This is my second Zbrush model and first post to this forum. I’m a fan of the old Swamp Thing comics and thought it would make a good challenge (and learning experience) to try modeling his head in Zbrush. My poor computer only has 1.5 gb of ram and this model started to bring it to it’s knees. I think my biggest mistake that caused trouble was painting too much detail into the displacement instead of switching to bump mapping for all the fine detail. I wanted to render in Lightwave, but since ram was an issue I rendered out some different passes in Zbrush and then comped it all together in Photoshop and painted on details like the moss and eyes. Also wanted to try out the fiber brush to get the moss effects but just ran out of time. Hopefully I can re-visit this guy later when I get more familar with Zbrush and have some free time (and more ram!). I’ll post a couple of shots of the base mesh and rendered displacements here shortly in case anyone is interested in checking them out.
This is really nice Is there anyway we can see the 3d model with out the detailing from photoshop. 
Cool Stuff.
Really nice rendering
Evan Gaugh - Thanks!
Here’s a Zbrush view of the displacement
Forgot to mention, I used Jantim’s excellent plasterstone material on some of my render passes. Here’s one of the passes with his shader on it.
And, here’s a view of the base mesh. I modeled this in Lightwave and used Zbrush’s automated UV’s instead of doing them myself. I did have to add some additional geo in Zbrush, via edgeloops, to get some of the deeper pockets in his face (you can see the added polys in green)
Top row material
hey i really like your concept couldyou please post the light and material that you used for that one picture that is all blue and looks like plaster please post it thank you plus if you dont mind could you show us the different passes you did that you compiled it from!!
Wonderful detailing work.
Would love to see this project expanded to a full body.
you are extremely talented. hope u make a tutorial on ur texturing techniques, heheh. and you put ur zbrush passess together really well. Mind sharing how ur passess look like?
Extraordinary image.
Geat textures and a terrific painterly effect.
Well done indeed.
Paul
Thanks! Glad you guys like the image.
Troy 1617 - Here’s the thread with Jantim’s plasterstone material.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=21487&highlight=plasterstone
I’ll see about saving out the lights and posting them, but it’s really nothing special. I barely know how to use Zbrush enough to use it for lighting and rendering.
Here’s the different passes I rendered out of Zbrush for compositing together in Photoshop
And, because some asked for it, here’s the mess of layers that make up the Photoshop file. These layers are arranged in order from left to right by rows. I also included the type of layer and the opacity settings. I left out some of the detail layers, like the eyes and stringy moss, to cut down on the number in the image. Could this have been done with fewer layers? Probably, sometimes I just start stacking these suckers on without really paying attention and before you know it I have a document with 20+ layers. Whatever gets you there.
Attachments
Layers in folly 
Wonderful work. You got my vote for top row!!
wonderful !
top row work, 5* from me
very nice
5 stars
wow … i bow to you
man… i give you more ramm next christmas
Outstanding
Top row
…on the top row?
Wow!! Thanks again for all the kind words.
mikala - Yes, I would like to tackle a full body model someday when I have some more Zbrush experience and ram (I’m gonna fix this ram problem shortly). I attatched one of the images I used for reference that show’s some of the great potential for a full body model.
Even though I like how this image turned out, it doesn’t have the complexity I was hoping to accomplish. There’s so much detail and layering of different types of vegetation in some of Stephen Bissette and John Totleben’s Swamp Thing drawings. I really wanted to try and get that going in my 3D version but wasn’t able to. In fact, if anyone has any tips, techniques, or thoughts on how they would have approached a character like this I would love to hear them. I went with a one piece mesh but ultimately feel like it gave the result of a guy in a rubber suit.
Great work !!! I love it
I submitted my Swamp Thing image to D’artiste and had to create a much larger version (3500 pixel height). My original was only 765 x 947 pixels. Here’s the new one (scaled down of course).
