Welcome to ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting. I wrote this book to pull together the tools and techniques I have gathered over the past few years as a digital sculptor from both personal experience and the openness and sharing of other ZBrush artists. It is my hope that this book will help build on your experience with ZBrush and open up new and exciting techniques using the program.
This book focuses specifically on character sculpting and painting with ZBrush. Creature and character work has been the focus of my career for the past 10 years, and since moving into a digital workflow with ZBrush, I have seen the possibilities for artists explode. We will cover topics from basic sculpting to more advanced techniques of building form and character. We will also look at painting skin and adding fine details to our characters. Throughout the book, I have invited some friends to add their own experience with ZBrush in the sidebars. Every artist works differently, and we can learn so much from seeing other approaches to the same problems.
In addition to working as a digital sculptor, I have been an instructor at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood teaching ZBrush for the past two years. In this time I have seen a variety of students, from beginner to advanced, approach ZBrush and learn the toolset. This experience has helped me craft this book in a way that I hope will be most beneficial to you, the reader.
In my experience teaching, I have found that it is important to learn the ins and outs of the software. Knowing how to find the tools is, of course, necessary. I have also seen that just as important is an understanding of what to do with the tools you learn. It is easy to find the Standard brush, for instance, but I illustrate how to use the brushes to build a character with sound structure, form, and an eye toward sculptural anatomy. These foundation artistic principles are the core of good work whether you are making it in ZBrush or in clay.
This book is for anyone who wants to sculpt creatures and characters in ZBrush. It is best to work from the first exercises through the book if you are new to ZBrush. You may also skip to the section specific to your center of interest. For this reason I have sought to include many examples of how to approach digital sculpting from an artistic perspective in the book. It is not by any means the last word on the subject, but I find that my own experience in traditional media has helped me in ZBrush. I hope that by applying the same principles of gesture, form, and proportion to this book it will help you as well. It is easy to become preoccupied with the technology, so we often need to step back and look at the art itself. Because this is a sculptural medium and a series of still images can only show so much, I have included most of the exercises on the DVD in video form. You can watch these and see the steps performed in real time.
This book is for the intermediate ZBrush user. I assume a certain amount of experience but I have also been careful to include enough information that a new user can grasp the topics quickly. For a more foundational introduction to the tools, I recommend looking at Eric Keller's Introducing ZBrush, also from Sybex.
In this book you will learn how to work with the ZBrush sculpting and painting toolset to create believable characters. We will also look at how to get your work out of ZBrush into a third-party application for rendering using either displacement or normal mapping techniques. We will look at anatomy and how it affects the form of the head and explore how to use anatomical knowledge to assist in sculpting a human head. We will talk about color theory and how it influences color choices when painting a creature skin from scratch. We will also discuss how to create your own base geometry in ZBrush using ZSpheres, as well as how to remesh a ZTool into an animation-ready base topology. Other topics include posing in ZBrush, using alphas and stencils for detailing, understanding ZScripting, and customizing your interface. Over the course of the book, we will also look at production considerations and how to get the most flexibility from ZBrush in a work pipeline.
To complete the core exercises of this book, you need ZBrush version 3.1 or higher. Some sections also include material related to Photoshop and Maya and using these programs together with ZBrush. Hardware requirements are a PC or Mac running ZBrush with a gigabyte or more of RAM. The more RAM you have, the better results you can get with ZBrush.
It is also imperative that you have a Wacom tablet. While it is possible to use a mouse with ZBrush, it is like drawing with a brick. A Wacom or other digital tablet will open the doors for you to paint and sculpt naturally. Personally I recommend a Wacom Cintiq. There are two variations of this tablet screen available at the time of this writing. The desktop model with a 21" screen as well as a smaller 12" portable model. The Cintiq allows you to sculpt and paint directly on the screen and can vastly improve the speed and accuracy with which you can use ZBrush. It is essential to use some form of Wacom tablet be it a Cintiq or a standard Intuos with ZBrush.
I have structured the text to start from a basic look at the ZBrush toolset and progress through the entire program into more advanced concepts and tools. Although there is an open and thriving user community, there was a need for a physical manual for working with ZBrush. This book seeks to fill that void and offer a training solution for users who prefer to work from a printed material at their own pace. I also recommend you read Eric Keller's Introduction to ZBrush published by Wiley.
