PolySculpt

While I was at the International Comic Festival of Angoulême (FIBD), I’ve been interviewed by the french magazine Advanced Creation [FR], about my blog, and others. If you want to see what I’m look like and if you understand a little bit french, watch it

Thanks to Thierry Maurel!

For the french speakers, the next workshop will be dedicated to 3D Printing with ZBrush: how to think about your model before creating, the rules to know, the printing constraints, the finalization and more.

The (free) registration is at the usual webpage!

This is two brushes I just made for ZBrush 3.5 R3. Click on the images to download them (Right click >> Save As).

The first one, OnTop, allow you to Sculpt, Mask or Polypaint on the top of a surface, especially a flat surface. It’s a little bit different from the Automasking >> Cavity Masking. This brush is using the brush Depth Mask with various settings. I strongly advise you to use a large brush and trying to remain on the top of the surfaces to avoid artifacts on the side of the object. A tip is to create masks, inverse the mask, blur and sharpen it twice.

This is a small video of the OnTop in action, used to create a mask.

The second one, Onborder, is a brush which work on border of small extrusions and is based on Automasking >> CavityMask.

Happy New year to all of you and all my wishes for these next 365 days!

This is a “steampunk style” compositing I did quickly yesterday night, based on a panoramic photo I did of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, on the first January (yes, I was on the top of it, with my family

Sorry, it’s not the best image ever made :p

This is the original photo, composed of 16 shoots:

ZBrush 3.5 R3 is now available for all the ZBrush registered users.. or for the new ZBrush customers!

This R3 is not just a bug fix release, but add several new features and enhancements which brings the sculpting software to a new level, especially in the hard sculpting field, making this R3 what should have been (IMHO) ZBrush 4.5 while ZBrush 3.5 should have been ZBrush 4.0

With the 3.5 R3, you will have some nice new additions like:

• Quicksketch, a 2D sketching plugin, to draw your ideas in a click. Just try it, it’s very addictive!
• A huge set of new features for the polygroups creations: new groups from polypainting or masks, GroupsLoops to create loops around the polygroups, export polygroups as polypainting, etc…
• The Remeshing, to create new object based on the combination (or subtractions / intersections) with the visible SubTools. It’s a kind of boolean solution, but to create new basemeshes.
• Tons of new brushes, included the new h/m/sPolish which will become your new favorite brushes for sure: with a low pressure, it will polish your surface and a high pressure will create hard edges on the border of the stroke, while protecting the surface angle. A real joy
• Various new additions on the brush settings: stabilization of the brush, angle masking, brush tilting, etc….

Just check the new ZBrush 3.5 webpages on Pixologic.com for a new feature overview, view the presentation video on these same pages and don’t forget the ZBrush 3.5 car design tutorial by Pixolator himself

Don’t forget that ZBrush 3.5 R3 is a free update for all the ZBrush customers. Which others company do that?

I will post soon some photos I did of my own cooking sculpting. It’s not like what my sister is doing, but I was proud of my first Japanese cooking (yakitori, maki, katsudo, oyakodon, etc..)

This post is only for french speakers, sorry!

Just to let you know, I give some news of the next ZBrush workshop, and announce the last videos available for download.

The last subjects were the character clay sculpting (three videos, from the base mesh with ZSketch and ZSpheres II, the retopology and the final sculpting) and the Speed Sculpting (Subject, “the path”).

Would you like to see some workshop in english, with my poor accent?

This short tutorial is to answer a question by Jbshorty on my forum Polyloop.net: after creating a base mesh in Hexagon, he had a problem of alignment of his radial symmetry, which wasn’t centered at all. After looking at the model, I found the problem. It was not a bug from Hexagon or ZBrush, but a problem because of the form of the model.

This is the original model:

As you can see, the brush dots are offset down the model. Using the local symmetry, or trying to use the posable symmetry doesn’t work for a simple reason: ZBrush is using the bounding box to compute the symmetry and on this model, the center of the object isn’t at the center of what we think it is, because of the two ‘arms’ on the left and right of the model. Then, on the screenshot, the brush have the good position in the space, not the model.

