Intro to ZBrush Part One (free videos)

[Pavlovich]

Figured some people here might get a kick out of these; I put an Intro to ZBrush Part One course up on my YouTube channel:

Michael Pavlovich

It’s 47 videos, a bit over 6 hours total, and covers everything from opening up ZBrush for the first time, to concepting a 3D bust and render setup in Keyshot.

The reason I’m putting these videos together is so that when I get into more “involved” tutorials soon that encompass a wide range of tools and a variety of techniques (from concepting in 3D to production modeling to texturing to final rigged model for example), I don’t have to pause every minute and explain basic functionality (because that’s not fun to record, and even less fun to watch!)

These also aren’t meant to be a replacement for the awesome pixologic classroom tutorials–these are a supplement to those, and only if you’re so inclined. Really it’s a way for me to keep organized what I’ve gone over and have specific instruction to point back to when questions arise down the line.

Part II of the Intro course will be along shortly, I just have to stitch it all together. Those I will probably post on gumroad / www.lumi3dstudios.com for purchase, so if you enjoyed Part I, consider getting Part II; if you didn’t enjoy it, you’re not out anything! But at the very least it hopefully helped you get up and running in ZBrush and wasn’t too horrible to watch.

There’s a few other “production-y” vids on the channel as well, if you have any questions there just reply back or ask them in the comments.

Thanks guys!

Attachments

[Knacki]

Michael, thank you very much.
It already answered a lot of questions in first minutes of first video I was watching.
EDIT:

I watched all videos about clip, trim and slice and then some more because I couldn’t stop.

These videos are diamond and exactly what I want.

• no endless intro screen but very intelligent integrated title and logo - no endless bla bla bla introduction - short - ultra compact & very informative - spot on -

Best tutorials I have ever seen on net.
I am in love with you

[Daniel_Biggers]

That is very awesome of you. I bought pretty much all of your eat3d zbrush training and you are a very good instructor that is thorough.
I really enjoyed your lessons in the past.

[kryats]

not really a beginner but I too did learn something right away…thanks

[Pavlovich]

Glad to hear they’re useful, thanks everybody! Let me know if anything is unclear and I can address that as well.

[mobiuscog]

These are absolutely fantastic (for an aged beginner like me, anyway).

I really like the pace and the fact that aspects are introduced as necessary.

The length of each is also nice - I only have a couple of hours each night, but got through to 14 last night, and it really gave me a great feel for Dynamesh.

I also liked the fact that you stressed that it could take a while to ‘get’ the navigation (I still struggle with it) and showed how important the different brushes were.

Thanks for doing them, and I’ll certainly be interested in the follow up.

[Takai]

I will have to check these out, its always fun to listen an watch something creative and educational while one sculpts.

Its really funny but its fully working: the relentless old timer in the super suit! Honestly, a full model of that would be great.

[DavidW]

Thanks michael,

You’ve always done so much for the community, I was wondering when you were gonna put up a new batch of videos, since Zbrush 4r7 was out haha. And these are on Youtube, so totally free for everyone. That’s amazing and very generous. Your videos are always of high quality, you’re very patient and have such a great voice too! Thanks for your time and efforts!

[Pavlovich]

Thanks for the kind words guys! Hoping to have some time next week to get the next batch edited, up and running.

the relentless old timer in the super suit! Honestly, a full model of that would be great.

I kind of want to see the trio decked out in mech armor, I think they’d look…interesting! hahaha

[DougE]

Michael,

Your lessons are greatly appreciated.

Your presentations seem to be well scripted and thought out.

I always enjoy when an instructor makes a ‘mistake’ and reveals that they are not invincible. You make some of these ‘mistakes’ on purpose to show the users what might happen, why it happened, and most importantly how to recover from the ‘mistake’. (Like example 028, where your pacman has a difficult orientation, and you show and explain how to ‘fix’ this)

Great little tips given throughout such as ;Mentioning ‘good habits’, like selecting the ‘name’ of a sub-object with a tap rather than broadly clicking to make the selection and inadvertently changing invisibility or other settings.
When you suggest that using the transpose tools is highly recommended and that one won’t learn how to use them by watching a video you are so accurate. Transpose tools took a while for me to get my head around.

Your voice is easy to listen to and steady and clear. Thank you for not mumbling. Thank you for going off on slight tangents to explain something.

It must be difficult to explain the basics and stop yourself from going into freestyle sculpting full steam ahead mode.

(I have to say that the end of video 045 caught me off guard. ** that )

I very much appreciate your time and efforts with all your tutorials and input.

Thank you

[Pavlovich]

Nice!!! Glad the videos are working out and thank you for the kind words!! To speak to some of your points:

–I am anything BUT invincible haha. If I make anything look easy it’s because I’ve spent 10,000 hours behind the scenes looking like an idiot, I promise.

