ZBrushCentral

A newcomer to the world of digital sculpting/some possible opportunities

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi everyone!

Digital modeling and animation has always been an interest of mine, but I’m intimidated by the learning curve of the software. My background is in film and video with a heavy emphasis on digital editing, and I would love to add CG compositing to future films. For a couple weeks I have been devouring tutorials for Zbrush, building up my confidence before actually diving into the program. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed and ultimately disheartened like I was with Maya, jumping in without preparing myself. After finally booting up the program and messing around with a few things I can safely say Zbrush has given me a new perspective. I still have a LOOOOONG way to go before I can consider myself proficient, but working with the software has given me a glimpse at the possibilities. Zbrush seems very powerful and more friendly with beginners then Maya or 3ds max- is Zbrush the software of choice now for the modeling steps?

From a producer’s standpoint I have lots of questions - one of the most important is what the development pipeline is for a given project. If my goal is to composite a cgi-troll into a live-action scene, what is the process? Is it: Zbrush to do base model- export to Maya for animation-then After effects for compositing?

And where in this process does skinning, motion capture, coloring, and physics come in? ( I know that much of this can be done on several programs, but what are the popular ones and in what order do the differnt steps occur?)

If anyone can shed light on this process I would be very grateful, I consider myself tech savvy, but as usual these programs can be a bit much to take in all at once. Also- I’ve looked through all the tutorials on the zbrush site, where else is a good place for more video walkthroughs?

Thanks for any info/advice- I’m also very open to talking about film ideas if anyone is interested in that- I wont be able to use my creations in any films yet, but if someone has a project they would like to see composited then they should PM me and we can discuss! There is alot of quality work on this forum, and it would be great to pair some modelers/animators with film makers in the future.

#2

For ZBrush-related answers to your questions the best place to begin is my signature. Start with the tutorial movies, then read the online documentation.

#3

AH forgot to add that I already went through all the Zbrush tutorials on their website- Any other large repositories of zbrush knowledge?

#4

The pipeline can differ greatly depending on the project and the applications being used. So I can’t give you just a one step end all be all for the process. But I can give you mine. Zbrush sketches>art director>refined mesh (in Zbrush). The refined mesh is given to a rigger/skinner. The refined mesh is being rigged at the same time the highpoly is being created. The highpoly is baked back down to unwrapped refined mesh. Color is done in Zbrush/photoshop then baked into the refinded mesh as well. All textures are given to the art director. I bake and unwrap 2 different times. Once is for a 4k image and the unwrap has as little distortion as possible (broken into many small pieces to achieve this). Another is for the more compressed version that will be used in LOD (level of detail) shots. In XSI someone is already animating a very basic mesh and rig. That animation will be transfered onto the refined mesh using Gator inside XSI. The rig and skin that was created earlier is also applied to the refined mesh. The animator will go through and correct any issues that happen between the transfer as well as using the controls that the rigger has established to create more secondary motion and any facial animations that are needed. Rendering is done using Mental Ray and then transfered into the compositing software of your choice. The rotoscope junkies should be done with the roto by this point and the compositor can have a hay day with whatever they need to achieve.

If you’re doing mocap, then that stage can happen somewhere in that stage. Each studio has their own set up for that.

#5

That is a very extensive answer, thank you! It seems that one person would have a hard time of doing this entire process; do most carrier driven animators/modelers specialize in a specific step of the process rather than the whole? It seems that the most important thing right now is seeing what stage of modeling /animation I want to focus on.