I’m a game design student who’s more interested in the technical stuff instead of the artistic stuff. Until I got introduced to Zbrush, I really didn’t attempt anything creative. But I freaking love this program! Here’s some things I’ve made. Comments and critiques welcome.
Did a hydrant today. The though part was trying to make the main part of the hydrant one mesh without any tris or noticeable pinching. Once I got all the pieces into ZBrush, it was a bunch of experimenting with the noise features, trim, hPolish, FastMallet, and Clay brush (with custom alphas.)
I’m making a low poly game version of this, so I’ll be adding chains later on. Render passes in Zbrush and composite in Photoshop.
chases away crickets
Here’s some more stuff I’ve been working on.
A model that I speed sculpted from a vary simple mesh then retopoed in max. The body followed pretty much the same process.
Been working on a project for class. Thanx to a friend of mine, I hate the female head I did earlier. Still a work in progress, but thought I’d share some rendering fun.
Played around with the Move Elastic and Clay Buildup brushes today. Love them. This took me about 45 minutes.
Here’s something I made the other day. It was practice using ZSpheres and BPR. Everything except the head phones and the music notes were made in ZBrush. One problem I’m having though is when I make object in ZBrush and then send them to Max, they come out really tiny. I make them bigger in Zbrush, but things like Surface Noise end up looking stretched. Anyone know a way around this?
[youtubehd]PqQV1Gz9nDU&hd=1[/youtubehd]
Really fun to watch you sculpt, thanks for sharing!
Thanx. Not entirely sure what you mean by that, but it feels nice to get a reply. Nice portfolio btw. You have a very wide array of interesting characters.
Here’s some more ZSphere practice. C & C very welcome, because I know it’s far from perfect.
edit to add: here’s the video showing how I made this one. I’m not done with it yet, but I’m kind of confused on the anatomy around the wrist area. I tried using Lightbox to find some muscles pics, but I don’t think I translated it well. But here’s what I have so far.
[youtubehd]dH9NkRJDJVc&hd=1[/youtubehd]
watching your video, i can see you need to take a different approach. first thing is first, get yourself some thorough reference. it definately seems you were starting and restarting, and errasing and restarting again, when in the end you still werent quite sure what the ear or nose or eyes should look like. reference, clear reference is the trick of the trade. all great artists, and even just mediocre artists use solid picture reference. another thing, you were using the clay brush for everything. thats why your build-up wasnt giving you bold changes. the clay brush is flat by nature. the standard brush will give you the rounded effect your process needs. because organic shapes are, more often than not, rounded. clay brush is ussually used for slight changes. at least the way i use it. if you want to really flesh out the shape and cut deep and pull deep you use the standard. clay brush is great for building up flesh between wrinkles or slowly adding layers to a form. not great for fleshing out the form itself. im still not sure why you were using the rake… just to errase the whole thing. it felt to me that you were making a tutorial while you were learning the brushes.
Thanks for those tips. The reference I had was a really small, one angle sketch a friend of mine drew. As for the clay and standard, I usually try to use the standard, but for some really weird reason, the alphas weren’t working (which added to my frustration)
As for the rake Brush, that was a last ditch effort to learn something new. Epic fail. But yeah, I really need to work on translating stuff I see in my head onto a canvas. This is why I gave up drawing 
dont give up on drawing. just get solid reference. train your eyes. it comes in through the eyes and out the fingers. so, make sure your eyes know what they are looking at and why. and start from the largest forms, perfect them, then move to the smaller ones and so on down the line.
Hello
This is good… best of luck buddy.
Regards,
Pankaj Malik
Business Development | CG Innovation
http://www.cginnovation.com
Thanx for the advice. I should start carrying a sketchbook with me when I go out.
Here’s something I’ve been working on. I started with a Zsphere base and was trying to make an entire body from it, but ended up cutting out the head and lower half. Any advice on how to make what I have better? I know there’s something wrong with the rib cage, but I’m not sure if it’s too low or the breasts are too high.
Looks good. The sturnum should only come down an inch or two below the breast. For the back you’re missing the scapula and the rear delt shouldn’t extend that far towards the middle of her back.
Keep it up. 
The elbow shouldn’t get skinnier before it gets thicker. The bicep runs straight into the elbow.
Thanks for the tips. I tried my best to apply them to the model. I also tried adding some evidence of a hip bone, but I’m not sure if it came through. I’m going to have to concentrate on the hands soon, but I’m dreading it. That, and the breast shape. sigh Update time.
SN: my main references are the works of other artists here. I have a huge folder dedicated to awesome Zbrush artists. I’m not sure if using other people’s work as reference is a bad thing, but it’s definitely more enjoyable 
this may sound wierd… but it works… go find a good porn sight, not one of those ones you have to pay for or the kind that drop a virus into your computer, but something reliable like, redtube. i know it may sound tacky, but you will get the male and female form completely nude in about every position you can think of, and there is just alot of opportunity to learn and study the body and what its doing. you can screen grab whatever you need as reference. just ctrl “print screen” at the top right on your keyboard.
or, i also really like to have netflix for the same exact reason. if i need muscles, i play rocky or conan… if i need a pretty face, sky’s the limit. costumes monsters gore fantasy… its all on netflix.
and or a really nice photo book. i use mens health and national geographic… that kind of thing. but it helps to have many different angles of view of a subject. so, thats why i prefer video reference.
if you ever have an idea to do a giant frog as a project. i would say, if you really want to turn out an amazing model, go buy a few books on frogs. same goes for anything. if your going to be spending that much time on a model, and we all know it takes forever, then its worth the price of solid reference. for your female. its comming along nicely… may i suggest you pic a specific person to model the face off of. it will give you a much better result than if your winging it. find a girl that you think is really pretty and get her to let you take tons of pictures of her. then, use a super model to reference the body off of.
hope this helps.
Ha! This is the second time someone has suggested I use porn for reference. It doesn’t sound weird at all and I applaud you for publicly saying that. I’ve been meaning to subscribe to men’s health, but I do have a few references saved up from my short subscription to 3d.sk
I gave her legs today. I literally chopped the lower half off of another model, used GoZ to fuse them together, then did a bunch of shaping in Zbrush. I’ll definitely get a good face reference soon. I know a few good looking people, so hopefully one of them won’t mind if I used their head 
your proportions are pretty on the money. thats not an easy thing to see. your definately going in the right direction. grats, mate.
and remember this, if throughout you get bored or discouraged… all the life of the model comes out in the pose. once you pose your model, it becomes alive. thats the best part. and you can really understand the difference between the t-posed and the posed once shes no longer semetrical. its huge. infact, a-semetry is the other trick of the trade. its such a subtle thing that brings out soooo much realism. its really surprising when you realise how a-semetrical peoples faces actually are. its natural… and your brain knows it. even if you dont realize it.
