A little challenge...

[SNARK]

Jason,

Thank you for the terrific thread and the attention you give to pushing limits. I have a question about the philosophy behind the placement of ZSpheres that are meant to be facial cavities (eyes, ears, mouth). Most times when I begin to build a head and place ZSpheres for sockets, the resulting sockets have knife edges. That is to say, some part of the boundaries of the holes curve inward sharply and close to the surface. Is there an approach to placement that eliminates that?

Also, is there a way to open your zgirl tool (earlier in this thread) in Windows XP without distortion? When I highlight the tool (and before actually selecting it) the thumbnail preview shows no distortion but when I draw the tool on the canvas it has upper body distortions as described in posts earlier in this thread. I like the ZSphere construction and would like to study this more closely.

Also, there is a ZBrush preview movie for Version 2.5 that shows a female ZSphere body being used to create a mesh. Who made that model and is it perchance available for download?

Thanks!

~S.~

[Jason_Belec]

Thank you for the terrific thread and the attention you give to pushing limits. I have a question about the philosophy behind the placement of ZSpheres that are meant to be facial cavities (eyes, ears, mouth). Most times when I begin to build a head and place ZSpheres for sockets, the resulting sockets have knife edges. That is to say, some part of the boundaries of the holes curve inward sharply and close to the surface. Is there an approach to placement that eliminates that?

Sometimes, by pushing the zsphere used for each socket further into the head will make it better. If you grabbed my samples, you should be able to see any smooth settings, group settings, etc. In the Tool menu for how the adaptive meash is applied. Of course the various xyz settings also contribute to this information.

You must keep in mind that this is equivalent to copper wire and very quickly applied clay to elicit a basic shape.

Also, is there a way to open your zgirl tool (earlier in this thread) in Windows XP without distortion?

Sorry, no! Pixologic introduced an error/problem when creating the mac and windows versions. I am working on a script to solve it in spare time. I have been informed that the issue should be resolved in Zbrush 2.5, we will have to wait and see.

When I highlight the tool (and before actually selecting it) the thumbnail preview shows no distortion but when I draw the tool on the canvas it has upper body distortions as described in posts earlier in this thread. I like the ZSphere construction and would like to study this more closely.

Understood, frustrating for me as well when showing people stuff and useing the process in production on different systems I can assure you.

I’m going to try something new soon. Where I will build all from scratch and record the script to see if this will resolve things. This way each armature will be built on the indivduals system. Not the best approach, but we’ll see if it works.

Also, there is a ZBrush preview movie for Version 2.5 that shows a female ZSphere body being used to create a mesh. Who made that model and is it perchance available for download?

Cool isn’t it?! Got me, I don’t work for them, nor do I have access to either Windows beta’s used for development or Mac beta’s that straggle along after. I’m just a simple user like you and everybody else.

Thanks!

~S.~

I wish I could be of more help. However, welcome to the thread and please post any questions and results, positive or negative that you encounter.

[SNARK]

Thanks, Jason!

~S.~

[Jason_Belec]

I guess I have to post something new to keep this thread alive. I’ll try to dig up something else. I really had hoped a few people would post some images and issues. Perhaps everything is working perfectly.

[Jason_Belec]

OK, next level. A working mouth!!! Sometimes the simpler ones are the best. Went back and compared my notes on some successful characters and found that I had pretty much provided the right rig earlier with Nos and a few before him. So here is a head for those of you following along at home…

[system]

Hi Jason,
great thread. The opening and closing of the mouth on the zsphere character works well and is easily replicated in maya.

Zsphere head:

Keep up the great post.

• Fro.

Attachments

[Jason_Belec]

That does look great Fro Lee, glad you took the time to post it. I’m liking those simple setups the best myself. Perhaps it’s a issue with the system (capabilites) but when I try to be clever, things get out of hand quickly, especially at higher resolutions and sub-divisions. I have been lucky on some characters in the past, but while trying to provide others here with a repeatable structure setup that works everytime, various (similar) problems keep resurfacing.

I hope to have some time next week to contribute some more here, seems that many people have disappeared. Hhhmmmmm… The love has left the building.

[system]

Hi everyone,
I was just playing around with zspheres - this model uses an older zsphere setup. Unfortunately, with this setup you lose the ability to open and close the mouth.

• Fro.

[joe_seig]

Nice work Fro Lee!
Jason I’m still following along at home, what’s left of it anyway
Thought to check out your recent post of the Mac superhead_OG.ZTL last night, here’s some tests.
Wasn’t necessary to rebuild for the PC, just rotated your eyeSpheres counterclockwise and it fell into place.

[attach=24706]jasonJaw1.gif[/attach]

First try, the inside of the mouth was moving around way too much, and the lips wouldn’t meet.
Still not bad considering there is no skin weighting involved as in maya.

