My path to Zbrush Zen [Sketchbook]

[johnchen]

thank you Jake Rupert , thank you zuloo666

Been busy with a new scene I’m building which will be featuring a vampire, crypt, and rats

Here is the rat, I went old skool with the modelling and started in Maya, took it into ZB for detailing and texturing. Going to test out the Fibermesh to maya hair workflow to see if its any good.

If anyone has experience with fibermesh > maya > vray, love to get some tips.

basemesh with polygrps from UV

shaping

texture

test with fibermesh

[James_Crabb]

hey that fibermesh is looking pretty good. may i as did u use the groom brushes with any great effect? as i am having difficulty working with groom brushes?

[sculptntoo]

Nice sculpt and the fibermesh looks great.

[johnchen]

thanks guys, I’m going to have a look at convert fibermesh in maya hair now.

I use mostly hairlengthen, hairlong, and groombrush 1. try turning on backface masking for small tweaks.

Also do your hair in patched using different subtools, that way you can control the overall length better, you can see in my first screen shot I have 4 subtools of fibermesh.

If I can get the last step done, I’ll do a mini tut for you guys.

[johnchen]

heres a screengrab, the import process wasn’t too hard, just need to spend time tweaking the hairsysem in maya ( im using vray 2.0 )

will post more details soon when I have the model finished.

In the meantime take a look at these pages, which I used to help

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2010help/index.html?url=Introducing_Maya_Hair_Hair_overview.htm,topicNumber=d0e417191

Creating realistic hair with V-ray for Maya Part 2

[johnchen]

Just thought I’d put a quick update on working with fibermesh curves in Maya.

After a solid day of experimenting with 2 main techniques of exporting curves from fibermesh into maya I got sick of it and rage quited. Messing about with dynamic hair / fur is painfully a slow process, and for what I needed the fur to do didn’t justify spending more time on it.

In my opinion doing human hair using the 2 techniques I will describe bellow can be useful, but for fur, which requires more growth control rather then styling the method can be achieved quicker by native fur plugins.

The two main methods I tried for using fibermesh curves to maya was

1 - Curve to maya hair system

2 - Curve to PFX tubes

Method 1 overview - Curve to maya hair system ( full tut here http://mayazest.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/creating-realistic-hair-with-v-ray-for_10.html )

• export curves from fibermesh, set your previz amount to 10 - 20 percent if you have a lot of fibers. These will be used as guides to generate hair clumps.
• import it into maya new scene along with the underlaying geometry if you wish
• create a hair system on a dummy geo used PFX and nurbs in rollrout
• select the imported curves ( not group ) and attach it to the hairsystem
• now the fun part starts were you have to start playing with all the settings to get a right look for the hair. if you are doing fur then your clump settings are important as maya basically decides how many strands of hair it will assign to each clump of hair, a clump will be determined by the curves you imported from zbrush ( so more curves you import, the more clumps you will have )
• heres a tip when working on styling, set your simulation to static and display quality to >20 and turn off dynamics and collision, otherwise your computer will blow up if you have imported a lot of curves. your PC will lag no matter what, but doing the above will make it at least useable.
• I’ve attached some hairsystem presets I used for you to test, these are for maya 2012

Method 2 overview - Curves to PFX tubes ( for non animated things by default, no dynamics or constraints etc )

http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/index.html?url=files/GUID-4B5FF2A6-F304-48E4-8DE1-9DA809555E9-2894.htm,topicNumber=d28e338441

• The idea of this method is to duplicate the single PFX effect onto the curves from zbrush
• this can be a pretty efficient way of making fur and I think if I spent more time tweaking it might have looked better. But again its a slow process and very cPU and ram intensive.
• import your curves using a higher previz number then above, since this method doesnt do clumps like hairsystem you need to have more curves to cover your obj
• load paint effects ( rendering -> paint effects -> get brush )
• pick a preset thats similar to what you need. ( the bear one is good start ) middle mouse drag from visor into scene
• draw a curve similar length as one of your imported hair curves. you should see some hair, this is what you will use to tweak your PFX preset with. ( template stroke )
• you should select the stroke and edit the settings ( not the shape node settings )
• since we have already styled our hair as strands we dont want any tubes coming out per step. so the important settings are in the “Tubes creation settings”
  Tubes per step - 0
  Start tubes - <5 ( this is similar to clumps but not as good )
• again tweak tweak tweak ( I’ve included the presets I test with ) ( dont forget to tweak the colors, shading etc.

