My old computer wasn’t able to subdivide enough to sculpt some areas with a decent amount of polygons… until my co-worker Paul asked me for this model for a testing purpose. It was time to finish what I started! And no more real polygons limits now as I can push my mesh up to 26 millions of polygons

Then after few hours, I finished the model. It’s not really my original idea, but not enough time to do what I wanted to do (Beeeer is the god of the beer in fact…). Then this model could be a good test for printing purposes too (except for cutting it…)

This is the final model with its pose (which I did quickly) and some ZBrush screenshots (click to enlarge)

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!

I think that I’m very negative in my feedback about modo, because right now I’m on the modeling part and because of my strong background in this task. To be honest, I deeply think that modo is far behind than Amapi 8 and Hexagon 2 on the polymodeling tasks but, and this but is important, modo offer a lot of customization, a lot of scripts to add the tools that you don’t have, something which was simply impossible in Amapi or Hexagon. When you start to know better the modo toolset, it become easier, but still far from being easy and productive.

But I started to work on the shaders, maps (not visible yet), and UVs and for this part, modo really rocks (even if the shader tree is not really understandable at the first glance. Where is the node view?? ) And I don’t speak of the render speed. How easy is it to setup the shaders when you can have a live preview on your model, changing the lights and a couple of seconds seeing the result on your screen.

This is the evolution of the same WIP, still progressing. Some parts have been hidden as they were the resulting of tests

I forgot to say that I started to work on the pivot point to have some easier pose for my robot

I bought modo 201 some time ago, because I was looking for an alternative modeler for Amapi and Hexagon because these software in a short future will “die”: Amapi 8 development has been stopped 1 month before its public beta, with less than 3 months of development to have a full product ready to be shipped, and Hexagon is no more developed by DAZ, or nearly not, except adding content specific stuff (well, let’s hope I’m wrong!)

I also needed a new render engine as an alternative of the also “dying” and restricted  Carrara, and too expensive 3DSMax (thanks for the license of my job!). Then modo was a good choice: company with a strong background in 3D, new architecture, full feature set Sub division modeler, very good UV editor, a killer renderer at a price that a freelance, a small company can afford. Another important point: finding resources. modo have a great community and Luxology, the editor, provides a lot of learning content, free or not.

But hell! It was and it’s still hard to learn modo and I’m far to be a beginner in 3D and with 3D modelers. But i’m still thinking that I did a good choice and I will post on my blog my progress, my learning and what I find weird or crazy in this package!

Because I  lack of free time and because I always have 2457 projects at the same time, I try to focus on a simple project which will makes me see all kind of features that modo 302 (my current version while waiting the release of  the 401): A simple robot, freely inspired from the movie Robots from Dreamworks. It will be basically some hard modeling, but with traditional modeling, copies, I will have to see how the hierachy and rigging (for the 401) will work, spend some time on UVs, work on the shaders and lighting and finally, the render. When all that stuff will be done, I will be able to start on the animation!

At the same time, I’m checking, redoing the videos I bought on their website to learn again and again. Then you will see a mix of various projects while I provide the feedback about how I’m progressing with this software

This is some screenshots, which will be commented later, in another post about my progress in modo:

And the beginning of an Austin Mini Coper (you may recognize the Digital Tutors tutorial

Ths is a timelapse modeling of Gerogette, the caracter I modeled a long time ago, for the over illustration of the software Carrara 5. I have been modeled her with Hexagon 1.21.

Enjoy!