ZBrushCentral

An Old Withering Tree

really nice tree there…
and i dont even want to think about the time spent pulling out all those tiny zspheres…
but one litlle critique: i liked it better when it didnt stand on something. without the plate or the little hill it has a more symbolic quality. and i like that more then the graveyard-scene.

i could even imagine the tree on an amulet or belt-buckle.

keep it up, good work!

edit/afterthought: you only show one perspective of it. it is hard to tell how deep it is - maybe thats why i perceive it as being “flat”?

Hey guys, big-ish update from me here. I decided to take the scene in a little bit of a different direction. I agree that the tree was a little out of place with a more simple scene like that, so I decided to revamp it and start on a new less complex but just as spooky tree. I’d like to eventually print this scene and hand paint it once the tree is worked on and the rest is done. C&C would be much appreciated :slight_smile:

Closeup of the start of the fence statues. The bricks took awhile but were really fun to paint and sculpt!

StatueRender1.jpg

I think I’m finally making some progress :slight_smile: not sure where to go from here on the tree though as far as detailing the upper half. Hope you guys like it so far

Very nice tree and so much to learn from this thread. I’ll tray today @remcv8 wrinkles tips on my tree that I started doing yesterday.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25774322/3h.jpg
Can’t wait to see the final scene.

@slowiak thank you :slight_smile: let me know if you have any questions. It’s been a really long process so far but I’m learning a lot from it. Yours is looking good so far

Update from me, not sure where to go with the upper half now:

Finishing up some of the environmental stuff that’s going to be in the scene, and a small update of the tree also. Hopefully somebody can offer some comments or criticisms as I feel like I’m not really sure where to go next.

graveyard_Render.jpg

Attachments

newbranch_Render.jpg

I would love to see a face on this tree, eyes,nose, mouth. I’m not sure what’s your plans tho.

thats really cool bro! my question for you looking at your progress is I how did you give the whole tree that initial gentle twist in one of the first shots? :+1:

@idlemind thanks man! :slight_smile:

how I got the twisting was actually quite a long manual process, though I’m sure there are more simple ways in other packages. What I did was take the Clay Tubes brush to create a rough pathway for all of the twisting, then I took the Dam Standard brush with a slightly lowered intensity and traced the outsides of that pathway to create grooves. After that I smoothed inbetween the Dam Standard strokes to make it much cleaner and more subtle, and then used the Inflate brush with a very low intensity, around maybe 6 or so to puff up between the grooves. Hope that was clear enough, I’ll add some pictures a little later explaining the process better if necessary :+1:

Sorry it’s so quick and dirty, I only have an old file of this version of the tree so the topology is terrible :o

Hope it helps!

TwistingTut.jpg

Attachments

newbranch_Render.jpg

Alright, I see thanks alot. I was just thinking if there was a way to do that with sliders and buttons I needed to know that! Your short tutorial there still taught me something. that was much appreciated. adding that little twist to the mesh at exactly that point in your process was a very cool move.

This is some really great tree work. creepy but approachable

I modeled a tree not long ago and I had the same problem as you do.

This is caused because ZSpheres have 8 divisions along their diameter no matter how big or small they are - so basically your stump has as many divisions along it’s diameter as the tiny branches do.

One thing you could do is go out of ZBrush to a polygonal modeling kit like Maya or Max or XSI, and maybe build the base mesh there. You could also import a ZSphere base mesh with only the larger parts (stump, main branches), and use extruding in maya/max/xsi to make the smaller ones. This should work, but it requires more software.

If you want to resolve this in ZBrush, what I recommend is using Remesh.
You can use Remesh on your existing tree, with all the details, and then project the details on the resulting mesh. You can also use unified skin instead of adaptive skin on your ZSphere model, which is what I would do, since projecting so much detail will probably just explode your mesh.

This is how I resolved the issue with my tree (unified skin, and then add detail). But keep in mind that in case you ever want to animate it, it won’t work. For that you’ll have to make a proper basemesh. A unified skin is a great mesh to sculpt on, but nothing else.

Hope this helps you in any way. Good luck!

Ive learned some stuff here in this thread thanks people. How come you cant animate unified skin I have not gone from zspheres to that yet only adaptive skin. maybe I should just give it a whirl and see on my own lol :lol:
side note: that tree reminds me of boogie woogie the villian from the nightmare before christmas for some reason. looks good but I liked the first version of the tree better.

Well it’s not that you CAN’T animate a unified skin, it’s just that it’ll look terrible where it moves.

@idlemind and jack999 thank you guys :slight_smile: I’m glad I can help a little bit, and I’m glad you guys like it so far.

@Alon.Tako thanks kindly for your explanation! Remesh is a good idea that I didn’t consider. My problem with that initial tree was that the very first adaptive skin came out to nearly 1million poly’s, so I’d never be able to take it into anywhere to remove edge loops or extrude all those tiny branches again.

I’ve given up on that first version of the tree as for now, the technical difficulties have gotten the best of me and I just get frustrated trying to figure it all out. I just want to sculpt and make fun stuff :o let’s see how this second version ends up.

Finished all of the modeling for now (I think!). Any comments or crits so far guys? I’m hoping to actually put this one in my portfolio and get it printed after I paint everything, so the help would appreciated :slight_smile:

Thanks everybody for looking so far.