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ZBrush Tutorial Modeling of the Dinosaur 1/2 Mon Sep 27, 2010 8:17 am
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by Damir G. Martin, Croatia Web: www.dinomonsters.com
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When working inside ZBrush, everytime I start modeling something from Z-sphere. It is one of ZBrush’s cool features that enables fast and intuitive modeling of low poly objects. Also what I like with this tool is, you can constantly check the outcome of your ZSphere form on how it looks when turned into mesh by pressing “A” key on your keyboard.
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Once I establish the basic form and proportions of the model, I turn it into 3D. From that point on, I start adding details to the mesh by subdividing low poly to few steps usually, in the beginning it goes from 3 to 4 steps, and as the model becomes more and more detailed I add steps until I finish somewhere with 6-7 steps altogether.
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After getting right proportions and roughly determining how do I want my dinosaur to look and how do I want my texture and scales. I go for higher subdivision steps. This is the phase where patience comes into account. Also when doing intricate details of dinosaur or reptile like skin, you can fall into trap of forgetting how does the bigger picture look and you can end up with uneven surfaces.
I had that problem with Carnotaurus, in other words some parts of my mesh look more finished then others and that is not the best way of doing things. Your mesh has to be treated with the same level of attention from the tip of the toe to the end of the tail. I didn’t solve this problem with my Carnotaurus but I learned great deal of things so next model should be bit better and so on. It is important to be critical all the time because there’s always some room for improvement.
There is no way of doing everything right in the first time. Because in that case, you would be modeling one dinosaur for months and I don’t know how exciting would your portfolio be looking with one or two images, although in more cases I prefer quality over quantity.
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When working inside ZBrush, everytime I start modeling something from Z-sphere. It is one of ZBrush’s cool features that enables fast and intuitive modeling of low poly objects. Also what I like with this tool is, you can constantly check the outcome of your ZSphere form on how it looks when turned into mesh by pressing “A” key on your keyboard.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Once I establish the basic form and proportions of the model, I turn it into 3D. From that point on, I start adding details to the mesh by subdividing low poly to few steps usually, in the beginning it goes from 3 to 4 steps, and as the model becomes more and more detailed I add steps until I finish somewhere with 6-7 steps altogether.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
After getting right proportions and roughly determining how do I want my dinosaur to look and how do I want my texture and scales. I go for higher subdivision steps. This is the phase where patience comes into account. Also when doing intricate details of dinosaur or reptile like skin, you can fall into trap of forgetting how does the bigger picture look and you can end up with uneven surfaces.
I had that problem with Carnotaurus, in other words some parts of my mesh look more finished then others and that is not the best way of doing things. Your mesh has to be treated with the same level of attention from the tip of the toe to the end of the tail. I didn’t solve this problem with my Carnotaurus but I learned great deal of things so next model should be bit better and so on. It is important to be critical all the time because there’s always some room for improvement.
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When I am finished with modeling and adding details to my model I usually start exporting displacement and normal maps. Also, I am using displacement map to create diffuse, color map of the dinosaur. But that part is done in Photoshop.
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To create displacement map you have to do following things:
You need to lower the resolution of the mesh to the lowest subdivision step you will be using in your 3D animation software Max/Maya etc.
For instance, you might not be satisfied with the lowest resolution, since you are losing lot of information regarding scales and the final outcome is just not good enough. So, you might want to use second or even third step. In that case, you must delete lower steps, so that the step you would be using is the lowest one in order to be able to perform extraction of the displacement map.
When you have done this, you need to press the cage button in the geometry dialog. If you have done everything right, your mesh would turn into the spiky looking thing. This is good. Now, all you have to do is to go in the displacement dialog and press “create displacement” and depending on how big your texture is and how fast your computer is, either you will have displacement map or your PC would crash. If you want Normal Map, you can just go to the Normal map dialog and press “Create Normal Map” and if you did everything as explained, it should work fine.
Note: The “texturing” method I used in my image “Carnotaurus Saestri” is completely different.
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That’s it. I hope you have gained some knowledge on how to model dinosaur inside ZBrush by read all these steps. In the next pages you will have insight of my approach in creating an illustrative image using photography, compositing and other trickery inside Photoshop to achieve good looking imagery.
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To create displacement map you have to do following things:
You need to lower the resolution of the mesh to the lowest subdivision step you will be using in your 3D animation software Max/Maya etc.
For instance, you might not be satisfied with the lowest resolution, since you are losing lot of information regarding scales and the final outcome is just not good enough. So, you might want to use second or even third step. In that case, you must delete lower steps, so that the step you would be using is the lowest one in order to be able to perform extraction of the displacement map.
google_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad); |
Note: The “texturing” method I used in my image “Carnotaurus Saestri” is completely different.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
That’s it. I hope you have gained some knowledge on how to model dinosaur inside ZBrush by read all these steps. In the next pages you will have insight of my approach in creating an illustrative image using photography, compositing and other trickery inside Photoshop to achieve good looking imagery.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