Once you think you have a look that could work the next step is to duplicate the PFX stroke onto each of the zbrush curves
(®) - select the template stroke, paint effects -> get settings from selected stroke ( you will need to do this each time you make a change to the preset )

• select all the imported curves ( not the grp but individual curves )
• paintfx > curve ultilties > attach brush to curve ( sit back relax, this will take a long time… your PC might crash, if so then you’ll have to use less curves or do it in patches)
• what you should end up with is a ****lioad of PFX strokes where your curves used to be.
• you want to group the strokes so you can hide them in the viewport for faster work.
• test render
• if you want to tweak the look of the hair you will need to delete all the strokes and start again from the above steps (®), unfortunately theres no quick way around this unless you can script.

To finally achieve a good result I used vrayfur plugin instead, which worked like a charm for the rats fur, I wont go into details on how to do that here but if you want to look I will be putting up a demo on the process on my blog http://www.vfxforge.com/blog/workflow-breakdown-for-vrayfur-vrayfurmtl3/

Anyway I hope this helps you on the right track, again I think this would work better for long styled hair rather then fur since you are not dealing with so many curves needed for fur )

Good luck!

( PS: I’ve attached some funny failed attempts and also the vrayfur example and one example with nofur, just basic texturing. )

lolfail

Using vrayfur and custom maps worked!

No fur textured

[johnchen]

Heres my final rat, rigged and fur added using Vrayfur & rendered with Vray for maya.

Video turntable

I wrote a detailed tutorial on my blog on how to do this, hope it helps.

[omarpac]

beautiful work on the fur and thanks for you workflow on your website…very useful

[johnchen]

You’re welcome

[johnchen]

HelSing character in progress.

[johnchen]

Download Link #1 - http://www.sendspace.com/file/ic9e1o
Download Link #2 - https://www.yousendit.com/download/QlVnSU5KYUlUWUNGa2RVag
Zbrushcentral_freebie.zip ( 6.65mb )

Here is a free creature ztool for you to enjoy in your own projects. I was inspired to share this on the spirit of Cesar’s new series of free video tutorials on utube.
The tool contains a muscular structure made from insert mesh spheres and also a zsphere skeleton for you to tweak.

How To Use:
All the muscles are seperated in their own Polygroups, so you can easily mask, tweak, pull as you like, then Dynamesh it for a easy basemesh to work from.

I’ve tried to include all the major muscle groups of a human, but they were adapted to my original creature design, so proportions are not exactly human. In saying that this should give you a good base to work from.

You are free to use this in personal and commercial projects, no strings attached. But if you would like to credit me, please do.

Made with Zbrush 4r2. Have Fun!

Xpose video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WHl8TTiHRY )

Attachments

[johnchen]

This was a nice break from what I’ve been doing the last few weeks and very relaxing to sculpt.

[johnchen]

Chameleon Study - about 4 hours.

[system]

good stuff ! real chamelon hands/fingers are totally diferent yours looks like a frog right now.

[johnchen]

good stuff ! real chamelon hands/fingers are totally diferent yours looks like a frog right now.

Thanks yes, I was referencing a gecko’s hands, they are very frog like but have a claw. Was more of a design thing then anything else.

[johnchen]

a new wip :3

[Silverwind_dragon]

“Good news, everyone! I’ve been sculpted in Zbrush, finally!” )))

[ministerart]

“Good news everyone…Ive invented a machine that makes you read this in my voice while you read it”

[johnchen]

Ghood noose everyone, head retop’d and textured. Hope to make him animatable soon.

[johnchen]

whats up guys, been awhile since I’ve posted. Here are some WIPS from the last month or so.

Portrait of a sad clown ( Emett Kelly ). Inspired by the photographer Vivian Maier. Very early progress, just started this today, needs lots of love and energy still.

Cyber link console, inspired by the comic ‘Old City Blues’ Cyberpunk business.

Started shading and facial rigging for the prof, here are some test expressions. Still need to fix up the skin weights on it.

And last one, Lorenzo Helsing. Character I did for a Vray contest.

Thanks for looking.