ZBrushCentral

GroBoto Lab Work

Community
#1

Here’s a new GroBoto Unified Mesh brought into ZBrush with a bit of (very) rudimentary sculpting. Original model built with our new boolean modeling stuff.

GroBoto’s new mesh generator creates a single unified ‘Shell’ with all interior geometry removed. These meshes are more compatible with ZBrush sculpting & distortion tools… rolling this feature out in GroBoto 3.0 (later this year).

If anyone here would like to try playing with these new meshes (I’m creating new ones every day), please contact me (I’d love to see what can be had in ZBrush by someone who knows what they’re doing). Beta versions of GroBoto 3 (with these new features) will be available soon.

More info here:
GroBoto Mesh Info

Best,
Darrel

#2

Cool feature!

I’ve been a fan of you and Rick at Braid.com for a long time so it’s cool to see you here. :slight_smile:

I played around with one of the regular Groboto meshes I downloaded from your site. I tried to auto-group the polys in ZBrush just for the heck of it–ended up taking forever and I thought ZBrush was gonna choke! So a unified mesh would definitely help in that area too.

Had a strange problem where ZBrush would mask a lot of verts after I hid/unhid polygons–not sure what was causing it but others might want to watch for that when trying these.

groboto_zbrush1.jpg

#3

this looks really interesting… can’t wait to try it when I get home from work

#4

Hey Marsyas,

Thanks… yep, Rick and I have been at this since the days of steam-powered vacuum-tube computers.

The current GroBoto meshes are composed of individual meshes for each ‘primitive’. That approach will always have its uses, but gets inefficient when there are a lot of overlapping intersections. They can be exported with a variety of grouping options – which may be useful when importing into ZBrush.

Don’t know about those masked verts… I’ll see if I can learn anything.

I like what you did with the sample – just simple stuff, I know – but that’s part of the point… these GroBoto forms take on a whole new character when warped, torqued, disturbed & ‘organified’ in ZBrush. These new unified meshes really expand the possibilities.

I’ll contact you off-forum with details on the unified mesh samples available for download – just in case you want to play. I won’t be posting any of those on the GroBoto site or elsewhere for awhile – not until we are a bit closer to release. Happy to make them available to anyone here who’s interested… just let me know.

Here’s another…

#5

Here’s another avenue we are pursuing…
Converting GroBoto Models into ZSpheres via ZScript.

This will likely be included in GroBoto 3. It’s a completely different approach from our Unified Meshes (earlier in this thread). While it doesn’t offer the detail and fidelity of those Unified Meshes, it’s well suited for getting certain flavors of GroBoto topology into a very Z-Compatible/Editable form.

…works fine if you just run the script and immediately generate an adaptive mesh, but I also sense there are some nice opportunities for ZSphere editing.

I’ll post some more images, and making some of these scripts available – to anyone who is curious – soon.

#6

That’s interesting.

I like to have another tool to affect them Zballs automatically.

Thanks for the desire. Looking forward to see the new interacting plugins:p

Anatom

#7

Thanks Anatom,

Here is another experiment… based on a slightly more complex GroBoto Model with more variation in radius and spacing of elements. Of course, only the radius and centers of the cylinders are used when generating ZSpheres.

-Darrel

#8

So the idea is you work in groboto, and then export a zscript, which is then played in zbrush to form an analogous z-sphere structure?

#9

That’s exactly right Bill.
Lemo

#10

Hey Bill,

Exactly… wanted to pursue it for quite some time. This is all just a few days old… experimenting to see which GroBoto topologies produce the most interesting effects.

I think some wild stuff will come from tapping into the complexity & mutability of GroBoto’s bots. This method offers ZBrush editing options and flexibility you can’t get from any sort of exported/imported mesh.

-Darrel

#11

OMFG! i can’t even begin to imagine how you’re converting that into zspheres, care to share the idea? also this looks like it can truely be an awesome feature. thanks-a

#12

Hey SpaceBoy,

Thanks.
In the hands of skilled ZBrush artists, it should be fun.

