

Question: can someone tell me about those shaded handles coming out of the Zspheres? I’ve seen them in other pics but they don’t appear in my Zsphere models.

#17

Can you explain the creation method of the material£¿thanks :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

#18

Those are ‘magnet spheres’ or ‘attractor spheres.’ I can’t remember which is the proper term for them. They help to gradually pull and deform the model into the desired shape. Of course, you could always just do that with the Standard Brush or the Inflate Brush by painting the deformations into the model. However, I’ve found that good use of these magnet spheres can be a bit more precise in getting that base mesh much closer to the sillhouette you want for the final object and sometimes be a little faster as well.

While in Draw mode and laying out your ZSphere model just Alt+click on any connector sphere in the chain connecting to the ZSphere you wish to convert to a magnet sphere. For a ZSphere to become a magnet sphere it must be the last sphere at the end of a string of ZSpheres. It’s effect varies depending on it’s distance from your model and it’s scale. Once you get used to them they can be very fast to set up during the ZSphere modeling stage and really cut down on the amount of work you have to do with the editing brushes in the later stages.

Basically, I think there are 2 main methods of using magnet spheres in the modeling process from what I’ve been able to see so far:

The first is what I like to refer to as a ‘point’ method. This uses only one magnet sphere or sometimes a few magnet spheres in a tight cluster along a central line to deform a sharper bulge in one part of the model. You’ll see this in a few areas around the legs on the scarab. So far I haven’t done any models that really call for extensive use of this - I tend to use the next technique more often.

The second method and the one I think I use most often is the ‘row’ method. You can see this most noticeably along the scarab’s carapace. I have an even row going down the centerline with 2 other rows on either side a little farther out. It’s also used to a lesser extent in some places on the legs. By using rows of magnet spheres you can get some nice subtle deforming of your mesh. Notice in the ZSphere views of the model how most of the carapace was deformed from that one ZSphere around the middle. I can set the magnet spheres up quickly and do alot of easy fine tuning of the shape by grabbing different magnet spheres in each row and adjust their scale and distance from the rest of the model. I toggle between the ZSphere view and the polyframe view frequently to see the changes made by the magnet spheres I’ve adjusted.

That amount of control of fine tuning the base shape can be tough to do sometimes using just the editing brushes. They aren’t as precise. With practice the magnet spheres can be very quick to use and get you a basic shape very close to what you want for the final result. Then you can focus on using the editing brushes to jump right into doing all the fun details. It’s just a different approach - a little more work up front to make less work later. The technique seems to work for me in most modeling situations I’ve come across so far and it may work for some of you as well. It’s just a matter of finding what works for your particular style and way of thinking.

#19

oh yes, those magneto-spheres are absolutely brilliant and a joy to work with for the exact reasons you mentioned. their main advantage IMHO is, that everything remains editable and reversable, if you don’t like the result just kill the sphere - feels like unlimited undo, even your model has detail, texture, whatever … and they allow for vast, easy deformations with a few klicks.

though i must admit that compared to this amazing scarab all my experiments with tem are but child’s play :slight_smile:

just imagine what an awesome tool they would be, if your mesh was visible while tweaking them (anyone at pixologic reading this? hin hint :slight_smile: )

btw: there’s no way to have negative attractors, pushing, not pulling the mesh, or is there?

#20

Scarab Beetle Shell Material_01

Here’s the material I started experimenting with for you all to play around with. It’s got some gel and metal properties and is slightly translucent and other things. Just poking around with different materials and slider settings so I really don’t remember how I started it exactly. The irridescent effect comes from assigning different colors to the diff, spec and ambient channels mostly. I’ve seen some neat variations on this by just changing the colors assigned to those channels while I was trying to get the combination that I wanted. For the beetle I assigned a really dark desaturated blue color that was almost black then assigned this material to it to get what you see in the shaded rendering. Hopefully some of you will find a variation of this useful for something you are working on. I’d be interested in seeing what some of you do with it.

I’m probably going to modify this material to get a darker and a slightly more matte finish look for the head and legs and then probably use a completely different material altogether for the underside of the scarab.