IntroductionIntroduction| 00:04 | Hi! I am Ryan Kittleson and I'd like to
welcome you to Digital Creature Creation.
| | 00:09 | In this course, I will show you how to
use ZBrush, Maya, and Photoshop together
| | 00:13 | to create a feature film quality creature.
| | 00:17 | First, I am going to discuss how
to design the creature using basic
| | 00:20 | brainstorming and drawing techniques.
| | 00:22 | Then, I will show you how to start
sculpting and painting the creature with
| | 00:26 | ZSpheres and DynaMesh in ZBrush.
| | 00:28 | After that, I will cover how to model
certain parts in Maya and how to easily
| | 00:33 | transfer models between the two programs.
| | 00:36 | Finally, I will teach you how to use
Photoshop to enhance texture maps and
| | 00:40 | polish the final renders
that we'll make in Maya.
| | 00:43 | In my years of making creatures for
film and games, I found many ways of
| | 00:47 | streamlining my techniques to make
them straightforward and easy to follow.
| | 00:51 | I hope you are as
excited to get started as I am.
| | 00:54 | So let's get to it with Digital
Creature Creation in ZBrush, Photoshop, and Maya.
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| What you should know before watching this course| 00:00 | Digital Creature Creation is an
intermediate to advanced course.
| | 00:04 | Therefore, it can probably be
helpful to watch a few lynda.com courses
| | 00:08 | beforehand, such as ZBrush 4 Essential
Training, Modeling a Character in Maya
| | 00:14 | 2011, Maya 2011 Essential Training,
and Photoshop CS5 Essential Training.
| | 00:19 | It can also be helpful if you have basic
artistic skills and basic 3D modeling skills.
| | 00:24 | As you go through this course, if you
run into trouble, feel free to search the
| | 00:28 | lynda.com Library for any videos that
might help out on the finer points of the
| | 00:32 | programs we're using.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library, you have
| | 00:05 | access to the Exercise Files
used throughout this title.
| | 00:09 | The Exercise Files are in the Exercise
Files folder which I have placed on the desktop.
| | 00:14 | You can store it wherever you like.
| | 00:15 | There are files for most movies.
| | 00:18 | They reside in subfolders
named according to the chapters.
| | 00:22 | It is not necessary for you to use these files.
| | 00:25 | You can use files of your own in place of them.
| | 00:28 | If you are a monthly or annual
subscriber to lynda.com, you don't have access to
| | 00:32 | the Exercise Files, but you can
follow along with your own work.
| | 00:36 | One note for opening Maya files:
| | 00:38 | the Exercise Files are
saved in Maya version 2012.
| | 00:43 | If you're using an earlier version of
Maya, you can still open the files by
| | 00:47 | going to File > Open Scene with the
Option Box checked, and make sure you check
| | 00:53 | Ignore Version, then you can open like usual.
| | 00:57 | So let's get started with
Digital Creature Creation.
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1. Preparing Your WorkspaceInstalling custom brushes| 00:01 | ZBrush allows you to customize many of its
features to fit the way that you like to work.
| | 00:05 | Over the years, I've used that
customizability to create a few special brushes
| | 00:10 | that have really sped up my workflow.
| | 00:13 | I'm including these brushes as part of
this course to help you get some of the
| | 00:17 | same results that I will be showing you.
| | 00:19 | First of all, if ZBrush is open,
go ahead and close it down.
| | 00:24 | Then, you'll want to find
your ZBrush program files.
| | 00:27 | On a Mac, you'll navigate to your
Applications folder, and then open up the ZBrush folder.
| | 00:32 | On a PC, you will go to the Program
Files (x86), and then open up the Pixologic
| | 00:39 | folder, ZBrush 4R2, ZStartup,
and BrushPresets folder.
| | 00:44 |
| | 00:47 | The customer brushes are located in the
Ch_01, Exercise Files, folder 01_01, and
| | 00:52 | you will just want to select all of
these and copy them, and then paste them
| | 00:57 | over in the BrushPresets folder.
| | 01:00 | Now, you can restart ZBrush.
| | 01:03 | And just to have a model to work on,
let's open up the default DynaWax.
| | 01:08 | Double-click on that and let's open
up the Brush Palette by clicking on the
| | 01:12 | standard brush over here.
| | 01:13 | So you can see there is these last
three brushes here which are the custom
| | 01:17 | brushes that we just installed.
| | 01:18 | So we've got the crease brush, the
customclay brush and the shorthair brush.
| | 01:23 | Let's try them out really quick.
| | 01:25 | Go ahead and click on crease
and let's just see how this works.
| | 01:28 | Okay, so you can see that the brush just
creates a nice crease on the surface of the model.
| | 01:35 | To rotate around as a quick reminder,
you can just click-and-drag on any
| | 01:38 | open part of the canvas.
| | 01:41 | Let's subdivide this surface a few
times so that we get a smoother result.
| | 01:44 | I am going to hit Ctrl+D,
and just do that three times.
| | 01:48 | Now, let's zoom in here by clicking-and
-dragging on the scale, and let's try
| | 01:55 | that brush one more time.
| | 01:56 | There you get a nice very smooth result.
| | 01:59 | Let's hit B again to open up the Brush
Palette and try the customclay brush.
| | 02:03 | There's nothing too fancy about this brush.
| | 02:05 | It basically just builds up the surface,
but in a way that I've customized a
| | 02:10 | little bit to just make
things a little smoother.
| | 02:12 | This brush is based on the clay
build-up brush that comes with ZBrush.
| | 02:16 | I will show you how you can customize
this brush just in case you don't want to
| | 02:20 | install it separately.
| | 02:21 | Go ahead and hit B to open up your
Brush Palette, and click ClayBuildup.
| | 02:25 | Now this brush is kind of chunky,
kind of rough, kind of blocky.
| | 02:32 | So the way I've customized it is I
will go here and turn off the Alpha, and I
| | 02:37 | will also go up to Focal Shift,
and just slide this to the center.
| | 02:41 | Then one last adjustment I made was by
going to the Brush menu, going down to
| | 02:46 | Auto Masking and turning on BackFaceMask.
| | 02:50 | This makes it so that if you're
sculpting on a very thin object, the sculpting
| | 02:54 | won't pass through from the
front to the back of the object.
| | 02:57 | So now you can see you get some
nice smooth sculpting with this brush.
| | 03:01 | If you want to save a brush with any
customizations that you've made, go up to
| | 03:05 | the Brush menu and click Save As.
| | 03:08 | You can just give it any name you want,
and save it into the Brush Presets where
| | 03:12 | we save the other brushes.
| | 03:14 | And one last brush to check out,
hit B, and select the short hairbrush.
| | 03:19 | I am just going to go around
to clean part of the model here.
| | 03:22 | Let's shrink the size of the brush a little bit.
| | 03:27 | This brush is good for making
short hair like stubble or eyebrows.
| | 03:31 | We're not going to be using it in this course,
but I'm giving it away as a nice little bonus.
| | 03:37 | To download these brushes, just go to the
free Exercise Files folder on lynda.com.
| | 03:42 | These custom brushes are not necessary
for creating great work in ZBrush, but
| | 03:47 | they do help me work
faster, and more efficiently.
| | 03:50 | Feel free to modify them in any
way that helps you work better.
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| Preparing GoZ| 00:01 | GoZ is a feature in ZBrush that allows
you to quickly send models to Maya and
| | 00:05 | then back into ZBrush.
| | 00:07 | In just one button click, it does
the same thing as manually exporting
| | 00:10 | from ZBrush and importing into Maya or
exporting from Maya and importing back to ZBrush.
| | 00:14 | GoZ is a fairly new feature that
interfaces with other complex programs, as
| | 00:20 | such, there are times when
it doesn't work quite right.
| | 00:23 | If that happens to you, just know that
you can get the same results by manually
| | 00:27 | exporting and importing
OBJ files between programs.
| | 00:31 | GoZ is a part of the
standard ZBrush installation.
| | 00:34 | However, it is not automatically
set up when ZBrush is installed.
| | 00:37 | If you've never used it before, you'll
have to set it up in order to use it.
| | 00:41 | Let's go ahead and do that now.
| | 00:42 | I am going to open up the dog
model that comes with ZBrush.
| | 00:45 | So double-click in
DemoProjects and double-click the DemoDog.
| | 00:50 | Now, over in the Tool Palette,
let's click the GoZ button.
| | 00:53 | So we get this little pop up that
tells us some important things about GoZ.
| | 00:57 | Basically, you want to make sure that
all of your sub tools are named with
| | 01:01 | unique names before you use GoZ.
| | 01:04 | So let's click Continue.
| | 01:05 | It's going to search through my
computer for any 3D applications that it knows
| | 01:10 | how to interface with, like
CINEMA 4D, like 3D Studio Max and Maya.
| | 01:16 | So there is no CINEMA 4D,
we'll click Not installed!
| | 01:18 | And it found 3D Studio Max but
we're not using that in this course.
| | 01:22 | So well we'll go ahead and install it
anyway, and go ahead and click Yes if it
| | 01:28 | asks for permission to
install anything on your computer.
| | 01:31 | We'll go ahead and install with Maya as
well, and click Yes, and we don't have
| | 01:36 | Modo, so we'll click Not installed!
| | 01:39 | And go ahead and pick your version of
Photoshop, we'll go ahead and go with 64
| | 01:42 | Bit CS5.1 and click Install, and click Yes.
| | 01:49 | It found three different programs
that GoZ knows how to interface with;
| | 01:52 | 3D Studio Max, Maya, and Photoshop.
| | 01:55 | We want to work between Maya and
ZBrush, so we're going to click Maya here.
| | 01:59 | So GoZ is preparing the file for transfer
to Maya right now and it's loading Maya.
| | 02:05 | Okay, so now that we're in Maya, it's
telling us that at anytime we can send the
| | 02:11 | mesh back to ZBrush by clicking
the GoZ button on the GoZBrush shelf.
| | 02:16 | So you get your standard shelf up here,
Maya uses all these standard buttons.
| | 02:20 | At the very it created a tab called GoZBrush.
| | 02:23 | Inside there is a single button called GoZ.
| | 02:25 | So that's the button that we're going
to click to send this back to GoZBrush.
| | 02:27 | We get the standard Maya pop-up here
that's asking us if we want to learn
| | 02:33 | anything, I will just close that out.
| | 02:34 | I am going to maximize
Maya, and hit F to zoom in.
| | 02:39 | So we've got the dog here, I am going
to hit 5 on the keyboard to show us the
| | 02:42 | Shaded Mode and it's the exact
same thing that we had in ZBrush.
| | 02:46 | You can make any modifications to the
model here, for example I am going to just
| | 02:49 | change the shape of it a little bit.
| | 02:50 | I am just going to create a soft
selection and just make a drastic change to the
| | 02:59 | overall shape just to demonstrate something.
| | 03:01 | So you could pull it, let's pull it up
like this, make it look like it's scared.
| | 03:06 | You could insert edge loops, you could layout
UVs, make any changes you want to the model.
| | 03:10 | When you're done with it, you just
click GoZ to go back, and you see the
| | 03:15 | adjustment that we made in Maya
is automatically applied in ZBrush.
| | 03:19 | There's a few other buttons associated with GoZ.
| | 03:22 | You can send all sub tools at
once by clicking the All button.
| | 03:25 | So if you have multiple sub tools, just
click All, and it will send all of them.
| | 03:29 | If you just click GoZ, it's only
going to send the active sub tool.
| | 03:34 | If you want to use GoZ with different
programs other than Maya, for example 3ds
| | 03:39 | Max or Photoshop, click the R button.
| | 03:42 | Then you can pick which button
you want to be associated with GoZ.
| | 03:45 | So if I change it to 3D Studio Max, and
then I click GoZ, it's going to send the
| | 03:50 | model to Max rather than Maya.
| | 03:52 | Let's go ahead and switch that back to Maya.
| | 03:54 | This technology that bridges
ZBrush with Maya can be buggy sometimes.
| | 03:59 | If you make changes that are too
drastic in Maya, it may cause the Z tool to be
| | 04:03 | deformed when brought back to ZBrush.
| | 04:06 | Also, GoZ doesn't like sub tools
that have names that start with numbers.
| | 04:11 | So I am going to go into the SubTool
Palette here and just change the name of
| | 04:16 | the sub-tool and I am
going to click Rename here.
| | 04:18 | I am going to change it to let's say 1dog.
| | 04:23 | It works fine here in ZBrush.
| | 04:24 | However, any names that begin with
numbers are going to have problems in Maya.
| | 04:29 | Don't use any special character or
punctuation, always start the name with a letter.
| | 04:35 | Also, avoid changing the names of sub-
tools or Maya objects while using GoZ,
| | 04:40 | because that can also confuse the software.
| | 04:42 | It could be said that GoZ is still
kind of an experimental technology.
| | 04:47 | So whenever I use it, I like to take it slow
and try not to hit it with too much at once.
| | 04:52 | Problems can arise from using it.
| | 04:54 | So I like to make sure that I did
everything right before I save over anything.
| | 04:58 | However, once you get a sense for what
it can do reliably, it becomes a valuable
| | 05:02 | tool for moving between
ZBrush and other programs.
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| Optimizing tablet settings| 00:00 | Ideally you should have a digitizing
tablet when sculpting and texturing in ZBrush.
| | 00:05 | It works a lot better than the mouse
because you have much more natural control
| | 00:09 | over stylus movements.
| | 00:11 | In order to get the most out of the
tablet, there's just one thing that should
| | 00:14 | be set up properly first.
| | 00:16 | By default a Wacom tablet is not set to use
the same proportions as the monitor screens.
| | 00:23 | This is especially apparent
if you're using dual monitors.
| | 00:26 | The result is that your stylus strokes
will be stretched or squashed and your
| | 00:30 | sculpting will be more difficult.
| | 00:33 | To change this, first you should
close any programs that use the tablet.
| | 00:37 | So I am going to close ZBrush.
| | 00:39 | So on our Windows machine
let's go to Control Panel.
| | 00:43 | On a Mac computer you
would go to System Preferences.
| | 00:47 | In Control Panel let's go to
Hardware and Sound, and let's scroll down to
| | 00:51 | Wacom Tablet Properties.
| | 00:55 | Make sure that you've used the pen at least
once in order to activate the Pen options.
| | 00:59 | So if this Grip Pen icon is not showing
up right here, just use the pen a little
| | 01:04 | bit and then it should open up.
| | 01:06 | So click on the Grip Pen and
then go to the Mapping tab.
| | 01:09 | Now you want to make sure that
Force Proportions is turned on.
| | 01:13 | If it's turned off, the
proportion of the tablet will not match the
| | 01:17 | proportion of the screen.
| | 01:20 | So I want to have it turned on.
| | 01:21 | Now you notice right here, the
proportion changes just a little bit for me.
| | 01:25 | On my screen there is not a big
difference between the monitor and the
| | 01:28 | Tablet proportions.
| | 01:30 | However, if I run a computer with dual
monitors, the difference could be drastic.
| | 01:34 | Either way, you'll have more natural
feedback from the tablet with Force
| | 01:38 | Proportions turned on.
| | 01:40 | Then you can just close to Wacom
Tablet Properties and restart ZBrush.
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2. Designing the CreatureBrainstorming| 00:00 | Let's leave the digital studio for the
next couple of movies and take a minute
| | 00:04 | to focus directly on the
concept of the creature.
| | 00:07 | Using traditional drawing materials can
help ideas flow without fancy software
| | 00:12 | and buttons to get in the way.
| | 00:14 | One thing that trips up a lot of
beginner concept artists is that they compare
| | 00:18 | their drawing skills to the slick
finished work of professional artists.
| | 00:23 | Finished concept art is usually very
highly detailed, beautifully rendered and
| | 00:27 | painstakingly crafted.
| | 00:30 | Beginner designers often feel like every
drawing they do has to live up to those
| | 00:34 | standards or they're just not
cut out to be a concept artist.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to let you in on one of
the biggest secrets in concept art.
| | 00:41 | Those slick paintings that look so
good are just the end result of a whole
| | 00:46 | process of sketching.
| | 00:47 | Before sitting down to create finished
art, a concept artist will go through
| | 00:51 | page after page of loose doodles that they
probably be embarrassed to show their mothers.
| | 00:57 | Some of the doodles I make are so
abstract that they don't even seem to be
| | 01:01 | relevant to the project.
| | 01:02 | It's just one way of loosening up your
mind and your hand so that when ideas
| | 01:06 | come you'll be ready to capture them.
| | 01:09 | The biggest mistake you can make is
to try to sit down and just do that one
| | 01:13 | finished painting or drawing.
| | 01:15 | When you never see the stacks of
sketches that built up to a finished drawing
| | 01:19 | you can get a distorted idea
of how the artist created it.
| | 01:23 | You may get discouraged that your
attempts at finished art either look awkward
| | 01:27 | or unrefined, and think that
you just don't have it in you.
| | 01:31 | The problem is not necessarily that
you're a bad artist but rather that you
| | 01:34 | didn't realize that a ton of rough
drawings must precede the finished work.
| | 01:40 | These rough drawings help you
explore different ideas and designs.
| | 01:44 | They help you read out clich degrees or bad ideas.
| | 01:47 | Loose or accidental scribbles can inspire new
ideas you never would've come up with otherwise.
| | 01:53 | I try to avoid laboring over a single
drawing and making it anatomically perfect
| | 01:58 | and beautifully rendered.
| | 01:59 | In your sketches try to loosen up
and do pages full of quick, gestural
| | 02:04 | shapes, then once you've got lots to
look at, take a step back and examine
| | 02:08 | what you've come up with.
| | 02:10 | Nobody else needs to see the work at this point.
| | 02:13 | You understand that the
squiggly line represents a backbone.
| | 02:16 | Keep the drawings so fast and
loose that only you understand them.
| | 02:20 | Don't worry about any details
of the creature at this point.
| | 02:23 | Just deal with the overall shapes.
| | 02:26 | Never fall in love with
your first idea or design.
| | 02:29 | Always work out variations and
different ways of looking at it.
| | 02:33 | Very rarely your first idea will be a
winner but if you don't do a whole bunch
| | 02:37 | of alternatives, you'll never
know what else you could have done.
| | 02:41 | You will never have the confidence of
saying this idea is the best compared to all the rest.
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| Refining a concept| 00:00 | The next step is to take your best idea
from all the doodles and get more specific.
| | 00:05 | We are not dealing with
skin texture or hairstyles yet.
| | 00:08 | It's still very basic.
| | 00:10 | At this phase you'll be arranging
the limbs and the other major shapes.
| | 00:14 | Now is the time to experiment with
various proportions making some parts
| | 00:17 | bigger and smaller, moving legs forward and
backward, playing with the various limb thicknesses.
| | 00:23 | It's still very loose and simple drawing here.
| | 00:26 | You'll be doing several pages of variations
of this round of the design process as well.
| | 00:31 | Out of all the brainstorming sketches
that I did, I like the ones that are going
| | 00:35 | in the direction of this four-legged
critter with its tail looped over its head.
| | 00:40 | Now that I have a very basic idea of
where I'm going, I need to start thinking
| | 00:44 | more specifically about it.
| | 00:46 | I need to understand the world
that it lives in and how it behaves.
| | 00:50 | If the creature is part of a story that
is already been written, you will need
| | 00:53 | to take into account the role
that the creature takes in the story.
| | 00:57 | For this course, it's more up to my imagination.
| | 01:00 | When you start sketching, ask
yourself questions about where and how
| | 01:04 | the creature lives.
| | 01:05 | Your answers will help in form the design.
| | 01:08 | What kind of habitat does the creature live in?
| | 01:11 | Does it chase prey or evade predators?
| | 01:14 | What does it eat and how does it catch it?
| | 01:16 | Imagining where your creature will actually
live, will add believability to your design.
| | 01:22 | For this course, I actually brought
several different concepts to this
| | 01:25 | moderately refined point.
| | 01:27 | I wanted to make the best creature that I
could so I made lots of types of creatures.
| | 01:32 | This gives me lots of options from
which to choose and when designing having a
| | 01:37 | variety to choose from is always better.
| | 01:40 | Whatever the case, you'll probably
work with writers, directors, and other
| | 01:44 | artists to refine a
design that works just right.
| | 01:48 | The design that we are doing in this
course was chosen because it features
| | 01:51 | several different anatomy types in one creature.
| | 01:54 | I want to show techniques for making
different kinds of scaly, leathery,
| | 01:58 | bony, and smooth skin.
| | 02:00 | I also want to show muscle and joint
anatomy along with common anatomical
| | 02:05 | features like eyes and teeth.
| | 02:07 | For those reasons, I
chose this Dewhopper design.
| | 02:11 | I imagine the Dewhopper to be carnivore
and a hunter, yet it's also small like
| | 02:15 | a squirrel so it needs to be able to run
and hide when larger predators are around.
| | 02:20 | I imagined a dry desert where water is scarce.
| | 02:23 | I imagine that it lures insects with a
drop of sticky liquid that it can excrete
| | 02:27 | at the tip of its tail.
| | 02:29 | Insects think that it is a drop
of dew and come up for a drink.
| | 02:33 | The creature can then
lunger the insects to capture it.
| | 02:36 | The best design for a particular project
isn't necessarily the one that looks the coolest.
| | 02:41 | You have to consider how it fits
into the production that it's a part of.
| | 02:45 | You don't want a minor character to have
a look that upstages the main characters.
| | 02:50 | As artists and sculptors, we often
want to give creatures huge muscles and
| | 02:54 | big fangs, but often the creatures placed
in a story calls for a more subtle approach.
| | 03:00 | The main thing to remember at this stage is
to give yourself lots of ideas to work with.
| | 03:05 | Don't get stuck on just one idea no
matter how much you feel it to be right.
| | 03:09 | A good designer is always coming up with
variations and alternatives to any design.
| | 03:14 | When you have a good set of ideas to
choose from, you'll be able to finally tell
| | 03:19 | which one works best for your character.
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| Gathering reference images| 00:00 | The basic anatomical structure of our
Dewhopper is kind of like a cross between
| | 00:04 | a lizard, a frog, and a rodent type animal.
| | 00:08 | Before I get into the details of the
design, I want to find reference images of
| | 00:12 | those kinds of animals.
| | 00:14 | Doing this, it will help me get the subtle
nuances of the anatomy in a believable way.
| | 00:18 | As much as you may know about animal
anatomy, there's always something new to be
| | 00:23 | learned by looking at the actual
animal rather than relying on memory.
| | 00:28 | I like to use Google Image
Search to find reference.
| | 00:31 | I am just going to go to
Google and click Images.
| | 00:33 | Just start finding and saving as many
pictures as you can that might relate to
| | 00:38 | your creature design.
| | 00:39 | So I am just going to search for lizard.
| | 00:41 | So right off the bat you can see that
there is some really interesting images,
| | 00:46 | this one might be good for the skin
texture or for the way that the anatomy
| | 00:50 | works in the joints and the fingers.
| | 00:52 | Something else I'd like to
do is search for large images.
| | 00:57 | This helps you find images that only
have really high definition, resolution so
| | 01:02 | you can see every detail.
| | 01:03 | A lot of lizards and amphibians have
limbs that are very tube like and undefined.
| | 01:10 | However, I want my creature to be a
little bit more anatomically detailed and
| | 01:13 | interesting, because of that I want to
find pictures that reveal muscle and bone
| | 01:17 | structure more than average.
| | 01:19 | So this limb right here is great for
this scaly skin texture but there might be
| | 01:24 | other images that are
better for muscle structure.
| | 01:27 | So let's just look through
here and see if we find any.
| | 01:33 | So with this one you can kind of make
out calf muscles and biceps and deltoids,
| | 01:38 | so images like this can be very useful when you
are sculpting the musculature of your creature.
| | 01:42 | I am including some images that were
very helpful to me as exercise files.
| | 01:47 | You can also check out video footage of
similar animals to get a sense of how they move.
| | 01:52 | YouTube is a great resource for this.
| | 01:54 | Even though we won't be animating the
creature in this course, video reference
| | 01:58 | is very valuable for helping us to
understand the anatomy that goes into the
| | 02:01 | various movements that
your creature can perform.
| | 02:05 | The importance of
reference cannot be understated.
| | 02:08 | This is another aspect to creature
design that you may not ever see when looking
| | 02:12 | at other people's designs.
| | 02:14 | It can be easy to think that the
professional concept artists just invent their
| | 02:18 | designs out of their imaginations.
| | 02:19 | The reality is that they spend a lot of
time studying nature and real animals in
| | 02:24 | order to create believable designs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Basic Sculpting in ZBrushStarting with ZSpheres| 00:00 | Now that we have a pretty solid idea of
where the design is headed it's time to
| | 00:05 | get even more specific about its anatomy.
| | 00:07 | This usually means doing detail
drawings or clay mockups, however, with
| | 00:12 | digital technology at our fingertips
we can not only get this phase done more
| | 00:16 | efficiently, we can also do things that just
aren't possible with traditional materials.
| | 00:22 | It's one thing to see a drawing
or a clay sculpture of a design.
| | 00:25 | But it's a whole other thing to get
a sense for how it can move and make
| | 00:29 | adjustments to the design without
having to redraw or re-sculpt it.
| | 00:33 | 3D software is going to
help us speed up this process.
| | 00:37 | In ZBrush, we can build a figure out of
ZSpheres and pose them in various ways.
| | 00:42 | This means that you can build the body
once and then position the limbs to test
| | 00:46 | out how they would move.
| | 00:48 | So let's create a ZSphere.
| | 00:49 | I am going to hit the Comma key to
make this little menu go away because it's
| | 00:53 | just in the way right now and let's
make a ZSphere by clicking Cylinder 3D
| | 00:57 | and click it one more time and we get
this little pop-up with some primitives
| | 01:01 | that we can choose from.
| | 01:02 | I am going to click ZSphere.
| | 01:04 | Now just click-and-drag in the canvas
to draw one out and go into Edit Mode.
| | 01:09 | So this one ZSphere doesn't look like
much, but it's going to be the start of
| | 01:13 | the structure of our creature, and we
can build new ZSpheres based off this one
| | 01:18 | by clicking-and-dragging on it.
| | 01:19 | So if we click-and-drag we get a new ZSphere
and we can continue to build the structure out.
| | 01:23 | I am just going to undo that because
we want to build this symmetrically.
| | 01:27 | So I am going to hit X to turn on Symmetry.
| | 01:29 | So now you see, everywhere you move
the mouse, you are getting one dot on one
| | 01:33 | side and a symmetrical one on the other.
| | 01:35 | So if we click-and-drag, you get two of them.
| | 01:38 | However, I don't want to build
two of them off to each side.
| | 01:42 | What I actually want to do for right
now is make one along the center line.
| | 01:46 | So if you move the mouse close to the center,
you notice that the two dots snap together.
| | 01:50 | So I can just click-and-drag I know that this
one is created exactly along the center line.
| | 01:55 | So let's look at this from a different angle.
| | 01:57 | I am going to click-and-drag out
on the canvas to rotate around.
| | 02:01 | Okay, let's load up the
Reference image of our Dewhopper.
| | 02:03 | So go up to the Texture menu and click
Image Plane, and then click Load Image.
| | 02:10 | I am just going to
navigate to our Exercise Files.
| | 02:14 | In Ch_03, 03_01 and we need to change
from Photoshop to JPEG because that's the
| | 02:21 | format of our image and let's open that.
| | 02:23 | I will show you a few tips on
using image planes in this video.
| | 02:28 | I won't use the image plane much in
the rest of this course because it can
| | 02:32 | create a lot of visual clutter.
| | 02:34 | However, feel free to load up one
whenever you think you could benefit from
| | 02:38 | comparing your model to a reference image.
| | 02:41 | So the ZSpheres that we've created are
going to be the core of the creature.
| | 02:45 | So we can move it so it's on top of
the reference by just clicking the Move
| | 02:49 | button and dragging and I want to position
that first ZSphere kind of over the hip area.
| | 02:55 | And now let's go into Move Mode up
here at the top and just click-and-drag on
| | 02:59 | this ZSphere and just move it
down, kind of to the shoulder area.
| | 03:02 | Now you know what's happening is these
ZSpheres are covering up our reference image.
| | 03:07 | So I want to make the ZSpheres a little bit
transparent so we can see both at the same time.
| | 03:12 | Go up to the Texture menu, go down to
Image Plane and click Reference Views.
| | 03:17 | Now you can change the model opacity;
| | 03:19 | I am just going to bring
it down to about halfway.
| | 03:22 | Now let's grow out some more ZSpheres to
give this creature some more structure.
| | 03:27 | Let's give him a head, so I am
just going to go into Draw Mode and
| | 03:30 | click-and-drag and rotate around, so we
can see the front of this shoulder ZSphere.
| | 03:34 | I am just going to click-and-drag to
make a new ZSphere for the head, and I will
| | 03:39 | just rotate back around and I want
to hold down Shift so I snapped an
| | 03:43 | orthographic view and just move this so
it fits on top of our Reference again.
| | 03:47 | If you go into Move Mode, you can just
grab the ZSphere and just move it out to
| | 03:51 | the kind of tip of the snout and
sometimes what happens is, other ZSpheres get
| | 03:56 | moved along, so you just have to
push them back to where they belong.
| | 04:00 | You can add new ZSpheres in between
existing ones by going to the Draw Mode and
| | 04:05 | just clicking anywhere on
the segment between ZSpheres.
| | 04:08 | So I want to make a new ZSphere that
kind of goes up to the horns on the top of
| | 04:11 | the head and also one that goes down to the jaw.
| | 04:13 | So I am just going to click right here.
| | 04:15 | If you want to delete ZSpheres, all you
have to do is hold down Alt and click on
| | 04:20 | one and it goes away.
| | 04:21 | But I am just going to hit Ctrl+Z to
undo that because I wanted that one there.
| | 04:25 | Now we can grow some new ZSpheres out of this.
| | 04:27 | Let's do one for the lower jaw.
| | 04:28 | I am just going to rotate around so I
can see the underside of this one and I
| | 04:33 | will just click-and-drag one
right out of the center line.
| | 04:36 | And let's move it back and hold down
Shift to snap it and let's make sure that
| | 04:42 | everything is positioned where it should be.
| | 04:45 | Go back into Move Mode and now I want to grab
this ZSphere and bring it out to the lower jaw.
| | 04:51 | You might just have to grab some of
these and move them around a little bit to
| | 04:54 | force them where you wanted to be.
| | 04:56 | It's never going to be really exact,
and now you might want to scale one, after
| | 05:00 | you create it, so just go into Scale
Mode, I am going to shrink this one down a
| | 05:03 | little bit, doesn't have to be exactly
positioned, just kind of roughly in place
| | 05:10 | and now let's make some for the horns.
| | 05:12 | So I want to go back to Draw Mode and
just make a new ZSphere there, drag it out
| | 05:17 | and go back into Move and
we will just move it up.
| | 05:21 | So what happens there's a lot of times
different ZSpheres get pulled around, so
| | 05:25 | you might have to struggle with a
little bit till you get everything correct.
| | 05:30 | Let's look at this from the front view.
| | 05:36 | From the front view we can see that we
might want to move these horns out to
| | 05:39 | the side a little bit.
| | 05:40 | So I am just going to click-and-drag in
the Move Mode and bring them out to the side.
| | 05:44 | Alright, good, so rotate, go back into
Draw Mode and I am going to hold down
| | 05:52 | Shift to snap it to the side.
| | 05:54 | Go ahead and continue creating and
positioning ZSpheres as needed to complete
| | 05:59 | the toes, and the limbs
and the tail of the figure.
| | 06:01 | It's just the same procedure
that we have been doing so far.
| | 06:04 | Clicking-and-dragging to create new
ZSpheres, moving them, sizing them or
| | 06:10 | creating new ZSpheres in between existing ones.
| | 06:12 | I am going to stop here and in the
next movie we will pick it up with
| | 06:15 | the ZSpheres finished.
| | 06:18 | ZSpheres are a great way to start on
the character model because it's fast way
| | 06:21 | to get a sense of the design in 3D.
| | 06:24 | Sometimes there are problems with the
design that you might not be able to
| | 06:26 | anticipate in a 2D drawing.
| | 06:28 | For example, sometimes a design
looks great on paper, but ZSpheres can
| | 06:33 | reveal that maybe the front legs would bang
into the hind legs in the course of walking.
| | 06:37 | By creating the limbs and structures in
3D, you can see if the design will work
| | 06:42 | in 3D as well as you hoped.
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| Posing the ZSpheres| 00:00 | Let's take the experimental abilities
of ZSpheres a step further, and test out
| | 00:05 | different poses that the Dewhopper could take.
| | 00:07 | By using the Rotate tool, we can
position the limbs without messing up with
| | 00:11 | distance between the joints.
| | 00:13 | We will also be posing the character
in a special pose that makes modeling
| | 00:16 | and rigging easier.
| | 00:17 | So let's open up the Exercise File.
| | 00:20 | Go up to File and Open, I am just
going to navigate to the Exercise Files >
| | 00:24 | Ch_03 > 03_02 > zspheres.ZPR and Open.
| | 00:30 | I am going to hit the Comma
key to make that sting go away.
| | 00:34 | So let's rotate around this
and see what it looks like.
| | 00:37 | As it is now the Dewhopper is
in a neutral standing posture.
| | 00:40 | Let's make sure that the design
still works when the creature is fully
| | 00:44 | extended in a jumping pose.
| | 00:46 | You can use the Move and Rotate tools,
not only on the ZSpheres but also on the
| | 00:50 | gray connections between them.
| | 00:52 | So let's go into Move Mode and just
click and drag on the space between ZSpheres.
| | 00:57 | So you see that it moves the joints around
while maintaining the space between them.
| | 01:02 | Go ahead and hit Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:05 | You could also do a similar thing with Rotate.
| | 01:08 | Feel free to experiment with the poses
as long as you like, you may find that
| | 01:13 | the design doesn't quite work in
certain poses like you would expect.
| | 01:17 | This might be an indication that the
overall design should be changed to
| | 01:20 | accommodate all required poses.
| | 01:22 | This is the perfect time to make those changes.
| | 01:25 | You don't want to get in to sculpting
details only to find out that you need to
| | 01:29 | make a drastic adjustment to the overall design.
| | 01:31 | For example, if the design of the
creature required it to be able to use its
| | 01:35 | hind legs to scratch behind its ears,
you could pose these ZSpheres and see if
| | 01:40 | his toes could reach his head.
| | 01:41 | Let's see if that works.
| | 01:42 | I am just going to use the Rotate tool
to drag the hind leg up and let's also
| | 01:47 | bring this leg segment forward and
let's move this one, so you can see the hind
| | 01:52 | leg would probably be able to reach the
head to scratch the ears, and then I am
| | 01:55 | just going to hit Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:57 | If the hind legs don't reach and we
need to scratch behind the ears, we
| | 02:02 | would need to make an adjustment to
the design either making the legs longer
| | 02:05 | or the torso shorter.
| | 02:07 | Now that we know that the limbs can
move as needed, let's position them in a
| | 02:11 | neutral pose for sculpting.
| | 02:13 | The creature's default standing
pose involves the legs being folded up.
| | 02:17 | That makes it difficult to sculpt in
tight places where the limbs are touching
| | 02:20 | each other, for example,
right here behind the knee.
| | 02:23 | Imagine the difficulty, you would have
sculpting the back of the knee and a pose
| | 02:27 | like this, it would be very hard for a
rigger to paint joint weights in this
| | 02:31 | area with the geometry all crunched together.
| | 02:34 | If we put the limbs at a half-extended
position, not only will it be easier to
| | 02:38 | sculpt, but it will be easier
for a rigger to put joints in it.
| | 02:42 | Then once we are done modeling, we can
pose the limbs back to the creature's
| | 02:45 | natural sitting posture.
| | 02:47 | So let's go ahead and do this.
| | 02:48 | I am going to look at the
creature from the top view.
| | 02:50 | So let's move into the center and rotate
around and so I have got my Rotate tool on.
| | 02:54 | That's good.
| | 02:54 | I just want to grab these limbs and
just kind of bend them out so that they are
| | 02:59 | kind of halfway extended, to make it a
lot easier to sculpt into this area right
| | 03:04 | here for example and let's
look at it from the back as well.
| | 03:07 | So I might want to bring this limb out a
little bit and even extend this one somewhat.
| | 03:16 | I want to adjust my view here, and I
might want to drag the front limbs out just
| | 03:22 | a little bit, so it could be
easier to sculpt up in the armpit area.
| | 03:26 | Working out any posing issues at this
stage will be a big benefit before you
| | 03:30 | invest a lot of time in modeling.
| | 03:32 | Also, getting the character into a good
pose for modeling and rigging will make
| | 03:36 | things a lot easier in later chapters.