[attach=24709]jasonJaw6.gif[/attach] [attach=24708]jasonJaw5.gif[/attach]

Lowered the top half of the face so the top lip wasn’t so high.
Therefore the lower jaw didn’t need to travel as far to meet the the upper.
Also by adding the tongue, it seemed to keep the inner mouth in place. (?)
Reshaped the lower lip in the open position, so that when closed it would meet up with the top lip…

This simpler setup does seem more controlable. Nice work Jason!
Okay back to work.

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[Jason_Belec]

Yeah, I noticed the tongue issue as well. If you look back a few posts I added a tongue and in some cases teeth. One of those things I forgot to mention.

I’m about to start a sequence of characters for a project derived off all this. In essence, the master rig will define all the characters. This way they can be rigged easily and using MotionBuilder, animated quickly. It also means that modifications should be very easy to implement.

We shall see…

[Jason_Belec]

So here we have a new character derived from all that works in this post. All the same rules apply that we have been discussing. I’m now bending and tilting all the joints to see where I may have issues over the past as I’ve drastically altered the character mass on the structure. I went back to the simple head and lower jaw. Far less trouble and as joe_seig noticed putting a tongue oe something in the mouth helps a lot, just do a few tests as you go along. Essentially I have used the same zsphere armature as Frankie ‘Big Hands Jr.’ from earlier. I did remove a finger and add a toe, elt that was fair. As soon as I’m sure I got it right, I’ll start detailing the character, to be ready for posing.

Felt something new needed to be posted here, as some of you have again been sucked into an event horizon.

Class was not dismissed.

[Jason_Belec]

Adjusted the character mass on the very base mesh after altering some zspheres to better handle the motions. Again, getting back to simpler is better.

[Jason_Belec]

Well this is turning out to once again being repeatable. I won’t mention how short a time with the Wacom Cinitq 21u, but not much…

[Jason_Belec]

Well with a few changes to the front hands/paws, I was able to easily repose this character with zsphere’s and no mishaps. I even went back and used magnets to get the basic headshape right, that we tossed aside earlier. So this character can now easily function as one with ‘human’ characteristics applied standing upright and ‘animal’ characteristics when down on all 4s.

The great thing is it is all the same geometry and maps, freeing up a lot of tedious work.

The nice thing I found with this one was the east to get it right based upon all the input from everyone and all the stuff I’ve been pulling out of my notes. Especially getting the muscle mass in the right areas for later detail that flows with the joints/bones.

On to the next stage…

[Jason_Belec]

Exploring the use of an old technique that many of my old posts explored with various means of doing hair in Zbrush. This is a suprisingly effective means to be utilized on a character that you aren’t really going for that realistic look. It is nice to see it wiggle and move along with morphs and bones.

Something new, as things have dried up a bit around here.

[Blaine91555]

Hi Jason,

I’m following along. I don’t know what I’m doing yet though, and I recognized right up front that what your trying to do here is very useful. I’ve kind of used this thread as a guide in some ways to figure out what I need to learn to be able to animate. This Mac / PC issue frustrated me though. I’ve got the modeling tools pretty much down and I’ve spent the last week exploring materials and texturing. What is difficult is often finding the right tut’s in this maze. Like just figuring out how to pose in ZBrush. These tut’s are not very Newbee freindly. Often it takes hours of searching due to this darn (not strong enough word) five letter minimum search engine that often fails even with five letters. I lost this thread because when I type in “little” I get no hits?

Please keep going. I know this thread is going to help me a lot in animating figures and your efforts are truly appreciated. I don’t post because I don’t have anything intellegent to add and I don’t know what I’m doing yet.

[Jason_Belec]

Hey blaine91555, boomarks work… sorry, couldn’t refuse! I’ll keep going, as long as boxes of super sugar cereals, and tea so strong the spoon stands up exist I will continue to share. All this stuff here an in other posts are used in production so it should work.

And we all hate this silly issue of the PC vs Mac version messing with Zspheres!!! joe_seig noticed somethin a few posts back, that rotating certain zspheres fixed the issue at least on that model. Let me know if it works for you, he may be onto something that we really can script out…

[Jason_Belec]

This is starting to work well.

[billrobertson42]

He’s cute. Looks like you’re having fun.

[Jason_Belec]

Hello billrobertson42, and thanks for the observation.

However this is neither male or female, but the templant as they say in ‘Blade Runner’. All the other characters and sex will be derived from this, tall, short, fat, whatever. The great part is the ability to pose quickly on a storyboard scene to see if it’s what will be wanted. Then later on the animator knows what is expected with a fairly decent reference.

Found this particularly useful in getting that right expression for a director and scenes where several characters interact at key points.

Zsphere characters are the best.

In case I haven’t explained this earlier, you have the very base zsphere preview, export it and rig. Now model up to the ‘templant’ and export (sometimes cage helps - trial and error). Attach this as a morph to the earlier base. Now you can model each character, pose at will in Zbrush then export as displacement to the ‘templant’ that can be applied at time of render. A normalmap version also helps prior to export and sometimes even then. This is just for those of you who haven’t already done all this a thousand or so times already.