ZBrushCentral

Complete Newbie's take on Zbrush and Tutorials

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Howdy folks. Absolutely brand new to Zbrush, as well as 3d sculpting altogether. I dabbled with Blender, Google Sketch up, and then found Sculptris. Sculptris had my attention from the get go, because it was so easy to pick up and use. It was WONDERFUL! I was able to sculpt things like I could with clay, and I was absolutely blown away. Enough to shell out $700 for the parent program! I’m a college student, a husband, and a father-to-be, so we don’t have a lot of cash to throw around, so you can imagine how impressed I was with Sculptris in order to make this kind of a purchase! I saw the tutorials for Zbrush, and figured that since God blessed me with at least some relatively decent brain activity, I could slowly learn what I needed from the tutorials all over the internet. Well, I’ve run into a few things while on my way through learning.

  1. Cannedmushroom’s channel on YouTube requires the making of a “modeling sphere.” This starts with a 3d cube > edit > unified skin > resolution down to 8. Except mine only goes down to 16, so everything past that doesn’t work, and the modeling sphere doesn’t come out right. doh! So I quit the tutorial, since he said that he’ll be using this modeling sphere a lot.

  2. Found a link to another 3rd party tutorial in these forums: http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/zbrush_training/lesson_01/zbrush_lesson_01_e.asp It was going well, but then he also made a modeling sphere, which he called a squirkle (square/circle, get it?). Ran into the same problem, can’t put my resolution down to 8, only 16. sigh He says, “Use this tool every day.” Well… too bad I can’t make the tool! Another tutorial down the drain.

  3. But there is the PDF file about how to get started with Zbrush, right? Right. So let’s go to the PDF. This links us back to the video tutorials here at pixologic.com. Except… these tutorials are out of date as well. The intro videos has the gentleman saying (paraphrase), “By default you’ll have this sphere on the screen at start up.” And here I was, staring at a blank screen… Well, I figured out how to make a sphere, and moved on. But now I get to “Masking” in the intro movies, and it’s not working like how he says it is supposed to. As I apply a mask, it’s not applying as it is for him. Mine is lighter, and much larger, and my brush, stroke, and alpha are acting different than his. …

So… I’m having a little bit of trouble finding up to date tutorials for me to learn from. =\

I found some at lynda.com but they want subscription fees.

#2

The sphere that you were trying to create is now included with ZBrush. It’s called the PolySphere and it’s in the Tool category within LightBox.

Regarding the startup screen, a lot of users didn’t like having a model already loaded and in edit mode when they launched the program. So we changed back to the blank canvas. All you need to do, though, is launch ZBrush, select the Tool section of LightBox and double-click the PolySphere to be right at that same point. Or you can load any of the other included tools or projects.

Hope that helps!

#3

Ah, the polysphere will help! I did figure out how to get the previously default sphere on the canvas. Might want to update the tutorial video here on Pixologic to reflect the changes to the program though. The guy is already running through it fast enough that I find myself pausing it, or saying “whoa! whoa! What did he just do?” and I’m rewinding a lot and going through it again and again (I know, that’s what you do with a tutorial). But when I run into something that isn’t working at all like it is intended (like the “masking” video) it makes me think that I’ve done something wrong, and I try initializing Zbrush a handful of times, but the masking isn’t working the same. I’m guessing that this is another change to the program, but now I’m trying to figure out how to get the masking to work as nicely as his is. And I don’t have a frog model that I can see…

So far though, I’m enjoying the program, if not the tutorials. I do think that this is something Pixologic needs to take seriously though, because the fact that there are video tutorials is the only reason I was willing to shell out $700 for the program in the first place.

So for all us Zbrush newbies, let me entreat you our request: “Please sir… may we have an update?” =)