April's (not the month) learning sketchbook

[system]

Hello everyone! As of today I’m opening this thread to show and share my journey through Zbrush.

I have very little to none experience with the software so I’m starting with simple (or so I think) tasks, so I can learn faster.

Here I’m trying to make a tilable stone/brick texture. As of now I just have the rocks sculpted but I’ll updating with the texturing process too.

Any feedback, comment or tip is very appreciated. Also, if anyone has any advise on how to make cracks looks deep as if the rock splitted in two fragmets, I would be very thankful. I tried making that effect with the large rock on the bottom left but I’m not entirely convinced.

Thanks in advance guys, I’m really eager to learn a lot!

Attachments

[system]

So… after doing that sculpt, I baked the tiles and did a little bit of compositing in photoshop and it’s already starting to look a little bit better.

The first one is the basic “tile” and the second is the same tile in a 2x2 grid, so you can see how it works.

I’m already starting to see some details I could have improved in some parts, as you can see the repetition fairly easy in some cases…

[system]

An update here:

Worked directly on photoshop because I wanted to try adding more details and "fixing"some of the things I saw that I didn’t like before.

Added som color variations by putting random blobs of color and then putting the l;ayer in color mode, lowering it’s opacity. Not sure now where to go from here…

Would this count as a hand painted texture? What sort of charactericts do you think hand painted texture have to make them so?

[Cad64]

The main problem I see with your texture is the long straight joint lines between stones. That is a definite no-no in stone work. You don’t want long uninterrupted lines like that because visually, your eye is drawn right to it. Also, in the real world, those long vertical joints will make the wall weak. Stacking the stone in more of a one over two, two over one, pattern will keep the joint lines shorter and will make the wall stronger. You should try to randomize the pattern more and break up some of those long joint lines.

Attachments

[system]

Thanks Cad64, actually I didn’t even notice about the straightness of the stone work. Now that I know about it I cannot unsee it. I’ve been thinking about doing a new tile just to apply everything that I’ve learned so far but at the same time I would like to move to other type of projects.

I’ll keep you updated

[system]

So… I’ve moved from textures to human heads. Texturing was fun but I decided to try something else too. Also, doing this helped me grasp a little more Zbrush’s tools.

This is going to be somewhat of a dump, since I have done quite a few but I haven’t post anything.

In order of creation:

I wanted to first make a skull to have an idea of the underlying shapes of the head. It was somewhat complicated, specially doing the holes of the cheek bone.

The thing I have found the most dificult is the eyes, bot the placing of the eyelids and how this connect with the rest of the head. You can see that in the first tries.

I’ve watched a couple of speed sculpts to give myself and idea of the techniques people use to make the eyes, and the easiest one I’ve found is the one where you take a sphere and split it in half, then modifying the shapes… but then I can never match this lids with the rest of the face… it’s complicated for me.

Please, if you have any advise, critique or anything to share with me, I will apreciate it very much. I’m really eager to learn more about Zbrush and to develop myself further in this software.

Thanks!