This blog contains many tutorials, interesting new items relating to digital sculpting and samples of fantastic digital art. It was developed between November 2007 and March of 2008.

To browse the blog use the the topics to the right of this post.

• For a list of tutorials on how to use ZBrush click here or visit the Artist’s Series.
• Also, visit the Tips and Tricks page here.

Thank you to all of you who contributed to the blog with comments and feedback.

Ryan Kingslien

Well, let’s imagine a world where there are no polygons. It’s easy if you try. No nurbs below us. Above us only sky. Imagine all the artists simply creating for today. Imagine there’s no topology. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to divide or subdivide for. Imagine all you had to do was be the dreamer, would you really care about how a bunch of lines are spread over the surface of your model? (Thanks for the poetry John!)

To look at it another way, do we really care where the 1’s and 0’s of this internet browser store the text information we read or whether the images we look at on the web are gif’s or jpeg’s or png’s?

We would likely only care about those details if it meant that a web page took longer to view or looked less appealing.

Its the same for topology. Topology is like an image format. If you sculpt a head out of a sphere and you don’t care about the topology then its alot like working in a .PSD file format. The file size is big but it does the trick. However, when we start to share our sculpt we may need to cut down on the file size. Either because the animation program requires it or our sculpting program requires it.

To cut down on the file size we use Topology tools to put more geometry in some places and less geometry in other places. In other words, we optimize the file.

I like to think of this as the Polygon Economy where we are often trading tight topology control for independence and fast, on the fly, creative thinking.

The tools that help us navigate in the Polygon Economy are below:

• The Pinch Brush, which helps us get nice clean edges.
• ZSphere’s Topology
• ZSphere’s Projection
• SubTool’s Project All button
• ZProject Brush

Happy ZBrushing!

In this post I wanted to share the recent evolution of a ZBrush sketch. It all started out innocently enough with a cup of coffee, ZBrush and a PolySphere.

There was no real direction or idea. There was only a desire to push and pull the sphere around until it came to represent something or something clicked in my brain.

So, the sphere became the first of 3 wicked dudes, think Monty Python’s depiction of the Spanish Inquisition here. I would say that they are wicked clergymen except for the ruffles around their neck. Don’t ask me what they are for. I just work here. I let the subconscious do the thinking.

Then, last night, with another sphere I sculpted the first of their victims.

For more, I’ll have to wait to see what my subconscious does when I sculpt their bodies. Like I said, I just work here.

Here is the victim:

Sculpting Process

Here are recordings of the sculpting process for each head. Please note that I had little idea where I was going and was experimenting with ideas as I progressed.

One of the ways that I compare different ideas is to drop one of them to the canvas by pressing SHIFT+S and then moving the live on off to the side. Then I can press undo till the change has been undone and compare the two versions.

Editor’s note: The above content was created in the vein of a disney-eque fictional storyline that just popped into my head and is meant to be enjoyed from an artistic processes point of view not a historically accurate depiction of real-life events.

In this video, Francois performs the following steps:

1. Paints a black shape on a 3D plane
2. Selects the MRGBZ Grabber tool and grabs a section of the 3D plane
3. In the Texture palette, press Texture: Make Alpha
4. In the Alpha Palette, press Make 3D
5. Select the new model in the Tool palette and then sculpt

Thanks for sharing Francois!

Click the image to go to the movie or click here.

If you haven’t seen his sketchbook thread click here.

For a link to all the cool images he has posted in this thread click the ThreadGallery button or click here.

Alex Oliver’s website

Ralf introduces his collection by saying, “I worked for over an year on this collection and these two sets contains the best shaders I have made. Some are very good for modeling but all are great for presentation.”