–The more comfortable I am in a program is directly proportional to the number of mistakes I’ve had to learn from while using it, and I’ve made more mistakes in ZBrush than are countable. So I’m pretty comfortable, but not because it’s been a smooth ride the whole time! Just like above, if it looks smooth, it’s because I’ve spend years sanding down the lumps I’ve taken while learning.

–I’m glad you’re able to pick up on the “little” stuff like selecting subtool names; a lot of times that can get lost in the shuffle of learning a new program and cause a lot of confusion down the line. And believe me new people to ZBrush out there, I know this is a lot of information, and there’s a lot more coming. But hang in there, it gets SUPER fun I promise!

–I love teaching, especially ZBrush, but you’re right, I do…internally sigh a little bit every time I can’t go full steam ahead and really dig deep into stuff right away at the beginning, knowing all the cool stuff that’s just over the horizon. That’s why I want to get the beginner stuff out of the way, so we can get to the REALLY fun stuff coming up, where we’re at cruising speed and the sky’s the limit! Soon hopefully!

Thanks again for watching!!

[albertagungag]

I just read from http://pixologic.com/blog/ and see your great works is posted there. I am so excited to see all of your lesson there. I just finished some of the videos, and of course will straight to finish it this week. Thank you very much for your great effort in teaching us, Michael Pavlovich.

[Mytholon]

Thank you very much for the tutorials! This is a very clear and concice introduction.
I really appreciate your ability to explain complicated tools and processes in very simple terms.
I always discover something new when watching your videos.
Looking forwards to part 2

[Erik_Heyninck]

Thanks. I enjoy watching tutorials, mainly to observbe how other people work. But, just as I expected, yours is different and I must add that it is different beyond my expectations. I never came across a course that is as thorough as this one. That is at the same time an eye-opener and a reality-check. Because I did not have the slightest idea how many blank spots there still were/are in my knowledge of ZBrush. This course seems to be the final and ultimate manual for ZBrush.
Thanks for that, and count me in for part two!

[Knacki]

This course seems to be the final and ultimate manual for ZBrush.

That nails it. I am a official video tutorial hater.
Why?
As long, as there is no keyword search for videos, they are waisting my time too often.
Often, you are searching for an answer while you are working.
A quick answer, no movie. I am in a hurry, no popcorn, no lesson book open and mind free for long talk.
That’s why I prefer a manual.
Here, you are searching for exactly the short clip, you wanna have information about.
The information starts immediatly.
I wish most tutorial videos would have been done line that. Splitted into very small sections, spot on!

But I guess I already said that. Anyway would not be surprised if even long term daily users would fine some moments of enlightment.

[Pavlovich]

Thanks guys! Part of my long term plan (hopefully not too long, sometime this month / next month) is to provide kind of a “best of both worlds” approach to tutorials and documentation in the courses section of lumi3dstudios; first, go through each video and tag them appropriately, so that you can sort by, say, all videos that contain information on dynamesh. After that, I want to have a time-stamp breakdown of each video so that you can quickly look at a text list and find what you need.

So say you were trying to remember a weird little menu with the clip brush that had bradius and polygroup associated with it; you’d go and search for “clip brush”, look through the videos tags for “bradius” or “polygroup”, see that on video 19 at 3:35 (or whatever) I talk about the clip brush bradius and polygroup menu, and that to access it is to have the clip brush selected, hold down ctl+shift and then hold down spacebar. If that’s all the information you needed, you don’t need to watch the video, keep working! If you want to see how I used it, hop into the video at 3:35.

That’s the plan at least. Thanks again for watching!

[Pavlovich]

Finally got Part 2 and Part 3 up and running! Part 1 is still free on Youtube, Gumroad, and the Lumi3DStudios website, Part 2 and 3 have a handful of freebies on my Youtube channel:

Michael Pavlovich

The rest are on gumroad (the source files, some brushes, and part 1 can also be found here):

pavlovich

Anyway, here’s some pics and some process, and some…failed exploration :lol:

First, some big marketing renders:

[Pavlovich]

The “naked” reptile was a pretty straight forward render with a little bit of touchup, but the armor image had a little bit more going on:

BLEEAAhhhhhh!

[Pavlovich]

Obligatory clay render because it’s so fun:

Early full body blockout

Alligator back??

Annnnnd experimented with what ended up looking like leather bondage dairy cow, but decided that variant was best left on the cutting room floor

[skinnybonez]

EXCELLENT!!! Thank you Michael!!! I’ve learned a lot from your videos. all of your hard work is really, really appreciated!! i’m looking forward to watching/learning from this one too.