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| Sculpting the basic forms| 00:00 | Now we get to have some real fun with sculpting.
| | 00:03 | Let's open up the Exercise File.
| | 00:05 | Go to File > Open and navigate to
your Exercise Files > Ch_03 > 03_03.
| | 00:14 | We are going to start out by taking
what is basically a 3D stick figure and
| | 00:18 | giving it some shape and silhouette.
| | 00:19 | I am also going to introduce
the brushes that I use most often.
| | 00:24 | The main thing to keep in mind at
this stage is to keep it rough and loose,
| | 00:28 | because you don't want to get locked
into fine details, when the basic anatomy
| | 00:32 | hasn't even been established yet.
| | 00:34 | At this early phase, I don't need to
see any details, just the big shapes.
| | 00:38 | Here are some reference images of
animals with similar anatomy to the Dewhopper.
| | 00:44 | One way to help see past the fine
details, is by shrinking down the image or
| | 00:49 | blurring it so that you can
focus on only the big shapes.
| | 00:53 | I like to work with dual monitors, so I
can put my reference in one monitor and
| | 00:57 | work in ZBrush in the other.
| | 00:58 | So I am just going to move this out of the way.
| | 01:02 | Now let's get the ZSphere structure turned
into polygons, so we can start sculpting.
| | 01:06 | Hit the A key to preview
what it looks like in polygons.
| | 01:10 | Now we need to lock in these
polygons so click Make PolyMesh 3D.
| | 01:14 | All right, now it's time to sculpt.
| | 01:18 | First I want to use the Move
Topological Brush, so I am going to hit B+M+T, and
| | 01:22 | there we are switched to Move Topological Brush.
| | 01:26 | I also want to sculpt symmetrically, so
make sure you hit X to turn on Symmetry Mode.
| | 01:31 | So now I just want to push things
around to, give this a more appealing shape.
| | 01:36 | I might want to look at my reference to
see what kind of shapes existing animals
| | 01:40 | have or I might want to -- just
experiment with different shapes to see what
| | 01:44 | looks more appealing.
| | 01:45 | So I am just going to push things around.
| | 01:51 | This is a really good time to
experiment, just try out different shapes.
| | 01:56 | Another brush I would like to use a
lot is Custom Clay, so that shortcut is
| | 02:00 | B+C+O, and with this one,
I can just build up forms.
| | 02:05 | I can just increase volume or
hold down Alt to subtract material.
| | 02:10 | It's a really good way to build on
muscle forms, or here you can build up a
| | 02:18 | quadriceps muscles for
example or the hamstrings.
| | 02:20 | It's a good place you can build up some
volume and just give some shapes to the
| | 02:24 | limbs to keep them from just looking
like boring tubes, you can really just give
| | 02:28 | them some nice silhouette and shape.
| | 02:33 | And again, it's more about experimenting
at this point, just seeing what looks good.
| | 02:36 | You might want to sculpt a
little bit more on the head area.
| | 02:39 | Now it's really low detail right
now, so I am going to hit Ctrl+D to
| | 02:44 | subdivide this once or twice.
| | 02:45 | Now you can come in and really define
what the head is going to look like.
| | 02:51 | So for example, I want there to be an eye
cavity, so I am just going to dig in for an eye.
| | 02:56 | I can also shrink my Brush Size here.
| | 03:01 | Another brush, I like to use a lot is Smooth.
| | 03:03 | To use this brush, you just hold down
Shift while any brush is active and you
| | 03:07 | will go into Smooth Mode.
| | 03:08 | So now if you don't like any
structure that you have made, you can just
| | 03:11 | smooth it right out.
| | 03:12 | If I go up to the tail and use
Smooth, you can see that it's kind of
| | 03:17 | shrinking the shape as well, so this
can be a useful way to just shrink the
| | 03:22 | overall size of something.
| | 03:25 | There maybe problems with the design in
3D that weren't apparent in the drawing
| | 03:29 | phase, be on the lookout for things that
may need to be altered from the concept
| | 03:33 | art, the temptation exists to jump
right into sculpting the details or to work
| | 03:38 | out the finer points of anatomy.
| | 03:40 | That would be a big mistake right now.
| | 03:43 | The one way I keep myself out of that
problem is to keep my subdivision levels low.
| | 03:48 | If the geometry is only dense
enough to show the big shapes.
| | 03:51 | That's all I'm going to be thinking about.
| | 03:53 | If you go and subdivide the model a lot
right from the beginning, you're going
| | 03:56 | to notice fine details and forget
about the more important overall shapes.
| | 04:01 | So I will just switch between these
different brushes, go back to Move maybe and
| | 04:06 | just see how different shapes could
work with the silhouette and the overall
| | 04:10 | structure of this character.
| | 04:12 | Asking myself questions like, are
these shapes appealing or do the different
| | 04:16 | shapes relate to one another?
| | 04:17 | Any of the shapes too big
and overpowering other shapes?
| | 04:21 | We just want to play around and
spent a lot of time just making sure that
| | 04:26 | everything is looking good at this
phase, and I will go back to the Custom
| | 04:30 | Clay Brush, B+C+O is the shortcut
for that and just experiment with more
| | 04:36 | musculature to see what kind of shapes
I can find that are appealing and the
| | 04:42 | shape of the limbs.
| | 04:43 | All right, this is pretty fun and I
could keep going on forever but you get the
| | 04:47 | idea, and it's not any
specific special technique.
| | 04:51 | It's just spending the time to make the
shapes look good, to not getting bogged
| | 04:58 | down in fine details.
| | 05:00 | This step of the sculpting process is
so crucial because it sets the stage
| | 05:04 | for all the details.
| | 05:05 | While the geometry is simple, it's
easy to block out and think in terms
| | 05:10 | of volumes and form.
| | 05:11 | It's easy to make big
sweeping changes and experiment with
| | 05:15 | different proportions.
| | 05:16 | Too many people rush through this, so
that they can get to the fine details like
| | 05:20 | scales and wrinkles.
| | 05:22 | If you do that and then it turns out
that you need to make a large-scale change,
| | 05:26 | you might end up ruining those fine details.
| | 05:29 | Better to get the overall shapes
looking good before moving on to fine details.
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| Using DynaMesh| 00:00 | ZSpheres are a great way to get
started sculpting on a mesh that roughly
| | 00:04 | resembles your final concept.
| | 00:06 | However, it does have a few shortcomings.
| | 00:08 | One of the main problems is that it
can be tedious to create lots of toes,
| | 00:12 | horns, and fingers and so on with ZSpheres.
| | 00:16 | Another problem is that when ZSpheres
are turned into polygons they end up
| | 00:20 | creating a high density where ZSpheres were
small and a low density where they were big.
| | 00:25 | Let me zoom in and try to explain.
| | 00:27 | I am going to hit Shift+F to turn on
the wire-frame and now let's zoom in.
| | 00:31 | So you can see that the polygons are
very dense down here on the fingers and
| | 00:37 | then they are much more spread out here.
| | 00:39 | This means that when you have a mesh
made from ZSpheres, you have to subdivide
| | 00:43 | it many times in order to get fine
detail out of some parts of the mesh.
| | 00:48 | DynaMesh is a way of evening out all of
the mesh so that it all has the same density.
| | 00:54 | This means that you can do things like
stretch out polygons to make fingers for
| | 00:58 | example and then let
DynaMesh clean up after you.
| | 01:01 | Let's see how it works.
| | 01:03 | So we have got the rough sculpt of our
Dewhopper here and in order to create
| | 01:07 | some of these shapes, I just grabbed
polygons and stretched them way out.
| | 01:11 | DynaMesh is going to even this out for us.
| | 01:14 | Let's open up the Geometry
Palette, now click DynaMesh.
| | 01:17 | Don't worry about this pop up, just click No.
| | 01:19 | So now you can see the topology over the
entire creature is the exact same density.
| | 01:26 | Now you can actually change
the resolution of DynaMesh.
| | 01:29 | I want to hit Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:32 | Let's see what happens if we set the
Resolution down to about 60, 56 looks good,
| | 01:38 | now hit DynaMesh again,
and go ahead and click No.
| | 01:42 | So it's a lot less dense,
which might be what you want.
| | 01:45 | Whatever let's see if it caused any problems.
| | 01:49 | So here in the front feet, the
resolution actually was not enough to pick up the
| | 01:53 | shape of those toes accurately.
| | 01:56 | What you want to try to do is set
the resolution to a number that's high
| | 01:59 | enough to pick up all the forms you
need, but not so high that it becomes
| | 02:03 | difficult to work with.
| | 02:04 | Usually the default of 128 is good.
| | 02:06 | So I am just going to undo that
and set the resolution back to 128.
| | 02:11 | Looks good and click
DynaMesh again and click No.
| | 02:15 | Now let's try one more thing.
| | 02:17 | You can make drastic changes to the
model at this point and then quickly run
| | 02:21 | DynaMesh to smooth everything out.
| | 02:24 | Let's see how it works.
| | 02:24 | I am going to switch to the Move tool, B+
M+T, and let's just see what happens if
| | 02:31 | we want to create a big spike
coming off the creature's nose.
| | 02:34 | I am going to shrink the brush down a
little bit, and just grab the nose here,
| | 02:38 | and just hank this way out.
| | 02:40 | So you notice all these
polygons got stretched out.
| | 02:43 | We can quickly run DynaMesh again by simply
holding down Ctrl and clicking and dragging.
| | 02:49 | This could be a great way to create
horns or toes or fingers or anything else
| | 02:54 | that sticks off the mesh.
| | 02:56 | Now we could continue to sculpt
on this mesh without worrying about
| | 02:59 | stretched out polygons.
| | 03:01 | DynaMesh can be used anytime that you
want to even out the topology in order to
| | 03:06 | sculpt more efficiently.
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| Sculpting muscles and mid-size shapes| 00:00 | Here's another far too often overlooked
phase of creature modeling, the midrange details.
| | 00:07 | These are the shapes and structures of
your model that are smaller than the big
| | 00:11 | things like limbs and heads, but
are bigger than wrinkles and scales.
| | 00:15 | Midrange details are things like
the muscles that make up a limb.
| | 00:20 | So a good example of a midrange
detail here is kind of the way this muscle
| | 00:25 | overlaps this limb right here.
| | 00:26 | It's kind of creating a
separate shape from the limb over all.
| | 00:30 | It's also these little folds of flesh
that kind of hang off the skin here.
| | 00:34 | Same thing with these bits of skin
here on the neck the way they hang off.
| | 00:39 | Looking at this kangaroo here, some
good midrange details are these bits of
| | 00:43 | tendon and muscle that are
surrounding this joint right here.
| | 00:47 | This is going to come in really handy
on a dew hopper, because we can look at
| | 00:50 | this and see how these
different muscles connect to the joint.
| | 00:54 | Same thing with this frog.
| | 00:55 | There are little details that are
bigger than the tiny little warts.
| | 00:59 | So for example, this
little lump here on the back.
| | 01:01 | And that's a good midrange detail.
| | 01:03 | It's not as big as a big limb or a head.
| | 01:07 | These are the details that
bring believability to a creature.
| | 01:10 | Unfortunately, too many modelers get
distracted by the temptation to sculpt
| | 01:14 | the fun wrinkles and skin bumps
before they really give this phase the
| | 01:17 | attention that it deserves.
| | 01:19 | While sculpting this type of detail, be
sure to look at your reference closely.
| | 01:23 | I'll be looking at images like these to
help me maintain a sense of anatomical
| | 01:27 | believability as well as artistic appeal.
| | 01:30 | So let's load up our exercise file.
| | 01:32 | I am going to go to the Exercise
Files, Chap_3, 03_05, simplemesh.ZPR.
| | 01:42 | So I am going to hit Shift+F to show
the wireframe and just zoom in here.
| | 01:47 | So you can see that there's a
good number of polygons, but it's not
| | 01:51 | really heavily detailed.
| | 01:52 | It's just enough to give
me this midrange detail.
| | 01:55 | Usually, I try to get all of the shapes
into a subdivision level that I possibly
| | 01:59 | can before subdividing again.
| | 02:01 | This keeps me from getting bogged
down in fine detail before I am ready.
| | 02:05 | I am just going to hit Shift+
F to turn off the wireframe.
| | 02:08 | So let's look at an example of one way in
which midrange details can be done wrong.
| | 02:13 | I am going to go into my Crease Brush. So BCJ.
| | 02:18 | So what happens a lot of times is
people will sculpt in muscles and joints in
| | 02:23 | such a way that it separates
the joints from each other.
| | 02:26 | So what you will see is kind of a line
that separates two joints, and I am going
| | 02:31 | to go into my Custom Clay Brush
and also sculpt on some muscles here.
| | 02:36 | So what you see a lot of times is
muscles that bulge on either side of a joint.
| | 02:40 | It kind of creates a separation from the
top of the leg to the bottom of the leg.
| | 02:48 | And that lacks believability and
it's not as nose interesting to look at.
| | 02:51 | So I am just going to hit
Ctrl+Z to undo all of this.
| | 02:54 | What's more believable is if you sculpt on
muscles in such a way that it creates a pattern.
| | 03:00 | So if you look at your reference, you
can see oftentimes that muscles will
| | 03:05 | attach on one limb and then
they extend down onto the other.
| | 03:09 | So these muscles of the forearm
actually attach up on the upper arm.
| | 03:14 | Similarly, with the bicep, the muscle
attaches down on the bone of the forearm
| | 03:21 | and then continues up onto the upper arm.
| | 03:23 | I am just going to tweak this some more.
| | 03:25 | So now you can see that the muscles
kind of have this zigzag pattern which is
| | 03:32 | much more believable and much
more interesting to look at.
| | 03:35 | Let's look at another example.
| | 03:37 | I am going to hind leg and I just want
to subdivide the model a few times to
| | 03:43 | give myself more detail.
| | 03:44 | I am going to go to the Crease Brush
to just show you what you see sometimes.
| | 03:50 | Sometimes people will try to create
separations between muscles by just
| | 03:54 | scratching on a line and try to
define and separate muscle this way.
| | 04:00 | The problem with that is that the
shape of the muscle might be there, but it
| | 04:04 | doesn't really have the volume of a muscle.
| | 04:06 | It just looks like lines on a surface.
| | 04:08 | So let me undo that.
| | 04:10 | What tends to work better is
sculpting on the volume of the muscle.
| | 04:14 | So I am going to my Custom Clay Brush
and I just want to sculpt on the size and
| | 04:20 | shape and volume of that muscle
rather than lines between them.
| | 04:23 | Of course, I'll probably spend a lot
more time refining the shapes of these, but
| | 04:28 | you get the idea that seeing the
volume of the muscle is much more believable
| | 04:33 | and appealing than just seeing
lines scratched on between them.
| | 04:36 | Sometime also I'd like to consider when
sculpting in midrange detail is that you
| | 04:41 | don't really need to be
all that careful with it.
| | 04:43 | You can just go in and be wild and just
experiment with different things and if
| | 04:47 | they don't work very well it's
very easy to just smooth them out.
| | 04:55 | Then just try something else.
| | 05:01 | It's also a good idea to try to use variations.
| | 05:04 | So let's say I want to put in
some ribs of this character.
| | 05:07 | I am going to do some thin ones and
some thick ones and just try to get some
| | 05:11 | variety, and then you can smooth
things out and continue working into it.
| | 05:21 | You can overlap muscles.
| | 05:23 | So for example, you've got this muscle
that comes off the shoulder right here
| | 05:27 | and onto the back and it overlaps ribs.
| | 05:29 | So I just like to work back and forth
and just try different things and overlap
| | 05:33 | different things and eventually
with time you get some good results.
| | 05:39 | It can be hard to know when
you've gone far enough with this.
| | 05:43 | What I usually like to do is try to
force myself to go too far to really pull
| | 05:48 | out these muscles to the point where
it's just silly and then just tone it back
| | 05:52 | until it looks right.
| | 05:54 | Kind of like you never know if you have
gone far enough until you've gone too far.
| | 06:00 | Another thing you can do is ask
yourself, if you can sense the volume of each
| | 06:04 | muscle underneath the skin.
| | 06:06 | If not, if your muscles are just
defined as lines on the surface, you should
| | 06:10 | work more developing those forms.
| | 06:12 | It's very common for beginners to
overlook this stage of sculpting, but if you
| | 06:16 | keep it in mind every time you
work, it will become second nature.
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| Defining joints| 00:00 | Another anatomical feature that
is often overlooked is the joints.
| | 00:04 | Having well-defined joints goes a
long way towards making creatures
| | 00:08 | believable and feel solid.
| | 00:11 | Joints that are lacking in definition
will look soft and mushy and it happens
| | 00:15 | way too often in beginner work.
| | 00:17 | Let's look at this reference image.
| | 00:18 | I wanted to find animals that
have particularly pronounced joints.
| | 00:22 | This frog is a good example.
| | 00:24 | You can see how the joints have
sharper angles to them and it makes the
| | 00:27 | whole limb feel solid.
| | 00:29 | So let's go into the ZBrush
and open up our exercise file.
| | 00:32 | Go into Exercise Files > Ch_3, Folder 03_06.
| | 00:39 | So we've got a lot of the midrange
detail and the muscle sculpted in already,
| | 00:43 | and let's look at how we can
make these joints look better.
| | 00:45 | I am going to zoom in on the knee on the
back leg, and I am just going to switch
| | 00:50 | to my Custom Clay Brush.
| | 00:53 | I will shrink the size down a little.
| | 00:55 | I am just holding down a
Spacebar while I do this.
| | 00:58 | So as you're sculpting joints you want
to think about the structure of the bones
| | 01:02 | underneath the knee more than what
it looks like on the surface so much.
| | 01:07 | So it could be helpful to look
at reference images of skeletons.
| | 01:10 | It could be helpful to look at video
of animals in motion to really see how
| | 01:14 | those joints are meeting together.
| | 01:16 | You also want to think about how the
muscles are joining those knee caps or
| | 01:23 | those bones around the joints.
| | 01:26 | Go ahead and adjust this to your liking.
| | 01:28 | It might be something you just have to
keep working at until you get something
| | 01:33 | that looks nice and solid.
| | 01:36 | Actually, one thing I want
to do is change the color.
| | 01:38 | Right now, it's kind of bright and
it's kind of hard to see the details.
| | 01:41 | So I am just going to make the
color a little bit more gray.
| | 01:43 | That might make it a little easier to see.
| | 01:50 | Same thing with the back of the elbow here.
| | 01:52 | I want to zoom in on it and spring
out some of the structure of that.
| | 01:56 | So it's not so soft.
| | 01:57 | I am just going to tweak this some more.
| | 02:00 | Of course, you want to use your
reference images and notice how the details, the
| | 02:08 | angles are forming on real-
world animals as you do this.
| | 02:11 | You're not just putting something random on.
| | 02:16 | For this course, I am dividing the
sculpting process down into different types
| | 02:20 | of anatomy as a way of organizing it.
| | 02:22 | However, when I work on a project I
will go back and forth between muscles and
| | 02:26 | joints and skin and limbs and so on.
| | 02:28 | Don't feel like you have to finish the
muscles before you start working on the
| | 02:31 | joints or finish the joints before
you move on to the next body part.
| | 02:35 | You should feel free to work on
whatever is most needed at any point in time.
| | 02:40 | It would be a mistake to work on just
one small part of the creature until
| | 02:43 | you're done with it and
then move on to other parts.
| | 02:46 | Move around and work up detail
all over the model at the same time.
| | 02:50 | The problem with working on just one
part of the time is that even though
| | 02:54 | that one part might look good, it
probably won't work well with the parts
| | 02:59 | that connect to it.
| | 03:00 | Every body part needs to work
together to make a convincing whole.
| | 03:05 | The best way to make that happen is to
not let any one part of the body get left
| | 03:09 | behind as you work on everything else.
| | 03:11 | So let's not zoom out and see these
joints look compared to the whole body.
| | 03:14 | So it's looking pretty good.
| | 03:18 | I could spend a lot more time to really
polish these joints and make them look a
| | 03:21 | lot better, but it's just using the
same techniques I have already shown you.
| | 03:25 | Just building up those forms and making sure
that they connect to the body parts around them.
| | 03:30 | When not enough attention is paid to a
creature's joins, they will look soft
| | 03:34 | like macaroni noodles.
| | 03:35 | The joints are the focal points of movements.
| | 03:38 | They also make a creature feel
solid and believable when done well.
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| Sculpting bony plates| 00:00 | Our little Dewhopper here has boney plates
and spikes around his head, legs and back.
| | 00:06 | Hard protective plates like these
are visually interesting additions to
| | 00:09 | many creature designs.
| | 00:11 | The main challenge when sculpting them
is getting them to integrate with the
| | 00:14 | softer skin surface of the creature.
| | 00:17 | So let's look at some reference images.
| | 00:19 | One thing that helps us understand
how to sculpt something like this is by
| | 00:23 | paying attention to surface quality.
| | 00:25 | The textures, shapes, and curves of
these surfaces help us to understand what
| | 00:29 | kind of material they're made of.
| | 00:32 | Surfaces with wrinkles imply that the
material is pliable because the wrinkles
| | 00:36 | form when the surface bends.
| | 00:38 | Surfaces with sharp edges imply that
the material is hard because soft surfaces
| | 00:43 | don't tend to form edges.
| | 00:45 | Surface quality is the way in
which we can tell what kind of material
| | 00:49 | something is made of just by its
surface shape alone, and it's an
| | 00:53 | indispensable skill for a sculptor to have.
| | 00:56 | Being able to sculpt different
material types without resorting to color,
| | 00:59 | shininess, or fancy shaders is one of
the best things you can do to make your
| | 01:04 | creatures come alive.
| | 01:05 | Of course, all those other attributes
will come later, but if the modeling
| | 01:09 | and sculpting doesn't feature good surface
quality, the shading and lighting will fall flat.
| | 01:14 | So let's put this into practice.
| | 01:15 | Back in ZBrush, you can see that
we've got the overall mass of the boney
| | 01:20 | parts already created.
| | 01:22 | What we need to do now is to make
it feel like a hard organic surface.
| | 01:26 | There're several tools for this job;
| | 01:28 | one is the Crease Brush.
| | 01:30 | It will create hard corners and sharp edges.
| | 01:32 | So let's see how this is going to work.
| | 01:34 | Let me just zoom in here on the head, I
am going to get the Crease Brush, typing
| | 01:40 | B+C+J.So you can see when you use this
brush, you get some nice sharp corners.
| | 01:47 | You can also hold down Alt
while using it to dig in.
| | 01:57 | This can create nice
separations between different boney parts.
| | 02:02 | You could also use it to separate
these boney plates from the back here.
| | 02:06 | So I am just going to create kind of a
crease between them, then you could also
| | 02:11 | use the Crease Brush to build up
sharp corners around the boney plate.
| | 02:15 | Another good tool is the Polish Brush.
| | 02:18 | So the shortcut for that is B+P+O.
Using this brush puts flat spots onto the
| | 02:27 | surface, kind of polishes down any rough
areas which also creates a nice surface quality.
| | 02:34 | Go ahead and adjust this to your liking.
| | 02:36 | I might want to use a smaller
brush here for some of these parts.
| | 02:45 | We can use the Custom Clay Brush to
build up the volume of little small horns
| | 02:49 | that are clustered around big horns.
| | 02:51 | So let's look at this reference image.
| | 02:53 | You can see that there's some of these
big horns right here, but then there's
| | 02:56 | little smaller ones kind of clustered around it.
| | 02:59 | So let's see how we can
get that effect in ZBrush.
| | 03:01 | I am going to go to Custom Clay, B+C+O
and I'll just use it to build up a shape
| | 03:09 | and size and volume of
little smaller horns around here.
| | 03:13 | I am going to spend some more time on this area.
| | 03:23 | So there's lots of ways you can build up forms.
| | 03:26 | I'm sculpting out these
horns with the Custom Clay Brush.
| | 03:28 | I just want to get kind of the shape
built-in, and then I am going to go in with
| | 03:33 | the Crease Brush and define the shape
of these horns a little bit more clearly.
| | 03:39 | If you hold down Alt while you stroke,
you can use the Crease Brush to define
| | 03:43 | kind of an inward crease.
| | 03:45 | You know what, I didn't
really like the way that was going.
| | 03:49 | So I am just going to undo a little bit
and use the Smooth Brush to knock these
| | 03:53 | shapes back a little bit.
| | 03:54 | I just want to remove some of that
volume and I want to try again with the
| | 04:00 | Crease Brush to define these forms.
| | 04:04 | That makes a much nicer
separation between these horn shapes.
| | 04:09 | Keep moving around to different parts
of the sculpt and building in detail.
| | 04:13 | These boney points can have patterns
or interesting shapes worked into them.
| | 04:17 | Sometimes I'll smooth out everything
and try it in a different way if I don't
| | 04:20 | like how it's working.
| | 04:21 | Don't feel like you have to lock
yourself in to the first shape you make.
| | 04:25 | Step back and evaluate what everything
looks like and be open to making changes.
| | 04:29 | You can also use the Move
Brush to push things around.
| | 04:32 | So let's say I don't like how these
boney points are coming out right here.
| | 04:35 | I am just going to smooth
them out and try something else.
| | 04:38 | Maybe I'll use the Move Brush, B+M+T,
and try making that a different way.
| | 04:48 | So you've got lots of options.
| | 04:49 | It can take a while to really get
that sense of hard boney surfaces.
| | 04:53 | Keep at it and you'll find that the
model takes on a much more solid tone with
| | 04:58 | variations and surface quality.
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| Sculpting leathery skin| 00:00 | Leathery skin is a special sculpting challenge.
| | 00:04 | There's so much going on
that it can become overwhelming.
| | 00:07 | There are so many things to keep track
of that sometimes it helps to make a list.
| | 00:12 | The way that leathery skin looks
is a combination of several things;
| | 00:15 | one, how the underlying bone and muscle
push and pull on the skin to form cracks.
| | 00:21 | So for example, with this elephant,
you can see that cracks are forming in a
| | 00:25 | certain pattern that's because the
motion of this elephant walking everyday for
| | 00:29 | years has forced the skin into
forming certain crack patterns.
| | 00:34 | Two, the variation of bumps on the skin and
how those bumps transition across the skin.
| | 00:42 | So for example, on this rhinoceros,
you can see that there's where there's
| | 00:46 | large bumps and then there's smaller bumps and
there's kind of this transition in between them.
| | 00:50 | That kind of pattern and the
relationship between those different patterns can
| | 00:55 | add a lot of believability, variety,
and artistic interest in your work.
| | 00:59 | Three, variations in
thickness and firmness of skin.
| | 01:04 | So looking at this image, you can see
that there's some parts of the skin that
| | 01:08 | are more thick and more leathery than others.
| | 01:11 | Around the eye, the skin is probably
going to be a little softer, less hard and
| | 01:16 | maybe on the trunk, the skin is going
to be harder and that's going to affect
| | 01:21 | how the skin bunches up and how wrinkles form.
| | 01:24 | And then the last thing, number
four, is a good helping of chaos.
| | 01:28 | There's just a lot of random things
that happen, and if you make everything the
| | 01:32 | same, keep all the patterns looking the
same, and going in the same direction,
| | 01:36 | it's going to look artificial.
| | 01:37 | If you change things up and just kind
of do random things here and there, it's
| | 01:41 | going to look a lot more believable.
| | 01:43 | Once you start thinking about these
four factors and recognizing how they are
| | 01:47 | creating the effects that you see in
the reference, you'll be in a much better
| | 01:50 | position to recreate those
kinds of effects in your sculpture.
| | 01:55 | So let's go into ZBrush.
| | 01:56 | I want to start by making some major
wrinkles and creases where the skin is most
| | 02:01 | likely to get pushed and
pulled by the underlying structure.
| | 02:05 | Wherever there's joints or where limbs
attached to the body, you can imagine how
| | 02:09 | the skin will get repeatedly stretched.
| | 02:11 | So I am going to zoom into the armpit
area and I want to pull out the Crease
| | 02:16 | Brush, B+C+J.So you can imagine that
wrinkles are going to form around in this area.
| | 02:23 | So I am just going to carve in some and I
want to keep some nice variation in there.
| | 02:27 | So I am going thick and thin and I'm
starting in some places and I'm not making
| | 02:32 | them all the same length.
| | 02:33 | I want to have some variety;
| | 02:35 | I want some space between them
to be a little bit different.
| | 02:38 | So I have maybe some connecting to each
other, some of them maybe starting far
| | 02:43 | away and then moving closer to
others, just a lot of nice variation.
| | 02:48 | Then you can have some that
cross the other direction too.
| | 02:54 | And maybe these are a little bit
lighter, maybe they are a little bit more
| | 02:57 | sparse, maybe they are a little shorter too.
| | 03:00 | You can just play with all kinds of variation.
| | 03:02 | If you don't like it, you just
go in and erase it and start over.
| | 03:05 | Now let's put in some major bumps.
| | 03:08 | I want the skin close to the backbone
of the creature to have more pronounced
| | 03:12 | bumps and then get gradually
smoother as it gets down to the belly.
| | 03:16 | Try not to make a pattern that's too regular.
| | 03:18 | So I want to go to the Custom Clay Brush,
I am going to shrink it down a little
| | 03:24 | bit, holding down the Spacebar, I am
just going to draw on some bumps, maybe
| | 03:31 | make some of them bigger,
some of them a little smaller.
| | 03:33 | Just kind of try to space them out
kind of randomly, and I want them to be
| | 03:36 | bigger up here close to the back of the
creature, and I want to transition to a
| | 03:41 | little bit smaller down on the belly so
that they are less pronounced down here.
| | 03:49 | And I am putting them sort of in the
spaces between the cracks as well, and of
| | 03:56 | course, I'd probably be doing this over
the entire surface of the creature, but
| | 03:59 | just for an example, I'm going to
focus on only the shoulder area.
| | 04:03 | I don't want to use space too evenly.
| | 04:07 | Some can be close together,
then others are more far apart.
| | 04:11 | That kind of thing just adds interest.
| | 04:13 | I don't want too smooth of a
transition where they are very predictably
| | 04:20 | transitioning from big to small.
| | 04:21 | I want to kind of mix them up so
maybe I'll have a small ones up with the
| | 04:24 | big ones, maybe a few big ones down with
the small ones, just keeping it interesting.
| | 04:30 | Now that I've got some bumps, I
can put in secondary wrinkles.
| | 04:34 | These are creases that flow between
bumps and also roughly perpendicular and
| | 04:38 | parallel to the major creases.
| | 04:41 | So I'll go back to the Crease Brush, B+C
+J and I am just going to kind of wind
| | 04:48 | some creases in between these bumps.
| | 04:49 | Again you just want to keep it
natural, you don't want to maintain any
| | 04:54 | predictable pattern.
| | 04:55 | If you find yourself getting into a
rut and just making everything the same,
| | 04:59 | make a conscious decision to break that
pattern and go in a different direction.
| | 05:03 | So you see I am kind of
going diagonally right down here.
| | 05:07 | You kind of want to follow
the shape of your limbs as well.
| | 05:12 | So if you come up to a limb, think about
how that crease might interact with the
| | 05:16 | muscle in the joints.
| | 05:17 | Alright, I could probably keep going
for a while with this, but let's move on.
| | 05:23 | So now back to bumps.
| | 05:24 | I am just going to zoom in a little bit
closer and just add in another level of detail.
| | 05:28 | I am going to go back to my Custom
Clay Brush and make it a lot smaller.
| | 05:32 | So now you can also get
kind of just rough and random.
| | 05:37 | You might even scribble some things and
just to rough up the surface a little bit.
| | 05:40 | I want to add some detail in this area.
| | 05:48 | You might want to
experiment with different brushes.
| | 05:50 | There's really no wrong brush to use here;
| | 05:52 | you just want to make it look
like it wasn't done by hand.
| | 05:56 | You want to make it look natural, like it
could really have existed on a real animal.
| | 06:02 | And it can be hard to know exactly
when you've gone far enough or too far.
| | 06:07 | What I like to do is actually really
push it until I know it's gone too far.
| | 06:12 | That way I know to back off and maybe
smooth out some of the roughness that I've made.
| | 06:16 | So let's say I could really just take it too
far here and just say that's just too much.
| | 06:23 | Maybe I'll just smooth it out a little bit.
| | 06:26 | Go back to the Crease Brush, maybe just
touch up a little bit there and I know
| | 06:34 | that that's good enough.
| | 06:36 | Don't worry about making the wrong details here.
| | 06:38 | You can always smooth it
over or sculpt over mistakes.
| | 06:41 | It even helps to add to the texture
and roughness of the surface to leave a
| | 06:45 | little hint of your mistakes behind.
| | 06:48 | One problem that some people run into
is they get too timid at this stage.
| | 06:52 | They don't want to ruin any of the
anatomy that they've already created or
| | 06:55 | sometimes people feel overwhelmed with
the amount of work that will have to go
| | 06:59 | into creating the fine detail.
| | 07:01 | The best approach that I've found is to
just dive in and try a whole lot of things.
| | 07:06 | There's just one last thing to be aware of.
| | 07:09 | When I am sculpting this kind of
detail, I usually have Symmetry turned on.
| | 07:12 | However, when you get close to the
center line of the creature, it becomes very
| | 07:17 | obvious if you use symmetry.
| | 07:19 | So for example, if I'm sculpting in some
sort of detail here, it becomes looking
| | 07:24 | artificial because it's so symmetrical.
| | 07:27 | So what I'd like to do is turn off Symmetry
when I am working close to the center line;
| | 07:31 | just hit X to turn it off and then you
can go in and sculpt things along the
| | 07:35 | center line, and then as you start to
get farther away from the center line,
| | 07:40 | then you could turn Symmetry back on.
| | 07:42 | Sculpting this kind of detail is a
challenge because it requires you to engage
| | 07:46 | both your artistic brain and your
analytical brain at the same time.
| | 07:50 | It can also seem daunting because there's so
much detail to make over the whole creature.
| | 07:55 | I find it helpful to just put on some music,
shut out the outside world, and attack it.
| | 08:00 | If you get stuck, you can always look
at some reference images to help you out.