The first set contains the following materials:

1. RS_GreyResin.ZMT
2. RS_Gost.ZMT
3. RS_MetalDust.ZMT
4. RS_ModelingClay.ZMT
5. RS_OilClayRed.ZMT
6. RS_RedMetallic.ZMT
7. RS_ResinBlueEdge.ZMT
8. RS_SculpyYellow.ZMT
9. RS_Silicon.ZMT
10. RS_SkyMetal.ZMT
11. RS_WesternClay.ZMT
12. RS_WetClay.ZMT

The second set contains:

1. RS_BasicClay.ZMT
2. RS_BigRed.ZMT
3. RS_BlueChrom.ZMT
4. RS_BronzeAntique.ZMT
5. RS_CooperLight.ZMT
6. RS_GreyClayExtreme.ZMT
7. RS_GreyClayLight.ZMT
8. RS_Lava.ZMT
9. RS_RedChavant.ZMT
10. RS_SculpyLight.ZMT
11. RS_SkinBase.ZMT
12. RS_WinstonClay.ZMT

Metal Dust is by far my favorite material from the first set. It is an excellent presentation material and works perfectly for my recent Siren project. The turntable below gives a hint of how this could be used to help an artist pre-visualize what his or her sculpture will look like and even to present it to a client.

Ralf’s clay materials are fantastic to model in and each one gives you something different to focus on.

For example, RS_WetClay has good contrast between the lights and darks and really focus your attention on the connections between muscles and forms.

RS_Modeling Clay, on the other hand, is very good at focusing your attention on the overall form.

It is more atmospheric and has less contrast than WetClay.

The star of Ralf’s second set, for me, is RS_RedChavant.

This is an incredibly beautiful material. I can almost feel the smooth, creamy Chavant under my fingers as I work with this material.

Other highlights are BasicClay and BronzeAntique. BasicClay is a great foundational sculpting material. The specularity really shows off the form!

BronzeAntique is another fabulous presentation material and is very sophisticated. By using MatCap’s cavity feature Ralf was able to get a very realistic bronze patina.

Overall, the quality of all 24 materials puts them at the top of the heap and are a must-have for digital artists who put together turntables and character sheets for critique. Each set costs $20 and will definitely make your sculpts look great.

Thanks Ralf for putting these together and making them available to the community!

Click here for MatCap Set 1

Click here for MatCap Set 2

Happy ZBrushing

Now, I have been thinking of how to show this feature off for over a year now. I had looked at Edouard Lanteri, at Lucchesi and all over the web to find a way that would show off the following items that I think are crucial to understanding the structure of the mouth:

• The teeth are primary
• The upper lip is composed of three ovals
• The lower lip is composed of two equal sized ovals
• The line of the lip is NOT in the same place as where the bottom and top teeth meet
• The flesh of lips and the muzzle of the mouth has a surprising thickness that is on top of the teeth

So, starting with a fresh perspective, I sat down to show them the elements that I think are important to understand about the mouth and came up with, what I think is, a pretty cool demonstration of the various components that make up the barrel of the mouth.

Please note, that I made heavy use of the Clay brush. When you see me make sharp, incised lines in the model I used the Standard brush and Alpha 39 on ZSub.

I hope you enjoy it.

We will use topological masking instead of polygroups because they are fast and easy to use on the fly. I can quickly create a mask that represents the area I want to hide by pressing R, then CTRL + click and drag on the surface.

You can learn more about topological masks here.

In this tutorial we will use a macro to do the following:

• Invert the mask
• Hide the unmasked parts of the model
• Return us to Draw mode

Creating the Macro

1. First, start off with a mask on your model. For a humanoid character, press R for rotate and then hold CTRL down and click and drag from the pectorial muscle to the bicep. This should leave the arms unmasked
2. Start the macro recording by pressing Macro: New Macro
3. Press Tool: Masking: Inverse
4. Press Tool: Masking: HidePt
5. Press Transform: Draw Pointer or Draw on the top shelf
6. Finish the macro by pressing Macro: End Macro
7. Save it in the ZBrush root directories ZStartup/Macros/Misc folder

Creating the Hotkey

1. Hold CTRL and click on the macro in the Macro palette
2. Immediately press the hotkey or combo you want assigned. In my case, I pressed CTRL and “H” to assign CTRL+H to it
3. Store the hotkeys for later use by pressing Preference: Hotkeys: Store

And there you have it. You know have a hotkey that will take the mask you have created and use it to hide part of your model. I find this very useful when working on the torso of my models or the insides of individual legs.

Happy ZBrushing!

Ryan

It was an interesting experiment to try and teaches a lot about the connection between flesh and the bones underneath them. I hope you enjoy and would love to see some of your experiments with it!

Click Here to download movie or click the image above to stream the movie

Click here to see FOT’s Skeleton Torso set.