Really nice renders! Zbrush has come a long ways. After viewing your thread I had to try some settings out. 
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~t
Thanks lildragon
I just printed some hi dense renderings, an A2 paper. Its impressive. ZB renderer is fine for the job. Especially when using multi passes. And fast enough. A hair - particles modeler and weâll be in heaven.
cio michalis,
I donât know how to express my feelings after viewing your work from Page-1 to page-10⊠You are a great artist and i must admire your work by saying YOU ARE THE âMichelangelo of the centuryâ âŠ
Your technique, aesthetic sense and work is awesome, fantastic, fabulous, beautiful and greatâŠ
Last year I have visited the Italy and France and i saw many sculptures at Rome⊠I really love Rome because of its history and preservation of Art and sculpturesâŠ
If you start making statue i really confess that your artwork will be kept in museum tooâŠ
My salute to YouâŠMy salute to YouâŠMy salute to youâŠ
I wish i could meet with you⊠I really want to kiss your hands and i am a big fan of youâŠ
My highly regards and salute to you
Thank you Khattak,
But lets keep the scale to a minimum. 
Ready for the belly flop. :lol:
A WIP, used 3dc and zbrush, BPR and some sss for old painting feel.
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hi
Superb this last work, bravo!
Nice! what is he looking at?
Very nicely done⊠well done Michali!
Thanks kargall, nasossa
Well, this BPR isnât what I like, definitely. See how wrong these shadows look. Its a one piece mesh, why these hair like forms are so brighter than the face? Why face and legs are so dark, where did this came from? I didnât use AO BTW. This is a basic material and an one tone texture. Havenât painted yet. How can I paint having the face so dark all the time? Proportions donât look right either. This happened when I used a face for the floor. But I really need to have a floor when sculpting. Why not?
michalis, try adjusting the shadow settings with Flat Color selected in the Material palette. This will show you when the shadows are overpowering the form.
One tip is to set VDepth, in the BPR Shadows sub-palette, to -6. That will push the shadows away from the light. I posted a pic of this here: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=097694. Its mid way down the page.
Also, make sure to set the shadows resolution to be at least the same as the document size for the best resolution. As Julian_K points out higher values give better results.
Hope that helps. Very cool sculpt.
Best,
Ryan
thanks ryankingslien,
Your thread is excellent of course, and youâre right about vdepth, though it doesnât work with some light angles well.
But what if we use vdepth +20 ? And two rim lights? And soft shadow rays (res~ 400, blur 8)? Combined as screen layer in ps. SSS without sss material? Why not? sss in zbrush is a fresnel trick IMO. 
A fast 5 min painting
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Michalis, regarding the shadow settings, I just posted a test I made in my thread. have a look.
great work on that boy.
what where your sss settings in the last render?
Hey , thanks julian.
A lack of sleep is common to us these days. :lol:
I didnât use sss, just playing with resolution of BPR shadows and vdepth (see picture). Its a second pass render using back rims only. I also tested it in combination with sss passes, you may find it interesting.
thatâs funny - it really looks a lot like sss
I have the idea that zbrush sss is just a fresnel trick. Why not?
Michalis, yeah, like most ZBrush features there is a lot of interconnetivity with the new rendering tools.
Another test you can do to see the connections between them is to set shadows and ambient occlusion to the same settings. Plus, set Bpr AO: gamma to 2. The results are the same. This means you can use one for hard shadows and one for soft gradual shadows too.
Also, have you played with multiple shader channels and their blending modes? There is a lot of power there, as well.
[attach=227332]explainer_AO-Shadow.jpg[/attach]
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Thanks ryankingslien, its interesting as it seems that AO is depended on the angle of lighting as well. Now mask AO and export a baked shadows map. A kind of. lol
Shaders are the method to tell zb how to react with separated materials. If a single material is in use (a portrait) then we probably donât need sss shader at all. Just two or three passes with different lighting and BPR shadows parameters.
Michalis, yeah, do you remember the skin shader from Rimasson years back? If I remember correctly that used a separate shader channel for its SSS effect. Youâre also right to say that SSS is not physically accurate and more of a fresnel effect. Thank god for that, btw. Iâm fairly decent with Maya but some of those shaders get complex! ZBrushâs SSS is more about finding another route for artists to create realistic or illustrative renders.
I do think, though, that SSS has alot of value for any render. The problem I have experienced using it is having a simple workflow for developing its look. I had a pretty awesome demonstration of that a while back from the Pixologic team and I hope to be able to show it soon.
Ryan
I second that. I keep âpreachingâ that Zbrush rendering in general has its very own merits. yes, it canât do certain things that the big popular renders like Vray or Mental Ray do, but that goes vice versa. I recently actually tried to achieve a âZbrushâ look in 3ds Max with Mental Ray and just couldnât get it there, at least not before I decided that I canât spend more countless hours on fiddling with it.
Bottom line, I wouldnât compare Zbrush rendering to others, because thatâs a bit comparing apples and oranges. The Zbrush Render is a unique tool on its own, with its own advantages and drawbacks.
Youâre also right to say that SSS is not physically accurate and more of a fresnel effect.
As most SSS methods are. Its easy to have sss with back lighting. But I like this red effect between light and shadow, this red passage. Its obvious that I need a different lighting angle to achieve this. Cheating, âThank god for that, btw.â Agreed.
Julian, youâre a master of BPR. You could achieve great renders using mentalray-vray. These are superior engines. But we like rock&roll here. :lol:
You donât like to wait for a rendering. I donât like to spend more than some hours for the whole project.
For christmas and the new year, best wishes to all of you.
here some improvement and a BPR with two sss passes (front and back). PP for background, vignette and DOF.
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