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|
|
4. Basic Modeling in MayaUsing GoZ between ZBrush and Maya| 00:00 | Being able to quickly take models back
and forth between ZBrush and Maya is a
| | 00:04 | huge advantage to using GoZ.
| | 00:07 | It does have its quirks however.
| | 00:08 | It doesn't always work smoothly.
| | 00:11 | It's a new technology that's
getting the kinks worked out.
| | 00:14 | As long as we're careful and don't try
to make it work too hard, it should be
| | 00:17 | able to do what we need it to do.
| | 00:19 | Let's use it to get the sculpt as we
have it into Maya, so that we can model
| | 00:23 | things like eyes and teeth over there.
| | 00:25 | GoZ will send over the lowest
subdivision level of the active sub-tool.
| | 00:30 | There's just one sub-tool so we
don't have to worry about that right now.
| | 00:33 | Just go ahead and click on GoZ.
| | 00:36 | If you see this pop-up just
go ahead and click Continue.
| | 00:43 | Okay, now we are in Maya.
| | 00:44 | You can go ahead and close this window
and I want to go ahead and zoom in on
| | 00:48 | this and hit 5 on the keyword
so we can see the shaded view.
| | 00:52 | Now let's click on the model
and go into its attributes.
| | 00:55 | So you can see here, it's given the same
name as the sub-tool head in ZBrush Dewhopper.
| | 01:02 | If you want to make any changes to the
model here in Maya, and then send those
| | 01:06 | changes back to ZBrush, make sure
that you don't rename the model or ZBrush
| | 01:10 | won't know what to do with it.
| | 01:11 | Now that we have the Dewhopper's body
here in Maya, it will be easier to model
| | 01:16 | the extra bits in relationship to it.
| | 01:18 | When it comes to extra body parts like
teeth and horns and spikes, you could
| | 01:22 | make them as separate objects like
we're doing here or you could just sculpt
| | 01:25 | them right into the same object as the body.
| | 01:28 | It can work either way.
| | 01:30 | Just keep in mind that both ways have
their own advantages and disadvantages.
| | 01:34 | We are keeping the claws
together with the same mesh as the body.
| | 01:38 | One advantage to this is that
there's fewer objects to keep track of by
| | 01:41 | keeping it together.
| | 01:43 | However, one advantage to making
things separate is that you can more easily
| | 01:47 | swap out one part for another.
| | 01:49 | You could have several
sets of teeth for example.
| | 01:52 | If the teeth were part of the same mesh
as the body, it would be a lot of work
| | 01:55 | to change them after making them.
| | 01:57 | The eyes will have to be a
separate object because they need to move
| | 02:01 | independently from the
body when they are animated.
| | 02:04 | Keeping everything in one object or
splitting the parts up. There is no right or wrong.
| | 02:08 | It's just how you prefer to work.
| | 02:10 | This course will show you both ways, so
that you can get a sense for what works
| | 02:13 | best in different situations.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making an eyeball| 00:00 | The eyes should be simple enough to make.
| | 00:02 | They are spheres after all.
| | 00:04 | However, there are some tips and
tricks that I will show you to help you get
| | 00:07 | the most out of them.
| | 00:08 | Now you might think of
starting by making a sphere.
| | 00:11 | So let's go to Polygons and
select the Sphere Primitive.
| | 00:15 | And I will just zoom out so
we can make a sphere here.
| | 00:17 | And that can work all right, but
let's try something a little better.
| | 00:21 | Let's start with a box.
| | 00:22 | So I am going to select the box and
just drag one out here into the grid.
| | 00:26 | I want to change the size of the
box by going into the Channel Box.
| | 00:31 | Going down to its polyCube1 INPUTS,
and just changing the Width, Height and
| | 00:36 | Depth to 1 each so it's an exact cube.
| | 00:39 | Now let's smooth it a few times.
| | 00:40 | I am going to put on smooth and let's
go down to the Smooth input here and
| | 00:47 | change the Divisions to 3
so we get a nice smooth cube.
| | 00:51 | It may seem counterintuitive but a
box is going to be better than a sphere.
| | 00:55 | Smoothing a cube results in a sphere,
but with one big difference, the
| | 00:59 | Topology, so I am going to select this sphere
as well and we can compare the difference here.
| | 01:04 | The sphere primitive has poles where
all these edges come and meet at the top
| | 01:08 | and at the bottom and
that can create pinch points.
| | 01:11 | The smooth cube however,
has a much more even Topology.
| | 01:15 | This makes it a lot better for
sculpting and painting in ZBrush.
| | 01:19 | So let's just delete this sphere.
| | 01:20 | We don't need it anymore.
| | 01:22 | And I am going to move the
cube to the center of the world.
| | 01:25 | This makes it easier for ZBrush to
know exactly that this object should be
| | 01:29 | right in the center.
| | 01:30 | So I am going to hold down X while I
go into Move Mode and I am just going to
| | 01:34 | hold down X so it snaps to the grid
and just snap that right to the center.
| | 01:38 | And let's also rename this eye.
| | 01:39 | So I am just going to go into my
Channel Box here, double-click on the name
| | 01:43 | and just call it eye.
| | 01:44 | And I am going to hit F to zoom
in on it, and let's deselect it.
| | 01:49 | Now you might see as we are moving
around that it's not exactly a perfect sphere.
| | 01:53 | It has slight bulges to it.
| | 01:55 | This is a result of the smoothing algorithm.
| | 01:57 | ZBrush has an easy way to fix this.
| | 02:00 | So let's hit the GoZ button
and send this back to ZBrush.
| | 02:03 | So go into the GoZBrush tab and click GoZ.
| | 02:06 | Now just click-and-drag into the
canvas to draw it out, and I am going to hit
| | 02:12 | the Comma key to go make that go away.
| | 02:14 | Make sure you go into Edit Mode
and I am going to hit F to zoom in.
| | 02:19 | Okay, so we've got an
almost perfect sphere here.
| | 02:24 | Let's open up the Deformation Sub Palette.
| | 02:26 | I am going to go down to the
Spherize and just drag that up.
| | 02:29 | You might see a subtle change here where
it just gets a little bit more spherical.
| | 02:34 | You can drag that a couple of more times.
| | 02:36 | So I am just going drag it to the right
about four or five times, just to make
| | 02:40 | sure that's an absolutely perfect sphere.
| | 02:43 | Now as I rotate around, you don't
really see that shape change where before
| | 02:47 | there was a little bit of bulge that was
making that shape not quite a perfect sphere.
| | 02:51 | I am just going to make the one eye
ball for now because there will be more
| | 02:55 | things I want to do to it in later chapters.
| | 02:58 | After all those things are done, we can
just copy and mirror it over to the other side.
| | 03:02 | Alright, now let's GoZ this back to
Maya, scroll up in your Palette here and
| | 03:06 | click GoZ, and if you get
this pop-up just click Continue.
| | 03:09 | Alright, we've got a smooth, spherified cube.
| | 03:15 | I am just going to move this and
place it up inside the eye socket.
| | 03:18 | So I am just going to use my scale
controls here and I shrink this down a little
| | 03:25 | bit and just move it and scale
it until it's right into place.
| | 03:29 | I am going to hit F to zoom in.
| | 03:31 | Alright, good enough for now.
| | 03:35 | We can always make adjustments later.
| | 03:37 | Making and eye like this is really
easy but it's a good way to practice some
| | 03:40 | workflow tricks that can make life
easier when doing more difficult tasks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating tail spikes| 00:00 | Here's another relatively easy task,
making some spikes for the tip of the tail.
| | 00:05 | Of course there is going to be some
handy tips sprinkled around that can help
| | 00:08 | out in all kinds of situations.
| | 00:11 | Let's start out by making a
cone primitive on the ground.
| | 00:14 | So let's go to Polygons
and pick the Cone Primitive.
| | 00:17 | I am just going to drag it out
here anywhere and pull it up.
| | 00:21 | I am going to hit F to zoom in on it.
| | 00:24 | By default, that's a pretty nice cone,
but its topology is all wrong for ZBrush.
| | 00:29 | The cone's polygons are
all long and stretched out.
| | 00:31 | ZBrush likes polygons to be
roughly square-shaped for best sculpting.
| | 00:36 | So let's go into the cones creation
parameters and change its subdivision access
| | 00:40 | to 4 and set the
subdivision height to 4 as well.
| | 00:44 | So over here in the Channel Box,
we'll just go to polyCone INPUTS and
| | 00:49 | Subdivisions Height type-in 4,
and Subdivisions Axis 4 as well.
| | 00:55 | Now you might not need to use exactly
these numbers, but the result is something
| | 00:59 | it's a lot more square, you see the
size of these different polygons is for the
| | 01:03 | most part fairly even.
| | 01:04 | Before going any further, let's
move the pivot points of the spike.
| | 01:08 | It'll be easier to position it,
if the pivot point is at the base.
| | 01:12 | So I am going into Move Mode and you
can see our pivot point is kind of in the
| | 01:15 | center between the bottom and the top.
| | 01:18 | I am going to hold down D and then click
-and-drag on the vertical axis just to
| | 01:22 | bring that pivot point down to the base.
| | 01:24 | Alright, pretty good.
| | 01:26 | It doesn't have to be exact.
| | 01:27 | Okay so the spike is looking pretty good.
| | 01:30 | It's a little too blocky however.
| | 01:31 | So I am just going to smooth it once.
| | 01:33 | Alright, that looks a little bit
more organic, not quite so artificial.
| | 01:38 | And let's move it into place so
it's positioned at the tip of the tail.
| | 01:41 | So I am going to zoom out a little bit,
go into Move Mode and let's just move it
| | 01:45 | up there and scale it,
rotate it, make it fit nice.
| | 01:50 | So I had sculpted into the tip of the
tail, little holes, little notches for the
| | 01:55 | spikes to fit into, so just go ahead and
rotate your tail spikes so it fits into
| | 01:59 | these different slots.
| | 02:00 | I am just going to move it and rotate
until I get something that fits, maybe
| | 02:06 | scale that a bit smaller.
| | 02:07 | You can always fine-tune the
positioning later, but this is something that's
| | 02:11 | pretty closest good.
| | 02:13 | Now let's make some duplicates.
| | 02:14 | Hit Ctrl+D and you get a duplicate spike.
| | 02:17 | Now I am just going to hit F to zoom in
on this one and do the same thing, just
| | 02:21 | rotate it, position it, scale it,
whatever you need to do to get a nice variety
| | 02:26 | of different sizes and angles
and positions or tail spikes.
| | 02:29 | Okay, just go ahead and keep
duplicating them until you've got a nice array of
| | 02:33 | spikes, all along the tail.
| | 02:35 | This is another fairly easy bit of modeling.
| | 02:38 | However, these tricks with pivot
points and smoothing are useful on a regular
| | 02:42 | basis when modeling in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a tooth| 00:00 | There's lots of types of teeth
and lots of ways to make them.
| | 00:03 | In this movie, I'll demonstrate an
effective method that can be modified to
| | 00:07 | create a wide variety of teeth types.
| | 00:10 | I'm also going to cover some more
common modeling tools and techniques that
| | 00:14 | should help out in all kinds of
situations, not just making teeth.
| | 00:18 | I decided to base my teeth on
the ones in this reference image.
| | 00:21 | They are triangular and in a fairly neat row.
| | 00:24 | So let's get into Maya.
| | 00:26 | To start, let's just make one tooth.
| | 00:27 | Let me go up and select the Pyramid
Primitive and just draw it out onto the grid.
| | 00:32 | And I am going to change some of the
attributes so let's go into the Channel
| | 00:37 | box and go into the polyPyramid Input, I
am going to change the Number of Sides to 3.
| | 00:43 | And let's change the
Subdivision Height to 3 as well.
| | 00:47 | And the reason I'm doing this is to
have a little bit more control over the
| | 00:50 | shape of this, I want some Subdivisions
along the height so that I can tweak the
| | 00:53 | shape a little bit more so
it's not a perfect pyramid shape.
| | 00:56 | I also want to rotate this pyramid so
that one of the flat sides is facing forward.
| | 01:01 | So you can see right now if I look at it
from above, I want this flat edge to be
| | 01:05 | facing directly forward.
| | 01:07 | That's because I want this ridge right
here to be on the inside of the mouth.
| | 01:11 | I am just going to go into my Rotate
tool and move this so that I get a flat
| | 01:15 | edge facing forward.
| | 01:16 | Okay, I am going to hit F to zoom into it
and I just want to edit the shape a little bit.
| | 01:20 | So I am going to come around to this
side and I am going to my Move tool.
| | 01:23 | I must going to go down to Face Mode so
I am holding down the right mouse button
| | 01:27 | so I get this marking menu
and just come down to Face.
| | 01:31 | Now I can just select all these faces
right here in the middle and it looks like
| | 01:34 | I've got soft select turned on, you
can see by that coloration so I am just
| | 01:37 | going to hit B to turn that
off and just move this forward.
| | 01:40 | So I get a little curve to the tooth.
| | 01:42 | Now what we have here could work very
well for a real-time 3D game model, but
| | 01:47 | let's give it some more
detail for high-resolution work.
| | 01:51 | The edges are perfectly sharp right now.
| | 01:53 | So let's bevel that edge
to make it more natural.
| | 01:55 | I am going to switch to Edge Mode by
holding down the right mouse button
| | 01:58 | and going up to the Edge Marking menu,
I am just going to double-click all
| | 02:03 | these edges, holding down Shift so I can
select multiple edges at once and just double-click.
| | 02:08 | Now I need to bevel them so let's go to
the Polygon menu set, to Edit Mesh menu
| | 02:14 | and go down to Bevel.
| | 02:18 | It might have beveled it just a
little bit too much, so we can go into the
| | 02:20 | Channel Box and just change the Offset .2 maybe.
| | 02:24 | Okay, that's pretty good.
| | 02:25 | I just don't want it to be too soft.
| | 02:27 | So now let's smooth this to see
what it looks like a little bit softer.
| | 02:31 | I am just going to hit 3 on the keyboard.
| | 02:32 | This is the Smooth Preview Mode.
| | 02:34 | So I am going to hold down on the
right mouse button and go back to Object
| | 02:37 | Mode so you can see we get a nice,
pretty soft effect on that, looks pretty
| | 02:42 | natural, I like it.
| | 02:43 | And just hit 1 to turn that off.
| | 02:45 | Let's delete the polygon on the bottom.
| | 02:48 | So on the underside here, you
are never going to see that.
| | 02:50 | So I am going to go under Face
Mode, select that and hit Delete.
| | 02:53 | This also makes it easier
to unwrap the UVs later on.
| | 02:57 | Now let's position this tooth in the mouth.
| | 02:59 | So I am just going to use Move, Rotate
and Scale to get this up inside the mouth.
| | 03:04 | So it's a little big right now.
| | 03:05 | Just shrink it down a bit.
| | 03:06 | I am going to use Move to get this
up inside the mouth, hit F to zoom in.
| | 03:13 | It doesn't have to be exact quite yet to
something pretty close to the inside of the mouth.
| | 03:20 | Let's lock in all of the edits
that we've made so far to the tooth.
| | 03:24 | Go up to Edit > Delete by Type > History.
| | 03:27 | So that locks in all of
the edits that we've made.
| | 03:30 | I use Delete, History anytime that I
know I won't need to go back and change
| | 03:34 | some edit that I have made.
| | 03:35 | For example, I know I'm not going to
change the Bevel Width on the Bevel so
| | 03:39 | I can delete history.
| | 03:40 | I also want to freeze transforms.
| | 03:43 | This locks in any move, rotate or
scale changes that I have already made.
| | 03:47 | So go to Modify and
click Freeze Transformations.
| | 03:51 | Finally I want to move the pivot point to
the base of the tooth rather than the middle.
| | 03:55 | This will make it easier to position
in the gums, so I am going to hit F to
| | 03:59 | zoom in on it one more time, get a better view
on it and hold down D, I switch to Pivot Mode.
| | 04:05 | I am just going to move that down to the base.
| | 04:07 | Again, we've practiced some
more common modeling tasks.
| | 04:11 | There's probably an infinite number of ways
that we could have gone about making this tooth.
| | 04:15 | Regardless whichever technique you use,
functions like Delete History and Freeze
| | 04:20 | Transforms are likely to be a part of it.
| | 04:22 | That's because they lock in any
changes that you might make to an object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Duplicating the teeth| 00:00 | Now the tooth is ready to be duplicated,
we'll be using more common modeling
| | 00:05 | tricks here, namely,
instancing geometry with transforms.
| | 00:09 | It sounds complicated, but it's not too hard.
| | 00:11 | We've made one tooth in the mouth,
so let's get the others made.
| | 00:15 | I want to zoom in here and see what we've got.
| | 00:16 | I'm going to hit F2 to zoom in nice and
tight, instance versions of this model
| | 00:23 | not only make it so that we don't have
to create every tooth from scratch but
| | 00:27 | we can also make changes to one of
them after duplicating and they all get
| | 00:31 | changed automatically.
| | 00:32 | Let's see how this works.
| | 00:34 | Make sure that the tooth is selected and
go up to Edit, and go down to Duplicate
| | 00:38 | Special and click the option box.
| | 00:40 | There are a few settings
here that we need to look at.
| | 00:44 | I want an instance rather than simple copy,
so I'm going to change this to Instance.
| | 00:48 | I also want to move each instance
tooth a little bit off to the side so that
| | 00:53 | they're not all on top of each other.
| | 00:55 | So to do that I'm going to set the
Translate in the x-axis to .04, so in the
| | 01:00 | Translate these boxes stand for X, Y,
and Z, so .04, and I know this number
| | 01:08 | because I've already tested it out
but it's just going to move the tooth a
| | 01:11 | little bit to the side.
| | 01:12 | You might need to do a different number
depending on the scale of the objects in your scene.
| | 01:16 | I also want the teeth to grow a
little bit as they go back into the mouth.
| | 01:20 | So I'm going to scale each instance, so that
it is 1.05 times as large as the one before it.
| | 01:27 | I've also tested out this number to
make sure it works good for what I'm doing,
| | 01:30 | but you might want to try a
different number for yourself.
| | 01:36 | So each instance of this tooth is going to be
just a little bit bigger than the one before it.
| | 01:40 | I also want to make 20 copies, I might
not use all of them, but it's good to
| | 01:44 | make just a good large number of them
and if it's too many, we can just delete
| | 01:48 | the ones that we don't use.
| | 01:49 | All right, let's see what we get.
| | 01:51 | I'm going to click Duplicate Special,
okay, so I made a whole bunch of
| | 01:54 | duplicates of this tooth and each one
is spaced out just to the side a little
| | 01:58 | bit and they're a little
bit bigger each time as well.
| | 02:01 | If you didn't quite get what you
wanted you can undo and try again
| | 02:04 | with different settings.
| | 02:05 | Now comes the fun part, tweaking by hand,
go ahead and place each tooth in the
| | 02:10 | gums going back inside the mouth.
| | 02:12 | So you can just select one at a time and
just move it back a little bit, you can rotate.
| | 02:19 | And you go ahead and position them
however you think is working best in the gums.
| | 02:24 | And the same thing with the next one
and the next one, so on and so forth until
| | 02:28 | you get them all positioned.
| | 02:35 | One cool thing about instance is that
if you find you want the teeth to be all
| | 02:39 | smaller or larger, you can go into
Polygon Mode, select all the polys and scale
| | 02:44 | them, so let me show you how that works.
| | 02:45 | I'm just going to select one
of these; hit F to zoom in.
| | 02:48 | Let's get a better look on this and I
want to go into Face Mode and I'm going to
| | 02:55 | select all these faces and go to
Scale and just shrink them down.
| | 03:00 | So what happens is changing
the one, changes all of them.
| | 03:03 | And so I just undid that because
I didn't want to make that change.
| | 03:07 | Okay, let me zoom in on this tooth again.
| | 03:10 | So we're in Polygon Mode, let's say I
just select one of these, may be the one
| | 03:14 | here at the top and I want to make the
tooth a little bit taller, so I can just
| | 03:17 | go into Move Mode, and let's move
this up and they all get changed.
| | 03:21 | And let's undo that, okay, so I'm going
to hold down the right mouse button and
| | 03:26 | go back to Object Mode.
| | 03:29 | So what happens if I scale up in Object Mode?
| | 03:32 | Notice that it only changes this one.
| | 03:35 | Move, Rotate, and Scale affects only
individual instances of these teeth.
| | 03:40 | However, if you make the change in a
Component Mode, the change happens to all of them.
| | 03:45 | In the next movie we'll pick it up with all
the teeth placed along one side of the lower jaw.
| | 03:49 | If you fill the jaw and have teeth
left over, you can just delete them.
| | 03:53 | Another fairly simple modeling job here,
but it was made even simpler, thanks to
| | 03:57 | Duplicate Special and the power of instances.
| | 04:00 | You'll use instances all the time in
your modeling to make duplicates, so that
| | 04:04 | they can be updated at any
time by just altering one of them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing the teeth| 00:00 | Let's get the teeth finished up with a
few modeling tips and tricks that you
| | 00:04 | can use on a regular basis, then we'll get
the teeth, eye, and spikes back to ZBrush.
| | 00:09 | Let's zoom in on the mouth so
we can see those teeth better.
| | 00:13 | Select one and hit F to zoom in.
| | 00:15 | All right, let's go ahead and select all
of the teeth, so I'm just going to hold
| | 00:19 | down Shift while I select each one.
| | 00:25 | Now we need to combine these teeth into
one object, go to Mesh and click Combine.
| | 00:32 | After this step the teeth are no longer
instances, so make sure that any edits
| | 00:36 | you want done to the teeth have
already been done before this step.
| | 00:40 | Now let's duplicate these
teeth over to the other side.
| | 00:43 | Let me zoom out a little bit, so I can see
this better and hit R to go in the Scale Mode.
| | 00:47 | Now when you combine, it moves the
pivot point to the center of the world, so
| | 00:51 | that's great, and then I'm just going to hit
Ctrl+D to duplicate and let's scale this over.
| | 00:57 | Now when you scale negative, it basically
flips wherever you scale, over to the other side.
| | 01:01 | And so you notice over in the Channel
box, we get a number that's showing us
| | 01:05 | exactly how much we're scaling by.
| | 01:07 | I wanted to just make sure that's exactly -1.
| | 01:11 | Okay, now let's combine one-half
of the teeth with the other half.
| | 01:14 | So I'm just going to hold down Shift
while I select the original teeth, and go
| | 01:19 | up to Mesh and combine once more,
and hit W to go into Move Mode.
| | 01:22 | Notice the pivot point is still down
in the center of the world far away from
| | 01:26 | the actual teeth, so I want to
move that pivot points up closer.
| | 01:30 | I could do it manually, but an easier
way is to just go to Modify and click
| | 01:35 | Center Pivot, so it just moves the
pivot to the center of the object.
| | 01:39 | Okay, let's duplicate
these again for the top teeth.
| | 01:41 | Hit Ctrl+D, let me go into Rotate Mode,
and let's just flip it over exactly 180 degrees.
| | 01:46 | I'm just going to move it a little bit
and going to the Rotate, let's see, let's
| | 01:52 | get exactly 180 degrees, and now here's
just a simple matter of moving them and
| | 01:56 | rotating them into place.
| | 01:57 | I'll hit F to zoom in here.
| | 02:00 | Okay, it's pretty good.
| | 02:04 | Finally, let's make sure that we name
these teeth to help us stay organized.
| | 02:08 | Go into the Attribute Editor and give
the name like teeth-top or teeth-bottom,
| | 02:11 | you can do here in the Channel box too,
so I'm just going to double-click on the
| | 02:15 | name and call it to teethTop, and
similarly with the bottom teeth I'm just going
| | 02:20 | to change this to teethBottom.
| | 02:26 | Now let's get everything that we've made
in Maya back into ZBrush, so let's slip
| | 02:30 | into ZBrush here and open up our Z tool.
| | 02:34 | So I'm going to go to File > Open and
navigate to the Exercise Files, go into
| | 02:39 | Chapter 4, and 04_06, and I'm
just going to open up this ZProject.
| | 02:45 | It's the exact same model that we
had before and we're just going to GoZ
| | 02:49 | those items into ZBrush.
| | 02:50 | So now that we've got this open,
let's go back to Maya and let's select our
| | 02:56 | teeth, our eyeball, and our tail spikes,
just holding down Shift as I select all these.
| | 03:04 | All right, now in the
GoZ tab let's go click GoZ.
| | 03:08 | So we get this little pop-up telling us
that GoZ has already used a mesh called
| | 03:14 | eye and our current scene
involves a mesh called eye.
| | 03:17 | That's okay, it doesn't matter.
| | 03:19 | We'll just click Create and we
automatically gets switched over to ZBrush.
| | 03:25 | Sometimes GoZ doesn't work exactly
the way you'd expect, sometimes objects
| | 03:29 | will be in the wrong place and you'll have to
move them back to where they belong by hand.
| | 03:33 | Other times it puts objects in separate
tools rather than in SubTools of the active tool.
| | 03:38 | It's easy enough to fix,
let's see what happened.
| | 03:41 | So we've got the original Dewhopper here,
so I open the SubTools, okay, nothing there.
| | 03:47 | Let's go into tail spikes, okay, so in
this tool are all of the SubTools that we
| | 03:51 | just used GoZ to transmit.
| | 03:54 | So what we can do is combine the
Dewhopper, which is on a separate tool with all
| | 03:59 | of these accessory objects.
| | 04:01 | So let's go down in the
SubTool palette and click Append.
| | 04:04 | What this does is, lets us append any
of the existing tools as a SubTool of the
| | 04:09 | current tool, so let's click
Dewhopper, and let me zoom out and make sure
| | 04:16 | everything is in the right place. Okay, cool!
| | 04:18 | So we've got our original Dewhopper,
we've got our tail spikes, our eye,
| | 04:22 | teethTop and teethBottom,
all in the correct place.
| | 04:25 | Working between Maya and ZBrush is a
great way to get things done efficiently.
| | 04:30 | You can use each piece of
software for the strength.
| | 04:32 | ZBrush is good at some things that
Maya isn't very good at, and vice versa.
| | 04:37 | There's no absolute rule about which
program should be used for which tasks, so
| | 04:42 | as you get more comfortable with them,
you'll certainly find your own tricks and
| | 04:45 | techniques for getting
work done better and faster.
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|
|
5. Creating Topology for AnimationDrawing guidelines for retopology| 00:00 | The mesh that we created from ZSpheres
and then used DynaMesh to even out the
| | 00:04 | topology with has worked out
pretty well to start sculpting on.
| | 00:08 | However, we need to get this guy
setup for rigging and animation.
| | 00:12 | That means we have to retopologize it.
| | 00:14 | Retopology is going to create a new
wireframe that has the same shape, size, and
| | 00:19 | detail of the current model but with
a different arrangement of polygons.
| | 00:23 | The result will be something
that can be rigged and animated.
| | 00:26 | As it is now, the edges of the mesh
don't always flow along with the major
| | 00:30 | anatomical forms like skin-folds, muscles,
and bony plates, retopology will change that.
| | 00:36 | One bit of warning, make sure that you
will not have to make any substantial
| | 00:40 | changes to the creature's
design after this point.
| | 00:43 | If you retopologize and then it turns
out that your art director or client
| | 00:48 | wasn't happy with the design
you'll have to redo a lot of this work.
| | 00:51 | Better to get a solid approval of the
creature from anyone in charge before
| | 00:55 | continuing, otherwise you'll probably
find yourself wasting a lot of time.
| | 00:59 | Something as simple as adding a new horn
to his head becomes a major effort once
| | 01:04 | the retopology has been done.
| | 01:06 | Now that we know that we are ready
to retopologize, we are going to draw
| | 01:09 | guidelines to help us place new polygons.
| | 01:12 | Let's go into the Polypaint Palette
here and just turn on Colorize so that we
| | 01:16 | can paint, and let's switch our Color
so that the primary color will be red
| | 01:21 | actually, so the secondary color will
be white, I just want to change this to
| | 01:25 | something that we can see
clearly, so red is pretty good.
| | 01:28 | Something else I want to do is change
it to RGB so that we're painting with
| | 01:31 | color and turn off Zadd so
that we're not sculpting anything.
| | 01:35 | And finally, I want to change the Draw
Size to something pretty small like two,
| | 01:38 | because we're going to be making fine
lines, and let's test it out to make sure
| | 01:42 | that this brush is going to work.
| | 01:43 | Let me just zoom in here and I also want
to go up to my highest subdivision level.
| | 01:48 | So I'm going to hit D a couple of times
till I am up to my total of 7 million points.
| | 01:52 | All right, let's see if this is going to work.
| | 01:54 | Okay, cool, nice line.
| | 01:57 | So how do you know where to draw lines?
| | 02:00 | Character modelers use a principle
called Edge Flow to determine where
| | 02:04 | polygons should go.
| | 02:05 | Edge Flow is a way of
relating the topology to the anatomy.
| | 02:09 | Some things to take into consideration
are one where creases form, so you want
| | 02:14 | to look for lines and edges on the model.
| | 02:17 | When this model animates having the
Edge Flow follow creases will help
| | 02:20 | maintain their shape.
| | 02:21 | So for example, there is a nice tight
crease right here around the lower eyelid.
| | 02:26 | It's a great place to put a
guideline, same thing with down here.
| | 02:33 | Another place that creases form a
lot are around where joints bend.
| | 02:37 | So it would be a really good idea to
put one here, maybe around the backside of
| | 02:41 | the elbow as well, where creases form here.
| | 02:46 | Another thing to keep in mind is
the directional movement of flesh and
| | 02:50 | muscle, so when the body moves the
skin is going to be pulled and pushed in
| | 02:54 | various directions.
| | 02:55 | Understanding what direction the skin
moves will help you place edge flow, so
| | 02:59 | let's see where we could do this.
| | 03:02 | We know that the shoulder is going
to move kind of in this back and forth
| | 03:06 | direction as he walks, and also
the skin flaps around the mouth.
| | 03:10 | We know they are going to have to
compress in this direction and the skin will
| | 03:14 | probably bend kind of at an angle like this.
| | 03:17 | Something else to look
forward, are obvious structures.
| | 03:20 | Anatomy often has a clear direction to it.
| | 03:23 | Bones, limbs, and muscles can be indicators
of where to place edge flow. So let's see.
| | 03:28 | I think the hind leg is going
to be a good example of this.
| | 03:31 | It's kind of an obvious direction to
these limbs right here, just right along
| | 03:36 | that edge of the bone, so a nice straight limb.
| | 03:38 | So it's pretty obvious that we're going
to need some nice straight edges there,
| | 03:42 | and we can also follow the contour of
this muscle around this limb as well.
| | 03:49 | Down the leg as well.
| | 03:50 | It's pretty obvious place to put it,
and you can connect them up as well if it
| | 03:53 | seems like it's a pretty
straightforward way of doing that.
| | 03:56 | Something else you can do
is play connect the dots.
| | 03:59 | Some parts of the anatomy will be
harder to figure out than others.
| | 04:03 | You want to do the simpler parts first,
the more obvious parts, and then see if
| | 04:06 | you can bridge the more
difficult spaces between them.
| | 04:09 | So let's look at
underneath the chin of our creature.
| | 04:12 | So you might not know exactly what
you should do in this area, but if you
| | 04:17 | figure out that we are probably going
to need a center line, edge that goes
| | 04:21 | right down the center of the creature
and we're going to need edges that follow
| | 04:24 | around here, you could pretty much
guess that we can fill in some spaces in
| | 04:28 | between with new edges.
| | 04:33 | Lastly, you can get ideas from
looking at other people's models.
| | 04:36 | There are lots of professionals who post
their work online with Edge Flow visible.
| | 04:40 | Study what they do but understand that
there's not just one right way to do it.
| | 04:45 | So go ahead and look around the body
and find places where it's pretty obvious
| | 04:49 | where edge flow should go,
following the major anatomical forms.
| | 04:52 | That will make it a lot easier to
fill in the rest of the retopology later.
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| Fleshing out the retopology guides| 00:00 | Now that the most important
guidelines have been established, let's go in
| | 00:04 | and flush out the rest of the guidelines to
cover the entire model with polygon grids.
| | 00:09 | Although it may seem like a lot of
work, it's better to have a solid idea
| | 00:13 | of what the retopology should look
like now, because the actual process of
| | 00:17 | retopology is even more work and we
want to avoid having to redo any of
| | 00:21 | that work later on.
| | 00:22 | So let me zoom in on the face
and let's see what we can do here.
| | 00:26 | What we want to do here is just continue
flushing out all of these lines, so you
| | 00:33 | can look at lines that you've already
created and figure out that pretty much
| | 00:36 | you're going to want lines that are
parallel and perpendicular to those.
| | 00:40 | So we've already got one for the brow
or the upper eyelid right here, we can
| | 00:44 | probably assume that we want another one
it runs roughly along this ridge right here.
| | 00:48 | We can also create lines that run
perpendicular to existing ones, so it's pretty
| | 00:52 | much assumed that we're going to
want to have line that come out of this
| | 00:55 | direction away from the
eyelids and down here as well.
| | 01:05 | Now this is another great
place to just add more lines in.
| | 01:10 | Now what happens if you change your
mind and you want to erase a line?
| | 01:17 | Pretty simple, just hit the V key to
switch your primary and secondary colors.
| | 01:22 | So I just hit it and notice now
white is our primary color and basically
| | 01:26 | drawing with white is the same as erase,
because the entire creature is filled
| | 01:29 | with white, and then you can hit V
again, switch back to red and draw it
| | 01:36 | somewhere else if you want.
| | 01:37 | I like to draw lines at a relatively
low density, where you could come in here
| | 01:42 | and draw lines very close together make
a lot of them, but that's actually going
| | 01:46 | to be a lot more work in the end,
you'll have to retopologize around every
| | 01:49 | single one of these.
| | 01:50 | What I like to do is just keep it a
little bit lighter and that way it's less
| | 01:55 | work when it comes to re-topology, and
what I can also do is subdivide the model
| | 02:00 | once or twice after I create the new topology.
| | 02:03 | That will give me all that extra detail
without actually having to create it by hand.
| | 02:08 | Another thing that I like to do at
this stage is to define sharp edges and
| | 02:12 | creases with a double line, we get
a better angle on this upper eyelid.
| | 02:16 | So this is a pretty sharp crease right
up here above the eyelid, sometimes I
| | 02:21 | like to add two lines, so that the
result is that you get a sharper crease in
| | 02:25 | your base mesh, after you create the
new topology if there are two lines close
| | 02:29 | together, let me show you
another place that's great to do that.
| | 02:32 | Over here with these bony plates right
here, you draw one line, you'll get a
| | 02:37 | crease in there, but if you draw too
close together and then you retopologize
| | 02:41 | with two lines close together,
you'll get a much sharper crease there.
| | 02:44 | So let me just give you another
example of how I might continue guidelines on
| | 02:48 | some of these complex bony spike areas.
| | 02:50 | I'm just moving close to one of these.
| | 02:56 | So I know I'm going to want to have
lines that go around all of these creases
| | 03:01 | and sharp edges, you basically just
want to keep drawing in lines until you've
| | 03:05 | created a grid of a
roughly evenly sized polygons.
| | 03:11 | So you can pretty much assume that
you're going to need some edges going along
| | 03:15 | all of these forms right here.
| | 03:16 | You might not know exactly how these
edges should form, but just start putting
| | 03:21 | something out and if it's not
working you can always erase it.
| | 03:26 | Places like this can get really
chaotic and complex, so there might not be a
| | 03:31 | simple solution that looks really clean.
| | 03:33 | Luckily these areas are not going to
deform, they're hard bony plates, so
| | 03:37 | they're not going to bend or twist or
anything, so the topology doesn't need to
| | 03:41 | be particularly clean here.
| | 03:45 | Go ahead and finish
covering the model with guidelines.
| | 03:48 | As tedious as this part may seem, it's
important to work out any mysteries about
| | 03:52 | how that apology should look at this stage.
| | 03:55 | It's a bit harder to change your mind later on.
| | 03:57 | I'll pick it up in the next movie
with all of the lines drawn out.
| | 04:01 | There will certainly be times when
you'll change your mind about the edge flow
| | 04:04 | while you retopologize
and that's perfectly okay.
| | 04:07 | There will also be some cleanup to be
done in Maya afterwards, so it doesn't
| | 04:10 | have to be perfect here.
| | 04:12 | I'm intentionally leaving out some
edges, because I know that it will be
| | 04:15 | easier to do them in Maya.
| | 04:17 | Retopology in ZBrush can be finicky,
especially in small tight areas like
| | 04:21 | between toes or inside the mouth and
around the eyes, I'm going to get a rough
| | 04:25 | general mesh created and
then refine it later in Maya.
