ZBrushCentral

Learning the tool.

Thank you! I’m confused :stuck_out_tongue:

And yes… about that hand you came late. Anyway symmetry in ZB is somewhat weird…

I’m working now on armour plates through zsphere topology tool… man! Is it really so complicated?
Is it really necessary to switch to a zsphere, attach the original mesh to it, draw the topology, create the adaptive mesh then switch back to the original tool and import the result? I’m not complaining about drawing the topology (obviously) but all those switches lead me to confusion, at least at this initial phase! And how much tool in the tool palette, at a certain point you don’t know which is which!

Isn’t it possible to work it all always into the same tool?

Cheers!

Ok ok… take a deep breath and start.

Well, it’s less difficult than i tought. Working on chest now. Front on left, rear on right. Will refine the holes after.

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Hey Umbertone!
It’s a surprise to meet you here :smiley:
Keep on with the good stuff!

Very nice on hard surface stuff… Looks very clean!

@stefanobernardi: Ciao Stefano! Nice to meet you here at ZBC! Lots of good stuff on you gallery! (What do you use for texturing?) See you soon!

@SolidSnakexxx: Thank you! I still need to get accustomed with the zsphere retopo, in fact there are some quirks that i hope to fix soon.

Ok, it’s a pretty straightforward process. Only lots of patience needed.
I painted orange the “hard surface” mesh to hilight over the dynamesh concept.

And yes… UI customization does pay. Built a panel with deformation->rotate; mirror and weld; subdivision level; del lower + del higher; crease/uncrease.

Now i’m in heaven (well, sort of) :smiley:

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Still working on it. Too bad i can dedicate only an hour a day to this project and i feel that hard surface modeling requires lot of time… Anyway, going on…

mecha12.jpg

Ok, now for the hands (i was long waiting this moment) :smiley:

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So I just went through all five pages of this thread – amazing perseverance on your part! Zbrush can be daunting. The most important thing is not to give up, even when you think your model looks terrible. It’s the only way to get better, even if it hurts. So well done! I find threads like this inspiring.

Also, the hard surface stuff looks amazing for a first attempt! You’ll have to give me tips, I’m afraid to even try… :o

Thank you for you patience, nagulov!

Well, yes, ZB is daunting the first time you face it… after the first approach it’s simply strange :smiley:

Thank you about the perseverance, i really want to bring a project to the end with ZB to understand its mechanics. About the hard surface, it’s not difficult, but it requires lot of patience (at least for me, perhaps i’m using the bad technique) and the most annoying part is creasing all the edges by polygrouping, selecting and dissecting the mesh. I hoped that the new creasing brush in 4R6 did the trick by painting the creasing directly over an existing edge but it doesn’t look it works this way.

Anyway, i feel more accustomed to hard surface than organic sculpting, mainly because my lacks of artistic/anatomical knowledge (i go into ZB in my spare time just to “relax”, in my daily work i’m a programmer).

By the way, i love your sculpting skills, seen your recent work.

Another little progression, finished hands and started detailing the holes…

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looking great!:+1:

Very clean looking. Well done

Thank you teeg and sankar!

Now i finished filling the holes with circular elements. Added a bit of colour just to see the overall effect.
Now it’s time to start detailing the surface with bolts and scratches… this is the part that scares me a lot.

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I like your work and can’t wait to see you post the final!

Thank you fivewingangel! After the weekend i managed to work again on this mesh.

I tought that a berserk pose would be cool, then i opened the mouth and dynameshed some kind of raw teeth (i used EVA-1 teeth as a reference and tried to fit them in the “host”). I tried also some sharp “shark” teeth but they didn’t click very well with the remaining model…

mecha16.jpg

And now for some posing. Tried to use Transpose Master more seriously and finally i managed to get the pose into a layer! So i can switch back and forth from T pose. I missed the correct workflow with the previous mesh (the mecha pilot) and i lost the original pose, so now i can say i’m pretty happy with this finding!

Played a bit with composite renderings and assembled them in Photoshop.

Once the pose is right, i plan to add some landscape to give the real size of this guy.

mecha17.jpg

Ok, after some trouble with 3d layers, i managed to refine a bit the pose. No more like a dramatic singer now, should look like it’s suffering some kind of huge pain into his head :smiley:

mecha18.jpg

Long time no post… i had an issue with Z and Pixologic team helped me figure out what was the culprit.

In a few words, on my (32 bit, sigh) system Z crashed with no apparent reason. I was not pushing into it so much polys to justify such crashes…
Well long story short, enabling the /3GB flag on my Windows 7 installation made Z rock again!

Finally i can restart working on my mecha. I started by refining the head, trying to make it more aggressive.

One thing i could not figure out is why and when the normal smoothing algorithm works or not. I have enable it both in the Display panel and in the Render panel but i got it working only a couple times. Mistery for me…

mecha19.jpg

Ok, long time no post…

I had a chance to enter Allegorithmic 2014 Substance Contest “Battle of The Titans” and i decided to pick up this ZB sculpt and to finish the work. Completely retopoed in modo, textured in Substance Designer and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2.

Hope you will enjoy it!

Attachments

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