ZBrushCentral

Human anatomy

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,
I guess most of you know the book “Sculpting Human Anatomy” by Scott Spencer. This is really a must have, at least for beginners as I am.
What I am wondering is how he sculpted those perfect muscle fiber lines. They look very fine and are all parallel. The tool he suggested is Rake (no alpha). If I try to follow his instructions, my muscle stucture does not look the same.

Is it a question of subdivision (I am at subdiv level 4; 1.3 mln polys) or do I have to modify the brush? Does anybody have a hint for creating muscle structure on such subdiv level, as I would like to avoid more polys?

Thanks

#2

I’m not sure what you mean by no alpha with the Rake brush. It has an alpha and won’t produce the parallel lines without it. Can you show a screengrab?

#3

Sorry marcus_civis, you’re right. What I meant was that I did not change the Alpha.

This is the result I get with horizontal and vertical rakes

Rake.jpg

#4

OK, that’s great, thanks for posting the picture. The problem is most likely lack of resolution and you will need to subdivide at least once more.

Dividing once more will give about 5 million polys. Is that really too much for your computer? If so, then you could perhaps use HD Geometry to get the detail.

#5

Understood.

No, it’s absolutely not a problem for my computer in terms of working within ZBrush. But I’d like to export the model into Poser and there things slow down significantly if I am going to subdivide more. I will try out HD Geometry tomorrow and I will post wheather it works better or not.

By the way, what do you think is the common resolution (polys) you like to have when creating figures for a) rendering within ZBrush and b) exporting to other programms like Poser ?

Nevertheless, thanks

#6

You don’t export the hi poly model to othe rprograms. You either exprt a low poly base mesh and have displacement or. Or Al maps for the detail, or export a decimated verdion

#7

Okay, Gordon Robb, unfortunately I am still a rookie, but I hope to learn texturing, expecially creating displacement maps, as soon as I finish learning the basics of sculpting.
Just to avoid that I am on the wrong way: am I right that you still have to sculpt in detail on higher levels and then go down to a lower subdiv level for making the displacement, or is all work in higher levels not necessary when you plan to export a detailed model with displacement maps? Probably a silly question, but I did not yet have the chance to go through the 500 pages of my book :confused: .
If you knew by chance a good video tutorial about displacement maps, I would appreciate very much if you posted a link.
Thanks

#8

Fairly sure the book you’re following goes through the whole process. If you want to render the model as U.S., try decimation master. It’ll allow you to export the model with the same detail but nowhere near the same number of polys

#9

Yes, I guess it will go through the whole process, at least I hope so.
Why am a asking though having a book in my hand: it’s a step by step procedure within the book and my skills should be more advanced when reading the texturing articles. The clue seems to be explained somewhere in between where I stand now and said article.

Please be so kind to give me a short hint how displacement works and - by the way - what does U.S mean?