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| Creating new topology| 00:00 | Now that we've got our guidelines for new
topology, it's time to actually create it.
| | 00:05 | Looks like our exercise
file came in upside down.
| | 00:07 | That's okay, we can just grab in
the open space and rotate it up.
| | 00:11 | Retopology in ZBrush is a fairly
straightforward yet time consuming job.
| | 00:15 | It's a good opportunity to just put on
some music and get in the mindset of just
| | 00:19 | working till it's done.
| | 00:21 | There are some things to look out for
however, ZBrush has a few quirks that will
| | 00:24 | make Retopology a hassle if
you weren't paying attention.
| | 00:27 | So we've got our model here with
guidelines already drawn on it.
| | 00:31 | Now to get into Retopology mode, it's
going to be a few strange steps, so be
| | 00:36 | sure to pay close attention.
| | 00:37 | I am going to scale in here on our
creature and let's go to our SubTool palette,
| | 00:43 | go to Append, and pick a ZSphere.
| | 00:45 | Now let's go up on our SubTool palette
and make sure we got the ZSphere selected.
| | 00:50 | Now it's kind of big and in the way, so
I want to go to Scale and just click and
| | 00:54 | drag on this to shrink it down, and
let me actually just move it, so it's up
| | 01:00 | inside the body so we can't even see it.
| | 01:02 | Now why we make a ZSphere, it
doesn't make a lot of sense.
| | 01:05 | It's one of those little quirks in
ZBrush that you just follow the step.
| | 01:09 | It doesn't make any sense, but
you just do it and it works out.
| | 01:12 | All right back into Draw mood, let's
go down to the Topology palette, now
| | 01:19 | click Edit Topology.
| | 01:21 | So now we're in retopologize mode.
| | 01:23 | One last thing I want to do is turn on
symmetry, so I'm going to hit X, so that
| | 01:28 | we are making the new retopology on both
sides at the same time, and we can just
| | 01:31 | confirm that that has been turned on.
| | 01:32 | If you go up to Transform, and you'll see
that Activate Symmetry has been turned on.
| | 01:36 | That's good.
| | 01:37 | The new topology can now be created by
clicking new vertices and edges onto the
| | 01:42 | surface of the skull, so
let's see how this works;
| | 01:44 | I want to zoom in closer here.
| | 01:45 | So you want to create new polygons
everyplace that we've already drawn new
| | 01:52 | guidelines, so if you just click on the
surface of the model, you create a new
| | 01:56 | vertex I'm just going to click around
this polygon right here, and then back at
| | 02:02 | the original vertex to finish that
polygon, you'll notice that there's a red
| | 02:05 | circle around the next to
last vertex that we clicked on.
| | 02:09 | That means that if we click anywhere
else on the model that new vertex will be
| | 02:14 | connected to it by an edge, this way
you can keep building off of the topology
| | 02:18 | that you've already created.
| | 02:20 | So let's see if I click this vertex
right here, it's going to be connected to
| | 02:23 | that one that had the red circle around it.
| | 02:26 | Basically this new vertex is the new one
that has the red circle, so that is the
| | 02:30 | one that is going to be connected.
| | 02:31 | So we want to click on a vertex that's
actually connected by a line, and then we
| | 02:35 | can close polygon off.
| | 02:37 | So what happens if you want to start
somewhere else, rather than build off of
| | 02:41 | that red vertex, it's simple.
| | 02:43 | Just click on any open space
to clear the active vertex.
| | 02:47 | So I'm just going to
click out here on the canvas.
| | 02:49 | Now you can pick a different place to
build from, so let say I just want to
| | 02:53 | start down here, just click
down here and just start a new.
| | 02:57 | Now let say if I want to close this one
off the red vertex is this one up here,
| | 03:03 | so it would actually connect across
there, which is not what I want, so I'm
| | 03:06 | going to hit Ctrl+Z to Undo.
| | 03:08 | I just want to click out here in open
space and then I can also start from a
| | 03:12 | vertex that already has been
created now and close that off.
| | 03:15 | Now there is one special case that happens,
let me zoom in here close so we can see.
| | 03:21 | Let's say we're creating some new
topology and we want to start in a new place,
| | 03:26 | so we want to clear out this red circle,
but there's no open space to click on.
| | 03:31 | One other way you can clear it out is
just by using any of these Move, Scale or
| | 03:34 | Rotate buttons and that will
also clear the active vertex.
| | 03:38 | When working symmetrically, you can
snap to the centerline of the model, so let
| | 03:42 | me zoom out so we can see
the center of the creature.
| | 03:46 | So let's say I'm creating some new
polygons here along the centerline.
| | 03:51 | When you click right in the middle,
you get a green circle around a new
| | 03:53 | vertex that's created.
| | 03:55 | That means it was snapped perfectly to
the centerline of the creature, let me
| | 03:58 | just finish this polygon.
| | 04:01 | So sometimes you'll want to delete
an edge or vertex if you change your
| | 04:05 | mind about the topology.
| | 04:06 | To do that, simply hold down Alt
as you click on a vertex or an edge.
| | 04:11 | ZBrush has a bad habit of sometimes
deleting more than what you wanted, so if
| | 04:15 | that happens you can just
re-create that topology.
| | 04:17 | Another annoyance of ZBrush's
retopology tools is that sometimes the new vertex
| | 04:22 | that you click to create, will be
attached to the ZSphere that we originally
| | 04:26 | created, rather than the red vertex,
this create a long edge that shoots off to
| | 04:30 | places we don't want.
| | 04:31 | If that happens, simply hit Ctrl+Z to Undo.
| | 04:34 | Now it happens randomly, so I'm not sure
if I can re-create it for you here, but
| | 04:38 | if something weird happens, you
can just hit Ctrl+Z to Undo it.
| | 04:41 | As you go, you may want to get a
preview of how these newly created polygons
| | 04:46 | will look when turned into a new mesh.
| | 04:48 | To do that just hit the A key, you may
also want to hide the original model, so
| | 04:54 | that you can see it better.
| | 04:54 | So I am going to go up to SubTool
palette here and just hide the original mesh.
| | 04:58 | So you can see that those new
polygons recreated have been turned into new
| | 05:02 | geometry, I'm just going to hit A to
turn them back to vertices and edges.
| | 05:08 | I'm not going to lie,
retopology can take a long time.
| | 05:11 | It's a lot of tricky clicking and
repetitive movements that can get a little
| | 05:15 | mind damming and it doesn't help that
ZBrush has a few bugs that throw a monkey
| | 05:19 | wrench into the process from time to time.
| | 05:21 | Stick with it however, and you have a
mesh with topology for animation and rigging.
| | 05:26 | That means your model can be much
more than just a static sculpture.
| | 05:29 | It will actually be animatable.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Generating the new mesh| 00:00 | After putting all that work into
retopology, we need to check it over to make
| | 00:04 | sure that it converts to the geometry correctly.
| | 00:07 | Some problems maybe easier to clean
up in Maya, but there are some that are
| | 00:11 | better dealt with while we
are still here in ZBrush.
| | 00:13 | Now let's see what this new
topology looks like in mesh form.
| | 00:17 | Going to your SubTool Palette and make
sure that the ZSphere SubTool is active.
| | 00:23 | Now let's go down to the Adaptive
Skin Palette and I'm just going to hit
| | 00:27 | Preview, so this is converting all those edges
and vertices that we created into new geometry.
| | 00:32 | So make it easier to see, let's go
back up and hide the original sculpt.
| | 00:37 | Now let's hit Shift+F to show the Wireframe.
| | 00:41 | Okay, looks pretty cool.
| | 00:43 | The Adaptive Skin preview lets us
see the mesh with added subdivisions.
| | 00:48 | Let's go back down to the Adaptive Skin
here and change Density to 1, so this is
| | 00:53 | exactly what we created in our new
topology without any added subdivisions.
| | 00:58 | However, sometimes there are problems
with the mesh that aren't apparent at
| | 01:01 | this density level.
| | 01:02 | So be sure to check it out on Density
2 or 3, because some problems reveal
| | 01:07 | themselves only when the mesh is subdivided.
| | 01:10 | So let's go up to 2 and I'm going to
turn off the Wireframe Shift+F. So let's
| | 01:15 | look around and see if there is
any holes or things that look weird.
| | 01:18 | You will notice that the tail is not complete.
| | 01:22 | That's because it's going to be really
easy to just extrude that in Maya rather
| | 01:25 | than retopologize
manually all the way around it.
| | 01:29 | Same thing with the claws,
I've left them off here.
| | 01:31 | So it looks like one problem I'm seeing
is down here on this toe, we are getting
| | 01:36 | some weird holes, some
parts are missing out of this.
| | 01:40 | Now I intentionally created some bad
topology on this toe, let's zoom in even
| | 01:45 | closer and take a look, I am going to
decrease the Density to 1 to make this
| | 01:49 | easier to see and let's just zoom in here.
| | 01:56 | What happened is that I created this
toe with just four polygons going around
| | 02:00 | it, so you can see it's kind of like a
box, there is just four edges all the way
| | 02:04 | around, the other toes
have five like a Pentagon.
| | 02:07 | Now the reason why this is a problem is
because when ZBrush tries to convert the
| | 02:13 | retopology to a mesh it looks for
four vertices connected by four edges.
| | 02:18 | So let's see, this hole right here.
| | 02:20 | It's obvious to us that the new polygon
should have been created by connecting
| | 02:25 | these four vertices right here.
| | 02:26 | However, ZBrush got confused and thought
that four vertices on the inside of the
| | 02:31 | toe needed to be connected right here.
| | 02:33 | This creates really bad
topology called non-manifold geometry.
| | 02:38 | Without getting too technical it's
basically a geometry that has more than two
| | 02:42 | polygons connected to a single edge
and it spells trouble big-time, let's get
| | 02:47 | this fixed right here in now.
| | 02:49 | What we need to do is add an extra edge
running down the length of this toe, so
| | 02:54 | that it has at least five
edges running the length of it.
| | 02:57 | That way ZBrush will know to fill the
four-sided polygons with geometry rather
| | 03:02 | than the five-sided polygons that
are on the interior of the other toes.
| | 03:06 | So let's get out of Preview mode and
I want to go back up to my SubTool and
| | 03:12 | bring back the original
sculpt, so make that visible.
| | 03:15 | Okay, so we're going to have to do a
little bit of editing to this retopology in
| | 03:20 | order to put that new edge in.
| | 03:21 | ZBrush has a little bug sometimes
where you can't just go and edit topology
| | 03:25 | after going to Adaptive Skin mode, so
what we need to do is go down to our
| | 03:31 | Topology Palette, turnoff Edit
Topology and just turn it back on again.
| | 03:35 | Now what we can do to add more edges
is just click in the middle of existing
| | 03:39 | edges and this is just going to create
a new edge down the length of this toe,
| | 03:46 | and now let's see if it worked.
| | 03:53 | I am going to turn on Preview Mode
again and let's go up to our original
| | 03:58 | sculpt and turn that off.
| | 04:00 | Okay, it looks like it filled it in pretty good.
| | 04:03 | Now let's export this retopology out as
an OBJ model, we could use GoZ to send
| | 04:09 | it to Maya of course, but I like to
save out a version at this point just in
| | 04:13 | case there's some problem and I want
to have a version saved out that I can
| | 04:16 | revert to if I have to.
| | 04:18 | Just make sure that the new topology is
in Mesh Mode and click Export and save
| | 04:22 | it wherever you like.
| | 04:23 | So I'm going just going to click
Export here make sure it's OBJ Format, let's
| | 04:29 | just save it to the Desktop
and I'll just call it retopology.
| | 04:36 | Any errors that you have in your
topology can cause a lot of problems later on.
| | 04:41 | It's a good idea to spend time to make
sure that there's nothing wrong with the
| | 04:44 | mesh before getting into any
more sculpting or texturing.
| | 04:48 | Unresolved problems can result in
losing work or forcing you to perform
| | 04:51 | complicated recovery techniques.
| | 04:54 | Better to get those things out of
the way at this stage of the process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cleaning up the mesh in Maya| 00:00 | Maya can be a more useful tool than
ZBrush for cleaning up things at the minute
| | 00:05 | level of individual polygons.
| | 00:07 | You may also want to fix problems in
Maya if you feel more comfortable working
| | 00:11 | there than in ZBrush.
| | 00:12 | Either way, you want to make sure
that the mesh is completely trouble-free
| | 00:15 | before moving on to the next steps.
| | 00:17 | As a change of pace, let's use OBJ files to
work between ZBrush and Maya rather than GoZ.
| | 00:23 | It's a good idea to know this workflow
just in case GoZ causes new problems.
| | 00:28 | So let's import an OBJ.
| | 00:29 | Go up to File > Import with Options.
| | 00:33 | And the File type, let's go pick OBJ.
| | 00:37 | One thing I want to make sure I do is check
Single Object rather than Multiple Objects.
| | 00:42 | The reason for that is, if you bring
in an OBJ as multiple objects, Maya will
| | 00:46 | reorder the number of the vertices, and
that can cause problems if you send that
| | 00:51 | model back to ZBrush and it's expecting
the vertices to be in a certain order.
| | 00:55 | Importing as Single Object, make sure
that the vertices keep their numbering.
| | 01:01 | Okay, let's go find that Exercise File.
| | 01:03 | Let's go to Exercise Files > Ch_05 and
folder 05_05 > cleanupinmaya.obj. Okay.
| | 01:11 | I am just going to hit 5 on the keyboard
to see Shaded Mode, and let's Zoom in here.
| | 01:16 | One thing that's easier to
handle in Maya is surface direction.
| | 01:20 | When ZBrush makes the retopologized mesh,
it doesn't actually know which side of
| | 01:25 | the mesh is facing in and
which side is facing out.
| | 01:28 | We can see this clearly if we
turn off Double Sided display.
| | 01:31 | Let me show you how to do that.
| | 01:32 | Just select your model here, and let's
go into the Attribute Editor, let's go
| | 01:37 | down to Render Stats, and scroll down
to Double Sided, let's turn this off.
| | 01:42 | And I'm just going to deselect the model here.
| | 01:44 | You can see the model is inside out,
all except for this little bit of the tail
| | 01:49 | here, the model is inside
out. So let's fix that.
| | 01:52 | Go ahead and select your model,
and we need to go into Polygon Mode.
| | 01:55 | So I am going to hold down the
right mouse button and go down to Face.
| | 01:58 | Now I just need to select all of the
polygons of the body except the tail tip.
| | 02:03 | Now, in your Polygon's Menu, go
up to Normals and click Reverse.
| | 02:07 | Let's see if that worked.
| | 02:09 | I am going to hold down the right mouse
button, go to Object Mode. All right!
| | 02:12 | It looks like everything is
facing the right direction now.
| | 02:15 | Another good thing to do in
Maya is create holding edges.
| | 02:18 | Remember, holding edges are those double
lines that help make sharp creases in your mesh.
| | 02:23 | It can be easier to simply insert an
edge loop in Maya in order to create them
| | 02:28 | than it would be to
manually create them in ZBrush.
| | 02:31 | So let's Zoom in on the
eyelids and see how we can do this.
| | 02:34 | I may want a sharper edge in
some of these eyelid creases.
| | 02:37 | So if I go to Insert Edge Loop and
put that in, it's much faster than
| | 02:41 | retopologizing it into ZBrush.
| | 02:43 | So let's go up to the Edit Mesh
Menu, pick Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 02:49 | And let's go into one of these creases
here and just insert a new Edge Loop.
| | 02:52 | I am just going to hit B
to turn off Soft Select.
| | 02:56 | Looks like it's on by default.
| | 02:58 | And I'll hit F to Zoom in.
| | 02:59 | So we've got a new edge that's really
tight next to the one that already existed
| | 03:03 | inside of that crease.
| | 03:04 | So now when I hit 3 to look at it in
Smooth Mode, and I am just going to go into
| | 03:08 | Object Mode really quick here, you can
see we get a nice tight crease in there.
| | 03:13 | This is a good thing to do anywhere that you
might want to have harder edges in your models.
| | 03:17 | Something else that you might
miss in ZBrush is holes in the mesh.
| | 03:21 | This happens when you're creating the
new topology and vertices don't quite get
| | 03:25 | snapped together correctly.
| | 03:26 | If you don't fix it in ZBrush,
that's okay, you can do it here.
| | 03:29 | Let's see if there're any holes.
| | 03:32 | I found one right here;
| | 03:33 | it's back behind this little boney plate.
| | 03:35 | Let's select the model, I am going to
go hit 1 on the keyboard just to get out
| | 03:39 | of that Smooth Mode.
| | 03:40 | And what you can do here is select these edges.
| | 03:42 | So I am going to go into Edge Mode by
holding down the right mouse button and
| | 03:46 | just double-clicking so
we select all those edges.
| | 03:49 | Now I'll go up to Mesh and
Fill Hole, as simple as that.
| | 03:53 | Six pointed stars are another problem
that need fixing, especially when they
| | 03:57 | happen along the centerline of the character.
| | 04:00 | Let's see if we can find any of those.
| | 04:01 | Here's one in the chest.
| | 04:05 | The reason why you want to fix them is
because when a single vertex is connected
| | 04:09 | to six edges, it has a
disproportionately large effect on that part of the mesh.
| | 04:15 | It has too much influence and can
cause pinching or other strange effects.
| | 04:19 | So let's get rid of it.
| | 04:19 | So I am still in Edge Mode.
| | 04:21 | I am just going to select these edges
that are kind of forming an X around
| | 04:24 | either side of the
centerline and just delete them.
| | 04:27 | Now we can just cut new
edges across the centerline.
| | 04:30 | So I am going to ago up here to the
Interactive Split tool and I am just going
| | 04:34 | to cut some new edges that
go across the centerline.
| | 04:37 | Once you create an edge that you like,
you can right-click to lock in that
| | 04:40 | change, and then just go cut another one.
| | 04:44 | Sometimes the tool is a little bit
finicky and actually can create a finish
| | 04:47 | line like I want it to.
| | 04:51 | The problems fixed in this movie are very
common when working between Maya and ZBrush.
| | 04:56 | I always check thoroughly for them,
because they always cause problems later on.
| | 05:00 | If you can fix them at this stage of
the process, they're much easier to deal with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling the tail in Maya| 00:00 | You'll notice that I haven't
done part of the tail or the claws.
| | 00:03 | This is because it will be
easier to create them in Maya.
| | 00:06 | Sure you could do them in ZBrush if
you're not comfortable modeling in Maya,
| | 00:10 | but it would be more tedious to
retopologize around the very narrow shapes of
| | 00:14 | the tail and the claws.
| | 00:15 | Let's do the tail first.
| | 00:17 | Retopologizing around the tail in
ZBrush could take hours, instead, let's
| | 00:20 | do something more fun.
| | 00:22 | Maya can create the tube
shape we need in seconds.
| | 00:25 | We'll use a NURBS curve to control an
extrusion from one opening to the other.
| | 00:29 | Let's go into our Side Orthographic View.
| | 00:31 | So I am just going to click on the
Viewport and hit Spacebar, and here in the
| | 00:35 | Side View let's click Spacebar again.
| | 00:37 | I just want to Zoom in on the tail.
| | 00:40 | Go up to your Curves tab
here and click EP Curve tool.
| | 00:44 | Now let's start this curve close to
this opening on the tail, and just make one
| | 00:49 | more click out in space, doesn't really
matter exactly where, and then one more
| | 00:53 | click down here at the other end of the tail.
| | 00:55 | Let's hold down the right mouse
button and go to Control Vertex.
| | 00:58 | What I want to do is just edit the
shape of this curve a little bit so it's a
| | 01:01 | little bit more natural.
| | 01:02 | I am just going to select individual
vertices and go into Move Mode, and just
| | 01:07 | move things around a little bit until
it looks like a much more smooth curve.
| | 01:11 | I will just click-and-drag this. Okay.
| | 01:13 | Let's go back into Perspective Mode.
| | 01:15 | I am going to hit Spacebar and then
Spacebar once again inside the Perspective View.
| | 01:20 | I just want to Zoom in close to
where the tail cuts off right here.
| | 01:23 | I am just going to go into Polygon Mode,
hold down the right mouse button, go to
| | 01:28 | Face, and click these two
polygons right here on the end.
| | 01:31 | Now we need to Shift+Select the curve
that we're going to use to extrude with.
| | 01:36 | So we've got two Faces and the curve selected.
| | 01:39 | Now let's go into the Edit Mesh Menu,
let's go down to Extrude with Options.
| | 01:43 | Make sure that under Curves
settings we're using the Selected Curve.
| | 01:47 | Let's also increase the number of edges
or Divisions that are created along the
| | 01:51 | length of this extrusion.
| | 01:52 | You can put it anywhere you want, and
you can change it later, let's just see
| | 01:55 | what 10 looks like for
starters, and let's click Extrude.
| | 01:58 | I am just going to Zoom out
and see what we get here. Okay.
| | 02:01 | That's pretty good!
| | 02:03 | We get some options that
we can set after the fact.
| | 02:06 | So I am just going to click-and-drag
on Divisions, and increase that a little
| | 02:09 | bit so it kind of matches the spacing
of edges that were on the existing model.
| | 02:13 | Looks like up to 23 is about good. Okay.
| | 02:16 | Once that looks good, let's
delete our history to lock this in.
| | 02:19 | Go up to Edit > Delete by Type > History. Okay.
| | 02:22 | Now I am going to go down to the little
gap here, where we haven't quite filled
| | 02:28 | in the space, and I am just going to hit Delete.
| | 02:29 | I am just going to delete those
polygons that are selected on the very end,
| | 02:34 | and let's rotate around a little bit to the
other side so we can delete these two Faces here.
| | 02:38 | I want to close up the gap just a
little bit, so I am going to hold down the
| | 02:41 | right mouse button and go to Vertex
Mode, and now I will just select these
| | 02:45 | vertices right here, and I will go into
Move Mode, I just want to move them up
| | 02:48 | closer to this other end of the tail.
| | 02:50 | So it's almost right on top of each other.
| | 02:52 | Now we can merge them together.
| | 02:54 | So I am just going to
select all of these verts now.
| | 02:55 | We'll go up to the Edit Mesh Menu,
and go to Merge with Options.
| | 02:59 | Let's just see what
happens if I apply it now. Okay.
| | 03:03 | So the Threshold was just
right, so that it merged.
| | 03:07 | I am going to hit F actually, Zoom in
on that, so it merged exactly the verts
| | 03:11 | that I wanted without merging unnecessary ones.
| | 03:14 | If I set this really high and hit
Apply, it's going to merge all of them.
| | 03:17 | That's not what I want, so I am just
going to hit Z to undo that. Okay.
| | 03:20 | So that's good, so I am going to X out of that.
| | 03:23 | Let's Zoom out here.
| | 03:25 | I am just going to go back into Object
Mode, select the full creature, and let's
| | 03:29 | just go to Edit > Delete by Type >
History one more time to lock everything in.
| | 03:33 | The exact shape of the tail might be a
little off from the original sculpt, but
| | 03:37 | we can modify that once we get back into ZBrush.
| | 03:39 | It will also be easier there,
because we can line up this model with the
| | 03:43 | original sculpt and get it precise in ZBrush.
| | 03:46 | Using a curve to control an extrusion is
a handy modeling trick that can come in
| | 03:50 | handy in all kinds of situations.
| | 03:52 | You can use it to make tentacles or
tree branches or anything else you could
| | 03:55 | imagine that involves a curving tube-like shape.
| | 03:58 | It's also faster to do simple shapes
like this using Extrude than it is to
| | 04:02 | retopologize one vert at a time in ZBrush.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling the claws| 00:00 | The claws are another part of the
model that could be retopologized in ZBrush
| | 00:04 | or modeled in Maya.
| | 00:05 | There is however one big advantage to
doing them in Maya, you only have to
| | 00:09 | create one and then
duplicate it for all the other claws.
| | 00:12 | Now, depending on the settings in ZBrush,
when you created the new mesh and also
| | 00:16 | the density of that mesh, the tips of
the toes may be open holes or they may
| | 00:20 | have been closed off.
| | 00:21 | Either way, the approach I use
in this video will work the same.
| | 00:24 | So I am just going to hit 5 to go into
Shaded Mode here in our Viewport, and
| | 00:28 | let's Zoom in on one of the toes.
| | 00:30 | I just want to see it from the other side.
| | 00:32 | So you can see here actually some of
them are open, like this one right here,
| | 00:36 | and this one is closed.
| | 00:38 | So what you want to do before going
any further is just delete any Faces that
| | 00:42 | are on any open tips of these toes.
| | 00:44 | So I am just going to click on the model,
hold down the right mouse button and
| | 00:47 | go to Face, and just select these two
polygons right here at the tip, so you
| | 00:52 | Shift+Select the second one and hit Delete.
| | 00:55 | And let's see, it looks like
there's another one over here.
| | 00:57 | Let's see if I can Zoom in a
little closer, Shift+Select and Delete.
| | 01:03 | So go ahead and see if there are any
other open holes on any of the other toes.
| | 01:07 | I'm only going to create a few claws
in this video, because it would be just
| | 01:10 | repetitive to do all of them.
| | 01:12 | Now we're going use Extrude on
these open edges to create claws.
| | 01:16 | So I am going to hold down the right
mouse button, go to Edge Mode, and let's
| | 01:19 | double-click on an open edge.
| | 01:21 | Let me just move my view
so I can see this better.
| | 01:23 | I am going to go and click Extrude.
| | 01:26 | I want to click-and-drag on this blue
axis here just to extrude out a little bit.
| | 01:31 | And I also want to go into
Scale Mode to shrink that down.
| | 01:33 | So I am going to hit R and let's
just scale this down to a point.
| | 01:38 | Now I want to go into Move Mode and
just move the tip of this claw around, I am
| | 01:41 | going to hit F to Zoom in on it.
| | 01:42 | Actually I Zoomed in too much,
so I am going to hold down Alt and
| | 01:45 | Right-click+Drag to pull out a little
bit, and I just want to make sure that
| | 01:49 | this tip of the claw is in the right place.
| | 01:50 | So let's make it a little bit longer.
| | 01:53 | And let's see, it's a little bit crooked.
| | 01:54 | I am just going to
straighten it out a bit. Okay.
| | 01:57 | So the claw is really straight right now.
| | 01:59 | I want to curve it a little bit.
| | 02:00 | So let's look at it from the Side View,
and I just want to use the Insert Edge
| | 02:04 | Loop tool to add some more geometry.
| | 02:06 | So go up to Edit Mesh, and
click Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 02:09 | I will just click once, and I am
going to go into Move Mode and just move
| | 02:13 | this up a little bit.
| | 02:14 | Now, you can repeat the last
function by hitting G on the keyboard.
| | 02:18 | So this goes back into Insert Edge
Loop Mode, and I will just insert another
| | 02:21 | one, hit W, go back to Move Mode,
and just round out that shape a bit.
| | 02:26 | Now, I want the tip of the
claw to be a perfect point.
| | 02:29 | Right now it's an open hole with some
vertices that are just very close to each other.
| | 02:33 | So I am going to hold down the right
mouse button and go to Vertex, and let's
| | 02:37 | just select all these vertices and merge them.
| | 02:39 | Go up to Edit Mesh, and Merge, now
we've got a perfect point. Okay.
| | 02:44 | Now to make the duplicates.
| | 02:45 | Let's go into Face Mode and
select all of the Faces of the claw.
| | 02:48 | What you can do is just select the ones
at the tip and then grow the selection
| | 02:53 | by holding down Shift and tapping the
period key, go ahead and do that twice.
| | 02:58 | Now we've got the entire claw selected.
| | 03:00 | Now let's break this off into a separate object.
| | 03:02 | Go up to Mesh and click Extract.
| | 03:04 | Now hit W to go into Move Mode, and I
am just going to Zoom out to see this a
| | 03:07 | little bit more clearly.
| | 03:08 | It looks like our pivot point
moved to the center of the world.
| | 03:11 | That happens whenever you extract.
| | 03:13 | So I want that to go to the center of the claw.
| | 03:15 | So I am just going to deselect everything.
| | 03:17 | Let's click that claw, and actually
we're still in Face Mode, so I am going to
| | 03:22 | hold down the right mouse
button and go to Object Mode.
| | 03:25 | Select that claw again, and let's
move its pivot point to the center.
| | 03:28 | So go to Modify > Center Pivot. Okay.
| | 03:32 | Great!
| | 03:32 | Now we need to duplicate.
| | 03:34 | So hit Ctrl+D and let's move this claw
out and position it next to this other
| | 03:39 | toe, and I am going to hit F to Zoom in.
| | 03:41 | And you might want to use your Rotate
tools or your Scale tools to get this claw
| | 03:47 | to fit and match that toe better.
| | 03:50 | Move this till it looks just about right.
| | 03:52 | Looks like this opening is a little bit
smaller, maybe I will scale this toe in a bit.
| | 03:56 | All right, pretty good!
| | 03:58 | Go ahead and do the same thing for all
the other claws on all the other toes,
| | 04:02 | duplicating them for everyone.
| | 04:04 | I am just going to do this one,
because it would be tedious and repetitive to
| | 04:07 | show you all the toes.
| | 04:09 | Once all the claws are in the right
place, you can select all the claws and the
| | 04:12 | body and then combine
them into one object again.
| | 04:15 | So let's Zoom out here and just select
over everything, assuming that you've got
| | 04:20 | claws for every toe you'd select
over all the claws, including the body.
| | 04:24 | Now go up to Mesh and click Combine.
| | 04:27 | So they're all one object again.
| | 04:29 | Let's Zoom back in on this claw.
| | 04:31 | So it's all one object, but there's
still a gap between the claw and the toe.
| | 04:35 | We need to merge some vertices
so that the surface is watertight.
| | 04:38 | So I am going to hold down the right
mouse button and go to Vertex and let's
| | 04:42 | click one of these vertices and now I
need to Zoom in even closer, holding down
| | 04:45 | Alt and the right mouse
button, I can Zoom in closer.
| | 04:50 | And I just want to Shift+Select a
vertex on the corresponding side of the toe.
| | 04:54 | So we've got the two selected, so
now go to Edit Mesh, and click Merge.
| | 04:58 | Now go ahead and do the
same thing for other vertices;
| | 05:01 | Shift+Select a second one and you can
repeat the same function by hitting G.
| | 05:07 | Same thing all the way around.
| | 05:08 | I am going to hit F to Zoom in on that again,
Alt+Right-click+Drag to Zoom in smoothly.
| | 05:14 | I am just going to adjust this. Okay.
| | 05:19 | Great!
| | 05:20 | Make sure to do that on all the
toes and the original toe as well.
| | 05:24 | When you're done, you can hit 3
on the keyboard to smooth the mesh.
| | 05:27 | So let's go into Object Mode, select
the body, and hit 3. Let's Zoom in now.
| | 05:33 | This is a good way of checking the mesh to
make sure that everything got merged correctly.
| | 05:37 | If there's any verts that didn't get merged,
it will make an obvious gap in smoothed mode.
| | 05:42 | So I'm looking at it all the
way around, it looks pretty clean.
| | 05:44 | If there was a hole in here, then we'd
know that there are some vertices that
| | 05:47 | didn't get merged correctly.
| | 05:49 | Using Duplicate in Maya is a powerful
way to create lots of things that all
| | 05:53 | have the same shape.
| | 05:54 | It makes the process of modeling claws a lot
faster than retopologizing each one in ZBrush.
| | 05:59 | You will use this technique in
all kinds of situations that involve
| | 06:02 | repetitious shapes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Preparing to project detail| 00:00 | Now, we've got two models;
| | 00:02 | the original high detailed sculpt in
ZBrush and this low detailed model with
| | 00:06 | proper topology in Maya.
| | 00:08 | What we need to do now is get the model
into ZBrush and put all of that detail
| | 00:13 | from the sculpt onto it.
| | 00:14 | ZBrush has a feature made just for
this kind of task called Projection.
| | 00:19 | It takes one mesh and shrink-
wraps it around another mesh.
| | 00:22 | We'll use this to transfer
detail from the sculpt to this model.
| | 00:26 | So we've got our model open in Maya.
| | 00:28 | Let's export this to ZBrush using OBJs
again instead of GoZ just for practice.
| | 00:33 | Make sure you've got your model
selected, and you want to make sure you've
| | 00:36 | deleted all history first.
| | 00:37 | So go to Edit > Delete by Type > History.
| | 00:40 | Now go to File > Export Selection with Options.
| | 00:45 | Now, I want to change the File type to OBJ,
however, there is one thing you have to do first.
| | 00:49 | By default, Maya does not include the
OBJ Exporter in your Export options.
| | 00:55 | So let's Cancel and set that up.
| | 00:56 | Go to Window > Settings/
Preferences > Plug-in Manager.
| | 01:01 | Now you need to scroll
down till you find objExport.
| | 01:05 | Go ahead and turn on Loaded and Auto
load, and go ahead and close out of that.
| | 01:10 | Now it should work just fine.
| | 01:11 | Go to File > Export Selection with
Options, and let's pick OBJexport.
| | 01:16 | We actually don't need any of these
settings, they might get in the way of
| | 01:21 | the import to ZBrush, so I am just going to
turn all of these off and click Export Selection.
| | 01:25 | Now you can save this wherever you want.
| | 01:28 | I will call it
modelfrommaya and Export Selection.
| | 01:34 | With that done, let's get into ZBrush.
| | 01:35 | Now, I've currently got
the model saved as a Z tool.
| | 01:39 | It's kind of like a project,
but a little bit different.
| | 01:41 | Let's see how that works.
| | 01:43 | Go up in the Tool palette and go to Load
Tool, now let's go to our Exercise Files;
| | 01:47 | Ch_05 and 05_08.
| | 01:50 | So go ahead and open this prepare.ZTL file.
| | 01:54 | Now, Z tools are a little bit different,
you have to click-and-drag to bring
| | 01:57 | them into the canvas, then you
have to go into Edit Mode to use them.
| | 02:00 | That's why I like to use Z Projects, but
it's good to know just in case you need
| | 02:03 | to work with the Z tool.
| | 02:05 | Now, if I import that OBJ that I just
saved from Maya, it will try to replace
| | 02:09 | this Z tool with that model,
and that's not what I want.
| | 02:12 | So let's import it into a different tool.
| | 02:14 | So let's go and create a
ZSphere in a separate tool.
| | 02:18 | So now we've got the ZSphere and we've
also got the sculpts that we just loaded
| | 02:22 | in, and I want to import
that OBJ on top of this ZSphere.
| | 02:26 | So let's now go to Import in the Tool
palette and let's pick that OBJ that we
| | 02:30 | just saved, and go to Open.
| | 02:33 | Now, we need to get both of
these models into one Z tool.
| | 02:36 | Let's go back to the sculpt here, and I
want to open up SubTool and just append
| | 02:42 | that model, that OBJ into this one.
| | 02:45 | So let's go down to Append and
just pick that model from Maya.
| | 02:48 | Now, here is something that happens sometimes.
| | 02:51 | When working between ZBrush and Maya,
sometimes things get offset a little bit.
| | 02:55 | So I need to move the model from Maya and
position it on top of the original sculpt.
| | 03:00 | Let's make sure we've got that
SubTool visible, and I just want to view
| | 03:03 | this from the side.
| | 03:04 | I want to hold down Shift to snap it, so
it's now snapped to a perfect side view.
| | 03:08 | We just need to move this model up
so it's perfectly on top of this one.
| | 03:12 | So go to your Move tool up here.
| | 03:15 | I am just going to click-and
-drag and manipulate that.
| | 03:16 | It actually doesn't
matter really where I put this.
| | 03:19 | I just want to click-and-drag now
on the center circle and move this up
| | 03:24 | till it's right on top.
| | 03:24 | I might want to Zoom in a little
bit too to make it more precise.
| | 03:29 | You could even click-and-drag out a new
manipulator if you have to, I just want
| | 03:33 | to get as close as possible.
| | 03:35 | Since we made the tail and claws
separately from the sculpt, their shapes
| | 03:39 | may not match exactly.
| | 03:41 | I will use the Move Brush in ZBrush to get
the tail of the model more on top of the sculpt.
| | 03:45 | So let's Zoom out a little bit. Okay.
| | 03:47 | So you can see our tail from ZBrush is a
little bit different from the tail from Maya.
| | 03:52 | So I am just going to go into the Draw Mode.
| | 03:54 | I am going to hit B to open up the
Brush palette here, and let's hit M for our
| | 04:00 | Move Brushes, and hit V or just
click on this Move Brush here.
| | 04:04 | And I am going to hold down the
Spacebar to increase the Brush Size;
| | 04:07 | just click-and-drag to scoot
this up so it matches and lines up.
| | 04:12 | Before we project the detail, we need
to increase the subdivision level of the
| | 04:16 | new model, but first I
want to save a morph target.
| | 04:20 | A morph target is basically a record of
the positions of all the vertices on a model.
| | 04:25 | I want to do this, because when I
subdivide the mesh, it will actually change
| | 04:29 | the shape of the lowest subdivision level.
| | 04:31 | You'll see what I mean.
| | 04:32 | I am going to actually hide the
original sculpt so I can just look at the
| | 04:36 | retopologized model, and let's Zoom
out so we can see it more clearly.
| | 04:39 | So I am going to go down to the Morph
Target Palette and click Store Morph Target.
| | 04:46 | Now let's hit Ctrl+D a few
times to subdivide this model.
| | 04:50 | I am going to subdivide it up
to about 8 million polygons.
| | 04:54 | You can see up here in Active
Points, it's about 8.18 million points.
| | 04:58 | Most computers should be
able to handle this okay.
| | 05:00 | If you're having trouble subdividing up
to that level, probably one subdivision
| | 05:04 | less is good about 2 million.
| | 05:06 | Now I am going to hit Shift+D to go
back to the lowest subdivision level.
| | 05:10 | Now, when I click Switch, it's
going to flip between the positions of
| | 05:14 | the vertices before I subdivided
with the positions of the vertices
| | 05:18 | after I subdivided.
| | 05:19 | You can see that subdividing the
model actually caused everything to get a
| | 05:23 | little bit softer, and by using this
Morph Target I can bring back that detail
| | 05:27 | that was lost by subdividing.
| | 05:29 | This is usually an important step to do
anytime you subdivide a model in ZBrush.
| | 05:34 | If you don't do this, your model will
lose definition and the positions of edge
| | 05:38 | loops that were so carefully placed on
the anatomy while retopologizing will
| | 05:42 | get shifted slightly.
| | 05:43 | Now that I switched the Morph Target
back on the lowest subdivision level, I can
| | 05:47 | delete it to lock in that shape.
| | 05:49 | Now, I know there are lots of small
steps in this movie, but they're all
| | 05:52 | important things to remember as you'll be
doing them all the time in this kind of work.
| | 05:56 | Making sure that the two models are
aligned and that you haven't lost any
| | 05:59 | detail when you subdivide it is going
to be crucial to get the maximum amount
| | 06:03 | of detail out of this model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Projecting detail to new topology| 00:00 | Projection is going to shrinkwrap the
new model around the existing sculpt.
| | 00:04 | The result is that our retopologized model
will pick up all the details from that sculpt.
| | 00:09 | It works fairly well, but
does misbehave sometimes.
| | 00:12 | I'll show you how to go about it the
right way so that it creates the fewest
| | 00:15 | number of problems possible.
| | 00:17 | To start with, we have got our Exercise
File open, make sure that the sculpt is
| | 00:20 | at its highest subdivision level.
| | 00:22 | So let's go in the SubTool, and let's
guess the original sculpt here and let's
| | 00:27 | make sure it's on the highest subdivision level.
| | 00:29 | So I am going to hide the other one and
zoom in and let's just hit D a few times
| | 00:33 | to go up on our subdivision levels.
| | 00:35 | It needs to go up to I think
it was about 7 million polygons.
| | 00:38 | Okay yeah, you can see up here
ActivePoints 7, so that's our maximum there.
| | 00:42 | Also, we need to get the other
model on its lowest subdivision level.
| | 00:47 | So let's open up our Geometry palette
here, yup it's on level 1 that's good.
| | 00:52 | We are going to project one level at a time.
| | 00:54 | The reason for this is that directly
projecting the highest level would be too
| | 00:58 | much of a stretch for all
those millions of polygons.
| | 01:01 | By doing it little by little the mesh can
ease into the sculpt's shape without breaking.
| | 01:05 | So we need to make sure that our new
model is the Active sub tool which it is,
| | 01:09 | make sure it's visible.
| | 01:10 | We are going to go down in the
SubTool palette to the ProjectAll settings.
| | 01:15 | Now if we just hit ProjectAll, ZBrush
can sometimes get confused about where it
| | 01:19 | should be projecting to.
| | 01:20 | So what we want to do is
create a ProjectionShell.
| | 01:23 | So we are going to grab this little slider
right here and just slide it to the right.
| | 01:26 | Now what we you see is our mesh
expanding and basically this is telling ZBrush
| | 01:32 | the maximum distance that it should
look to find detail on the other model.
| | 01:36 | So I am just going to drag it out
until I can't see any of the little pieces
| | 01:40 | of the other model.
| | 01:41 | So just drag this, like right about there.
| | 01:45 | So that made a Projections
setting of 0.01 and some change.
| | 01:49 | Now that our numbers are
set, let's click ProjectAll.
| | 01:51 | Okay, you might have noticed a slight
shift, there probably wasn't a large
| | 01:57 | amount of detail to project anyway at
the lowest subdivision level, so let's go
| | 02:01 | up one and do it all over again.
