ZBrushCentral

What does the Adaptive skin do in fact?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I know it’s for making a mesh from ZSpheres and getting an overall geography from it, but most of the time it’s nothing like the original shape I created.
It gets really thin at some points, sometimes it doesn’t even follow the ZSpheres themselves, not to mention the interconnecting parts (how do you call those, anyway?). Most of the time any variation between the Minimal skin to Child / Parent only makes it even worse.

A classic example: creating a human arm. the elbow becomes curved, the hand gets some edges around the knuckles (on both sides) that seem to be very hard to smooth out.

On the other hand the Unified Skin replicates the exact shape with the exact spheres.

I thought the Adaptive Skin is meant to be like a real skin on a ZSphere structure, and I still believe this, but how do I use it right? The truth is I still think it’s more proffetional for this use than Unified Skin. It just won’t work like I want it to.

#2

you just need more practice with zspheres. watch some tutorials around ZBCentral.

if a joint, such as the elbow, is curved all you need to do is add an additional zsphere on either side of the joint to make it more angular. a user named cannedmushrooms and several other users have made tutorials on getting started with zspheres.

adaptive skin is just a way to preview and/or create a mesh from your zphere model, the settings for the adaptive skin are really what work best for you, but of course there are some pointers for getting good results. just look around here for the tutorials.

cheers

#3

For instance what do I have to do in this case?

zsphere.jpg

I am too watching tutorials, but I just don’t get the hang of it.

#4

mouserider

Welcome to the ZbrushCentral forums.

In the Tool panel there is the Adaptive Skin subsection.
Expand the Adaptive Skin subsection and adjust the Density settings when your Zsphere model is in preview mod.
You can observe the resolution of your Zsphere model as by pressing the hotkey " a " for preview.
For more information visit the http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/ and observe the video tutorials.

#5

Thanks but I’m well aware of these things. In fact these are the only things I’m really aware of. What I could really use is some insight of the adaptive skin. How does it work? Because it’s clearly not following only the shape created from ZSpheres. It goes deeper than that. I learn better in a logical way. And with lots of practice, of course. But I see that step by step tutorials on how to do it exactly helps me very little.

And when adjusting the density the mesh will only have less polys, but its shape still remaines. I’m talking about those two distinctive spheres. In higher density it doesn’t even look like a whole sphere (does it matter which side of the ZSphere is showing?), but in lower density levels it starts looking extremele like a cube.

Thanks again, and thanks in advance.

#6

Each z-sphere is an object that generates topology. Its a machine with specific rules that are not necessarily obvious to the beginner. Once you learn them though, they begin to make some amount of sense.

I have not played with them in a long time, but as I recall, you need to start out with the thought in mind that each sphere is sort of like a cube, and if you put more than one child sphere on the side of the cube, then interesting things begin to happen, and at that point you either need to begin moving the child spheres (or adding new ones) or begin adjusting the parameters of the z-spheres to accommodate your layout.

Another common mistake is to have too many zspheres (I know because I did it all the time! :wink: ). Take a look at this thread, http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=68636 notice how few zspheres he starts with, but still ends up with a very detailed model.