PolySculpt

We just released a new free plugin for ZBrush today: UV Master. yes, again a free one and we hope it will help all the artist by removing one of the most complex task in the 3D production: the UVs creation.

UV Master is originally a one click button plugin to make the UV creation accessible for all the “humans” (and not for the “Aliens” ) and which producing a result understandable in a 2D editor like Photoshop, if you need to tweak or paint manually your texture in 2D.

We also add to this easy step an optional one, which name is “Control Painting”: paint areas on your model where you want to attract the UV seams created by the plugin or paint areas where you don’t want to have seams (like the face of your character). It’s just painting areas, not accurate seam. The purpose is to quickly paint these areas in few strokes!

This control painting also include a Density mode which, still through painted strokes, can change the local density of the UVs and then, allowing more or less pixels density for your textures.

I hope that you will enjoy this plugin, your feedback is welcome!

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.

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!

KURV has organized several webinar (live presentation) and several of them have been/are dedicated to ZBrush. Yesterday night was the first one of a series of three, presented by the artist Leigh Bamforth. The purpose is to create an Orc with ZBrush 3.5 with some of its new features like ZSpheres II. You can find more information on the KURV Website.

This is my review of the first session, “Creature sculpting with ZSpheres II” (and ZSketch):

During 20 minutes, Leigh built a ZSphere Skeleton which will support the strip of ZSpheres from ZSketch. The shape of the model created was very close to the final model. The purpose is to do easy deformation later on the ZSketch by editing the ZSphere skeleton.
Leigh also show an interesting way to build the foot of the Orc. I never thought of that way to do so as I always thought of a classical hierarchy, but now, it’s no more a restriction because of ZSketch. Good to remember for my own work.

The finished ZSphere Skeleton

When the ZSphere skeleton has been finished, Leigh start to sketch the model by small strip of ZSphere which are close to what the muscle would be positioned on a real Orc. Even if the muscle structure is not anatomically perfect, it allows the ZBrush users to discover the muscle structure apply on a humanoid model. Slowly, the “look & feel” of the model is visible and we can imagine its final form.

The ZSketch of the body almost done.

To build the head, Leigh loaded a previously made skull as a SubTool, and then, use it as a support to build the head. This is not a trick, but I think a lot of users may not be aware of this way to create their model.
In the same direction, Leigh refine it’s ZSphere skeleton to fit it to the added skull/head, and then, added the support for the hears. This is something that a lot of users have to know! Thanks Leigh!

The Skull added as a SubTool and then, used as a support for the sketching.

The edition of the ZSphere skeleton while doing the ZSketch of the head.

Most of the ZSketch tools has been shown, and also the classical Move Tool to do local deformations. It has been a good demonstration of which kind of result you can do directly with ZSketch.

At the end of the shape sketching part, Leigh switch to an adaptive skin and start sculpting the model in a more “traditional” way: using the Move tool to change the global shape and refine locally some parts (like the jaws, ears, etc…), the Clay finish brush (his favorite one, well, same for me!) to add some extra details and in after several minutes, the model was done (without the details, next session).

The final sculpted model, after 1h50 of work (excluding the skull).

The last part was the usual session of Questions & Answers. I had to shut down at the end of the Q&A session because of a scheduled meeting at work, then perhaps I missed one or two questions.

___________

To conclude, this presentation was interesting for all the new comers to ZBrush 3.5 as it shown at this stage (1st webinar), a good way to build from scratch a model and generating an accurate shape before moving the the detail stage. Leigh did a good sculpt in less than 1h50, which is a good timing for a full body and show some nice tricks. Everybody had something to learn and I was happy to watch it and I’m waiting for the two others webinar.

My two small negative comments are that Leigh don’t speak enough on some parts (but it’s perhaps because I talk too much when I do webinars!) and the other point is the quality of the sound when Leigh was speaking: it was like speaking on a distant microphone, then, for a non native english speaker like me, I had to focus a lot to understand. Wes (from KURV) voice was perfectly clear, it was definitly not a problem of bandwidth (26 Mbits at home). This is only minor points which doesn’t remove the quality of the work and presentation !

Note: I will try to do the review of the two next webinar (next couple of Saturdays)

This is a sculpt I did during the FormaCD event in Paris this Saturday. This event has been dedicated to the 3D illusion, with a drawing presentation, then Maya modeling, ZBrush sculpting and at the end, some Blender presentation.

It’s a speed sculpting, then sorry for the quality!

(Click to enlarge)

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

For the french people, I started a ZBrush workshop this last week and through internet, with a sharing screen software. I won’t give more details here as it is for the french speaking people.

Perhaps I will do one in english one day!