| | 02:03 | So I am going to hit D and we'll
just go up one subdivision level.
| | 02:07 | I am just going to slide the
ProjectionShell slider a little bit, just enough to
| | 02:12 | make sure that we're covering all of
the original sculpt and ProjectAll again.
| | 02:18 | And go ahead and keep doing that, hit D
to go up one subdivision level, set your
| | 02:22 | ProjectionShell and then hit ProjectAll.
| | 02:27 | Now as you get into the higher
subdivision levels, there is going to be a lot
| | 02:30 | more polygons to project.
| | 02:32 | So it's going to start taking a few
seconds, maybe even a few minutes on the
| | 02:35 | highest subdivision levels.
| | 02:36 | So I am subdividing one more time
by hitting D and we'll go to that
| | 02:41 | ProjectionShell and just make sure it's
set so that we just barely cover all of
| | 02:45 | the sculpt underneath and hit
ProjectAll, and again, hitting D to subdivide.
| | 02:52 | We are at 2 million polygons, so after
this one they should be just one more,
| | 02:59 | changing the ProjectionShell, okay it
looks like we are starting to see some of
| | 03:03 | the model poke through, so I am just
going to raise it up a little bit, there we
| | 03:06 | go and hit ProjectAll.
| | 03:10 | Okay, it looks like that one worked and I
am going to hit D to subdivide one last time.
| | 03:14 | We are now at the 8 million
polygons for this SubTool.
| | 03:18 | The ProjectionShell actually, probably
is not going to change much between the
| | 03:21 | two and it's such a high polygon count
moving this ProjectionShell might get
| | 03:25 | really sluggish, so I am just going to leave
it where it is for now and just hit ProjectAll.
| | 03:30 | Okay that looks like it
finished that last projection.
| | 03:33 | Be aware that the more polygons you have,
the longer it takes to compute the projection.
| | 03:37 | Depending on how beefy your computer
is it could take from a few minutes to
| | 03:40 | maybe even a few hours to complete projection.
| | 03:43 | Especially, when dealing with millions
of polygons, sometimes ZBrush will hang.
| | 03:47 | It might look like it's not responding.
| | 03:49 | Sometimes I give it awhile, you know maybe an
hour, and I come back and it's not done yet.
| | 03:53 | I'll come back another hour later and it
eventually finishes whatever it's doing.
| | 03:57 | So you know if ZBrush isn't responding,
don't necessarily think you have to
| | 04:01 | force quit or shut down
your computer or something.
| | 04:04 | Sometimes you just need to give it sometime.
| | 04:06 | Now that we've projected all the
detail we can delete the original sculpt.
| | 04:09 | So let's go up to our SubTools and click
the original sculpt and let's come down
| | 04:16 | in our palette and hit Delete and it
says it's not an undoable operation, so we
| | 04:21 | have to make sure we really want to delete it.
| | 04:23 | And I am going to hit OK. Alright, great!
| | 04:25 | So we've got our retopologized model
with correct topology and all the detail
| | 04:30 | from the original sculpt.
| | 04:32 | You will use Projection all the time
to get details from one mesh to another.
| | 04:36 | It does create some problems that need
to be cleaned up, but it sure be it's
| | 04:39 | having to re-sculpt all of that detail.
| | 04:41 | Cleaning up the problems isn't all
that hard either as I am going to show you
| | 04:44 | in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cleaning up projection problems| 00:00 | As useful as projecting detail from
one mesh to another is, it's not perfect.
| | 00:05 | It tends to create some messy spots,
particularly in tight crevices.
| | 00:09 | It's caused by ZBrush getting confused
in those areas and not being sure which
| | 00:13 | part of the sculpt it should project onto.
| | 00:16 | It results in clusters of vertices getting
pulled off where they're not supposed to go.
| | 00:20 | It's not too hard to fix, but it
does require some special techniques.
| | 00:24 | Luckily, I'm here to show you how it's done.
| | 00:26 | Let's take a closer look at some of the
problems caused when we projected the detail.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to go up to the highest
subdivision level to make it easier to see.
| | 00:33 | So we've got our SubTool palette
open and we've got our model here.
| | 00:37 | Let's go down to Geometry and just go
up to the highest subdivision level, and
| | 00:42 | then let's Zoom in and see if
we can find any problems. Okay.
| | 00:47 | Here's one right here on this
kind of bony plate on his leg.
| | 00:51 | You can see there's some
polygons that got kind of crunched up.
| | 00:55 | Let's see if there are some other areas.
| | 00:57 | Looks like there's some problems here
on these scale like plates on the tail,
| | 01:02 | some strange things happened here.
| | 01:05 | I'm going to Zoom out.
| | 01:07 | We're also looking at the foot.
| | 01:09 | Looks like maybe some detail didn't quite get
projected correctly here on some toes either.
| | 01:15 | So these are all things that
we can clean up at this stage.
| | 01:18 | For the most part, you can simply use the
Smooth Brush to iron out these problems.
| | 01:22 | You can also use any of the sculpting
brushes to simply re-sculpt over problem areas.
| | 01:27 | Sometimes, however, the mess caused by
projection calls for more serious attention.
| | 01:31 | Let's look at those plates on the tail.
| | 01:33 | Now you can hit F to see the whole
character and then I'm just going to hold
| | 01:36 | down Shift while I rotate to snap to a
Side View, and I want to isolate in on
| | 01:41 | some of these tail plates.
| | 01:42 | So I'm going to hold down Ctrl+Shift
at the same time and then just drag a
| | 01:46 | box over this area.
| | 01:47 | Now I'll just hit F again
to Zoom in on just this.
| | 01:50 | So I want to get the Smooth Brush out
just by holding down Shift as I brush.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to shrink the Brush Size
down a little bit and just smooth away
| | 02:00 | some of these areas.
| | 02:02 | Now, it's helping, but the
problem isn't going away completely.
| | 02:05 | I'm going to Zoom in even closer.
| | 02:07 | Maybe turn on Symmetry by hitting X,
and you can see it's kind of making the
| | 02:13 | problem go away, but there's still
like this weird little crevice thing here.
| | 02:18 | So one thing you can do is
look at it from the backside.
| | 02:20 | So since I hid part of the tail, we can
see through to the backside of that and
| | 02:25 | kind of attack it from the inside.
| | 02:28 | So if the Smooth Brush isn't quite
getting the job done, something else you can
| | 02:31 | do is go down to a lower subdivision level.
| | 02:33 | So I'm going to hit Shift+
D to drop down one level.
| | 02:37 | Smooth has a stronger effect on
lower subdivision levels, so let's see if
| | 02:40 | this is working better.
| | 02:41 | Okay, a little bit.
| | 02:44 | Let's go down even one more.
| | 02:46 | Now it's really having a stronger effect. Okay.
| | 02:49 | So we're working that pit out of there.
| | 02:55 | Now you could go up one higher
subdivision level just by hitting D, and if there
| | 03:00 | are any problems, you can clean them up.
| | 03:03 | They will be less severe to deal with
if you clean up problems in the lower
| | 03:06 | subdivision level and then you go back
up again, and there might still be some
| | 03:10 | problems, but they should
be able to smooth out easier.
| | 03:12 | And let's see if there are some
other areas that we can clean up.
| | 03:16 | We could continue smoothing away
in here, just doing the same thing I
| | 03:20 | was before, looking at it from
the inside, or going down to lower
| | 03:23 | subdivision levels.
| | 03:26 | And to bring everything back I'm
going to hit Ctrl+Shift and just tap once.
| | 03:32 | So you want to look throughout your
creature and see if there are any things to
| | 03:36 | clean up and smooth out.
| | 03:37 | Looks like in the eye area some
things got kind of crinkled up.
| | 03:41 | So you can come in here with Smooth.
| | 03:44 | This is something I would actually
probably want to re-sculpt as well.
| | 03:47 | So you can kind of smooth out the
worst parts of it and then maybe go in with
| | 03:52 | your Clay Brush, B+C+O and maybe just
sculpt some of that detail back in to fix
| | 03:59 | up all these weird spots.
| | 04:02 | Go ahead and adjust this to your liking.
| | 04:05 | Once the projection problems are all cleaned
up, you're ready to put on the final details.
| | 04:10 | There's nothing to show you that
hasn't already been shown in previous videos
| | 04:13 | about this kind of sculpting.
| | 04:14 | You can use all the sculpting brushes to
add that final layer of detail to the model.
| | 04:19 | You might want to use the Crease
Brush to tighten up wrinkles and seams.
| | 04:22 | So let me just do that really quick.
| | 04:23 | B+C+J, I'll increase my Brush Size a little bit.
| | 04:28 | And so you can see we've got some nice
detail here, but if you come in with the
| | 04:32 | Crease Brush, you can tighten up a lot
of these creases, just bring out that
| | 04:36 | extra level of sharpness to the detail.
| | 04:38 | Let's look at another
thing we can do at this point.
| | 04:42 | You might want to sculpt into the gums
too, kind of make it look like the teeth
| | 04:45 | are plugging into the gums.
| | 04:47 | So I want to switch to Custom Clay Brush,
shrink it down a little bit, and you
| | 04:51 | know we can sculpt around these teeth a
little bit, kind of add that extra level of detail.
| | 04:57 | So pretty much we're doing the final
pass on all the detail at this point.
| | 05:01 | You might need to take as much time as
you need at this point to really work
| | 05:05 | on all the details that you want to
get into this model and polish it up and
| | 05:09 | make it look its best.
| | 05:10 | Be careful at this stage to not
make drastic changes to the shape and
| | 05:14 | structure of the model.
| | 05:15 | If you do, the topology that you've
created may lose its relationship to the anatomy.
| | 05:20 | This is the last phase of sculpting,
so anything you need to do to make this
| | 05:23 | model look its best should
be done at this point now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Creating the UV LayoutCutting UV seams| 00:00 | Now that the modeling and
sculpting is done we can lay out the UVs.
| | 00:04 | Basically, this means that we flatten
out the model like a bare skin rug so that
| | 00:08 | texture maps can be applied to it.
| | 00:10 | We'll be going back and forth between
ZBrush and Maya a lot in this chapter,
| | 00:14 | because each program has
different tools for UV mapping.
| | 00:17 | Some of the tools in Maya are better
than the ones in ZBrush for certain
| | 00:21 | functions and vice versa.
| | 00:22 | One thing that Maya does well is it
allows you very precise control of
| | 00:26 | where seams get cut.
| | 00:28 | ZBrush has the UV Master plug-ins
that can cut seams as well, but it does
| | 00:32 | so very imprecisely.
| | 00:33 | I don't want to have complete control
over my seams in order to get the most
| | 00:37 | efficient use of my texture space.
| | 00:39 | The first thing we need to do is cut seams
on the model and this is best done in Maya.
| | 00:44 | So I used GoZ to get us here.
| | 00:46 | We've got the model selected.
| | 00:47 | I'm just going to zoom in a little
bit on it and let's hit 5 to go into our
| | 00:51 | shaded view and I also want to
open up the UV Texture Editor.
| | 00:55 | You can see here that there is nothing to see.
| | 00:57 | There is no UVs assigned to the model at all.
| | 01:01 | We need to create some before we can edit them.
| | 01:03 | Make sure you're in the Polygons menu
set and go to Create UVs and click Create
| | 01:08 | UVs Based On Camera.
| | 01:09 | It doesn't matter what they look like now.
| | 01:11 | There just needs to be something to work with.
| | 01:13 | Now we're ready to start cutting custom UVs.
| | 01:16 | There's no absolute right way to do it,
but there are some principles to guide you.
| | 01:20 | For one you want to hide them in less
visible parts of the body like underneath
| | 01:23 | the belly or on the insides of legs.
| | 01:26 | So let me just zoom in here.
| | 01:28 | A nice hidden place to put seams would
be underneath the belly and it's also
| | 01:32 | kind of hard to see on the back
side or the inside of these limbs.
| | 01:36 | Another principle is that you
want to cut down the length of any
| | 01:39 | significant protrusion.
| | 01:40 | This means down the length of all limbs,
toes, anything that sticks off the body.
| | 01:45 | So let's get into cutting seams.
| | 01:47 | I'll start with one that
goes underneath the body.
| | 01:49 | So let's hold down the right-mouse
button and go into Edge mode and I'm just
| | 01:53 | going to double-click on this edge
that's right along the middle of the body.
| | 01:57 | This selects all the edges in the center loop.
| | 02:00 | Now let's look at what it's done, kind
of selected these edges all the way up to
| | 02:04 | the top of the head.
| | 02:05 | Now I don't want to cut a seam on the
face, because the face is a very visible
| | 02:09 | part of this creature.
| | 02:10 | So I'll deselect the edges up on the head by
holding down Ctrl and dragging a box over them.
| | 02:17 | So now the seam just goes up
to the inner mouth and stops.
| | 02:20 | Now let's cut this selection into seams.
| | 02:22 | Go to the UV Texture Editor and
go to Polygons > Cut UV Edges.
| | 02:27 | Now it doesn't seem like much happened, but
now those edges have been defined as seams.
| | 02:32 | You can see it better if you make seams visible.
| | 02:34 | Let's go up to the Display menu, go
to Polygons, and turn on Texture Border
| | 02:39 | Edges and I'll just deselect those edges.
| | 02:42 | Now you can see that this
seam is a little bit darker edge.
| | 02:45 | We can make this even more visible if
we go back to Display > Polygons and Edge
| | 02:50 | Width, and just crank this up a little.
| | 02:52 | Now it's really visible.
| | 02:53 | Now you can continue selecting edges and
cutting seams on them like we already did.
| | 02:58 | I'll cut one around the neck to
make the head separate from the body.
| | 03:01 | Back here in the neck is a
very hidden place anyways.
| | 03:04 | So it's a good place to cut seems.
| | 03:05 | Go to Polygons and Cut UV Edges. Great!
| | 03:10 | Now what if you decide that you want to
remove a seam that you've already created?
| | 03:14 | That's easy.
| | 03:15 | Just select the edges.
| | 03:16 | So for example back here on the
tail I don't want the seam going up the
| | 03:20 | backside of the tail.
| | 03:21 | That's very visible.
| | 03:22 | So I think I might want to cut the seam up
the insight here where it's less visible.
| | 03:26 | So I'm just going to drag a selection
over the entire tail and then we can go to
| | 03:30 | Polygons > Sew UV Edges.
| | 03:32 | Now let's look at it now.
| | 03:35 | We just sewed up that seam.
| | 03:37 | So now the seam only goes
right up to here and stops.
| | 03:39 | Go ahead and continue cutting more seams.
| | 03:41 | You'll want to strike a balance
between cutting fewer scams and getting it to
| | 03:45 | unfold nice and flat
without too much distortion.
| | 03:48 | It's not an exact science.
| | 03:50 | I usually experiment with several different
patterns until I find the seams that work best.
| | 03:54 | When you're done cutting seams go into
Object Mode, select your creature, then
| | 03:59 | go to Polygons, and click Unfold.
| | 04:01 | Now it's not going to look very pretty right
now because we haven't cut all the seams yet.
| | 04:05 | So let's open up another exercise file
and I'll show you the finished seams that
| | 04:09 | I chose and I'll talk about
why I put them where I did.
| | 04:12 | Let's go up to File > Open Scene and go
to Desktop > Exercise Files and we're in
| | 04:17 | Chapter 06 and let's open up 06_
01 seamscut.ma. Well, that's okay.
| | 04:24 | We don't need to save this.
| | 04:25 | And I'll just select the model here and
we need to make those seams visible again.
| | 04:29 | So go up to Display > Polygons
and turn on Texture Border Edges.
| | 04:33 | So let's take a closer look here.
| | 04:35 | Predictably, we've got some scenes
running down the length of the legs and
| | 04:40 | once they get down to the foot, they
split off and I've got seam going down
| | 04:43 | the length of each toe.
| | 04:45 | Same thing with the front legs.
| | 04:46 | I've also got a seam running
around the inside of the mouth.
| | 04:51 | This is usually a good place to cut a
scene, because there's usually a kind of a
| | 04:54 | natural crease running on inside of the
lip and also the mouth is often going to
| | 04:59 | be closed so you won't
really see the seam very much.
| | 05:02 | I've got another seam on the inside
of the nostrils, another seam here on
| | 05:05 | the inside of the eyes.
| | 05:07 | It might be a little bit hard to see,
but you're never going to see the inside
| | 05:10 | geometry here of the eyes.
| | 05:12 | So it's okay if we just cut that off
and you'll never see that seam there.
| | 05:15 | There's something else that I've done
is cut around each one of these major
| | 05:19 | bony plates on the back.
| | 05:20 | That will help separate those
and make them layout more flat.
| | 05:23 | I've got another seam going around the tail
here so I can cut the tail off and be separate.
| | 05:29 | And I've got a seam running up the inside
of the tail all the way down to the tip.
| | 05:35 | All of these seems are meant to help the UVs
layout as flat and efficiently as possible.
| | 05:40 | It's a good idea to put seams inside of natural
creases, because they'll be hard to see there.
| | 05:45 | Taking the time to find the right
placement of UV seams is really worth it,
| | 05:49 | because a good UV layout means that
you can get a lot more detail out of
| | 05:53 | your texture maps.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Prepping UV shells for UV Master| 00:00 | Before we take the Cut Seams into ZBrush,
there's a few things that need to be
| | 00:04 | done in order to make sure
that it transfers properly.
| | 00:07 | Now let me show you what it looks like unfolded.
| | 00:10 | I am just going to click on the Dewhopper
here and zoom out here in our Texture view.
| | 00:14 | You see that when we unfolded, the
UVs it's taken where all the seams were
| | 00:18 | defined and used that information to
flatten and separate the mesh into various shells.
| | 00:23 | The way Maya flatten the shells
isn't very efficient or appealing.
| | 00:27 | So we are going to use ZBrush's UV Master.
| | 00:29 | However, there is just
one step to do before that.
| | 00:32 | You see when ZBrush brings in a mesh
from another program, it looks at the UV
| | 00:36 | layout and it sews up any UVs
that are close to each other.
| | 00:39 | This is very unfortunate, because as
it is now, some of these shells are very
| | 00:43 | small and that makes the space between
their UV seams within the tolerance that
| | 00:48 | ZBrush uses to sew them.
| | 00:50 | The result is that all of our hard work
will get lost if we take this into ZBrush now.
| | 00:55 | The solution is to scale up all of the shells
so that their UV's aren't so tightly packed.
| | 01:00 | I am just going to maximize the UV
Texture Editor to make this easier to see and
| | 01:03 | I am going to zoom in to
the tip of the tail here.
| | 01:06 | You see how tiny it gets.
| | 01:07 | ZBrush might close up
the seems that I made here.
| | 01:10 | So what I'll do is just select some of
the UVs by holding down the right-mouse
| | 01:15 | button and going to UV mode.
| | 01:17 | Now I'll just marquee select over some
of these vertices and go over to Scale
| | 01:21 | Mode by hitting R and just scale it up.
| | 01:24 | It doesn't matter if it looks ugly or not.
| | 01:26 | Now I'll just go to the other
shells and scale them up as well.
| | 01:30 | So things are getting kind of scrunched
up here, I'll just scale these way up.
| | 01:34 | And you just want to keep scaling
until everything is really spaced out.
| | 01:39 | There's nothing that's really
scrunched up, and that looks pretty ugly.
| | 01:43 | Something else you can do is hold down
Ctrl and hold down the right-mouse button
| | 01:47 | and mark over To Shell and then you can
just hit W to go into Move Mode and just
| | 01:51 | kind of move that out of the
way and then go do the next one.
| | 01:53 | Now I am going to hit G to go To Shell
on this one, hit R to go into Scale Mode
| | 01:57 | and just blend this up and
then move it out of the way.
| | 02:00 | I can click over on this shell, hit G
again and hit R to scale, just blend it up
| | 02:06 | nice and big and let's just
zoom out, move it down here.
| | 02:10 | It doesn't matter, where you
place them or how big they get.
| | 02:13 | All that matters is that you are
spacing out these different UVs so that they
| | 02:16 | are not crunched up on top of each other.
| | 02:19 | Keep doing this until you've scaled
up all the shells and all the UVs are
| | 02:23 | nice and spaced out.
| | 02:24 | I am just going to skip ahead now to a scene
where I've done this to all the different UVs.
| | 02:28 | Go ahead and close this and I am going
to go to File > Open Scene, and we'll
| | 02:32 | open the shellsprepped.ma scene file in
the Ch_06 06_02 folder and we don't need
| | 02:39 | to worry about saving this.
| | 02:40 | Now we'll just shrink down the UV
Texture Editor for now, get this out of the
| | 02:43 | way, make sure we can our Dewhopper and
now you see I've spaced everything out,
| | 02:48 | blended it up all nice and big.
| | 02:49 | Now ZBrush is going to clean all this up
for us, but for I just need all the UVs
| | 02:54 | to be big and spaced apart.
| | 02:56 | Let's take this into ZBrush now and
test it to make sure that it worked.
| | 02:59 | So I am just going to close the UV
Texture Editor for now and we'll going into
| | 03:03 | the GoZBrush tab and click GoZ.
| | 03:06 | And now I'll just click and drag this
into the canvas and hit T to go into Edit
| | 03:10 | Mode and I'll also hit the
Comma to make that thing go away.
| | 03:15 | Now once we are in ZBrush, now we are
just going to send this right back to
| | 03:18 | Maya with GoZ, we just want to test
that and make sure that ZBrush didn't sew
| | 03:22 | up any of those seems.
| | 03:23 | Okay, let's go into the Display menu
and go into Polygons and turn on our
| | 03:30 | Texture Border Edges and I just want
to examine this to make sure that all of
| | 03:33 | our seems are still there and I am
actually going to increase the size of those
| | 03:38 | just like we did before, make them nice and big.
| | 03:40 | And I am just examining all around to
make sure that our seams where they are
| | 03:44 | still supposed to be.
| | 03:47 | Okay, it looks good.
| | 03:47 | I don't see any problems.
| | 03:49 | The places that are most likely to get
sewn up are in the tips, the toes or any
| | 03:53 | other part of the model where the
anatomy gets very small and thin.
| | 03:58 | Okay, so let's save this out as an OBJ,
so that we can import it into the Z tool
| | 04:02 | that has our detail.
| | 04:04 | I'll just go to File > Export
Selection and change the File type to OBJ and
| | 04:09 | that all looks good.
| | 04:10 | So we'll just hit Export Selection and I
am just going to save this as UVs from Maya.
| | 04:18 | Hopefully, in the future, either Maya
will get better laying out UVs or ZBrush
| | 04:23 | will get better at cutting seems.
| | 04:25 | For now we have to go through this
whole journey just to lay out UVs.
| | 04:28 | Amazingly, this process is still
100 times faster than it used to be.
| | 04:32 | Just a few years ago, all the UVs had
to be meticulously tweaked by hand to
| | 04:36 | get a good layout.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using UV Master to unfold UVs| 00:00 | Now that we've got the seams cut and the
shells enlarged we are ready to flatten them.
| | 00:04 | We will be using the UV
Master plug-in for ZBrush.
| | 00:08 | With one click we will get really good results
that used to take artist days to get by hand.
| | 00:12 | There is still going to be some manual
tweaking to do, but thanks to UV Master
| | 00:16 | our task is going to be much simpler.
| | 00:18 | So we've got our exercise file open.
| | 00:20 | This is the dew hopper just as it was
before we sent it to Maya to cut the UV seams.
| | 00:25 | The next step is to import the OBJ that we
saved out of Maya with the cut and scaled shells.
| | 00:31 | ZBrush is smart enough to recognize
when an imported model is the same as the
| | 00:35 | one that it currently has open.
| | 00:37 | It's going to compare the OBJ to this
Z tool and see that it's got the exact
| | 00:42 | same geometry, but the UVs are different.
| | 00:44 | Then it will just apply the
UVs from the OBJ to the Z tool.
| | 00:48 | So while we've got our dew hopper open
here and the dew hopper is the current
| | 00:53 | practice sub-tool, we will just go
ahead and import and bring in that OBJ that
| | 00:57 | we saved from Maya and click Open.
| | 00:59 | Let's confirm that the UVs got transferred.
| | 01:01 | I am going to go down to the texture palette.
| | 01:04 | Texture Map, open, and click New From UV Map.
| | 01:08 | This paints the model different
colors depending on where the UVs are.
| | 01:12 | Now this result looks like
something out of the 80s.
| | 01:14 | It's just as messy as the UVs looked in Maya.
| | 01:17 | But go ahead and turn that off.
| | 01:19 | So let's unwrap this.
| | 01:20 | Go up to the Z plug-in
menu and open up UV Master.
| | 01:24 | Go ahead and scroll this back down.
| | 01:26 | We are just going to make one
little change to the settings here.
| | 01:29 | I want to turn on Use Existing UV Seams so
that we use the seams that we cut in Maya.
| | 01:34 | There are two buttons here unwrap or unwrap all.
| | 01:37 | I want to unwrap all of the subtools,
not just the dew hopper's body itself.
| | 01:41 | So go ahead and click Unwrap All.
| | 01:42 | And it's just going to take a few
seconds here to get through all the subtools.
| | 01:46 | It looks like it finished.
| | 01:47 | I am going to go back down and click that
same button from before New From UV Map.
| | 01:51 | It looks like it did a good job.
| | 01:53 | The teeth spikes and the eyeball
were made from primitives in Maya so
| | 01:57 | they already have UVs.
| | 01:59 | I just wanted to use UV
Master to optimize their layout.
| | 02:02 | Now let's get this back into Maya, so that
we can arrange the shells more efficiently.
| | 02:06 | I am going to turn this texture
off, and let's go hit GoZ All.
| | 02:11 | So before we've used the GoZ button
to send a single sub-tool to Maya, now
| | 02:15 | let's send them all. Back in Maya.
| | 02:20 | Now Maya gives us much more control
over the UV layout, but ZBrush does a much
| | 02:25 | better job of un-wrapping the UV.
| | 02:27 | So now that we are in Maya we are
going to go into the UV Texture Editor and
| | 02:31 | start working with these UV shells.
| | 02:33 | So I am going to click the dew hopper,
I am going to hit F to zoom in on him.
| | 02:37 | Let's hit 5 to go into shaded view and
let's go into the polygons menu set here
| | 02:42 | and go and open the texture editor.
| | 02:44 | Now GoZ brought in that texture
maps that it created based on the UVs.
| | 02:49 | So when I did the GoZ All, it also
brought in that texture map that I created to
| | 02:54 | test out the UV layout in ZBrush.
| | 02:56 | So we can just make this image disappear by
going into Image and turn off Display Image.
| | 03:01 | It will make that go away.
| | 03:03 | The next thing I want to
do is turn on Shade UVs;
| | 03:06 | also in the image menu.
| | 03:08 | What this does is show us if there's
any UVs that are overlapping or backwards.
| | 03:13 | If they're backwards they're red and if
they're facing the right way they're blue.
| | 03:16 | Now ZBrush creates UVs upside
down compared to how Maya reads them.
| | 03:21 | So we are going to want to select all
the UVs and flip them in the vertical axis
| | 03:26 | until they flip over and turn blue.
| | 03:27 | I will just zoom out a little bit here.
| | 03:29 | I am going to hold down the
right mouse button and go to UV Mode.
| | 03:32 | I am just going to select everything.
| | 03:33 | I am going to hit R to go into Scale
Mode and scale it until it flips around.
| | 03:39 | It doesn't have to be exact and deselect that.
| | 03:42 | Now they're all blue. That's great.
| | 03:43 | Let's see how the other subtools are working.
| | 03:46 | So the tail spikes also need to be flipped
and probably the eyeball and teeth as well.
| | 03:51 | I am just going to hold down the right
mouse button and go into Object Mode so I
| | 03:55 | can deselect the body.
| | 03:57 | Go ahead and do the tail spikes
eyeballs and the teeth by selecting the UVs and
| | 04:02 | flipping them upside down.
| | 04:03 | So you see that both ZBrush and Maya
have strengths and weaknesses when it
| | 04:07 | comes to laying out UVs.
| | 04:09 | With some extra effort, you can use Maya
and ZBrush together to have a much more
| | 04:13 | optimal workflow and get
done laying out UVs much faster.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Arranging UVs in Maya| 00:01 | Okay, so we are back in Maya.
| | 00:02 | I am just going to select the Dewhopper here.
| | 00:04 | Now even those ZBrush did a pretty good
job with the UVs, there are still some
| | 00:08 | things that we can do to make things better.
| | 00:10 | If you compare the UV space covered by
the shells, to the spacer that's empty.
| | 00:14 | It looks like only about
half the space is being used.
| | 00:17 | That means that any texture maps
that we use will be about half wasted.
| | 00:20 | That would be a shame.
| | 00:22 | We want to get as much detail
out of our maps as possible.
| | 00:25 | So let's get these shells
arranged more efficiently.
| | 00:27 | First, let's just do the
shells of the main body.
| | 00:30 | I'd like to scale everything up
until the largest shell just barely fits.
| | 00:34 | In this case, it's the tail.
| | 00:36 | So let me zoom in here closer.
| | 00:37 | I am going to hold down the right-
mouse button and go UV Mode, and I'll
| | 00:41 | just select everything.
| | 00:42 | Hit R to go to Scale, and just scale
this up until the tail just barely fits.
| | 00:47 | It's that long piece down at the bottom.
| | 00:48 | All right, that's pretty close.
| | 00:50 | Then I just go and order from
the largest shells to the smallest.
| | 00:54 | It's kind of like a puzzle game
seeing how you can pack everything in with
| | 00:57 | a least wasted space.
| | 00:58 | So for example, let me actually grab a lot
of these and move them out of the way for now.
| | 01:03 | If you hold down Ctrl+Right-Mouse-Button,
you can go to Shell, which is going to
| | 01:08 | select the entire shell of
anything that you've got selected.
| | 01:11 | So I am just going to move
these out of the way for now.
| | 01:14 | So let's move the head into place.
| | 01:16 | I am just going to grab a little bit
of that and hit G to repeat the last
| | 01:19 | function, which was to shell.
| | 01:22 | So now you can position is wherever you want.
| | 01:24 | You can also use rotation to
help things fit a little bit better.
| | 01:28 | Maybe this fits better here.
| | 01:30 | You might want to try some different
variations of how these fit together.
| | 01:33 | Something else you can do is you Soft Select.
| | 01:36 | So let's say you just select
one of these verts up here.
| | 01:38 | You can hit B to go into Soft Select mode.
| | 01:40 | You could hold down B and
click-and-drag to scale.
| | 01:43 | Then you can move things
around to help them fit.
| | 01:45 | You just want to be careful not to
stretch too far, because then your
| | 01:48 | textures can get distorted.
| | 01:50 | So I will just undo that.
| | 01:51 | So this can take a little while.
| | 01:53 | So I am going to skip ahead to
exercise file where I have laid out all the
| | 01:56 | shells of the main body.
| | 01:57 | Go to File, Open Scene, and let's open
uvsarranged.ma, and we don't need to save this.
| | 02:06 | So let's click on the Dewhopper and I am
just going to scale out a little bit here.
| | 02:10 | So I've packed things.
| | 02:11 | It's looking much more efficient.
| | 02:12 | Now we need to get these things like this tail
spikes in there and the teeth and the eyeball.
| | 02:17 | So this isn't too hard.
| | 02:18 | What I am going to do is just select
over everything, and let's zoom out.
| | 02:22 | So we've got the teeth over here,
the tail spikes on the right side, and
| | 02:25 | the eyeball up here.
| | 02:26 | What I am going to do is just go into
UV Mode holding down the right-mouse
| | 02:30 | button and let's grab all these teeth first.
| | 02:32 | Now right now the teeth are way too big,
and in reality those teeth are pretty
| | 02:37 | small compared to the body of the Dewhopper.
| | 02:40 | So I am going to scale these down pretty small.
| | 02:42 | We can go into Move Mode and just find
an open space for them, and see down here
| | 02:46 | it will probably work.
| | 02:47 | Yeah, it looks good.
| | 02:48 | The same thing with the tail spikes.
| | 02:50 | We are just going to grab all of these
and hit R to go into Scale Mode and just
| | 02:54 | scale these down, because these tail
spikes are also pretty small compared to
| | 02:58 | the parts of the body.
| | 02:59 | All right, that fits in there
and same thing with the eyeball.
| | 03:04 | Here is the back of the eyeball
actually so that can be really small.
| | 03:07 | We don't need to see much of that.
| | 03:09 | It's not quite so important that these
shells be scaled precisely, because they
| | 03:13 | aren't part of a continuous skin
surface where seams are highly visible.
| | 03:17 | When you're all done getting the most
that you can out of the UV space, send
| | 03:21 | everything backs to Zbrush.
| | 03:23 | Do this by selecting
everything and hit the GoZ button.
| | 03:26 | If you're working on your own project
and saving your own files as you progress
| | 03:29 | through this course,
hitting GoZ should work just fine.
| | 03:32 | However, GoZ is finicky and since this
course uses different files and different
| | 03:36 | folders for each of these movies, GoZ
can get confused and doesn't realize that
| | 03:40 | it should associate these models
with the ZProjects that it came from.
| | 03:44 | The result is that if you're using
the exercise files, you'll need to save
| | 03:47 | everything out as separate OBJ files,
and then import them on top of the
| | 03:52 | appropriate SubTools in ZBrush.
| | 03:54 | Even if you think that GoZ will
work for you, sometimes it doesn't.
| | 03:57 | So I'll show you how to do it just in case.
| | 03:59 | What you're going to do is select
each model of our Dewhopper and export as
| | 04:05 | an OBJ one at a time.
| | 04:07 | Now I will go up to File and
Export Selection with options.
| | 04:12 | OBJexport is selected. That's good.
| | 04:14 | I am going to hit Export Selection
and we will save this as bodyuvs.
| | 04:21 | Now for the tail spikes, same thing,
File > Export Selection with options, looks
| | 04:26 | good, call this spikesuvs.
| | 04:28 | Now for the eye, Export Selection > eyeuvs.
| | 04:34 | Let me zoom in so I can get those teeth better.
| | 04:39 | File > Export Selection >
teethbottomuvs, and the upper teeth.
| | 04:48 | File > Export Selection > teethtopuvs.
| | 04:54 | When that's done it's time to open ZBrush,
and I'm going to load the exercise files.
| | 04:59 | So I'll go to Load Tool > Exercise
Files > chap_6 > 06_04, and import.ZTL,
| | 05:08 | and just click-and-drag this out into
the canvas, click Edit and hit Comma to
| | 05:13 | make that disappear.
| | 05:15 | So we've got all our SubTools, so the
first thing we want to do is import the
| | 05:18 | body OBJ onto the body of the Dewhopper.
| | 05:22 | So go to Import > bodyuvs.obj.
| | 05:27 | And that's good to go.
| | 05:28 | The same thing with the tail spikes, and so on.
| | 05:31 | Continue until you've imported
all of the OBJs on top of their
| | 05:34 | respective SubTools.
| | 05:35 | The result of this is the same as using GoZ.
| | 05:38 | Now all the SubTools in ZBrush have
the UV shells laid out and arranged just
| | 05:42 | like we made them in Maya.
| | 05:44 | Getting all of the parts of the
body to fit in the same UV space can be
| | 05:48 | beneficial, because it means
creating fewer texture maps.
| | 05:51 | If each object has its own UV space,
you'd have to create a different normal map
| | 05:55 | and different color map for each one.
| | 05:57 | There are situations when it
makes sense to use multiple UV spaces.
| | 06:00 | For example, you may want a character's
clothing or accessories to be separate.
| | 06:05 | That way you can swap out
different accessories more easily.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Creating a Pedestal EnvironmentCreating a pedestal with Spotlight| 00:00 | Creating some kind of platform base or
environment for your creature can be an
| | 00:05 | important part of its presentation.
| | 00:07 | It should be something simple so that
it doesn't distract from the creature.
| | 00:11 | It should also relate to the story
behind the creature or its habitat.
| | 00:14 | From a practical standpoint, a base of
some kind is visually helpful, because it
| | 00:19 | places the creatures solidly on a
surface rather than having it float in midair.
| | 00:24 | The creature's shadow will also have a
place to rest and the design of the base
| | 00:28 | can reinforce the design of the creature.
| | 00:30 | Our little Dewhopper lives in the desert,
so we will use a photo of some cracked
| | 00:34 | desert mud to sculpt cracks into a flat surface.
| | 00:37 | The process for making this is a
little different from making something that
| | 00:40 | will be animated, because of that we
have fewer constraints and are more free to
| | 00:44 | just have fun with it.
| | 00:45 | Let's start out with a fresh scene in
ZBrush and make a flat plane to work on.
| | 00:50 | So let's get the plane primitive or
let's just click twice on Cylinder 3D
| | 00:54 | and select the Plane.
| | 00:55 | I am just going to drag this out
into the canvas and click Edit.
| | 00:59 | Now, let's hit Shift+F to view its wireframe.
| | 01:01 | It's already got several
subdivisions, but I don't want it to have any.
| | 01:05 | So let's go down to Initialize and drag
HDivide and VDivide all the way down to
| | 01:11 | their lowest settings, so that we
just have a plain square polygon.
| | 01:15 | Now let's convert this to PolyMesh3D
so that we can make modifications to it.
| | 01:19 | And I'm also going to turn off
Wireframe by hitting Shift+F again.
| | 01:23 | Now let's subdivide it a whole bunch of times.
| | 01:26 | When you subdivide a single square,
it actually turns into a circle.
| | 01:30 | So I am just going to keep
subdividing it about 12 times.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to get up to about 4 million polygons.
| | 01:37 | Let's size this and position it right
in the middle of our screen, and make it
| | 01:41 | nice and big so that we can project a
texture onto it nice and big as well.
| | 01:46 | Something else I want to do first is
change the material to white, just to make
| | 01:49 | it easier to see the texture
that we are going put on it.
| | 01:53 | Go up to the Texture Menu and
let's Import our exercise texture.
| | 01:58 | Exercise Files > Ch_07 > 07_
01, and let's get crackedmud.
| | 02:03 | Back into the Texture Menu, now we
have to click on crackedmud to make it
| | 02:08 | active, and there's this little button
right here that says Add To Spotlight.
| | 02:12 | So let's click that.
| | 02:13 | Spotlight is a way of painting texture
directly from a photograph on to your model.
| | 02:18 | It also brings up this menu that I hate.
| | 02:20 | So let's make it go away with the Comma key.
| | 02:22 | Now, the Spotlight interface can
be hard to understand at first.
| | 02:25 | I will just explain the few
features that I use regularly.
| | 02:28 | You can move this image around just by
clicking on the space inside the circle
| | 02:33 | here, and we will just put
it in the middle somewhere.
| | 02:35 | It doesn't really matter.
| | 02:35 | You can also change its size by
clicking-and-dragging on this.
| | 02:39 | And we want to see
through the photo a little bit.
| | 02:41 | So let's change its Opacity.
| | 02:43 | Just click-and-drag on this
and bring it down fairly low.
| | 02:45 | And one last thing we want to do
here is increase the Spotlight Radius.
| | 02:50 | This is kind of like a preview of
the brush that we are going to see.
| | 02:53 | So just kind of scale that up.
| | 02:55 | It might be really hard to see on your screen,
but just kind of scale it up to a medium size.
| | 02:59 | Now we can start painting from the photo
right onto the model. So hit the Z key.
| | 03:04 | This takes us out of Spotlight 2D Editing
Mode and lets us paint in 3D Editing Mode.
| | 03:09 | One thing to do here;
| | 03:10 | let's change our Brush Setting to RGB,
so that we paint with color, and turn off
| | 03:15 | Zadd so that we won't be sculpting,
and just go ahead and start painting.
| | 03:20 | Go ahead and fill in this entire circle
with all that color information from the photo.
| | 03:26 | This is a great way to do all
kinds of texturing based on photos.
| | 03:29 | What I want to do now is convert this
texture into a mask and then use that mask
| | 03:34 | to deform the shape of this circle.
| | 03:36 | So let's go to the Masking
palette and I want to Mask By Intensity.
| | 03:41 | So this basically converts the black and
white values of the texture into a mask.
| | 03:46 | So we are seeing the mask and
the texture at the same time.
| | 03:49 | Let's turn off the texture
so that we see only the mask.
| | 03:52 | Go down to Polypaint and turn off Colorize so
now we are seeing just the mask. All right!
| | 03:57 | Let's look at this from the side.
| | 03:59 | We're going to be
shifting parts of this upwards.
| | 04:01 | So we want to see it from the side
so we can see what the effect is.
| | 04:04 | And I want to shift it with deformation.
| | 04:07 | So what I am going to use is Offset, and
it's just going to push vertices of the
| | 04:11 | model in one particular direction.
| | 04:13 | And Z Axis is the one that goes up and
down, so I am going to switch to Z and
| | 04:17 | turn off X, and now just move this slider.
| | 04:19 | So you see everything that was masked
is staying where it was and everything
| | 04:24 | that wasn't masked is moving up or down,
depending on how I move the slider.
| | 04:28 | So let's move it in the negative
direction a little bit, maybe about -7 looks good.
| | 04:33 | All right, cool!
| | 04:34 | So we've got a cracked mud sculpted plane.
| | 04:38 | So there you have it, a fairly
convincing cracked mud model in 3D that was made
| | 04:42 | in a snap with photo projection,
masking techniques, and deformations.
| | 04:46 | There is really no end to the
effect you could invent with just simple
| | 04:50 | variations on this process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Decimating the geometry| 00:00 | The cracked mud that we have now looks great,
but it's way too dense to take into Maya.
| | 00:05 | We need an efficient way to turn
this model into something a lot lighter.
| | 00:09 | We could retopologize it like we did
with the Dewhopper, but that would be a lot
| | 00:13 | of work for something that
doesn't even need to be animated.
| | 00:16 | For rough organic shapes like this that
don't need a nice clean topology, I find
| | 00:20 | that Decimation Master is a great tool.
| | 00:22 | Decimation Master is a plug-in that
intelligently simplifies an object's
| | 00:26 | geometry by getting rid of polygons and
areas of low detail and leaving them in
| | 00:31 | where detail is fine.
| | 00:32 | Let's dive in and use it.
| | 00:33 | First I want to make a duplicate of the Ztool.
| | 00:36 | This is because the decimated mesh
will replace the original Subtool.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to need to use the original
one to capture its detail eventually.
| | 00:44 | So go up to your Tool palette and click Clone.
| | 00:47 | So now we've got two copies of the
exact same model and I actually want to
| | 00:51 | rename one of these so I
can help keep them straight.
| | 00:53 | So I am going to click on
that copy and click on Rename.
| | 00:57 | I am just going to call this one decimated.
| | 01:00 | Now you'll find Decimation
Master in the Z plug-in menu.
| | 01:04 | Go ahead and open that and
then click on Decimation Master.
| | 01:06 | We want to use Decimation Master
on the highest subdivision level.
| | 01:09 | So I am just going to hit D a few times
until I get up to the total 4 million polygons.
| | 01:15 | You can see up here we are at
the total number of polygons.
| | 01:17 | Now I will go to Z plug-in and open up
Decimation Master if it's not open already.
| | 01:22 | The button we are going to be
pushing is Pre-process Current.
| | 01:24 | This button tells the plug-in to
examine the mesh and make a record of which
| | 01:28 | polygons are in high detail areas and
therefore, less expendable and which
| | 01:33 | polygons are in low detail
areas and therefore more expendable.
| | 01:37 | After clicking this, you may have to
wait up to a few minutes for really
| | 01:40 | high-resolution meshes as it
calculates all those millions of polygons.
| | 01:44 | It looks like the pre-process has finished.
| | 01:49 | Now let's go back into the Z plug-in
menu and let's look in the Decimation
| | 01:52 | Master menu and the one other thing
that we need to concern ourselves with is
| | 01:57 | the percentage by which it decimates.
| | 01:59 | So currently, by default it's set to 20%.
| | 02:02 | That means that if we hit Decimate
Current, the current polygon count will be
| | 02:06 | reduced to 20% of its original.
| | 02:09 | That can work pretty good.
| | 02:10 | I've figured out, however, that about
5% is going to work best for what we
| | 02:14 | are doing right now.
| | 02:15 | In your own work, you might need to
experiment with this to see what works best
| | 02:19 | for the project you're working on, but
I know 5% is going to do a pretty good
| | 02:23 | job on the cracked mud.
| | 02:25 | So I've set that and I am just going to
click Decimate Current. So it's finished.
| | 02:29 | It clears out any poly painting information.
| | 02:32 | So it's now just pure white and we can
see what its wireframe looks like if we
| | 02:35 | hit Shift+F. So I am just going to zoom in here.
| | 02:38 | So it's actually still pretty detailed.
| | 02:41 | One thing I might want to do is run
Decimation Master one more time to reduce
| | 02:45 | that even lower and it should go a lot
faster this time, because we do have a
| | 02:48 | lot less detail to work with.
| | 02:50 | So let's go to Z plug-in and I am
going to pre-process current again and now
| | 02:55 | let's go to Z plug-in again and it
decimates and let's see what 20% gives us.
| | 03:00 | That looks much better.
| | 03:01 | Now it's got a total polygon count of
about 40,000, which is much more manageable.
| | 03:06 | So you can see we've still got all the
shape of the cracks, but without all the
| | 03:10 | extra information that just would
be way too dense to take into Maya.
| | 03:15 | Now we need to project the detail from
the original Ztool onto the decimated one.
| | 03:20 | So I am just going to get
rid of the wireframe here.
| | 03:22 | Shift+F and let's subdivide
this up to a few million polygons.
| | 03:26 | So I am just going to hit Ctrl+D a few times.
| | 03:28 | This is to give us enough geometry to
shrinkwrap or project the detail from the
| | 03:33 | original cracked mud onto this decimated one.
| | 03:36 | Now we will use projection
like we did on the Dewhopper.
| | 03:38 | Let's use Append here in the Subtool
menu to bring in the original cracked mud.
| | 03:43 | Now in the decimated one, let's go
back to our lowest subdivision level.
| | 03:46 | So I am going to hit Shift+D and
delegate all the way down to the lowest
| | 03:50 | subdivision level here and now we will
just use Projection like we did before.
| | 03:55 | Sometimes you can use Projection without
using Production Shell and it even works better.
| | 03:59 | So you might have to experiment.
| | 04:00 | I seem to have found that with the
cracked mud not using Projection Shell
| | 04:03 | actually works better.
| | 04:04 | So I will just subdivide one more
time hitting D and then let's project one
| | 04:07 | more time, and subdivide again and
project again, and we got one more
| | 04:13 | subdivision level to go.
| | 04:14 | So I hit D to subdivide
and now project all again.
| | 04:18 | It looks like it finished.
| | 04:21 | Now the decimated version has all
the same detail as the original, we can
| | 04:25 | delete the original.
| | 04:26 | Let's go up here and select the cracked mud
and I am just going to hit Delete and say OK.
| | 04:31 | So now we can go down to our lowest
subdivision level and still have pretty
| | 04:35 | decent looking cracked
mud at a low polygon count.
| | 04:38 | The original one didn't look much like
cracked mud at all at a low polygon count.
| | 04:42 | That's the benefit of Decimation Master.
| | 04:44 | It can take a really dense highly
detailed model and crunch it down so that it
| | 04:49 | still looks pretty good,
but with much fewer polygons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing the pedestal| 00:01 | Now that the base is made we need to
prepare it for use in Maya by laying out
| | 00:05 | its UVs and combining it
with the Dewhopper scene.
| | 00:07 | Now geometry that's been
decimated doesn't have any UVs by default.
| | 00:11 | So UV Master is going to create them for us.
| | 00:13 | Even though, it doesn't have any existing
seams, so let's use UV Master to lay this out.
| | 00:18 | So let's go up to the
Zplugin menu and open up UV Master.
| | 00:22 | Now even though this plane doesn't
have any existing seams I want to turn on
| | 00:26 | Use Existing UV Seams.
| | 00:28 | Setting this option will force the
plane to stay in one single shell.
| | 00:32 | If I turn it off UV Master might break
it up into multiple shells and that just
| | 00:36 | might be more complicated than I need.
| | 00:38 | Okay, it looks like we are ready to hit Unwrap.
| | 00:40 | All right, finished in just a few seconds.
| | 00:42 | All right, let's just check
to make sure it did it right.
| | 00:45 | Let me go down to the Texture Map
Palette here and let's click New From UV Map.
| | 00:50 | So it looks it laid it out
all nice in one big circle.
| | 00:52 | All right, let's turn this off now.
| | 00:54 | Now it's time to get the base
combined with the same Maya scene as the
| | 00:58 | Dewhopper, so let's open up Maya.
| | 01:01 | Okay, so now in Maya I just want to
open up our exercise file, go to Exercise
| | 01:06 | Files > Ch_07 > 07_03 and
let's open the dewhopper.ma.
| | 01:11 | Okay, so let's go ahead and close the
UV Texture Editor, we don't need this and
| | 01:14 | I am just going to hit Spacebar in the
viewport, so we get a maximized viewport
| | 01:17 | here, and it's just the same Dewhopper
that we had before, just with the UV laid out.
| | 01:21 | Right now back to ZBrush, we are going to
use GoZ to send this to Maya. All right!
| | 01:27 | So here in Maya you will notice that
the plane is not exactly in the same
| | 01:30 | orientation or size that it should
be, so this is easy enough to fix.
| | 01:34 | I am just going to go into Rotate
Mode and let's lay it flat here.
| | 01:37 | I am going to go into the Channel Box and
just make sure it's rotating exactly flat.
| | 01:41 | So looks like -90 degrees is going to be
right, and let's see, we will hit R go to
| | 01:47 | Scale Mode and scale this up a bit.
| | 01:49 | I am just going to bring this down.
| | 01:51 | For right now the way the Dewhopper is posed,
his legs are going to stick to the ground.
| | 01:54 | That's okay, we are going to pose him
later, but for now, let's just rest it so
| | 01:58 | that the front legs and the front feet
are just resting nicely on the ground.
| | 02:02 | Now GoZ imported that texture that was
created when I tested UVs and we don't
| | 02:07 | need that, we can get rid of that.
| | 02:08 | So let's go to our Material Editor, so
go to Window, go to Rendering Editors
| | 02:14 | and open the Hypershade and let's open
of Textures and this is the file right
| | 02:18 | here that it created.
| | 02:19 | So I am just going to click and hit
Delete and you can close out of that.
| | 02:22 | Okay, so we have got a fairly nice
plane, now we need to do something to
| | 02:26 | hide this jagged edge.
| | 02:27 | So what I am going to do
is create a polygon pipe.
| | 02:30 | Go to Polygons and there is a little
primitive right here, called Polygon Pipe.
| | 02:33 | So we will just create this and now
we will just draw it out on the grid.
| | 02:38 | And then you click and drag once more
to set the height and then you can click
| | 02:42 | and drag once more to set the thickness.
| | 02:43 | I think where it was by default was pretty good.
| | 02:45 | And now I just move this into place
so it's covering up that edge there.
| | 02:49 | One last thing I want to do to this
edge is give it some holding edges so that
| | 02:53 | the corners get beveled.
| | 02:54 | If I hit 3 right now to smooth it,
it rounds out and it gets really soft.
| | 02:58 | So I wanted to have a little bit of
a beveled edge on all these corners.
| | 03:01 | So let's go into Edit Mesh and
get the Insert Edge Loop tool.
| | 03:05 | I am just going to zoom in
so you see this more close-up.
| | 03:07 | I just want to insert an Edge Loop
pretty close to all the existing edges.
| | 03:11 | Let's see down here in the bottom too,
and one more on the inside. All right!
| | 03:17 | I am just going to hold down the
right mouse button and go to Object Mode.
| | 03:21 | Just click on this and hit 3 again.
| | 03:23 | So now you see we have got, kind of a
little rounded beveled edge there, looks
| | 03:26 | much more appealing.
| | 03:27 | So we have just practiced a few things
in this movie that we have done a few
| | 03:31 | times already, laying out UVs and using GoZ.
| | 03:33 | It's a good little review to
see how these tools can be used in
| | 03:36 | different circumstances.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Lighting and ShadingSetting up the scene for rendering| 00:00 | Before we start setting up lights and
rendering there's a few things that you'll want to do.
| | 00:05 | There's some technical render
settings to go over as well as some temporary
| | 00:08 | color and material settings to change.
| | 00:10 | Lighting and rendering is one of those
tasks that can be frustrating because it
| | 00:14 | takes so long to do test renders,
however, there's some tips and tricks that
| | 00:18 | I'll show you that really help cut down
render times so that you can spend more
| | 00:22 | time adjusting things in making them
look good and less time waiting around.
| | 00:25 | Now mental ray is very complicated.
| | 00:28 | If you want to learn more about mental
ray I'd recommend checking out the course
| | 00:32 | Maya 2011 Lighting and Rendering in mental ray.
| | 00:35 | In our scene we've got our model and
base pedestal with just the standard
| | 00:38 | Lambert material applied.
| | 00:40 | Let's start by giving
everything a stand-in material and color.
| | 00:43 | One thing I actually want to do is change
the Renderer to Default Quality Rendering.
| | 00:48 | The MIA materials are new mental ray
shaders that are more physically accurate
| | 00:52 | than standard Blinn or Lambert shaders.
| | 00:55 | To make them let's go to the Create menu
and go down to mental ray Materials and
| | 00:59 | click Mia_material_x.
| | 01:01 | Now you will notice that this
material is highlighted in red.
| | 01:04 | That means that it only works
with the mental ray renderer and we
| | 01:08 | haven't activated it yet.
| | 01:09 | So it's just warning us that this
material is not going to work as it is, but we
| | 01:12 | are going to change the Renderer later.
| | 01:14 | So let's use this Mia material for the eyeball.
| | 01:18 | Over here in the Attribute Editor
you can change the Material Settings by
| | 01:22 | clicking on a Preset and
let's make this more glossy.
| | 01:25 | So I am going to go down to
GlossyFinish and click Replace.
| | 01:28 | We could also give it a color, just something
to stand in for now to replace the textures.
| | 01:32 | Alright, now let's apply it to the eyeball.
| | 01:34 | I am going to zoom in here.
| | 01:36 | You can apply the texture, just by
middle mouse clicking-and-dragging from the
| | 01:40 | Material Swatch over to the eyeball.
| | 01:41 | Alright, let's do another,
let's get the ground material made.
| | 01:44 | Let's zoom out a little bit here.
| | 01:46 | Go to Create > mental ray
Materials > Mia_material_x.
| | 01:51 | Now the ground isn't so shiny, so
let's change this preset to let's say
| | 01:56 | MatteFinish and click Replace.
| | 01:58 | Now let's just change
the Color to a sandy brown.
| | 02:01 | Now let's apply this material using
a different method just for practice.
| | 02:04 | I am going to Drag+Select over the base
and that ring around it and then go over
| | 02:08 | to the Material and hold on the right
mouse button and then mark up to Assign
| | 02:12 | Material to Selection.
| | 02:14 | Okay, now let's do something for the teeth.
| | 02:15 | Let's go to Create > mental ray
Materials > Mia_material_x, and let's say for
| | 02:21 | teeth, let's also make it shiny
and glossy just like the eyeball, so
| | 02:25 | GlossyFinish > Replace, and let's make
the color bit brighter since teeth are
| | 02:30 | white, and let's just zoom in on these teeth.
| | 02:33 | I am going to select one and
then Shift+Select the bottom teeth.
| | 02:36 | Go to the Material, hold down the right
mouse button and Assign Material to Selection.
| | 02:40 | And finally, let's make a
material for the body and tail spikes.
| | 02:43 | Create > mental ray Materials > Mia_
material_x and let's go to the Presets and
| | 02:48 | we will start from a MatteFinish preset
but we will actually bring just a little
| | 02:52 | bit of glossiness into it.
| | 02:53 | So I am going to scroll down to
the Reflection Settings and increase
| | 02:57 | Reflectivity just a little bit and
bring down Glossiness, just so we get a
| | 03:01 | little, kind of blurry highlight.
| | 03:02 | It doesn't need to be exact, and then
we can make the color something that
| | 03:06 | generally represents the color that we
are going to give the Dewhopper in the end.
| | 03:09 | So I don't know, let's see
something little browner.
| | 03:13 | That should work fine for now.
| | 03:14 | Now let's zoom out and I am just going to
Drag+Select over the body and the tail spikes.
| | 03:18 | Go to the Material, hold down the
right mouse button and go to Assign
| | 03:21 | Material to Selection.
| | 03:22 | Okay, now let's get some of the
technical things out of the way.
| | 03:25 | We are going to use mental ray because
it's a more advanced Renderer than the
| | 03:29 | built-in Maya Renderer.
| | 03:30 | So let's go up to our Render Settings.
| | 03:32 | Right now it's set to
Render Using Maya Software.
| | 03:35 | So let's click this and go down to mental ray.
| | 03:37 | Now let's go to the Options tab.
| | 03:39 | There is just one setting I want to
change in here down under the Performance
| | 03:43 | Settings, I want to turn on Maya Derivatives.
| | 03:45 | What this does is it tells mental ray
to render normal maps in the way that
| | 03:50 | Maya likes to do it, mental ray by itself
has a different way of rendering normal maps.
| | 03:54 | It's not actually what we want.
| | 03:56 | So we want to do it the Maya way.
| | 03:57 | Now let's go to the Indirect Lighting
tab and let's turn on Final Gathering.
| | 04:02 | Final Gather bounces light off of
surfaces and casts some of that light
| | 04:07 | on nearby surfaces.
| | 04:08 | The result is a warmer, more
natural appearance and renders.
| | 04:12 | I'll be demonstrating exactly what the
difference is, but for now let's just put
| | 04:15 | some settings in place.
| | 04:16 | The default settings are actually
pretty good for final renders, but for the
| | 04:20 | sake of speeding things up as we want
to do with some early preview renders,
| | 04:24 | let's lower the quality so it goes faster.
| | 04:26 | So in the Accuracy let's bring
this down to about half, around 50.
| | 04:30 | Same with the Point Density,
I am going to make that 0.5.
| | 04:33 | Now what these numbers are doing is
actually very technical, but basically it's
| | 04:37 | going to reduce the number of
computations that need to be done and make the
| | 04:40 | renders go faster, which is also
going to make the renders more grainy.
| | 04:43 | So we can increase the Point Interpolation
which is going to smooth out the graininess.
| | 04:48 | It will make it a little bit blurry but
it's good for preview purposes, so I am
| | 04:51 | just going to crank that up to 50.
| | 04:52 | The exact numbers aren't important, but
basically what you want to understand is
| | 04:56 | that lower the quality the
faster the render is going to go.
| | 05:00 | For now, we want renders to go as fast as
possible so we can make big changes quickly.
| | 05:04 | Setting up your scene for rendering can
save a lot of trouble later on, you will
| | 05:08 | find that renders go faster and you
will have less tweaking to do later on if
| | 05:12 | you set it up right.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a key light| 00:00 | Setting up lights for a 3D
scene can seem like a daunting task.
| | 00:05 | It can be technically complicated and
artistically you might not be sure what
| | 00:08 | kind of result you even want.
| | 00:10 | I'll cover not only how to set things
up technically, but also describe some
| | 00:14 | ways of thinking about lighting that
can give you a clear direction to follow.
| | 00:17 | The most important thing to keep in
mind is that every light you create should
| | 00:21 | have a purpose, either an artistic
purpose to create a particular visual effect,
| | 00:26 | or a technical purpose to generate
realistically believable lighting.
| | 00:30 | Before touching the Lighting tools in
Maya, let's first look at a few pictures
| | 00:33 | to help us get an idea
of what we want to create.
| | 00:36 | I want to render the Dewhopper in a
way that makes him look like he is living
| | 00:40 | in a natural habitat.
| | 00:41 | He lives in the hot dry desert, so I
found photos of real lizards in similar
| | 00:45 | settings in order to get a better
sense of what I could do with the lighting.
| | 00:50 | Looking at these pictures,
they're all taken on a bright sunny day.
| | 00:53 | You can tell by this sharp dark shadow
that the subject is in direct sunlight.
| | 00:58 | The sun is the most obvious and
powerful lighting factor in this scene.
| | 01:02 | It's not the only one however, but
before we analyze the photo anymore, let's
| | 01:06 | get a primary or Key Light setup.
| | 01:09 | For this, I am going to use a Directional Light.
| | 01:11 | Let's go ahead and click in our
Viewport and hit Spacebar so you can
| | 01:14 | maximize our Viewport, and now I'm
just going to go to Create > Lights and
| | 01:19 | pick Directional Light. Okay.
| | 01:21 | So I am just going to hit W to go into
Move Mode, and let's just move this light
| | 01:24 | so it's up above our Dewhopper.
| | 01:25 | It actually doesn't matter where we
place it, because the light is going to come
| | 01:29 | from the same angle all over.
| | 01:31 | We just want to rotate this light so it's
pointing in the direction we want it to go.
| | 01:35 | I generally like to put the Key Light
on the opposite side of the subject from
| | 01:40 | where the camera is, so the camera
is looking at the subject from this
| | 01:44 | three-quarters angle right here.
| | 01:46 | So I like to put the light on the
opposite side, looking at the creature from
| | 01:50 | the opposite three-quarters angle.
| | 01:51 | So something like this
should probably work pretty well.
| | 01:54 | We can adjust it later on. Okay.
| | 01:56 | Let's get some renders going and test this out.
| | 01:58 | Let's Zoom in a little bit closer on our
subject, and I'm going to be doing IPR Render.
| | 02:03 | Now, an IPR Render will update in real
time, so you can move the lights around
| | 02:07 | and the objects around and the
render automatically updates.
| | 02:11 | Now what we need to do is define which part
of the image we want to see in the IPR Render.
| | 02:16 | So we can actually pick a smaller
portion than the full size of the render.
| | 02:19 | So I am just going to drag a box over
where the Dewhopper is, and you see a
| | 02:23 | render comes out in just a few seconds.
| | 02:25 | I am going to move this
off to the side a little bit.
| | 02:28 | Before I continue, I want to be
able to see my scene from four
| | 02:31 | different viewports.
| | 02:32 | Let's go up to Window >
Saved Layouts > Four View. Okay.
| | 02:37 | So now we can see from Top,
Front, Side, and Perspective View.
| | 02:41 | And I just want to rotate this light
here in the Top View and then we can see
| | 02:46 | instantly what happens in the Render View.
| | 02:47 | So I am just rotating a little bit,
and you can see it updates automatically.
| | 02:52 | And let's see what happens if I
rotate this light kind of drastically in a
| | 02:55 | different direction.
| | 02:57 | So you can get very quick updates of
what different lighting changes are going
| | 03:00 | to look like by using IPR Rendering.
| | 03:03 | Now let's adjust some of the Light Settings.
| | 03:05 | I want to bump up the Intensity of the light.
| | 03:07 | It is the sun after all.
| | 03:08 | So let me just move this Render
View over to the side so I can see the
| | 03:12 | attributes for this light.
| | 03:13 | I am going to crank up Intensity to, let's
see, 2, roughly 2, and let's change its Color.
| | 03:19 | The sun actually casts a slightly
yellow light, so I am going to set this to a
| | 03:23 | kind of a yellowish orange.
| | 03:25 | And just increase the Saturation a little bit.
| | 03:29 | Be careful to keep the color subtle,
picking an intense yellow will overpower
| | 03:33 | the effect, like this, so I
am just going to undo that.
| | 03:38 | Let's give the light a Shadow as well.
| | 03:40 | So I am going to go down to the
Attribute Editor here and scroll down to
| | 03:44 | Shadows, and let's
scroll down a little bit more.
| | 03:50 | Actually, let me move this down so
we can see more of that. All right!
| | 03:52 | I am going to turn on Use Ray Trace Shadows.
| | 03:54 | Now, there are a few settings to play with here.
| | 03:58 | The Light Angle describes the size of the
penumbra or more simply how fuzzy the shadow is.
| | 04:03 | I like to make it just slightly
fuzzy so that it's not absolutely sharp.
| | 04:07 | Let's see if we just increase this to, I
don't know, let's see what 9 looks like.
| | 04:11 | Okay.
| | 04:11 | That's maybe a little too fuzzy.
| | 04:14 | Let's bring that down to, I
will just type in about 3.
| | 04:18 | That should be good for now.
| | 04:19 | We can always adjust it later.
| | 04:21 | Another important setting is Shadow Rays.
| | 04:23 | Basically the fuzzier you make the Shadow,
the more grainy it will look, because
| | 04:28 | it's spreading out all those calculations.
| | 04:30 | If we increase Shadow Rays, we make
the render do more calculations to
| | 04:34 | smooth out the graininess.
| | 04:35 | I will bump this up a little bit, but
in order to keep renders going fast at
| | 04:38 | this stage, I won't try to get rid of
all the graininess, just enough to get a
| | 04:42 | clearer sense of what the shadows look like.
| | 04:44 | So I am just going to raise this to 2 for now.
| | 04:47 | One last thing, I want to show you exactly
what Final Gather is doing to our renders.
| | 04:52 | So in order to compare the difference,
what we can do is click this button here,
| | 04:56 | and it saves an image of what
the render looks like right now.
| | 05:00 | So let's go into our mental ray
settings, and I'm going to go to Indirect
| | 05:04 | Lighting and let's turn off Final
Gathering, and let's close this, and we will
| | 05:08 | just save another one now that
Final Gather has been turned off.
| | 05:10 | And now you can scroll between the
different saved images with this slider down here.
| | 05:15 | So you can see Final Gather is really doing
a lot to improve the realism of this scene.
| | 05:20 | With Final Gather off, notice how
much darker and colder everything got.
| | 05:24 | Turning it back on, you can see how
Final Gather is taking light that hits
| | 05:28 | the ground and bouncing it back up at the
character, just like what happens in the real world.
| | 05:32 | The result feels much more natural.
| | 05:34 | While you could create this effect
manually by setting up lights that point
| | 05:38 | upward to fill in the shadows, Final
Gather offers a faster solution that
| | 05:42 | usually works pretty well.
| | 05:44 | So the Key Light is the
primary light source of the scene.
| | 05:47 | It's the light that makes the
strongest distinction between light and shadow.
| | 05:51 | That's why we set it up first.
| | 05:52 | Don't worry about getting it to an
exact brightness or making the shadows just
| | 05:56 | right or giving it just the right color
yet, all of those things can be affected
| | 06:00 | by other lights that will be added.
| | 06:01 | For now, we just want to establish
its position and its overall attributes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a soft sky light| 00:00 | Now to set up a skylight, we've got
this sunlight worked out with a directional
| | 00:04 | light, and we've also got bounced
light working with final gather.
| | 00:08 | The skylight is a bit harder to see in
photographs however, because it's very
| | 00:12 | soft and comes from every angle.
| | 00:14 | To the untrained eye, it's not even noticeable.
| | 00:17 | However, we know that it's there
because the atmosphere takes certain
| | 00:20 | wavelengths of light particularly the
blue light and scatters it in all directions.
| | 00:24 | The result is that there is a soft
blue light shining from the whole sky.
| | 00:28 | You will really see the difference in
the render once we've got it in there.
| | 00:32 | Alright, so back in Maya, I am going to make
this skylight with a mental ray area light.
| | 00:36 | It's a type of light that has a shape
to it, rather than a spotlight where all
| | 00:40 | the light comes from a single point and
the area light comes from a big square.
| | 00:45 | Before we make it however, let's do a
render and save it so that we can compare
| | 00:48 | the before and after.
| | 00:49 | So let's go to our Perspective View
here and I am just going to click Render.
| | 00:54 | And I am just going to click on this
button here and save an image of this
| | 00:57 | Render so that I can
compare the before and after.
| | 00:59 | Let's close this now.
| | 01:00 | Alright, to make the light let's go up
to Create > Lights and Area Light, and
| | 01:06 | let's just use Move, Rotate and Scale to
get this position up above our creature here.
| | 01:10 | Now we want it to be fairly big, the
sky is big after all, and let's go into
| | 01:15 | rotate and it's going to shine in
the direction of this little line that
| | 01:19 | sticks out of the middle.
| | 01:20 | So I wanted to point down from the top
of the sky, so if we rotate it so that
| | 01:24 | this line is pointing down
that should be just right.
| | 01:26 | So I'll also go into move
and just bring this up above.
| | 01:29 | I want to go in the Channel Box and just
make sure that it's rotated exactly -90 degrees.
| | 01:35 | Now before we start looking at Renders,
there's just one thing I want to do.
| | 01:40 | Let's go into the Attribute Editor and
let's move this thing down so I can see
| | 01:44 | more of my attributes.
| | 01:45 | I am going to come down to mental ray.
| | 01:49 | And I want to turn on Use Light Shape.
| | 01:52 | What this does is it converts a
standard area light into one that's optimized
| | 01:56 | for use in mental ray.
| | 01:57 | Okay, now let's turn on IPR
Render so we can do some fine-tuning.
| | 02:03 | It looks like we're zoomed out far
from the creature so I am just going to
| | 02:06 | zoom in closer on him.
| | 02:09 | And let's drag a box so that we can
start rendering and let's change some
| | 02:13 | attributes of this light before we go
and compare it with the before image.
| | 02:17 | Let's change its attributes here, I just
want to change the color to be a little
| | 02:21 | bit more blue because
that's the color of the sky.
| | 02:25 | Okay, now let's compare the render to
what we had before creating the skylight.
| | 02:29 | Let's go and save one here
and just slide this over.
| | 02:33 | Okay, our camera shifted a little bit
but you can definitely tell that after
| | 02:37 | adding the skylight, everything is a
little bit cooler and there's a little more
| | 02:40 | light bouncing around.
| | 02:42 | Notice that the shadow underneath the
Dewhopper has a little blue tint to it,
| | 02:46 | just like in real life this skylight fills
in shadows with a little of that blue sky.
| | 02:51 | Adding a skylight to outdoor
scenes is a great way to add realism and
| | 02:54 | subtlety to a Render.
| | 02:56 | I use it all the time to
add soft shading to my images.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a rim light| 00:01 | Unlike a sunlight and a skylight,
which are naturally part of any outdoor
| | 00:05 | scene, a rimlight's purpose is more
artistic and not necessarily physically
| | 00:10 | accurate or natural.
| | 00:11 | It helps define the subject more
clearly from a visual standpoint.
| | 00:15 | Let's look at this photo that
has a very prominent rimlight.
| | 00:18 | One thing that it's doing artistically
is providing a contrast to the key light.
| | 00:22 | The key light shining on this
side of the face is very warm.
| | 00:25 | It's very broad and soft, whereas the
rimlight is cold, sharp and limited to
| | 00:30 | just a sliver of the subject.
| | 00:32 | Without a rimlight, the edge of
this subject would fade off to black.
| | 00:35 | The rimlight is helping to sharply
define the shape and features of the subject.
| | 00:40 | A rimlight is not always called for, however.
| | 00:42 | There's nothing wrong with having
one side of the subject fade to black.
| | 00:46 | It's an artistic decision that you make
depending on how you want to present the subject.
| | 00:50 | The reason I choose to use a rimlight
for the Dewhopper is that we're making
| | 00:54 | presentation renders that are meant to
reveal the subject's shape and structure
| | 00:58 | as much as possible.
| | 01:00 | If I was making renders for a
different purpose, perhaps setting a mood as
| | 01:03 | part of a story, then leaving out the
rimlight might very well be the best thing to do.
| | 01:08 | As with anything you do in Creature
Creation, it's about making artistic
| | 01:12 | decisions that are based on a reason.
| | 01:14 | So let's actually create this rimlight.
| | 01:16 | I want do a render from the perspective
viewport just to compare the before and after.
| | 01:21 | Okay, and let's save this image.
| | 01:23 | Now we can close the Render window.
| | 01:25 | Let's go to Create > Lights, and Area Light.
| | 01:30 | You can really use almost any kind of
light type for a rimlight, but I want to
| | 01:34 | use an Area Light because it
will have really soft shadows.
| | 01:37 | And the reason I want really soft
shadows is that if you have multiple hard
| | 01:41 | shadows on the ground, it can start to
get confusing and visually cluttered.
| | 01:45 | So I only want one sharp shadow from
the key light and I want the rimlight to
| | 01:49 | have a very soft shadow,
so it's less noticeable.
| | 01:52 | I like to position my rimlight
roughly opposite from the key light.
| | 01:56 | The default size of the light is pretty good.
| | 01:58 | I want it big enough, so that it casts
soft shadows, but small enough so that
| | 02:01 | its light doesn't cover too much of the subject.
| | 02:04 | So let's move this light.
| | 02:05 | I am going to move it up and back a little bit.
| | 02:09 | Actually, one good tip is that you
can actually look through the light.
| | 02:12 | So if you go to one of your viewports
that you're not really using so much, you
| | 02:16 | can go to Panels and Look Through Selected.
| | 02:18 | You can't really see right now, but
let's zoom out a bit and you can actually
| | 02:22 | position this light now via looking through it.
| | 02:25 | So it can be much more
useful for positioning the lights.
| | 02:28 | So I am just going to just zoom in
behind the Dewhopper and you notice our
| | 02:31 | key light is right up here, so we know we are
opposite on the backside of the creature here.
| | 02:36 | Okay, now that it's positioned, let's
make a few adjustments to the light.
| | 02:39 | I am just going to move this down,
so we can see more of our attributes.
| | 02:43 | I am going to come down to Shadows and let's
scroll down and turn on Use Ray Trace Shadows.
| | 02:50 | I also want to turn the Shadow Rays
up to 2, so that they are not quite so
| | 02:53 | grainy and let's also open up mental
ray and let's turn on Use Light Shape, so
| | 02:58 | that we're optimizing the light for mental ray.
| | 03:00 | Now let's do some IPR fine render tuning.
| | 03:03 | So make sure we've got our Perspective
viewport selected and let's go up to IPR
| | 03:08 | and select the Dewhopper.
| | 03:12 | Okay, it looks like we can see a
little sliver of this light here.
| | 03:15 | Let's make some adjustments.
| | 03:16 | I want it to be brighter, so that I
can see it better and cooler so that it
| | 03:20 | contrasts with the warmth of the key light.
| | 03:23 | So let's go into the Light Attributes
here and just crank up the Intensity.