It’s all part of our little 3D app GroBoto.
GroBoto Site

The good news – it’s a simple as playing around with our ‘Bots’ (algorithmic modeling tools), and then pressing a button to create the ZScript.

The bad news --it’s part of our GroBoto v3 development – not even available as beta yet.

…and finally the hopeful news
I’ll be able to share this with everyone as soon as we get the beta ready. Maybe a month or two.

-Darrel

#13

Very cool!

I hope you don’t run into problems with ZBrush 3’s zspheres–they act a bit less reliably than they did in ZBrush 2.

They run into trouble when more than one axis of symmetry is enabled, for example.

#14

What Darrel neglects to mention is that GROBOTO already play’s VERY VERY well with Zbrush. The current Groboto meshes can be exported and read as .obj into Zbrush. Once imported, all is possible. Just no generated scripts yet.
It’s really nice! There are a LOT of geometric patterns which can be a great source of new and unique material for any background or motion graphics artist.
Lemo

#15

Ahh Lemo,

You are a gentleman and a great supporter of our work, thanks.

Yes, anyone who finds the stuff on this thread interesting should check out
GroBoto

There are a couple of samples of our current OBJ exports in the resources section.

Darrel

#16

Still playing with GroBoto generated ZSphere Scripts,

… may actually try to take this one somewhere in ZBrush – think it has some potential. I especially like the Tulip & Bulb shapes that occur when enlarged ZSpheres are pushed back towards their parents… also like the warped effect when pulling ZSpheres off of their natural path ('tho that could just as easily be had in the mesh phase). Some minimally fractal-like stuff near the center – could go much farther in that direction with GroBoto… Z seems to have no problem with hundreds (thousands?) of ZSpheres.

-Darrel

#17

…with this incredible prog! :+1:

#18

Hello Pilou,

Thanks. Yes, I love exploring abstraction (as I know you do) – I especially enjoy being surprised by it… have a strong desire to see things I haven’t seen before.

I’m working back-and-forth now, looking for ZSphere arrangements produce interesting mesh interpretations in Z – then generating those arrangements with GroBoto bots.

This one packs groups of 2 or 3 large spheres close together (represented by the big discs in the GroBoto model)… combined with very small spheres, yielding some curious forms.

Darrel

#19

I’ve been focusing on our new features & export options in this thread… thought I might show a bit of what I’ve learned about working with our current export options.

Our current meshes are quite well suited for creating base meshes ZBrush.
Groboto’s meshes are all triangles, but they are ideally structured for conversion to quads. When importing GroBoto OBJ, I set the Tri2Quad setting to max.

This example uses one of GroBoto’s built in AutoBots (‘Lattice Node’).
The left side of the first image shows the OBJ imported into ZBrush. You can see that GroBoto has placed each ‘branch’ produced by the AutoBot into it’s own group. There are several export grouping options that can be vital to managing these complex meshes in Z.

I exported everything with low poly counts (basically 8 sided for all radial objects)… wanted to start with something that would allow good subdivision options in ZBrush. The long narrow cylinders in the GroBoto model are beveled, the short, flat ones are not. This makes a difference when later subdividing in ZBrush. If smooth-subdivision is on, un-beveled cylinders become rounded (sausage or lozenge-like), whereas beveled cylinders maintain a sharper shape.

The right half of the first image shows the model after a bit of editing, and with subdivisions cranked up to 3.

The second image is just a couple of in-progress close-ups (subDiv 2). I like using inflate & scale with small brushes (not much larger than the individual GroBoto primitives). The off-center distortions that result ad a lot of character & variety to the forms. Using the same tools with somewhat larger brushes works well for varying what I like to think of as the ‘line weight’ of these branchy forms.

I’ll probably jump back in and see what I can make of this simple test model. I’m also using this same approach on my first real attempt at a ZBrush model:
UHF-Head WIP

-Darrel

#20

This is very interesting work. You’re working with ZBrush 2 though aren’t you? As mentioned earlier, zsphere - zscripting is not currently working properly in ZBrush 3. :cry: