Stepping in to Zbrush - plz hold my hand - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 20-02-2011 , 08:46 PM

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Nightcrawler X-Men - Stepping in to Zbrush - plz hold my hand

Well its been a long time coming but my copy of Z brush hit the floor at my house yesterday - its time to start to learn it. Every other time I have tried has been with trails, and must say I did not get on with it. But its here to stay and a must to learn these days so here I go. Also after spending £480 I don`t really have my GF will kill me if I don`t start making some really cool models. All Mayaniac fault - his monitor battle with me opened my eyes to how much can be done so quickly with it.

Just watched all the training at Zclassroom under the getting started, just to find a free dvd with all the videos within the box (10 year collectors edition for ya). Thats what you get for watching videos before opening the program.

Going to place any work I do here in this thread as I am going to take this slowly.

But not of to a great start the graphics seem to be lagging, and when creating some ref images (plane 3d with textures on when rotating the front one moves (not the plain the texture) is there any settings within Zbrush for textures.

Also just so I know what should I set my memory to if I have 10 gigs of ram.

Last edited by tweetytunes; 24-02-2011 at 01:17 AM.

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# 2 20-02-2011 , 10:11 PM

Head of 3d Admedia
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hey man good luck with that i purchased zbrush 2.5 years ago and my oh my that thing gave me stress i hope you have a tablet working in z with a mouse can be daunting

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# 3 20-02-2011 , 10:58 PM

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Yer I have a crappy "trust" one - pen not the greatest but its massive. Saving up for a new one - more for photoshop than zbrush to be honest but a nice new wacom will not hurt to use in Z aswell.

Updated my drivers to a set of custom ones and its working a little better (texture is sorted) - find it very odd there is no graphic settings though. Really hating the lack of real zoom in and out control - the whole hold this button for one second press this mouse button then release that button crap is poor, but got a basic human mapped out in Zspheres but think I`ll stick to making base messes in maya as this is messy

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# 4 20-02-2011 , 11:09 PM

The thin red line
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Hi tweetytunes
Use the scale button (looks like a magnifying glass on a ball) on the right hand side it does not realy scale the model but zooms in and out, as far as I know zbrush does not use the grapthics card but the main cpu.......dave

Avatar Challenge Winner 2010

Last edited by daverave; 20-02-2011 at 11:20 PM.

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# 5 21-02-2011 , 08:31 AM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
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The only advice I can give you is to buy this book, it helped me a lot, trust me:
https://www.amazon.com/ZBrush-Charact...5258924&sr=8-1

My website;
https://www.eyellem.com

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/martin-van-stein/42/a81/b82

Yoda post;
https://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...highlight=yoda

Indiana Jones Post;
https://srv01.simply3dworld.com/showt...threadid=29188

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# 6 21-02-2011 , 11:18 AM

As Zbrushiac sounds stupid!
Join Date: Nov 2007

Location: Derby

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It's about damn time! user added image

I like the navigation controls myself, especially when using a tablet. You control everything with the 'alt' key. It takes time to get used to it, but I find it faster than most setups.

And yeah, Zbrush doesn't use the graphics card, but the CPU instead. Plus it will only go up to 4GB of Ram, it's a pain, as I have 8GB. But I don't have many lagging issues with it though. It seems to handle it's polys well. I've had about 24M in one subtool. It still worked well.

Anyway, good luck. Will be cool to see what you come up with.

www.stevenegan-cgi.com

"Your weapons are no match for ours! People of Mars, surrender!"
"Um, this isn't Mars. This is Earth."
"Earth? Earth-with-nuclear-weapons Earth?"
"Yes."
[long pause] "Friend!!"

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# 7 24-02-2011 , 01:27 AM

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Well found the perfect project to start my Z-Brush skills learning - Nightcrawler head and upper chest bust.

Perfecto`s thread about his Patrick Stewart project started a X-Men model poster idea and I have always wanted to model this guy. If the poster thing ever happens who knows, but having a project set for Zbrush is better than just messing around with it.Going for the movie version so hoping to get it looking like Alan Cumming with all those funky patterns on his body - think zbrush = perfection

user added image

Going to get the challenge finished off, and this will be my first Zbrush project - so don`t expect the speed I normally work at. But this should be fun - although google not doing the business for ref photos for Alan Cumming - Xmen 2 DVD it is then.

Last edited by tweetytunes; 24-02-2011 at 01:35 AM.

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# 8 24-02-2011 , 04:05 AM

Events Team at Wargaming.net
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hey man good luck, im stoked to see what you can do

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# 9 24-02-2011 , 08:13 AM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
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Tweety

ahh you dont need your hand holding. Zbrush central Pixologic.com have plenty of answers and videos to choose from. they also recently released a get started in Zbrush 4 pdf for free so go and dl it mate and get stuck in

if you can get your hands on a copy of the new character modelling dvd released by G***** too its worth it, its probably one of the best zb dvds out there now.

J

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# 10 24-02-2011 , 09:34 AM

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Yer I have that PDF - its quite cool to learn the tools and where everything is. I also got all the videos of the site on a dvd (zclassroom) with my copy as it was a 10 year version.

My problem at the mo is Z-Spheres - all the training I have found starts with them when goes to Maya to currect the topology - pointless just make the base mesh in Maya - so thats what I`m going to do. But which DVD are you on about as I don`t see any new ones over there.

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# 11 24-02-2011 , 09:53 AM

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sorry my bad it wasnt there, it was https://eat3d.com/zbrush4_intro

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# 12 24-02-2011 , 10:19 AM

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no problem - I like eat3d alot more than G***** any way

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# 13 24-02-2011 , 10:26 AM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
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Yeah definately!!

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# 14 24-02-2011 , 10:45 AM

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Wow tweety....getting into the depths now eh?? good to see you have a go at this man...great character too...one of the better X-men. I agree with Jay...you dont need to holding hands...you have the skills mate...just practice...good luck with the GF though LOL...ohhh you better perform bahaha will be watching you for sure man...good luck.

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 15 24-02-2011 , 12:25 PM

As Zbrushiac sounds stupid!
Join Date: Nov 2007

Location: Derby

Posts: 1,241

My problem at the mo is Z-Spheres - all the training I have found starts with them when goes to Maya to currect the topology - pointless just make the base mesh in Maya - so thats what I`m going to do. But which DVD are you on about as I don`t see any new ones over there.

Originally Posted by tweetytunes

I don't know what training you've been watching, but the whole point of ZSpheres is that you dont have to waste time in Maya blocking out a basemesh, you can rough out a character from ZSpheres in a tenth of the time... then you can retopo in ZBrush when you're ready. You can then bake off you're normal/disp maps, You can create your textures in Zbrush, and you can even use AppLink to jump your model over to PS to add some texture detail, then jump back.... seamless texturing! And you can use GoZ to make any mesh corrections you want.

Of course that's just one workflow... and you can use Maya to make a basemesh if you prefer, and sometimes it works better that way, especially if you have a lot of harsurface objects in your character's design.

I think ZBrush really comes into it's own with the conceptual side of the process. It's great for exploring a concept, weather it's already formed in 2D and you're just fleshing it out, or if you're designing from scratch... there's nothing faster... and the best thing is, once you've got the concept spot on and you're happy with it.... you've already got your 3D model.... just retopo, bake some disp maps, do some texturing... done.

Anyway.... have fun with Nightcrawler, looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

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Nightcrawler X-Men - Stepping in to Zbrush - plz hold my hand

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