| | 03:27 | Let's see what 4 looks like.
| | 03:29 | Okay, it actually looks pretty
decent on the creature, but the ground is
| | 03:35 | getting way blown out.
| | 03:37 | One thing that we can do to fix that is
position the light, so that it's below the ground.
| | 03:41 | So let's just move this Render view off
to the side a little bit and I am going
| | 03:44 | to go into the viewport that's being
controlled by the light and I am just
| | 03:47 | going to rotate around and just move my
view down, so that I'm below the ground
| | 03:52 | plane, just barely.
| | 03:57 | Okay, so we can see the IPR
is updating automatically.
| | 04:00 | Now the ground isn't so blown out, but we can
see that nice rimlight here on the creature.
| | 04:04 | The right placement of lights is subjective.
| | 04:07 | A tiny sliver of rimlight might be
good for some situations and a broader,
| | 04:11 | softer rimlight might be
the right choice for others.
| | 04:14 | Again, this isn't about making the
lighting perfect at this stage, but about
| | 04:18 | establishing the overall feel
that you're trying to create.
| | 04:20 | We'll get into removing the
graininess and stuff later on.
| | 04:23 | For now, experiment with the ways in
which a rimlight helps draw attention to
| | 04:27 | the subject and makes it
popped forward from the background.
| | 04:30 | Once all the lights are created,
feel free to adjust their strengths and
| | 04:34 | positions in order to
achieve the look you're going for.
| | 04:37 | You may want to brighten one light or
darken another, maybe you are getting
| | 04:41 | areas that are blown out and too bright.
| | 04:43 | In that case, you would want to
lower the intensity on one or two lights.
| | 04:46 | You may have to experiment with
several arrangements of lights until you find
| | 04:50 | what works best for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up a simple SSS skin shader| 00:00 | The Mia_material_x shader that we've
got on everything right now can do a lot
| | 00:05 | of versatile things.
| | 00:06 | However, in order to get a more
believable skin quality on a Dewhopper, we're
| | 00:11 | going to have to use something called
Subsurface Scattering or SSS for short.
| | 00:16 | Mental Ray has a shader
specifically for this purpose.
| | 00:20 | It simulates the effect of light
scattering around the inside of skin.
| | 00:24 | Check out this photo where you can
really see the concept in action.
| | 00:28 | The sunlight passes through the skin
where it picks up the redder tones of the
| | 00:31 | flesh and blood underneath the skin.
| | 00:33 | It's easiest to see where the skin is
thin like ears and fingers, but it really
| | 00:38 | happens over the whole body.
| | 00:39 | Most of the time, it has a very
subtle effect that can be hard to notice.
| | 00:44 | However, when it's missing renders
of people and skin feel cold and hard.
| | 00:50 | The mental ray skin SSS shader is
going to bring an extra degree of life and
| | 00:55 | realism to the Dewhopper.
| | 00:57 | Let's open up the Hypershade
and create the skin shader.
| | 01:01 | Go up to Window >
Rendering Editors and Hypershade.
| | 01:06 | Now in the Create tab let's go down to
mental ray Materials and then go down to
| | 01:13 | Misss_fast_skin_maya.
| | 01:15 | Okay, let me position some windows
to make this easier to work with.
| | 01:20 | I am going to move this down so
we can see more of our settings.
| | 01:22 | And so here are the
attributes for the skin shader.
| | 01:25 | There is a lot to go over.
| | 01:27 | Don't worry, I am going to help
you make sense of all of this.
| | 01:31 | The skin shader was meant to be able to
capture all of the subtleties of human skin.
| | 01:36 | However, we're working on a creature so
some of the settings are overkill and we
| | 01:40 | don't need to be quite so
precise to get a good result.
| | 01:43 | So let's apply this material
to the body and the tail spikes.
| | 01:46 | I am going to move this off to the side
and just little mouse click-and-drag and
| | 01:52 | put this on the body.
| | 01:54 | And let's put it on the tail spikes as
well, so I am just going to select the
| | 01:56 | tail spikes, hold down the right mouse
button and Assign Material To Selection.
| | 02:00 | Now we are not going to use the IPR
Render while we test out the skin shader.
| | 02:06 | That's because IPR and the skin shader
don't quite agree, so we are actually
| | 02:10 | just going to do full renders.
| | 02:14 | So what we have now kind of
looks like a bit of chewed gum.
| | 02:18 | The main concern at this point is that the
skin shader doesn't know how big the Dewhopper is.
| | 02:24 | The visible effect of subsurface scattering
is highly dependent on the size of the object.
| | 02:29 | A large marble statue will have
a small amount of SSS visible.
| | 02:34 | However, a tiny marble figurine will
have a more pronounced effect because there
| | 02:39 | is less material for the light to pass through.
| | 02:42 | By default, the skin shader is
set up for much larger things.
| | 02:45 | Every time I render I am going to
save a copy so that I can compare it
| | 02:49 | to previous renders.
| | 02:50 | Okay, so let's fix the scale on this shader.
| | 02:52 | I am going to click the shader and go into
Algorithm Control in the Attribute Editor.
| | 02:58 | Now the Scale Conversion is going to
adjust the computations to adjust for the
| | 03:04 | size of the Dewhopper, I want the
effect to be less pronounced so I am actually
| | 03:10 | going to increase the amount of Scale
Conversion, and let's just see what 10
| | 03:14 | does, I am going to another render.
| | 03:17 | And we need to make sure that we
are selected in the correct viewport,
| | 03:21 | Perspective View, okay, now we can render.
| | 03:25 | Let's compare this with the previous render.
| | 03:29 | Okay, not quite so pronounced of
an effect, but it's still too much.
| | 03:33 | I am going to save this
render and let's try it again.
| | 03:38 | Make sure you've selected your material
again and let's go down to the Algorithm
| | 03:43 | Control and let's see what 100 looks like.
| | 03:47 | Select our viewport and hit Render.
| | 03:53 | And let's save this view and
compare it with the previous ones.
| | 03:58 | So each time the effect of Subsurface
Scattering is getting less and less, which
| | 04:02 | is actually good because
it's way too much by default.
| | 04:05 | Subsurface Scattering should be a subtle effect.
| | 04:08 | A lot of times people want to put
in too much because it looks cool.
| | 04:12 | The effect though should be mostly subconscious.
| | 04:16 | it can be distracting if it's overused.
| | 04:19 | Okay, let's close this and just try
cranking up the settings a little bit more.
| | 04:22 | I am going to change the
Scale Conversion to 500.
| | 04:27 | Select our viewport and click Render.
| | 04:32 | Let's save this and
compare it to the previous one.
| | 04:39 | So it looks like 500
actually might be too little effect.
| | 04:43 | Now I worked this out before and it
turns out about 200 is just about right.
| | 04:48 | I'll probably tweak that number a little
bit later when I've got all my textures
| | 04:51 | applied, but for right now
it's in the right ballpark.
| | 04:55 | So let's close this and I am going
to change the Scale Conversion to 200.
| | 04:59 | Using the SSS skin shader can go a
long way towards getting realistic and
| | 05:04 | artistically pleasing results.
| | 05:06 | It can be complicated and overwhelming
at first, but if you approach it first by
| | 05:10 | setting the Scale and Algorithm
Control and then progressively changing one
| | 05:15 | setting at a time in order to see what
it does in the render, you can achieve
| | 05:18 | much greater control over it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the skin shader| 00:00 | The Subsurface Scattering Skin
shader is made for human skin.
| | 00:04 | So there's a few ways that we have
to work differently for a creature.
| | 00:08 | I'll explain each one of these changes
and talk about why I'm doing it as I go.
| | 00:12 | So let's get the colors and
shininess of the skin setup.
| | 00:16 | Let's maximize our view of the
attributes here of the skin shader.
| | 00:19 | There are several different places to put color.
| | 00:24 | I am going to open up the
Subsurface Scattering layer.
| | 00:27 | You can see that there's Overall Color,
Diffuse Color, Epidermal Scatter Color,
| | 00:32 | Subdermal Scatter Color, Backscatter Color.
| | 00:35 | It can be very confusing.
| | 00:37 | If you are doing a creature with very
thin or translucent skin or if you are
| | 00:41 | doing a realistic human, you would need
to put very specific colors and textures
| | 00:45 | into each of these channels.
| | 00:46 | However, the dew hopper
has tougher leathery skin.
| | 00:50 | So the way it responds to light is a
lot simpler and we can get away with
| | 00:54 | reusing the same color map
in several of these channels.
| | 00:58 | So what I want to do is put just a
general color that's going to describe
| | 01:02 | the entire dew hopper into Diffuse
Color, Epidermal Scatter Color, and
| | 01:07 | Subdermal Scatter Color.
| | 01:10 | And the color of the dew hopper is
kind of a tan brownish reddish color.
| | 01:15 | So let's just select the color
like that from the color swatch.
| | 01:18 | Give it little bit more red.
| | 01:22 | That's pretty close.
| | 01:24 | And just put a similar
color into these other channels.
| | 01:27 | And actually since we created a
custom color it's placed here in our
| | 01:30 | Custom Color Swatch.
| | 01:32 | So I am just going to click that
again and then once more down here.
| | 01:38 | Let's see what this looks like in a render.
| | 01:43 | Let's save an image of this
and close the Render View.
| | 01:47 | Now I want to more fully explain
what these different channels are doing.
| | 01:51 | I'll go and order from the
deepest and most superficial.
| | 01:55 | So let's slide down here to Backscatter Color.
| | 01:58 | Backscatter Color is a color that you
would see when light shines right through
| | 02:03 | the thinner parts of a model.
| | 02:04 | It stimulates blood underneath the skin.
| | 02:07 | You can get a sickly alien skin
by changing this to green or blue.
| | 02:12 | Next up is the Subdermal Scatter Color.
| | 02:15 | This is for the lower levels of skin
where fatty tissue and blood vessels exist.
| | 02:20 | You could even paint blood veins and stuff
like that into texture maps for this channel.
| | 02:25 | Next up is Epidermal Scatter Color.
| | 02:28 | This is for the top layer of skin.
| | 02:30 | On a human you could paint molds and freckles
in here and then up at the top is Diffuse Color.
| | 02:36 | This is for colors on the very surface of the
skin like makeup and dirt on a human character.
| | 02:42 | For the dew hopper, however, we'll
be putting the same map in all but
| | 02:45 | the deepest channels.
| | 02:47 | The overall color is going to
be used for ambient occlusion.
| | 02:51 | I'll go over how that works later.
| | 02:53 | Any color put in this channel
will darken the overall result.
| | 02:58 | Finally, there's a little slider
right here called Diffuse Weight.
| | 03:01 | This balances the subsurface
effects with any colors above the surface.
| | 03:06 | By default it's at 0.300, which means
that 30% of the final appearance is from
| | 03:11 | colors above the surface and
70% is subsurface scattering.
| | 03:15 | I am going to change this to 0.700
because the dew hopper's skin is thicker and
| | 03:20 | more leathery than human skin.
| | 03:22 | So less light gets underneath.
| | 03:25 | Finally, let's get the Specularity worked out.
| | 03:28 | This is how shiny the creature is going to look.
| | 03:31 | The Specularity in the skin shader
doesn't really work the way it should.
| | 03:35 | You kind of have to hack
it to get what you want.
| | 03:38 | It works best if the entire
body has the same shininess.
| | 03:41 | However, we've got several
surface types in one model here.
| | 03:45 | There's a wet inner mouth.
| | 03:47 | So that's going to be very shiny and
there's smooth hard plates, so those are
| | 03:51 | going to be kind of shiny, and then
there's rough leathery skin, which will
| | 03:55 | barely be shiny at all.
| | 03:57 | What I'm going to do is find values for
the Specularity that work for different
| | 04:01 | parts of the body one at a time and
then when I make the texture map for
| | 04:05 | Specularity, I'll connect them to the
shader in such a way that I can control
| | 04:09 | how the map affects the shininess. Don't worry;
| | 04:12 | it's all going to make sense later on.
| | 04:14 | For now, see what values work well
for different parts and then write those
| | 04:18 | values down somewhere.
| | 04:19 | So let me scroll down to the part of
this Attribute Editor that controls the
| | 04:24 | shininess right here under Specularity.
| | 04:27 | So there's lots of different controls
here, Overall Weight, Edge Factor, Primary
| | 04:32 | Specular Color, we don't need
to worry about too many of these.
| | 04:35 | The main one to concern yourself
with is Overall Weight, Primary Weight,
| | 04:40 | and Primary Shininess.
| | 04:43 | Now you would probably want to do a lot
of experimentation to find out exactly
| | 04:47 | what settings you should use
for these different numbers.
| | 04:50 | I've already gone through and
worked out what works pretty well.
| | 04:53 | So let's figure out some values that
are going to work well for the dull skin.
| | 04:57 | I am going to change the Overall
Weight to 0.300 and I'll leave the Primary
| | 05:03 | Weight at 0.300 as well I'll
leave the Primary Shininess at 5.000.
| | 05:08 | So let's do a render and
see what this looks like.
| | 05:10 | Make sure we've got our
Perspective View selected and click Render.
| | 05:16 | So the result is not particularly shiny.
| | 05:19 | It's kind of dull and leathery which is
exactly what we want for some parts of the creature.
| | 05:24 | So let's just save this and close it.
| | 05:28 | Now for the bony plates, these
need to be a little bit more shiny.
| | 05:32 | So I am going to increase the Overall
Weight to 1 and I'm going to increase the
| | 05:36 | Primary Weight to 0.500 and the Primary
Shininess to 10, and let's do a Render.
| | 05:47 | Let's save this image so that we can compare.
| | 05:51 | So just sliding between the two you can
see that it gets a little bit more shiny now.
| | 05:55 | This will work well for those bony plates.
| | 06:01 | Now let's find some
settings for the wet inner mouth.
| | 06:05 | I am going to set the Overall Weight
to 2.000, Primary Weight to 4.500, and
| | 06:15 | Primary Shininess to 111.000.
| | 06:17 | Let's make sure we've got our Perspective
View selected and let's go and hit Render.
| | 06:27 | And let's save this image and go compare it.
| | 06:32 | So this is much shinier now.
| | 06:33 | This will work well for the inner mouth.
| | 06:37 | Go ahead and close the Render View.
| | 06:39 | Now the number I am using our ballpark figures.
| | 06:41 | When I actually make the specular map,
there will be a lot of gradation and
| | 06:45 | variety between and
within the various body parts.
| | 06:49 | The skin shader wasn't really
meant for what we're using it for.
| | 06:52 | But it's the best option
to get the effect we want.
| | 06:55 | Although, setting up a shininess
involves jumping through some technical
| | 06:58 | hurdles, the result is
going to be worth it in the end.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding ambient occlusion to the shaders| 00:00 | Ambient Occlusion or AO for short is
a lighting trick that simulates the
| | 00:05 | appearance of shadows inside
of crevices and between objects.
| | 00:10 | It's based on the idea that light
doesn't reach inside places like that, as
| | 00:14 | easily as it does the
surfaces that are out in the open.
| | 00:17 | It's a nice way to increase the detail
and sense of realism in your renders.
| | 00:22 | So Ambient Occlusion doesn't
literally exist in the real world, but it's
| | 00:25 | going to simulate effects, like this
dark shadow here, where the belly is
| | 00:29 | very close to the ground.
| | 00:31 | To start with, let's do a render so
we can compare the before and after.
| | 00:36 | We've got our Perspective View here,
and let's just click Render, let's Save
| | 00:42 | that image, and close the Render View.
| | 00:45 | Now, let's go to the hyper shade and pick
the material that's applied to the ground.
| | 00:51 | In its Attribute Editor, we want
to add a node to the Weight Channel.
| | 00:55 | So let's go over here, I want to
shrink this down so we can see this better;
| | 00:59 | in the Weight Channel, we're just going
to click on this checker box right here.
| | 01:05 | The Weight Channel is a control that
tells the Shader how much light can get
| | 01:10 | reflected off the surface.
| | 01:12 | If we put something in this channel to
darken it, then the Shader will reflect
| | 01:16 | less light and therefore appear darker.
| | 01:19 | The Ambient Occlusion node will
deliver darker values into this channel only
| | 01:24 | where objects and surfaces are close
enough to each other to block light.
| | 01:28 | It might make more sense to just show you.
| | 01:30 | So here's how to do it.
| | 01:32 | In this Create Render Node dialog box
here, let's go down to the mental ray tab
| | 01:37 | and go down to Textures.
| | 01:39 | Then I am going to select mib_amb_occlusion.
| | 01:42 | Now, Maya needs a little help
understanding what to do with this node.
| | 01:48 | You see, the Ambient Occlusion node
creates red, green, and blue information,
| | 01:52 | but the Weight Channel
only wants 0 to 1 information.
| | 01:56 | We need to tell the Ambient Occlusion
node to only send one channel of information.
| | 02:02 | So let's go to its outValue, click
the little Plus sign here and just pick
| | 02:06 | either RGB, doesn't matter,
they're all going to be the same.
| | 02:10 | Now we need to plug this into the Mia_
material_x, diffuse_weight, let's just
| | 02:15 | move this box up here and now we can close it.
| | 02:18 | I am just going to middle-mouse+
Click in the Perspective View. Okay.
| | 02:22 | Now go up and click Render.
| | 02:27 | Let's Save this image, and compare
it to the one we did before. Wow!
| | 02:32 | What a difference!
| | 02:34 | Now let's look at the attributes of the AO
node and see how we can tweak the settings.
| | 02:39 | Go ahead and close this. Okay.
| | 02:42 | So we've got our Ambient
Occlusion attributes up here.
| | 02:45 | For now the only thing I want
to touch is the Max Distance.
| | 02:50 | If you have a huge scene with a
character on one side of a football field, for
| | 02:54 | example, and another character on
the other side, there's no way that one
| | 02:58 | character would have any noticeable
Ambient Occlusion influence on the other.
| | 03:02 | So you could set a Maximum Distance
beyond which AO will have no effect.
| | 03:08 | This can speed up your renders, because
it doesn't have to calculate so much if
| | 03:11 | you set a reasonable Max Distance.
| | 03:14 | By default, it's at 0, which
actually means infinite distance.
| | 03:18 | Let's switch to the Top View to make this
easier to measure what we should set this to.
| | 03:22 | So I am just going to hide the hyper
shade right now, and we've got our Top
| | 03:27 | View visible right here.
| | 03:28 | We've got gridlines visible here,
so we can count out distances.
| | 03:32 | I am just going to hit 5 to
see the shaded view more clearly.
| | 03:36 | Lets Zoom in a little bit.
| | 03:38 | Now, there is no absolute number we
should use here, but it looks like after
| | 03:41 | distance of about 3 grid units,
objects would be far enough apart that they
| | 03:46 | shouldn't affect each other's AO.
| | 03:47 | But it's not about exact numbers;
| | 03:50 | it's about what looks good.
| | 03:52 | So let's try a render with a setting of 3 in
the Max Distance and see what that looks like.
| | 03:58 | And let's middle-mouse+Click in the
Perspective View and try that again.
| | 04:05 | Let's Save this image and compare it.
| | 04:10 | There's without any AO;
| | 04:11 | there is with the Max Distance set
to Infinite, then there is with a
| | 04:16 | reasonable Max Distance of 3. Looks good!
| | 04:19 | Now the AO is pretty balanced.
| | 04:23 | Now, we can apply the same
node to all the other Shaders.
| | 04:27 | Let's close the Render View, and
we've got our hyper shade here, let's
| | 04:30 | just bring that back.
| | 04:32 | Let's do the eye shader next.
| | 04:34 | So remember, it's this shiny green one,
let's select this, and we can see its
| | 04:39 | attributes open here in the Attribute Editor.
| | 04:40 | Now, that AO node that we created
is visible under the Textures Tab.
| | 04:46 | Now we need to middle-mouse+Click-and-
drag this AO node over to the Weight node,
| | 04:52 | and just like we did before, we need
to select our value R or G or B. That
| | 04:58 | actually doesn't matter, and
select Diffuse Weight, and let's close.
| | 05:04 | Go ahead and do the same
thing to everything else.
| | 05:07 | However, there's just one difference
when applying it to the body shader,
| | 05:10 | because it's not the same as in Mia_material_x.
| | 05:13 | It's the skin shader.
| | 05:14 | Let's go into our Materials
Tab and select that skin shader.
| | 05:18 | Let's go in our Attributes and scroll
this up until we can see Overall Color.
| | 05:23 | Now let's go into our Textures Tab and
middle-mouse+Drag from Ambient Occlusion
| | 05:28 | over to the Overall Color.
| | 05:30 | Now, we didn't have to specify which
channel of the AO node to place into the
| | 05:34 | Overall Color, because Overall
Color receives RGB information.
| | 05:40 | So it just plugs right in without
having to specify the R, G, or B Channel.
| | 05:44 | Let's do another render.
| | 05:45 | Make sure we've got our Perspective
View selected and hit Render. Okay.
| | 05:53 | Let's Save this image, and now what I
want to do is compare directly between
| | 05:57 | this render and the first one
before I put in any AO at all.
| | 06:02 | So you can remove some of these in-
between images by going up to this little
| | 06:06 | icon with the Trashcan, and just go ahead
and Delete any ones other than this last one.
| | 06:12 | So now we can compare directly between AO
applied to all the objects and no AO at all.
| | 06:18 | Okay.
| | 06:19 | It's looking pretty good!
| | 06:21 | Ambient Occlusion is another tool you
have as an artist to get an extra kick
| | 06:25 | out of your renders.
| | 06:27 | Just remember to use it with a purpose.
| | 06:29 | Mindlessly adding things like this just
because it makes the renders look more
| | 06:33 | intense is a common beginner mistake.
| | 06:36 | AO is something that shouldn't
draw too much attention to itself.
| | 06:39 | It should be subtle enough to be
perceived almost subconsciously by the viewer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. TexturingPolypainting colors in ZBrush| 00:00 | In addition to sculpting ZBrush
is also a great tool for painting.
| | 00:05 | It works through a technology
called polypainting in which vertices are
| | 00:09 | colored when painted.
| | 00:11 | The more vertices you have in a
model, the finer detail you can paint.
| | 00:15 | In this chapter we will be
painting everything by hand.
| | 00:18 | While it's true that you can paint by
projecting photographs like we did in
| | 00:21 | Chapter 7 with the pedestal, I find
that painting most things from scratch
| | 00:26 | allows me to do some unique
things that you can't find in photos.
| | 00:31 | Before I start painting I do want to
study photographs of real animals so that I
| | 00:36 | can get a sense of the types of
colors and patterns that will feel natural.
| | 00:41 | There's often a relationship
between the anatomy and the coloration.
| | 00:45 | For example, in this photo notice
how the scales and plates are one color
| | 00:49 | pattern and the gaps between
them are different color pattern.
| | 00:54 | There might be one color on the creature's
underbelly and a different color down the back.
| | 01:00 | These kinds of variations bring both a
natural feel and visual interest to a creature.
| | 01:05 | So let's start painting.
| | 01:07 | The first thing you'll want to do is
make sure that you're on a white material.
| | 01:11 | So if you've got red wax or any other
colored material on your object, go to SkinShade04.
| | 01:17 | This one usually works really well.
| | 01:19 | You'll also want to make sure
you're on your highest subdivision level.
| | 01:23 | So let's make sure we've got
the right SubTool selected.
| | 01:26 | We want the dew hopper here.
| | 01:29 | Now let's go down to the Geometry
palette, and just go ahead and slide the
| | 01:34 | subdivision level all the way up to the highest.
| | 01:37 | Now we want to fill the whole
thing with a starting color.
| | 01:40 | I am going to pick a tan color.
| | 01:42 | It doesn't really matter so much
as it's going to be painted over
| | 01:45 | eventually with other colors.
| | 01:49 | Now we just want to fill
the model with this color.
| | 01:51 | So go up to Color and click Fill Object.
| | 01:55 | Now we're ready to start
painting with other colors.
| | 01:58 | I find it best to approach painting in
the same way that I sculpt, starting with
| | 02:02 | big broad areas of color and then
slowly getting more and more refined.
| | 02:07 | If I were to start with fine detailed
strokes, and then it turns out that I
| | 02:11 | wanted the base color to be a little bit
different, it would be very hard to change.
| | 02:15 | So let's figure out what color we want
to use in combination with this tan color.
| | 02:19 | I think the leathery skin on the
underbelly and legs might work well with this
| | 02:23 | tan color, but I want the bony
plates to be something a little different.
| | 02:27 | Let's get a kind of a dark red
and now we need to paint with color.
| | 02:31 | So I am going to go up and change RGB,
turn that on so we're painting with
| | 02:35 | color, and turn off the Zadd
so that we're not sculpting.
| | 02:39 | I also want to paint symmetrically.
| | 02:40 | So I am going to hit X to turn on Symmetry.
| | 02:43 | Let's just zoom in a little bit here.
| | 02:45 | So now you can just start painting.
| | 02:50 | Now I just want to get a broad variation
right now, kind of a gradient from this
| | 02:55 | red color to a tan color.
| | 02:57 | So I am not going to get really specific at all.
| | 02:59 | I just want to establish a basic gradient.
| | 03:04 | This is a good time to experiment
with different color combinations.
| | 03:08 | Maybe I want a little bit
more green, maybe on the legs.
| | 03:12 | So I could just try that out and see
how that looks, and if you don't like it,
| | 03:15 | you don't even have to undo, you can
just still pick a different color, and just
| | 03:19 | paint over, and see what works out.
| | 03:20 | I am going to zoom out for a better look.
| | 03:28 | Really, I am just playing around,
just giving myself lots of options.
| | 03:33 | Maybe I want to put that to a more
blue color and just see what you get.
| | 03:38 | I am going to hit Space and
shrink my brush size a little bit.
| | 03:43 | Maybe you could try out some weird
patterns or designs on this as well.
| | 03:46 | So really it's up to you at this stage.
| | 03:49 | Try things out, experiment, have fun with it.
| | 03:52 | Now, let's get into some tips and tricks.
| | 03:55 | You can use masking to paint only on the
bumps or only in the space between bumps.
| | 04:00 | This is a great way to use the
existing anatomy to make painting even easier.
| | 04:04 | Let me zoom in a little bit and explain.
| | 04:07 | So you could come in here, and shrink
your brush size down, and try to paint
| | 04:13 | only exactly right in-between cracks.
| | 04:16 | So you could try to paint in here and
spend all this time doing that, but that
| | 04:19 | would be very tedious.
| | 04:20 | So I am going to show you
a faster way to do this.
| | 04:23 | Let's go to the Masking palette and I
am going to click Mask By Cavity, and it
| | 04:29 | might take a few seconds to do this.
| | 04:32 | So what this has done is it's masked off
anything that's in a crack or a crevice.
| | 04:37 | Now if you invert this mask, you can
come in and get a larger brush and just
| | 04:44 | paint directly into all
these cracks and crevices.
| | 04:50 | If you want to change the color of
the bumps in-between the cracks, you can
| | 04:54 | just invert again, and let's try a
different color here, yellowish color maybe,
| | 05:01 | and paint on there.
| | 05:03 | Now if we clear the mask and zoom out,
we can see the effect that we have.
| | 05:08 | There are a few places where we could use
spotlight to project texture from photos.
| | 05:14 | The issue with that is that so much of
the color of the creature is dependent on
| | 05:18 | the specific details of the sculpted anatomy;
| | 05:21 | it would be very hard to find photos that
would complement the sculpted details exactly.
| | 05:26 | So in a photograph with lizard scales
for example, the scales would not very
| | 05:30 | likely line up with the
sculpted scales on the creature.
| | 05:34 | However, on the places like the
bony plates this might work out.
| | 05:37 | So let's give it a try.
| | 05:38 | I've got this photo of a seashell and
I am going to try to project it with
| | 05:42 | spotlight onto the bony plates.
| | 05:44 | Let's see how it works.
| | 05:46 | Let's go to Texture menu and Import,
and let's get that seashell reference.
| | 05:55 | Let's go back up to the Texture menu,
make the seashell active, and actually
| | 06:01 | what we want to do is zoom in on the parts of
the dew hopper that we're going to paint on.
| | 06:06 | So let's just zoom in really
close on one of these bony plates.
| | 06:09 | I want to look around for a better view.
| | 06:17 | That should work for now.
| | 06:19 | Now, open your Texture menu, make sure
the seashell is active and click on this
| | 06:23 | button right here to add it to spotlight.
| | 06:27 | I want to make this thing go away.
| | 06:28 | So I am going to hit Comma and now
let's position the seashell so that it's
| | 06:33 | right on top of where we
want to project through.
| | 06:36 | So we can rotate it, we can scale it,
we can move it around by clicking inside
| | 06:42 | of this area right here, and let's
lower the opacity so we can see the model
| | 06:46 | more clearly through it.
| | 06:47 | So I want to position the seashell so it's
right over the bony plate here, pretty good.
| | 06:56 | So let's click-and-drag on
the Spotlight Radius right here.
| | 06:59 | This is going to give us a
preview of the size of the brush.
| | 07:03 | Now when you're ready, just
hit Z to go into Paint Mode.
| | 07:08 | So now you can just start painting.
| | 07:10 | You brush right through the
photograph onto the model.
| | 07:16 | When you're done, you can hit Z to go
back into Spotlight, and you could either
| | 07:19 | reposition this photo to start painting
on a different place or when you're done
| | 07:23 | for good, you could just hit the X here.
| | 07:25 | Let's zoom out and see what this looks like.
| | 07:29 | So you see there are some situations where
you'd want to use photo sourced textures.
| | 07:34 | However, I would still want to do some
painting to help integrate this with the
| | 07:38 | rest of the textures.
| | 07:40 | From here on out, there's
not really any trick to it.
| | 07:42 | It's just a matter of working
from general colors to fine details.
| | 07:46 | Go ahead and paint various SubTools as well.
| | 07:49 | Just be careful to use Symmetry when
necessary and then turn it off when you're
| | 07:52 | close to the center line.
| | 07:54 | This part of the process really depends
more on your artistic eye for color and
| | 07:58 | painting than any techniques or tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Extracting texture maps| 00:01 | ZBrush allows the creation of many
different kinds of maps that can be used in
| | 00:05 | Maya to recreate the colors and
textures that we see in ZBrush.
| | 00:10 | We can even use Photoshop to enhance and
combine various maps for more detailed results.
| | 00:15 | I will admit the tools that ZBrush
has for creating maps can seem very
| | 00:20 | unintuitive at first.
| | 00:21 | But once you get used to the
sequence of steps, it really is very easy.
| | 00:26 | First off, let's create the most
obvious type of map; the colormap.
| | 00:30 | This is going to take all the
polypainted color that we did and transfer it to
| | 00:34 | a flat texture map.
| | 00:36 | Let's make sure we've got
the right SubTool selected.
| | 00:38 | Let's go into SubTool and yes,
we have the Dewhopper selected.
| | 00:42 | Now, let's just go up to the highest
subdivision level by opening the Geometry
| | 00:47 | palette and sliding the
subdivision levels to the highest.
| | 00:53 | Now, let's go down to the UV Map palette.
| | 00:57 | This is where we tell ZBrush how
large we want the texture maps to be.
| | 01:01 | Click on the button that says 4096.
| | 01:04 | This will create a map that is just over 4000
pixels tall and wide, also known as a 4k map.
| | 01:11 | The more pixels you have in a texture,
the more detail you can get out of the maps.
| | 01:16 | The downside is that it
also uses up a lot more memory.
| | 01:20 | If you have a powerful computer,
feel free to use larger maps.
| | 01:24 | You can even slide this all the way up to 8192.
| | 01:29 | However, if your computer strains
under the weight of all those pixels, you
| | 01:32 | might want to go down to 4k or even 2k.
| | 01:37 | Now, let's go down to the Texture Map
palette and I'm going to click New From Polypaint.
| | 01:43 | After thinking about it for a few
seconds, you should see a little thumbnail of
| | 01:46 | the colormap created right here.
| | 01:48 | If you hold the mouse over it, you
get an even larger view of what the
| | 01:51 | texture map looks like.
| | 01:53 | Now, here's one unintuitive step.
| | 01:55 | In order to do anything else
with this map, you have to clone it.
| | 01:58 | So I am going to click Clone Texture,
and basically all this is doing is placing
| | 02:04 | it in the Texture palette
so that we can save it out.
| | 02:06 | So now, go up to the Texture menu.
| | 02:09 | There is one thing we
need to do before we save it.
| | 02:12 | We need to click Flip V. We do this
because ZBrush creates maps upside down
| | 02:19 | relative to the way that Maya reads them.
| | 02:21 | Now that you've flipped it, you can click
Export and you could save it wherever you want.
| | 02:26 | I am going to call it bodycolor.psd.
| | 02:35 | Now I do the same thing for
the eyeball and the tail spikes.
| | 02:38 | The teeth are going to be just solid white,
so we don't need to do anything for them.
| | 02:42 | Just as a refresher, you would go to the
other subtool that you want to export maps for.
| | 02:47 | So for example, we could click on
talespikes up here in the SubTool palette, and
| | 02:52 | you would go to the highest
subdivision level, set the UV map to 4096, make a
| | 02:58 | new texture from polypaint.
| | 03:00 | Clone it, Flip V and then
save out with a descriptive name.
| | 03:04 | Now, let's make a cavity map.
| | 03:06 | This map is going to be composited in
Photoshop with other maps in order to
| | 03:10 | bring out more detail.
| | 03:12 | So let's select the Body subtool and
now let's go down to the Texture palette.
| | 03:18 | First thing we want to do is turn
off the texture that's currently on.
| | 03:22 | So now we're seeing the polypaint
information rather than the texture map that's
| | 03:26 | placed on top of it.
| | 03:28 | You can't see any difference but
trust me, you'll want to turn that off.
| | 03:31 | Now, let's fill the Dewhopper
with a single color like white.
| | 03:34 | Go up to the Color
palette and click Fill Object.
| | 03:38 | Now, let's create a mask
that masks off all the cavities.
| | 03:43 | Go to your Masking palette,
and click Mask By Cavity.
| | 03:47 | Let's zoom in to get a better look.
| | 03:50 | Okay, so right now the mask
is filling in all the cavities.
| | 03:53 | Actually, I want the cavities to be black,
so I am going to invert the mask, and
| | 03:58 | then switch the color to black,
and then fill the object again.
| | 04:03 | Now we can clear the mask.
| | 04:06 | Now, we've got
polypainting that's black and white.
| | 04:09 | It's black inside the cracks,
and it's white everywhere else.
| | 04:12 | Let's go down to the Texture palette, and
we just want to make a new from polypaint.
| | 04:20 | Now let's clone this one.
| | 04:23 | Back up in the Texture menu, you can
flip it vertically and then export.
| | 04:28 | I will just call this one bodycavity.
| | 04:33 | Do the same thing for the tail spikes.
| | 04:36 | The eyes don't need one
because they have no sculpted detail.
| | 04:40 | Now, let's do a normal map.
| | 04:42 | Go ahead and turn off this texture.
| | 04:44 | The normal map is a texture that
describes the difference between the lowest
| | 04:48 | subdivision level and the highest.
| | 04:51 | When the map is applied in Maya, it
creates the illusion of intricate sculpted
| | 04:55 | detail on the surface of a low polygon model.
| | 04:59 | In order to make this map, you want
to be on your lowest subdivision level.
| | 05:03 | So let's go up to the Geometry palette and
bring the slider down to the lowest level.
| | 05:10 | It doesn't matter what
polypainting we have on the object.
| | 05:13 | Now, let's go down to the Normal map palette.
| | 05:16 | All of the settings should be good by default.
| | 05:19 | So let's go ahead and click Create Normal Map.
| | 05:22 | So like we did before, we're going to
clone it, then go to Texture, and Flip
| | 05:27 | V and then Export and we're going to
call this bodynormal, and click Save,
| | 05:36 | and then go ahead and repeat that for
the tail spikes and let's go ahead and
| | 05:40 | turn this texture off.
| | 05:42 | The last map to extract is the Displacement map.
| | 05:45 | We're actually not going to use
Displacement in Maya but we are going to use
| | 05:50 | this map as another layer of detail to
composite into the maps in Photoshop.
| | 05:55 | So make sure that the model is
at its lowest subdivision level.
| | 05:58 | It should be if we just made a normal map,
and then go to the Displacement Map palette.
| | 06:05 | All the settings should be good by
default, so I am just going to click
| | 06:08 | CreateDispMap, and just as before,
we're going to click Clone Disp which places
| | 06:15 | it over here actually in the Alpha menu.
| | 06:18 | So in order to export this, we have
to go up to the Alpha menu, and it's a
| | 06:22 | little bit different in the Alpha Menu,
we're going to open up the Transform
| | 06:25 | palette here and click Flip V. Now
export, and I am going to call it something
| | 06:30 | like bodydisp and then go ahead and
do the same thing for the tail spikes.
| | 06:36 | You'll want to create a normal
map for the pedestal base as well.
| | 06:40 | So go ahead and do these same
steps to make a normal map for that.
| | 06:43 | With all these maps created, we're
going to have an avalanche of detail that we
| | 06:47 | can mix and match in Photoshop to
create really nice color, normal, and
| | 06:51 | specular maps in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Organizing the maps into Photoshop layers| 00:00 | You can use a variety of Blending
Modes to layer different maps together in
| | 00:04 | order to achieve some very effective results.
