ZBrushCentral

How does rigging with Zspheres work?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello everybody! I’m new in Zbrush, and I’m trying to pose a character I’ve made and I’m facing an issue: how does the rigging thing work? I mean, how big is the area around the Zspheres that binds the mesh? How does it behave when it has other zspheres around?

I’m a medical student so more or less I know how the joints and the muscles work: this has helped me a lot playing with posing a muscled character using Zsketch and Zspheres, but on a detailed mesh using Zsphere rigging the joints and muscles doesn’t behave that way (I didn’t pose it before mainly because I sculpted using symmetry, and also I thought it wouldn’t be so hard to do it later). I’m getting closer, but my rig is getting a little bit more complicated than I’ve heard is recommended to be.

I’ve already watched Paul Gaboury rigging videos: http://youtu.be/cmury2eT_io (could someone explain me why he does press the “shift” button while clicking on the preview button in the adaptative skin menu? and why he touches the mesh? btw, my mesh binds itself just by pressing the “bind” button, i’m using the 4R6 P2 version), the’re helpful but doesn’t give too much explanation about how this thing works. The same with other tutorials, besides in other cases the overall shape of the mesh is much “simpler” and doesn’t require many Zspheres to mantain structures on its place. Maybe am I trying to be too much precise?

I’m pretty sure I forget about some other questions, but this is enough for today.

Thank you very much Zbrushers!!

#2

Low resolution mesh is desired for posing. In general, don’t use anymore zspheres for your armature than necessary. Try it out a bit to see what happens. It’s a learning process.

#3

The influence for each zsphere is automatic. You can control the mesh with more zspheres but, as Doug says, a lot of zspheres can make the rig difficult to adjust. Also your mesh needs to be quite low resolution otherwise you can get horrid wrinkling when trying to pose.

The Shift+clicking is for previewing the high resolution detail for a mesh with subdivision levels. You can read about the technique here:

http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/posing-your-model/rigging/

#4

Thank you both, I haven’t payed attention to the shift+click detail on the Zbrush Docs.

I’ve been testing all night long (with a low resolution mesh to avoid problems), and I ended up with a more or less simpler skeleton, and I think I’m near the solution; there are still some problems but I suppose I will need to fix them “manually” on the mesh. The thing is that I was so tired when I finished posing that I don’t know what I did and lost all the high resolution mesh details. Luckily I tend to save in different files so I keep the not posed skeleton ;).

I’m going to be a bit busy a few days, but if not in a couple of hours in some days I’ll post images to better explain the issues I’m facing.

Thanks again, have a nice day!

#5

Yes, images are always useful when trying to solve a problem. Good luck!