Lessons from the Crypt: Gregory Callahan

Recently, we wrapped up the Scared Silly competition at ZBrushCentral. Lessons from the Crypt will follow a few of the threads and present some of the lessons they have taught us.

First in our series is Gregory Callahan’s Dracula and Frankstien. Gregory, also known as sasquatchpoacher at ZBrushCentral, notes:

The image has over 30 million polys. Had to be rendered in 3 different parts and multiple shader passes.
Zbrush was used almost exclusively with the exception of a few primitive shapes for props made in 3dsMax (see Wip thread).
Photoshop was used for color correction and textures (every object in final render is 3d).

I found his use of ZBrush very refreshing. Lets look at a few items in particular.

The Couch

click here for a larger version

This example of creating a couch from the simple box model looks almost too easy.

However, Gregory put a deal of effort into creating the volume of the couch and how the skin of a couch is pulled tight against its inside stuffing.

Brushes like the Inflate Brush or Magnify brush can be very useful for this kind of work.

Dracula’s Body

What I find really great here is how Gregory only focused on the necessary parts. He didn’t create the entire body as one polygonal object.

Also, he used ZSpheres for what they do best, put clay on the model! He resculpted it once the digital clay was in place but he didn’t rely on ZSpheres to create the perfect shape.

This is an important thing to keep in mind with ZSpheres. ZSpheres are one of the most advanced aspects of ZBrush and involve alot of complex math to make them work but nothing beats the human eye and hand.

Frank’s Body

Frank’s body involves several aspects of ZBrush:

ZSpheres
Topology
Mesh Extraction
Masks

First, this is a great way to use ZSpheres and one of the ways we considered important during development. ZSpheres can be used to create a polymesh three ways:

Adaptive Skinning
Unifiied Skinning
Creating New Topology on the top of them

Either approach will give you something to work with. However, you may only need ZSphere’s for the volume they create. In this case, you can use them as a base for topology.

How? With the ZSphere tool in Edit mode simply click Tool: Topology: Edit Topology and begin drawing your polygon edges onto your ZSphere model!

To learn more about topology click here.

When Gregory got to the pants he used masks and Mesh Extraction. See below:

Check out how he masks off the bottom for the torn and ragged edges of the jeans and then uses Mesh Extract to create jeans with thickness. A simple and powerful workflow. One of those that we try very hard to make possible in ZBrush.

Toes and Other Details

Gregory’s attention to detail is just fantastic.

The toes for cheetos which USED to be my favorite chip as well. Thanks Gregory!
The beer cans.
The fact that Dracula is drinking his blood from a beer hat!

Its really a great image and a wonderful thread at ZBrushCentral. Thanks Gregory for the hard work teaching people about your process and for the awesome image!

Click here for the ZBrushCentral thread.

Here are some more details to leave you with: