Production Modeling: Getting Along with ZBrush

Retopologizing in ZBrush

This month was undoubtedly challenging, but held many rewards. Going into this class I was very hesitant to use ZBrush, mostly because of my past experiences with it. After this month, I'm more confident in my sculpting abilities than I have ever been. That being said, I'd like to take this time to discuss one of the tools I learned about, which is ZBrush's retopology tool. My experiences with retopo were Maya based, and my first experiences with that were frustrating to say the least. It was refreshing to get the hang of A ZBrush tool right away, compared to its Maya counterpart.

My favorite thing about this tool was the ability to retopologize symmetrically along different axis. Whether it was Z, X, or Y, it could get the job done. Another thing I liked about this tool was that it was very straight forward to use. Append a ZSphere to a high poly mesh, hit edit topology, and start clicking. After using this tool I could hardly remember what retopologizing in Maya was like. I think the simplicity of this tool helped me conquer my fear of ZBrush's more complex tools, and allowed me to open up to the possibilities. I used to hate ZBrush, but now I have a respect for it.

Above is an example of the axe I modeled and retopologized. Rather than do my retopping and map baking in Maya, this class has changed my workflow in that I will make an accurate low poly blockout in Maya for hard edge purposes, import to ZBrush, sculpt the details, retopologize, create a displacement, and export and render in Maya. I think as an artist it's extremely important to have a plan for your model, and now I have a solidified workflow that I'm both comfortable with and now experienced in. This class has changed the way I will complete my models, and now that I'm much more comfortable in ZBrush I'll be able to revamp old pieces. Out of everything I've made so far, I am most proud of this.

Visual Development

This class was immensely helpful in understanding the process of texturing and material building. Throughout this month we used MILA materials with the mental ray renderer to achieve real world textures, and then this combined with batch renders of different passes helped me understand how a proper foundation in the basics of a software can be the difference between a sub par render and a professional one.

The most useful techniques I learned this month are probably the use of the MILA material and advanced knowledge of the hypershade. Before this class, I was mostly using MIA materials for my textures, with minimal, if any, hypershade node editing. After this class, I'm confident in my abilities to use the hypershade (and with minimal to no crashing too).

Warm Light Layer 

Key Light Layer 

Master Layer (Key, Warm, IBL)

Over the course of this class I made my own little experimental scene to test out materials, different bumps, and mess with settings overall to see what I could do.

Test Scene

This is my tester scene. I'll be making changes to it, such as adding different materials, bumps, and props, but its a nice little start to an exploration in texturing.

Character Design and Creation

CDC was a very challenging and trying course. The first week of class I was in the process of moving, so I didn't do as well I would have liked, but the knowledge I gained from this class was invaluable. I found myself becoming more and more comfortable with ZBrush as the class progressed, and I now enjoy using the software for sculpting and detailing meshes I've made in Maya. The goal this class was to create characters, as the name suggests, and I ended up with two characters.

Original mesh made in Maya

Mesh detailed in ZBrush

Second character, second pass with reference

Second character, detailed in ZBrush

This class pushed my limits as far as modeling goes, and doing so increased my artistic skill set and tolerance for strong coffee. The Zspheres and modeling in Maya worked best for me, whereas I need some more practice with dynamesh when modeling large tools (I used dynamesh as a base for the hair on the models, which I found easy to use in that situation). My major issues were mostly the crashing of programs and losing some save data, and Maya's interface bugging out, of course. My experiences with Maya in the past prepared me for dealing with the bugging, but Zbrush's curveballs required some research and YouTube videos. Those are things I use a lot as a student: Google and YouTube. The end results of my models turned out pretty well in my opinion, especially since this was my first time modeling completely in ZBrush. However, I need to work on my skills with dynamesh, sculpting nuances like eyelids and eyes in general, facial features, hands and fingers, and boots or feet. I think I still need to develop my artistic eyes in drawing and sculpting what I see a little more as well. I think though, that for my first time, I did well.

Project and Portfolio III

This class was very stressful this month, mostly because of the full swing of the holiday season and it starting the week of Black Friday. I was very excited to use a different rig and create my own animation this month, although it has a few things that need to be tweaked. I'm happy with the smoothness of translation, and completing this project has given me a greater understanding of the walk cycle. Here is the Link

I think that this class was valuable for helping me in discerning render time, learning the fine points of the walk cycle animation, subtle animation, and adjusting to new rigs and additionally new problems as they arise. It was challenging to say the least and I had many 5 A.M. nights this month. On to the next!

