| ZBrush Basic Modeling: Part Two A compliment to Pixologic's basic modeling tutorial found on the Pixologic web-page By Upham WARNING GRAPHICS HEAVY!
You'll see how to go from this -> |
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| 2. Well let's get creative! To start off with you still need to have the creature in Edit Mode. It should not be locked to the canvas layer. If it is, then clear the layer (CTRL+ N), and then redraw it, and straight away put it into Edit Mode by pressing T on the keyboard. |
The floating panel should look like the picture above. |
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| 3. Firstly unroll the DEFORMATIONS sub palette. This is found in the Tools palette (the same palette where the sphere and other tools are kept). and play with all those little sliders.
Here I have played with the SQUEEZE slider confined to the X direction (sideways direction) |
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| 4. Then I added a little bit of gravity to make it a little bit more pear shaped.
You can play around with the different sliders all you like. Now is the time to experiment! |
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| Now we will paint on the object! To do this we need is to set the base color.
5. In the color palette change the color from white to green. You?ll see the whole model turn green. We want to apply paint like a paintbrush. Change the color back to white and the whole model turns white. |
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The thing we DO-NOT-DO is select the paintbrush tool from the tool palette!!
Do not select anything from the Tool palette in this exercise (until step 19). |
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6. Open the color palette and click the FILL OBJECT button. You will not notice any change in the model. But what has happened is that the model has had a white base color applied all over it. | |
| 7. Choose a blue color and start to draw on the model. OPPS! We are getting raised portions where we draw! We have to turn off - ZADD. | ||
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| 8. So with ZADD turned off we paint over the surface to apply a flat color. To rotate the model so we can paint the back we move the cursor off the model and click-and-drag on the black area to spin the model around. (Extra tip! Hold the SHIFT button down so the model snap-rotates 45 degrees at a time)
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| 9. Select a pale yellow color and continue to paint the rest of the model. Then paint some black into the ears. | ||
| 10. Notice that the paint looks a bit pixilated? The resolution of the paint depends on the resolution of the mesh. We can increase the resolution of the mesh by going back to the TOOLS > MODIFIERS > DEFORMATION sub-panel and clicking the DIVIDE button. This doubles the mesh resolution (and also the memory usage). Also I have to add here, that it would be better to start off with a dense mesh before you made the model. Don?t worry about that at this stage though.
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| Onto Materials! 11. Open the Materials palette. Apply different materials to your model. Now is the time to experiment! Try as many as you can and see the effect each material has on the object. The thing to remember is that the color is still applied to the object. You are just changing the material the object is made from, i.e. - marble, steel, jelly, chrome, etc. The color is comparative to the type of material it is on.
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| 12. Here I have chosen the basic material (not the fast shader!) and unrolled the modifiers and applied a bit of NOISE and a bit of color bump. I have turned the SpecularCurve all the way up (specular = the light ?hotspot? or the whitest area where the light bounces off the object) |  |
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| 13. Let?s say we wanted part of the mesh to be a different material. Lets say the eyes to be a bit glassier, we can paint different materials on them while still in edit mode.
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| 10. To paint only the new material Select the M (for Material) on the floating panel and select a new material. I have chosen the Gel Shader B. You will see the whole model change to this material. We want to paint this new material around the eyes, so we brush the cursor around the eye area. We can not see any change until we change back to our first material (as shown above). We see that the material has been applied where we wanted it, but there is far too much! | ||
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| 11. So with our original material selected we paint around the eyes to paint back the original material. I decrease the brush size and zoom into the picture by pressing the ?+? (plus key) and maybe move my picture around by holding down the SPACE key on the keyboard and click-and-drag to move the picture so I can clearly see the eyes up close. Now I carefully paint the material around the eyes, trying not to paint on top of the eyeball. | ||
| 12. Here I have changed from M (material paint) to RGB (red-green-blue = color paint) and painted some more white color around the eyes - very carefully! |  |
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| 13. To zoom out, I press ?-? (negative key) or to get back to the original size I press ?0? (zero). | ||
 14. Masking! To apply a mask hold down the CTRL key and paint on an area to want to apply the mask too and you will see the area turn dark. (You have to be in Edit-Draw mode, which you should still be!) In the example above I have painted on the ears on the model on the left. Then I go to the TOOLS> MODIFIERS> SELECTION sub-panel and click the ?INV? button (inverse). The mask is now inverted, so now the head is in shadow and the ears are lightened. This means anything we do to our model will only be applied to the unmasked areas – the ears. |
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 14. In the TOOLS > MODIFIERS > DEFORMATION sub-panel I have increased the INFLATE a little bit to ?fatten? the ears a bit, (left), and then I have applied a bit of noise (right) to crinkle the ears a little bit. |
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| 15. When you have finished, go back to the TOOLS > MODIFIERS > SELECTION sub-panel, and click on the CLEAR button. This clears the mask off the model.
To find out more about masking please read the Masking tutorial found at the Pixologic site. |
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| 16. Lighting. To see the full effects of the lighting turn down the Global Ambient down to zero, then move the lighting direction box around to see the effect of the light on your model |  |
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 17. You can add colored lights by choosing the color from the color palette and then double clicking in the color check-box just below the light selection box in the Lighting palette. You can not see effects of the colored lights until you change to a BEST RENDER mode found in the RENDER palette. |
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 18. In my lighting setup, I have four lights. Three are colored lights, a blue & pink to the side and below, and a yellow one above. The main white one is brighter than the others and this is set into a position where I can see the light bouncing off the bumps in the skin. |
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18. Now comes the bit everyone new to ZBrush struggles with when first starting. The deselecting of the model. First we position the head into the position that it will remain for the rest of the picture and place a marker by pressing the letter ?M?. This has placed a marker that remembers the tools position size and rotation. Now if you select the FIBER BRUSH from the tools palette, you can now no longer modify the models head. It has become part of the canvas. If you really need to modify the head position again you can clear the layer (CTRL+N), and then double click the marker that is still in your document window, (hidden until you move the mouse over it)
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| 20. At the ZBrush Central you will find a tutorial called Fun With The Fiber Brush. It is through this that I applied the fur look. Here is a super-quick steps I took to create the fur above. (this is for the more advanced user). Select the Fiberbrush Tool. Density = 50%. Grooming = 100% Thickness=1. Flat material- no1. Picker = continuous. Set the depth to low. Do a Best-render and then bake the layer. Start fiber-brushing around the outside and push the fiber tool outwards. Set the depth even lower and the fiber-density to 20% and ?flick? the yellow lightly up, into the blue fur. | ||
 21. Next I use the blur tool to fix any mistakes I made. Usually blurring the seam between the two materials. |
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| 22. I apply a little bit more fiber-brushing to the face, and use the highlighter tool on the nose and I'm pretty much finished with the picture.
Click to see big version. |
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 EXERCISE 06 |
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to THIS! -> 