Then, in this small tutorial, I will show you how to fix that, by changing the pivot point in ZBrush, from the first step of importing the model.

1. Import and Radial Symmetry

To import the model, if you already have a 3D model (a ZTool) loaded, in the Tool palette, load the Polymesh3D model (a 3D star) and click on import. Choose your OBJ file to load. You should have something like that:

Then, the first thing to do to sculpt such object in a symmetrical way is to activate it. Then, go in the Transform palette, activate the Symmetry, choose the Z axis only (the depth is most of the time Z) and click on the (R) button, to switch to Radial Symmetry.

The screenshot below shows these settings.

As described in the introduction, the radial symmetry is not centred where we would like it to be.

2. Preparing the model for the new pivot point

It’s time to do some changes on the model to do the final step. First, switch to Orthogonal mode. By default, ZBrush is in orthogonal mode, not in perspective. But for the next step, you must be in orthogonal. To check that, go in the Draw palette and see if the button “Persp” is disable. The perspective shortcut is “P”.

Then, switch to a side view and while rotating, press the Shift key: ZBrush will snap the rotation to 90° angles. Choose a side view.

Now, we will need to display only a selection of polygons, the extremity of the extrusion. While on this side view, press CTRL+Shift and with the visibility marquee, select the last loops of polygons like on the screenshot below:

When releasing your click, only a cap should be visible. Take care of having a uniform selection of polygons, I mean, having a full loop of polygons around the cap. If you selection isn’t symmetrical, start again this step.

3. Setting the new pivot

Now, the main step of this tutorial! Let’s define a new pivot: in the Transform palette, click on the S.Pivot (Set Pivot). This action will redefine the pivot of the visible polygons. As our object have only the cap visible and because this cap is fully symmetrical in the X and Y axis, the new pivot will be exactly in the center. To prove that, when you will clicking on the button, the cap will move in your document.

Now, unhide the polygons of the other part of the model by doing a CTRL+Shift click in an empty part of the document and voilà! Your brush is now fully radial symmetrical!

Change the radial count in the Transform palette to 3 and you can start your sculpting!

Alain Juppé

This last Monday, I did a ZBrush training to the first year students of the ESMI school in Bordeaux. I like giving a training as it is always a good way to have the question that you don’t want to have, and then, you need to mix your knowledge to find the answer. Then, it’s a good way for me to learn too!

But the most important point of the day was the visit of the ex french Prime Minister, Alain Juppé (EN). He is currently the Bordeaux’s Mayor and decided to visit the school. We didn’t really know why he wanted to visit the school, but after some Google searches, I found that they want to create a kind of University Campus (FR) downtown, because of the hudge number of existing schools in the area.

Juppé came to my classroom and then, discover ZBrush. I wasn’t in his mind, but he didn’t gave me the impression of someone who had a lot of interest (perhaps too “old” for this kind of new technology). I also show him one of our demo real, including the Pirate of the Caribbean, Beowulf, Assassin creed, etc..  His reaction was clear: “Humm, a lot of violence and monsters”… Well, yes, he wasn’t right. Politically correct…

He did a small test of ZBrush on the Cintiq because I think he had the feeling that he have too… I just hope that this visit will bring some visibility of the ESMI School. It’s a young training center with a lot of motivation, then we will see if something new will happen in the next month, following this visit!

I’m so happy to do my 3D, discussing with artists and users, with my students and I’m so glad not doing political stuff!

This is the result of the last ZBrush workshop I did with 5 other guys. It has been a 5-6 hours workshop online (just for french sorry!). Started from ZSpheres II, then Sketched, sculpted, retopologized, sculpted again and then, the pose.

It need more work, but I will work again on the body itself in its T pose to refine some parts (arms, face, legs, etc.)