This book will be especially useful to those who are coming to digital sculpting with no previous 3D experience. I have tried to communicate the ZBrush workflow with examples from traditional sculpting and painting technique. To me, ZBrush is not only its own medium as much as it is an extension of paint and clay, much in the same way that Corel Painter extends and improves on paint and canvas, thus allowing the artist to use traditional techniques in new ways. Because of this, I believe it is just as important to discuss where to find the tools as it is to illustrate how to use them effectively to create compelling creatures and characters.
- Chapter 1: Sculpting, from Traditional to Digital
introduces the ZBrush interface and working methods. In this chapter we create a doorknocker from a primitive plane.
- Chapter 2: Sculpting in ZBrush
further explores the ZBrush sculpting toolset. Starting with a ZBrush primitive sphere, we block in the skull, facial muscles, and then skin of the human head.
- Chapter 3: Designing a Character Bust
applies what we have learned about sculpting in ZBrush to an imported polygon mesh. Using a generic human head model, we sculpt two different character busts. Advanced techniques for transferring sculpted details are also examined.
- Chapter 4: ZBrush for Detailing
In this chapter we look at creating high-frequency details in ZBrush. By using alphas and strokes, we can detail a character with a realistic skin texture.
- Chapter 5: Texture Painting
Using PolyPaint we paint a creature skin texture from scratch. This chapter introduces ZBrush texture applications as well as some important color theory to assist you in texturing your own characters.
- Chapter 6: ZSpheres
explores ZBrush's powerful mesh generation tool. Using basic and advanced ZSphere techniques, we create a biped base mesh.
- Chapter 7: Transpose, Retopology, and Mesh Extraction
examines the ZBrush posing tool called Transpose. In this chapter we also look at ZBrush's retopology tools for generating new base meshes from existing ZTools. Finally we look at making accessories with retopology tools and mesh extraction.
- Chapter 8: ZBrush Movies and Compositing
looks at a unique technique of rendering multiple materials passes from ZBrush and compositing them in Photoshop. We also look at capturing video directly in ZBrush.
- Chapter 9: Rendering ZBrush Displacements
in Maya is an extensive look at displacement mapping with ZBrush. Techniques for exporting both 16- and 32-bit maps are covered. This chapter also examines how to render your displacement map in mental ray for Maya.
- Chapter 10: ZMapper
covers the robust normal mapping plug-in ZMapper. Techniques for displaying and rendering normal maps in Maya are also covered. Other applications of ZMapper examined here include cavity mapping and blend shape animation.
- Chapter 11: ZScripts, Macros, and Interface Customization
concludes the book with a look at ZBrush interface customization. Custom menu sets, hotkeys, and custom macros are all examined. The chapter includes an introduction to ZScripting by guest artist Svengali.
On the DVD I have included several support files for each chapter. Many tutorials have video files accompanying them. In addition to videos, I have included supplementary text materials expanding on certain concepts as well as sample meshes, materials, and brushes. The video files were recorded using the TechSmith screen capture codes (www.techsmith.com) and compressed with H.264 compression.
The videos included I hope will help further illustrate the sculptural approach I take in ZBrush. Being able to see a tool in use can better illustrate the concepts than still images alone. On my website www.scottspencer.com you will find more tutorials expanding on the content of this book.
I welcome feedback from you about this book or about books you'd like to see from me in the future. You can reach me by writing to [email protected]. For more information about my work, please visit my website at www.scottspencer.com.
Sybex strives to keep you supplied with the latest tools and information you need for your work. Please check their website at www.sybex.com, where we'll post additional content and updates that supplement this book if the need arises. Enter ZBrush Character Creation in the Search box (or type the book's ISBN: 9780470249963), and click Go to get to the book's update page.
In conclusion, thank you for buying this book. I hope you enjoy the exercises within as much as I have enjoyed putting this book together. Being surrounded by likeminded artists who all have something to contribute makes every day a learning experience. It is an honor for me to share some of what I have learned with you. I hope you enjoy this book. Happy sculpting!