Shading and Lighting

I found an easier time in this course than past ones, at least in the beginning anyway. I really enjoyed getting to know the lights of mental ray and maya, as well as the powers of intensities and knowing what light relates to certain ambiances.

This was the final pass for our last week, and our job this class was to texture everything on the table (wineglass and bottle, place mat, cheese, knife, cutting board and bread). The hardest part about this class for me was misinterpreting how long render times can be. I had a few 5 A.M. nights.

Final pass for third week. This setup had multiple light sources to set up, and with various lights needing to be linked and unlinked to certain objects, I had some trouble with this one. My favorite parts of this are the eyeglass case and coffee mug. I like how those textures and reflections turned out.

This render is darker than I wanted. I had a lot of problems with the IBL and tweaking its brightness and color gain. I think problems with this ultimately made my scene darker than it should have been. Despite this, I like how this turned out.

The Cornell rabbit. Probably my most adorable project thus far, it was an excellent opportunity to study lighting and light linking. I very much enjoyed this exercise.

I had many late nights this class, as it was difficult to find the time to allow for rendering. I learned that it's much better to use low render settings to get the initial look of the reference, and then do a higher quality render when you think an aspect is finalized. 

3DA

How time flies! Second portfolio class, and an animation one at that. I had quite a few problems in the beginning with the rig, but through some troubleshooting and communicating with my awesome professor, I handled it. The lesson I learned though, is to always double check the rig before you keyframe. I had a totally different idea for my original animation, but due to a lack of time I had to do something simpler.

The first pass. It has a few breakdowns as well as keys. Looking at the difference in timing compared to my final is amazing. I owe this to the dope sheet in Maya and my new knowledge of it.

The final. I'm pretty happy with it, although it's still not as smooth as I'd like. Of course, my desire to strive for perfection could get in the way of seeing my actual progress. I wish I had more time to add some things to it.

BONUS: Original idea block out. This is where I was having so much trouble with the rig. It was set up differently then the rig from our previous class, and it lead to so much frustration that I had to go with a much simpler idea in order to have something to turn in. Oh well, perhaps I'll be able to experiment with it later, or rather, re-block it with different rig settings. It actually doesn't look bad in this clip, but that's only because for some reason Maya would interpolate it differently depending either on scrub through speed, or some other variable. Needless to say, the Euler filter didn't even help.

I very much enjoyed this class, and I love animating so much I'm switching my major over to computer animation. Through trial and error and determination, I survived and thrived this month. On to the next!

3AM

Words cannot express my excitement for this class. This was the class where all of my childhood dreams got a taste of realization, as dramatic as that sounds. The most difficult part of this for me was utilizing the graph editor, which I still need work with, but I'm getting the hang of it.

The classic bouncing ball. I actually had a much easier time grasping the operation of rigs and keys than I thought, and I feel I got a quicker handle on 3D animation than 2D. This will forever remind me of the importance of the squash and stretch, as well as slow-ins and slow-outs.

In the project titled "Super Smash Ball" we had to give the ball some character, and tell a story with it and the little star. There's always room for improvement, for example, I wish I would've held the arc of the final jump a little longer, but the nuances of the blocks and bounces help me love this.

Blocking for the walk. When I was doing this all I could think "wow, so easy" but the final week had a big surprise for me. I like this block and I think it conveys the action very well. I made many, MANY slight changes in the following week, but I can't complain. That's animation for you.

What had originally been just a walk turned into a snap, which had, in the end, turned into a gun. Yes, a finger snap into a gun. I wasn't happy with the timing of the snap so I added the finger gun after. I wish I would've added a little bit of trigger pulling and shooting towards the end but I ran out of time. I really enjoyed this, and the difference in flow from the blocking to this is phenomenal. Now that I compare the two, I'm amazed at my progress.

 Unfortunately, this class had to come to an end. My excitement with the career path though has only reaffirmed my belief in my choices, and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this blog as the months go by! This next class is another portfolio class where animation is the key. I think what I'll do is post my playblasts to this, that will help.