| | 00:08 | You can also use Photoshop's Advanced
Selection and Masking tools to get the
| | 00:12 | most out of these textures.
| | 00:14 | We're also going to learn some basic
Photoshop techniques to keep everything
| | 00:18 | organized with layers so
that they're easy to work with.
| | 00:21 | If you need help with any aspects
of Photoshop or a refresher on the
| | 00:25 | interface, don't hesitate to check out Photoshop
CS5 Essential Training in the lynda.com library.
| | 00:32 | So, all of our maps are 4K
images or 4096 pixels wide and tall.
| | 00:40 | So let's make a new image
that has those dimensions.
| | 00:43 | I am just going to go into File and
make a new document and just type into the
| | 00:48 | Width 4096 and same thing with
the Height, 4096 and click OK.
| | 00:57 | Now there three types of
maps I'm going to be creating;
| | 01:02 | Color Maps, Normal Maps and Specular Maps.
| | 01:06 | So let's make folder
structures for each type of image.
| | 01:09 | So I am going to go down to my
Layers and click Create new group three
| | 01:14 | different times and let's just
rename these to specular, normal, and
| | 01:23 | double-click a third time for color.
| | 01:27 | Now let's open up all the
texture maps that we've created.
| | 01:29 | Go to File > Open, and I just want to
select the first one and go down to the
| | 01:36 | last one and Shift+click and it
selects all of them and let's go to Open.
| | 01:40 | We've got a lot of files now.
| | 01:46 | I want to make it easier to see all of
them, so I am going to go up to Window
| | 01:50 | > Arrange, and Tile.
| | 01:52 | So now we can see all of our maps.
| | 01:55 | Now we need to drag and drop all
of these maps into one document.
| | 01:59 | So I've got the Move tool selected
here and let's start with body_color.
| | 02:03 | So I am just going to come down here
and you can drag and drop straight from
| | 02:07 | here into here, but it
might be offset a little bit.
| | 02:11 | You can make sure that the maps stay in
exactly the same place if you hold down
| | 02:15 | Shift while you click and drag.
| | 02:16 | So I am just going to hold down
Shift and I am clicking and dragging and
| | 02:19 | dropping it up here.
| | 02:22 | If you hadn't held down Shift, the map
might be shifted off in some weird place,
| | 02:26 | so you can see over here in this
layer swatch that it's not exactly in the
| | 02:29 | center, so I am just going
to hit Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 02:33 | So we'd drag that map right into the
last folder that we had open, which is good;
| | 02:37 | it's the color folder and
it's a color map, so that's good.
| | 02:40 | And we want to keep it organized.
| | 02:42 | So I am just going to
change the name to bodycolor.
| | 02:47 | Okay, so we are done with this one;
| | 02:48 | we can just close that and let's do
the same thing for body cavity now.
| | 02:53 | Hold down on Shift and click and drag.
| | 02:58 | Okay, so it placed what was the
body cavity map into the color folder.
| | 03:03 | So I am just going to click and drag
this and bring it up into the specular
| | 03:07 | folder because we are going to be
using this map for specular maps.
| | 03:12 | And double-click on it and change it to
bodycavity, so we can keep track of that.
| | 03:19 | So we are done with this one,
just go ahead and close that.
| | 03:22 | Now let's do the body displacement.
| | 03:25 | Hold down Shift and click and drag.
| | 03:26 | Now we are going to get a little pop-up here.
| | 03:29 | This is because the displacement maps
are grayscale images, they don't have
| | 03:33 | any color information and we're dragging it
into a document that does have color information.
| | 03:38 | So it's basically just saying that
the image is going to be turned into
| | 03:42 | color, which is fine.
| | 03:45 | And then let's name this layer, I am
going to call it bodydisp and we can leave
| | 03:50 | it right here in the specular.
| | 03:53 | Okay, go ahead and close this one and
let's do the normal now, Shift, click
| | 03:59 | and drag and I want to move this one into the
normal group and let's rename it to bodynormal.
| | 04:09 | Okay and we can close it here.
| | 04:11 | Now we've got that eye_color.psd.
| | 04:13 | Let's go ahead and do the same with this
one, and I dragged it into the normal group.
| | 04:18 | So let's just move it down to color,
because it is one of the color maps and we
| | 04:22 | could rename it, eye_color.
| | 04:26 | Let's do tailspikes_cavity, same thing
as before, dragging it in and let's put
| | 04:32 | it up with the specular maps and just
double-click to rename, spikescavity.
| | 04:37 | Okay and close it here,
tailspikes_color same thing as before.
| | 04:47 | Move this down to the color group
and I just want to move this layer up
| | 04:51 | above the bodycolor.
| | 04:52 | That's because we are going to be
cutting out all this black area, so that we
| | 04:56 | can see through this layer
to the body color below it.
| | 04:59 | So go ahead and rename it to
spikescolor, close this one.
| | 05:07 | Now we've got tailspikes_displacement.
| | 05:10 | Let's drag this one over and the same
message we had before, go ahead and click Yes.
| | 05:19 | And we want this one to be up in the
specular group, rename it, spikesdisp and
| | 05:28 | just one more, tailspikes_normal,
hold down Shift, click and drag and let's
| | 05:35 | move it down into the normals, double-
click to rename, spikesnormal and we can
| | 05:44 | close this last one.
| | 05:45 | After all that work we've got all of
our maps in one Photoshop document.
| | 05:50 | One last thing before we continue on is
we want to delete all this open space so
| | 05:56 | that we can see through some of
these maps to the ones below it.
| | 05:59 | So let's go into the specular folder
right here and we've got spikescavity and
| | 06:04 | this image is basically
blocking everything that's below it.
| | 06:07 | So I am going to go over to my Magic
Wand tool, so you can click and hold down
| | 06:13 | on this icon here until I see Magic
Wand tool and I only want to erase the
| | 06:19 | pixels that are exactly this gray color.
| | 06:21 | So I am going to turn the Tolerance to
0 and I am going to turn off Anti-alias
| | 06:26 | because I don't want it to pick up
any pixels other than exactly that gray
| | 06:30 | color and I want to leave contiguous
on so that just in case there's any gray
| | 06:34 | pixels inside the map that I want to
keep that are that exact same shade of
| | 06:39 | gray, it won't pick them up.
| | 06:42 | Go ahead and just click in here and
then once it's selected that, hit Delete.
| | 06:47 | To deselect, hit Ctrl+D. Now you
just want to go ahead and do that to all
| | 06:51 | these different maps.
| | 06:53 | So on spikesdisp, do the same
thing, click and hit Delete.
| | 06:57 | Now we can see through these two maps to
the body displacement map that's below it.
| | 07:02 | That's exactly what we want.
| | 07:04 | Now we can hide the specular folder
and do the same thing with the normal.
| | 07:08 | So go to spikesnormal and actually, the
selection for the spikes and the cavity
| | 07:15 | and the displacement map is exactly the
same as the selection that we would need
| | 07:18 | for the normal map, so we can
just hit Delete here. Great!
| | 07:21 | Now we can see through this
layer to the one below it.
| | 07:24 | Let's go down and do the
same thing with eyecolor.
| | 07:28 | Now we need to make a new selection, hit
Ctrl+D to deselect and actually, I want
| | 07:33 | to hide these normal folders right up here.
| | 07:37 | So we are just seeing the color folder now.
| | 07:40 | One click in here, hit Delete, now we can
see through to the spikescolor below here.
| | 07:45 | Let's go down to the spikescolor, Ctrl+
D to deselect, click one more time, hit
| | 07:52 | Delete and now we can see through all
of these layers to the ones below, Ctrl+D
| | 07:58 | to deselect one last time.
| | 08:00 | Now with everything organized, it's
going to be a lot easier to mix and match
| | 08:04 | layers, blend them, mask them,
and generally work with them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Compositing the color maps in Photoshop| 00:00 | The real power of Photoshop in this
pipeline is that it's going to let us
| | 00:05 | generate lots of additional detail in our
maps without having to paint it by hand.
| | 00:10 | It's also great, because you can
experiment with different layers, Blending
| | 00:14 | Modes, and effects in a nondestructive way.
| | 00:18 | That means that if you don't like the
result, you can just delete a layer and
| | 00:21 | try again without losing any work.
| | 00:23 | First of all, let's try some
effects to beef up the color map.
| | 00:27 | Let's make a duplicate of the displacement
layers and bring them down to the color folder.
| | 00:31 | So I am going to go up to the specular
folder and just grab these displacement maps.
| | 00:36 | I am going to select one and then Ctrl+
Select the other and just drag them down
| | 00:41 | into the New Layer icon.
| | 00:43 | So now we've got copies of them.
| | 00:45 | I am just going to drag
them down to the color folder.
| | 00:49 | So let's make these two layers visible.
| | 00:51 | Then we'll go up to the Layer Menu
here and go down to Merge Layers.
| | 00:56 | Now I am going to change their Blending Mode.
| | 00:58 | So in the Layer palette, come up to
where it says Normal, and we are going to
| | 01:01 | just go ahead and change this to Overlay.
| | 01:04 | This Blending Mode will lighten or
darken everything below it based on how light
| | 01:09 | or dark the layer is.
| | 01:10 | In this case, it brings out a
lot more variety in the color map.
| | 01:13 | So I am just going to hide this
layer and turn it on and off, and you can
| | 01:18 | just see the difference.
| | 01:19 | Having this displacement map used as
an overlay over the color really brings
| | 01:25 | out some more detail.
| | 01:26 | Now let's do the same
thing with the normal maps.
| | 01:28 | I am going to select one, Ctrl+Select
the second one, and let's drag them down
| | 01:34 | to make copies of them, and let's
bring them down into the color folder, and
| | 01:40 | let's make sure they are visible and
then I am going to hit Ctrl+E and that
| | 01:44 | should merge them together.
| | 01:45 | Now, I am going to use this normal map
information as a way of modifying the color map.
| | 01:51 | So let's get rid of this bluish tone to this
map right now and just convert it to grayscale.
| | 01:56 | So go up to Image > Adjustments,
then go down to Desaturate.
| | 02:02 | This removes all the color information
and leaves us with just shades of gray.
| | 02:07 | Now let's change this
Blending Mode to Overlay as well.
| | 02:11 | And I am just going to turn this layer
on and off so you can see the difference.
| | 02:15 | So it just brings out even more detail.
| | 02:17 | The effect is slight, so we can bump it up.
| | 02:19 | With that same layer selected, go to
Image > Adjustments, and go to Curves.
| | 02:26 | So this shows us where all of
the pixels are in that image.
| | 02:29 | Most of them are right in this light gray zone.
| | 02:34 | Now, watch what happens if
we click and drag on this.
| | 02:41 | This is increasing the amount of detail
that we can get out of that normal map.
| | 02:44 | So I want to drag both of these little
pointers right here just to the edges of
| | 02:54 | this spike right here.
| | 02:56 | Now, if I turn Preview on and off,
you can see that we're getting much more
| | 02:59 | detail out of this map now. That's good!
| | 03:01 | Let's hit Okay.
| | 03:02 | I just want take a look at
this same layer in Curves again.
| | 03:06 | So go to Image > Adjustments and Curves.
| | 03:09 | So you see that Spike is
now much more spread out.
| | 03:13 | That means we get more range of values,
therefore a much more pronounced Overlay effect.
| | 03:18 | Go ahead and click Cancel.
| | 03:19 | Just one more thing for that color layer.
| | 03:22 | It's looking just a little bit drab.
| | 03:24 | I want to put a Hue and Saturation
Adjustment Layer over everything.
| | 03:29 | So in the Layer palette, go ahead and
click on this little icon down here, and I
| | 03:34 | am going to pick Hue/Saturation.
| | 03:37 | This lets us bump up the
Saturation of these colors a little bit.
| | 03:40 | So the farther I drag this, the more
intense these colors are going to get.
| | 03:44 | That's too much, so I just
want a relatively minor effect.
| | 03:47 | So let's bring it up to about 28, 26.
| | 03:52 | If your Layer palette went away, just go
ahead and click on the Layers tab again.
| | 03:57 | So now if we scroll down we can see in
the color group, we've got all of these
| | 04:02 | displacement copy and normal map copy
maps that we brought in from different
| | 04:06 | groups, and we're layering them on top
of the color to bring out more detail.
| | 04:10 | We've also got this adjustment layer that's
bringing out more saturation in the colors.
| | 04:15 | So the power of Photoshop is in its
ability to combine layers in different ways
| | 04:20 | and adjust the information that's within
a map, so that you don't have to go and
| | 04:24 | do so much of this by hand.
| | 04:27 | In the next few movies we are going to
go through the specular and the normal
| | 04:30 | maps as well, to bring
out more detail with those.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Compositing the specular maps in Photoshop| 00:00 | Continuing in Photoshop, we will be
layering and compositing our textures to
| | 00:04 | create specular maps.
| | 00:06 | We'll be getting even more fancy with
the Photoshop tools in this movie in order
| | 00:10 | to create the best specular maps that we can.
| | 00:13 | What I want is a specular map
that goes from black to white.
| | 00:16 | The dullest parts of the creature are
going to be dark colors in the specular map.
| | 00:21 | The medium shiny parts of the creature
are going to be gray in the specular map,
| | 00:25 | and the shiniest parts are going to be white.
| | 00:27 | So let's go up in our specular group
here and make all of these layers visible
| | 00:33 | in the specular group.
| | 00:35 | Now, to simplify things, I am going to
combine the two displacement maps into
| | 00:38 | one and the two cavity maps into one.
| | 00:41 | So hit Ctrl+E and it just merges this down.
| | 00:44 | Same thing with the spikes_cavity,
selects it and hit Ctrl+E.Now, one thing that
| | 00:49 | I know I want in my specular map is
that the cracks and crevices between scales
| | 00:54 | be completely matte, or not shiny.
| | 00:57 | So let's put the cavity map
on top of the displacement map.
| | 01:02 | Now change the cavity layer
Blending Mode to Multiply.
| | 01:07 | What this does is make white
transparent and black opaque and shades of
| | 01:11 | gray semitransparent.
| | 01:13 | The effect that we achieve with this
is a roughly mid-gray tone everywhere
| | 01:18 | except in the cavities, where
there won't be any specular.
| | 01:20 | So if I just turn this layer on and off,
you can see that we're layering the
| | 01:24 | cavity on top of the body displacement.
| | 01:28 | Now, let's add some more variation.
| | 01:30 | I painted the scales, horns, and bony
plates with a reddish color, and I want
| | 01:35 | them to be a bit more shiny
than the tan colored skin.
| | 01:39 | We can use Photoshop's Color Selection
tools to easily make that kind of distinction.
| | 01:43 | So let's go down to the color map.
| | 01:46 | I actually want to hide the specular
and normal map folders for right now.
| | 01:50 | So let's grab the spikes_color layer
and Ctrl+Click the body_color layer and
| | 01:56 | let's drag them into a duplicate layer.
| | 01:59 | So we've got two duplicates now.
| | 02:01 | Let's move them back up into the
specular folder, and I am just going to hit
| | 02:06 | Ctrl+E to merge them into one layer.
| | 02:06 | Now, let's make a selection
of just the reddish areas.
| | 02:10 | So go up to Select and click Color Range.
| | 02:15 | With this tool we can select the areas
that are redder and deselect the tan areas.
| | 02:20 | So go ahead and click in your image.
| | 02:22 | I am just going to move this off to the
side, go ahead and click in a red area.
| | 02:25 | And you can add to the
selection with the Add Eyedropper.
| | 02:30 | Actually I am going to drag the
Fuzziness down pretty low for now, just so that
| | 02:34 | we're not seeing too much.
| | 02:36 | Now just click in several of the red
areas, also some of the yellowish areas too.
| | 02:41 | I just want to pick up all of these red colors.
| | 02:47 | And now we can also remove some tan.
| | 02:50 | So go ahead and click the Subtract
from Sample Eyedropper and just click in
| | 02:55 | any of the tan areas.
| | 03:01 | Now let's play with the Fuzziness Slider.
| | 03:04 | This is going to create a gradient
between the colors we selected and the
| | 03:08 | ones that we didn't.
| | 03:09 | So I just want to kind of drag this
until we select most of the reddish areas,
| | 03:13 | and mostly not any of the tan areas.
| | 03:15 | It's not an exact science, so
somewhere kind of in the middle should be good,
| | 03:18 | and when you're done click OK. Okay.
| | 03:22 | Now, let's make our specular folder
visible and what I want to do is fill the
| | 03:26 | selected area with white and
the unselected area with black.
| | 03:30 | So let's go and select black and white
as our colors, and let's reverse this so
| | 03:35 | we are filling with white first.
| | 03:36 | And let's get our Paint Bucket tool
and let's make the Tolerance the maximum.
| | 03:42 | We can just actually click-and-drag
and slide this all the way up to 255, and
| | 03:45 | just go ahead and click once.
| | 03:47 | Now we need to invert the selection
and fill the rest of it with black.
| | 03:51 | So go to Select and click Inverse.
| | 03:55 | Now, let's flip our color so that the black
is the primary color, and click one more time.
| | 04:00 | Okay.
| | 04:00 | Go ahead and hit Ctrl+D
to remove this selection.
| | 04:03 | Now we have a black and white image
where the reddish scales and bony parts are
| | 04:08 | white and everything else is black.
| | 04:09 | Let's use the Multiply Blending Mode on this.
| | 04:13 | So let's go up to our Mode and click
Multiply, and I am just going to turn this
| | 04:17 | layer on and off so we can see the effect.
| | 04:20 | So now all the areas that I want to be
more matte, more dull, are black, and
| | 04:24 | it's darkening all of the maps below it.
| | 04:27 | We can actually bring down the Opacity,
because I don't want those dark areas to
| | 04:31 | be completely black and I don't want
the red areas to be completely shiny.
| | 04:35 | So I am just going to bring
the Opacity down to about 60%.
| | 04:38 | Now, there is one final part of the
specular map to consider, the inner mouth,
| | 04:43 | where it should look shiny and wet.
| | 04:44 | We are going to do something similar to before.
| | 04:46 | So let's go down and get our body_color
map and make a duplicate of that, and go
| | 04:52 | ahead and drag that up to our specular folder.
| | 04:54 | Just make sure that's up on top.
| | 04:58 | Now, we need to use the Select > Color
Range Tool again to pick the pink inner mouth.
| | 05:03 | So let's go to Select > Color
Range, and let's click on the pink.
| | 05:09 | Now we can set the Fuzziness so that
it's not selecting anything other than
| | 05:12 | what's actually pink.
| | 05:14 | All right, looks good!
| | 05:18 | Now, just as before, I
want to fill this with white.
| | 05:20 | So make sure that white is your active
color and we are using the Paint Bucket
| | 05:24 | tool, so we just go ahead and fill that
with white, and then Select > Inverse,
| | 05:30 | and let's make black our active color
and fill everything else with black.
| | 05:34 | Now hit Ctrl+D to remove the selection.
| | 05:37 | Now I am going to set this layer to a
different Blending Mode called Screen.
| | 05:42 | It's kind of the opposite of Multiply.
| | 05:44 | Now, everything that's white in the
layer is opaque and everything that's
| | 05:47 | black is transparent.
| | 05:49 | And just one last thing I want to do here.
| | 05:51 | Not all of the interior of the mouth
got selected when we made that selection,
| | 05:56 | so I am going to go in and just
paint the rest of that white by hand.
| | 05:59 | So let's Zoom in on this, and
actually all of this interior part of the
| | 06:03 | mouth needs to be white.
| | 06:05 | So let's get our Paint Brush out and
make white our active color, and I am just
| | 06:10 | going to increase the size of the brush
a little bit with the right bracket key,
| | 06:15 | and just paint that in.
| | 06:19 | Doesn't matter if I spill over the
edge a little bit, just as long as I don't
| | 06:22 | brush out onto some other
parts of the texture. Okay.
| | 06:28 | And I'll just Zoom out, holding down Alt
and clicking with the Magnifying Glass.
| | 06:34 | Okay, looking good!
| | 06:35 | Now, we want to rename any of the new
layers so that they make sense to you.
| | 06:39 | So for example, this one that we just
made can be called mouthinner and this one
| | 06:46 | can be called bonyplates.
| | 06:50 | This is just one way of
compositing maps in Photoshop.
| | 06:53 | Feel free to experiment with different
Blending Modes, different ways of making
| | 06:57 | selections, and
different combinations of layers.
| | 07:00 | If you're working on your own creature,
you'll probably be trying these maps out
| | 07:04 | in Maya and seeing things
that you might want to fix.
| | 07:07 | Then you can either make adjustments
in Photoshop or even repaint things in
| | 07:10 | ZBrush and then re-export the maps.
| | 07:13 | Combining maps in Photoshop is a great
way to work, because that way you don't
| | 07:17 | have to paint all of these maps by hand.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing the maps into Maya| 00:00 | Getting the maps out of Photoshop and
into Maya is a fairly straightforward
| | 00:04 | procedure, but there's a
few things to watch out for.
| | 00:07 | That's nothing too complicated.
| | 00:09 | First thing to do is to save the
maps out from the Photoshop document.
| | 00:14 | Let's start with the Specular maps.
| | 00:15 | You want to make sure that the specular
folder, and all its contents are visible.
| | 00:20 | So it looks like they already are. That's good.
| | 00:22 | Let's go up to File and click Save As,
and we'll want to put these textures
| | 00:27 | inside of a textures folder.
| | 00:29 | So go ahead and open textures,
and save as a JPEG format.
| | 00:34 | Let's just call this something that can
we recognize, bodyspecular, and then we
| | 00:41 | have some JPEG save options.
| | 00:43 | The default is just fine;
| | 00:44 | we want to save highest quality, so
that there is no loss in quality when
| | 00:48 | we render the maps. All right!
| | 00:50 | Good!
| | 00:51 | Let's do the same thing for the normal maps.
| | 00:52 | Go ahead and hide the Specular layer and
let's unhide the Normal Map folder, and
| | 00:59 | we just want to make sure all the layers
are visible inside this folder. That's good!
| | 01:02 | Go up to File > Save As.
| | 01:05 | Again, inside the textures folder and let's
save it as a JPEG and let's name it bodynormal.
| | 01:17 | Okay, with that one done,
let's now do the color maps.
| | 01:20 | We've got the color folder visible but we
still need to unhide some of these layers.
| | 01:25 | All right!
| | 01:26 | That's good, let's save this now;
| | 01:27 | File > Save As, in the textures folder, Format:
| | 01:33 | JPEG and we'll call it bodycolor, and same
settings as before, it's good. All right!
| | 01:43 | When that's done, let's get into Maya.
| | 01:45 | Let's open up our Exercise File.
| | 01:50 | This is in Exercise Files > Ch_09 > 09_06,
and we are just going to open applymaps.ma.
| | 01:56 | So we've got our scene open, and
we've got our hypershade open right here.
| | 02:04 | I am just going to scroll this over, so
that we can see more of the hypershade.
| | 02:09 | We've got our Textures Tab open right now.
| | 02:10 | So this is where we are
going to load in all these files.
| | 02:13 | We need to create a new
file node for every texture.
| | 02:16 | So over here on the left side, we've
got all kinds of different nodes we could
| | 02:20 | create, and we just want to
scroll down, and pick File.
| | 02:23 | So now we can see the file
node here in our Attribute Editor.
| | 02:26 | So I am going to make this
easier to see by moving that down.
| | 02:31 | So there is a place where we
can load in individual files.
| | 02:34 | So I just want to click on this
folder, and let's load in bodycolor.jpg.
| | 02:38 | We can also name the file
node to help us keep track of it.
| | 02:44 | So we'll just name this one bodycolor.
| | 02:47 | One last thing, I want to change
the Filter Type from Quadratic to Off.
| | 02:52 | There's lots of filter types, but basically,
they all blur the texture just a little bit.
| | 02:59 | By turning it off, I can keep
my textures sharp and crisp.
| | 03:02 | Another reason why I don't want it to
blur is that the blurring effect can
| | 03:06 | sometimes cause the black background
around the texture to bleed onto the
| | 03:10 | texture and cause lines
to appear on the UV seams.
| | 03:14 | Okay, so we are good with this texture.
| | 03:16 | Let's go, and make another file node,
and let's go over to the Attribute Editor,
| | 03:20 | and we'll bring in
bodynormal now and Open. Same thing;
| | 03:26 | changing the Filter Type to Off and
let's name this bodynormal, and let's
| | 03:33 | do this one more time.
| | 03:36 | Let's load up a file, let's do
bodyspecular.jpg, and let's open that up, change
| | 03:42 | the Filter Type to Off.
| | 03:43 | Now, there's one more step to do,
because this file is a specular map and is not
| | 03:48 | going to be used directly for its color.
| | 03:50 | It's an alpha map which means that
we are using its grayscale values as
| | 03:55 | information to control specularity.
| | 03:58 | So once you've turned off the Filter,
open up the Color Balance attributes.
| | 04:02 | So we are going to have to scroll down,
Color Balance, and scroll down a little bit more.
| | 04:08 | We are going to turn on Alpha Is Luminance.
| | 04:11 | This tells the file node to interpret
the light and dark values of the texture
| | 04:15 | as information rather than as shades of gray.
| | 04:18 | So there's just one more file node to make.
| | 04:22 | Let's scroll up and load in that one
and this one is the groundnormal.jpg,
| | 04:29 | and Open, and change this one from Quadratic
to Off and let's name this one groundnormal.
| | 04:35 | All right!
| | 04:39 | Let's look in our textures.
| | 04:41 | Actually, this icon is too big.
| | 04:43 | Let's shrink this down by clicking this button.
| | 04:45 | It looks like there's one
of them I forgot to name.
| | 04:48 | So we'll just name this
one bodyspecular. All right!
| | 04:53 | So all of our maps are loaded in.
| | 04:56 | Getting maps from Photoshop to Maya
is a fairly mundane procedure, but
| | 05:00 | important nonetheless.
| | 05:01 | Understanding the filter settings will
help you get the best results whenever
| | 05:05 | bringing maps into Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Connecting the maps to the shaders| 00:00 | Now, let's get the texture file
nodes plugged into the shaders.
| | 00:04 | Again, there are some fairly
straightforward steps to go through here, but they
| | 00:08 | need to be followed carefully in
order for the textures to work properly.
| | 00:12 | Let's do the eye shader first.
| | 00:14 | We've got our eye shader in the
Materials here and I am just going to select
| | 00:17 | this, and make sure you can see the
Attribute Editor here on the right side.
| | 00:21 | Now, let's go into the Textures Tab.
| | 00:24 | The color texture for the
eyeball is in the body color texture.
| | 00:27 | So I am just going to middle-mouse click-and-
drag this over to the color node. All right!
| | 00:31 | Let's make sure we can see this in the Viewport.
| | 00:34 | I am just going to click in the Viewport,
and hit Spacebar to maximize this, and
| | 00:38 | let's just zoom out here and now let's
see if we can see this texture in the
| | 00:43 | Viewport, and make sure that your
Renderer is set to Default Quality Rendering
| | 00:48 | and hit 6 on the keyboard.
| | 00:50 | That should load in your textures, so you
can see them in the Viewport. All right!
| | 00:53 | It looks good.
| | 00:54 | Now, let's do the skin shader.
| | 00:56 | I want to hit Spacebar, so we can see
the hypershade again, and let's go into
| | 00:59 | our Materials Tab and select the skin shader.
| | 01:03 | We should see its attributes over here.
| | 01:05 | I am just going to drag this thing down,
so we can see more of the Attribute
| | 01:07 | Editor, and let's open up the
Subsurface Scattering Layer.
| | 01:11 | We are just going to drag from our
textures the bodycolor, and I am just going
| | 01:16 | to drag that into the Diffuse Color.
| | 01:18 | And do that again, middle mouse drag
over to Epidermal Scatter Color and let's
| | 01:23 | see, drag down one more time;
| | 01:25 | middle mouse drag from bodycolor
over to Subdermal Scatter Color.
| | 01:30 | Now, the skin shader doesn't have a
way of seeing textures in the Viewport.
| | 01:34 | So you'll have to do a render to
make sure that it went in okay.
| | 01:36 | I am just going to middle mouse click
here in the Perspective View, and hit
| | 01:41 | Spacebar, and let's just do a
quick render of this. All right!
| | 01:44 | It looks like our texture map went in okay.
| | 01:50 | It's too shiny, but we're
going to deal with that later.
| | 01:52 | Go ahead and save an image,
and you can close this.
| | 01:55 | Now, let's get the normal maps applied.
| | 01:57 | We're just going to hit Spacebar here in the
Viewport so we can bring back our hypershade.
| | 02:02 | Now, while we are still in the skin
shader, let's scroll down to the bump shader.
| | 02:07 | Go ahead and open that up.
| | 02:08 | Now we need to find the bodynormal
texture, and middle mouse click and drag,
| | 02:12 | bring that over into the Bump Channel.
| | 02:15 | This creates a bump 2D node to
connect the file node with the shader.
| | 02:20 | It gets kind of complicated,
but it's pretty straightforward.
| | 02:22 | We just need to change the Bump attributes,
and change it from Us As: Bump to Use As:
| | 02:28 | Tangent Space Normals.
| | 02:31 | Okay, with the normal map applied, let's
do another test render to see if it worked.
| | 02:36 | Go ahead and save an image.
| | 02:38 | I am just going to scroll into this so
we can see it more close-up, and let's
| | 02:43 | swap between the first and
the second render. All right!
| | 02:46 | It looks like that normal map is picking up
a lot of that fine detail and that's perfect.
| | 02:53 | Finally, let's apply the
groundnormal to the ground shader.
| | 02:57 | Go into Materials and pick that ground
shader and then back into the Textures
| | 03:01 | Tab, and let's see, scroll down a
little bit, make sure, we've got the
| | 03:06 | groundnormal here, and let's
scroll down and find the Bump section.
| | 03:11 | Okay, here it is, Bump. Now, there is two;
| | 03:14 | Overall Bump and Standard Bump.
| | 03:16 | It's actually exactly the same thing.
| | 03:18 | I don't even know why there's two
different ones, but we just want to middle
| | 03:21 | mouse click and drag into either one,
and again, change Use As from Bump to
| | 03:27 | Tangent Space Normals.
| | 03:29 | Let's do one last render from the
Perspective View, make sure it works out correctly.
| | 03:33 | I am just going to zoom out a little
bit so we can see the entire ground plain
| | 03:36 | along with the dewhopper. All right!
| | 03:39 | Looking great!
| | 03:40 | There's just one last thing to do.
| | 03:42 | The ring around the ground has
the same shader as the cracked mud.
| | 03:46 | So the ring is looking a little crinkled
because it's picking up the same normal map.
| | 03:50 | Let's just fix that by selecting the
outer ring here and now let's go into
| | 03:56 | the UV Texture Editor.
| | 03:58 | So right now, we're seeing the UVs for the
ground plain and the ring around the ground plain.
| | 04:04 | I am just going to zoom out a little
bit here, and they're both overlapped in
| | 04:08 | the exact same space.
| | 04:09 | So we want to make it so
they are not overlapped.
| | 04:11 | What I am going to do is hold down the
right mouse button and go to UV, and I'll
| | 04:16 | just select some of the UVs from the ring.
| | 04:19 | Now, I'll hold down Ctrl, and hold
down the right mouse button, and I'll mark
| | 04:23 | over To Shell, so I can
select the entire UVs for the ring.
| | 04:28 | Now, I'll just hit R to go into Scale mode.
| | 04:31 | Let's just scale these down, and I'll
go to Move Mode with W and I will just
| | 04:35 | move these off to one corner so that
they're not affected by that normal
| | 04:38 | map, because remember, the normal map was
just a nice circle right here in the middle.
| | 04:42 | All right!
| | 04:42 | We can deselect that and
deselect that. All right!
| | 04:46 | Great!
| | 04:46 | They are not overlapping.
| | 04:48 | So we can close out of the UV Texture Editor.
| | 04:50 | I'll just do one last
render to make sure that worked.
| | 04:54 | So we've got the color maps
and the normal maps applied.
| | 04:57 | The specular maps are going to be a
little bit more involved, so we are saving
| | 05:00 | that for the next movie.
| | 05:01 | But basically, that's how you get your
texture maps applied to your models in Maya.
| | 05:05 | There are some steps to memorize and
you'll probably want to render after
| | 05:09 | applying every map just to make
sure that it came through correctly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up remap value nodes| 00:00 | Getting good specular maps with the
skin shader requires some extra work.
| | 00:04 | The shader isn't really made for creating a
variety of specular types on a single shader.
| | 00:10 | For this we're going to have to go back
to the values that we wrote down back in
| | 00:14 | Chapter 8 when we first set up the skin shader.
| | 00:17 | Then we'll use those values to
manipulate the spec map that we made in Photoshop.
| | 00:21 | So let's do a render of the
Dewhopper as he is right now.
| | 00:24 | I am going to click in the
Perspective viewport and I am just going to hit
| | 00:28 | Spacebar so we can see it nice and big
and let's just zoom in so that we can get
| | 00:32 | it really tight on this, so we can see
what the renders are doing. All right!
| | 00:37 | Go ahead and hit Render.
| | 00:40 | Okay, so we've got our finished render now.
| | 00:42 | The problem that we are running into is that
the entire model has the exact same shininess.
| | 00:48 | The inside of the mouth, the boney
plates, the leathery skin, they're all just
| | 00:52 | kind of this medium amount of shiny.
| | 00:54 | And what we really need to do is to
control it with the map so that the leathery
| | 00:58 | skin is very dull, may be
slightly shiny if at all.
| | 01:02 | The boney plates are kind of a medium
shiny and we need to get the inside of the
| | 01:06 | mouth to be very shiny.
| | 01:07 | We are going to be able to make this
happen with something called a remapValue node.
| | 01:13 | The remapValue node is going to take
a specularity map and break it up into
| | 01:17 | three different channels that
we can control independently.
| | 01:21 | So let's save this render so that we
can compare it to the results later on.
| | 01:24 | I am going to close the Render
View and let's go to our Hypershade.
| | 01:28 | So, I'll just hit Spacebar and
we'll bring that back. All right!
| | 01:32 | Let's look at everything that's
going into the skin shader right now.
| | 01:35 | So in our Materials, let's select the
skin shader and now click this button up
| | 01:39 | here and it's going to show us
everything that's going into the skin shader.
| | 01:43 | So here is the normal map that we
plugged in, the color, the ambient
| | 01:46 | occlusion is up here.
| | 01:47 | Now let's get our specular map into the picture.
| | 01:50 | Open up the Textures tab and
we've got the spec map right here.
| | 01:54 | I am just going to middle
mouse drag it into the work area.
| | 01:57 | It's not connected to the shader yet.
| | 01:59 | Now we are going to
create some remapValue nodes.
| | 02:02 | Those can be found over here on
the Create side of the Hypershade.
| | 02:05 | You might have to scroll until you find them.
| | 02:08 | Here it is right here, the Remap Value
node and just click that three times.
| | 02:13 | And actually, I want to scoot this
over so we have more room to work with.
| | 02:16 | I am just going to slide this over and
let me select the specular map and I am
| | 02:21 | just going to move it over here to this side.
| | 02:23 | Now remember, there were three different
specularity channels that we need to control.
| | 02:27 | One of them was Overall Weight, the
second one was Primary Weight, and the third
| | 02:32 | one was Primary Shininess.
| | 02:35 | So let's name all of these remapValue
nodes to correspond to the channel that we
| | 02:39 | are going to control.
| | 02:40 | So the first one, let's
rename this one to overall.
| | 02:44 | The second one, let's name it
primaryWeight and the third one shininess.
| | 02:55 | Now let's take a look at
the attributes of this node.
| | 02:58 | I am going to scoot this thing down so
I can see more of the Attribute Editor.
| | 03:02 | So the remapValue node takes a grayscale
image like our specular map and it maps
| | 03:08 | it along this value.
| | 03:10 | So what you get is the black pixels down here
at the bottom, get converted into a value of 0.
| | 03:16 | Our white pixels up here at the top get
converted to a value of 1 and there is a
| | 03:21 | linear gradation between the two.
| | 03:23 | And what we're going to do is change
how the map is interpreted by putting in
| | 03:27 | different values so that
we get a different output.
| | 03:30 | So you could slide this up or down.
| | 03:33 | You can even insert new values in between,
so you can change the amount of gradation.
| | 03:38 | I am just going to undo that;
| | 03:41 | you can actually delete these
by clicking the X down here.
| | 03:44 | Okay, so now let's connect the
specular texture map that we created into all
| | 03:49 | these remapValue nodes.
| | 03:51 | Click with the middle-mouse button and
drag from the texture map to one of the
| | 03:55 | remapValue nodes and now click Default.
| | 03:58 | What we need to do is to pick the
outAlpha from the texture map and plug it in
| | 04:04 | to the input value and just close it.
| | 04:07 | Do the same thing for the other two.
| | 04:08 | Middle mouse drag over > Default > outAlpha >
inputValue and close, and just one more time;
| | 04:19 | Default > outAlpha > inputValue.
| | 04:24 | Now we need to connect the
remapValue nodes into the skin shader.
| | 04:28 | So select the skin shader and we're
here in the Specularity section of it.
| | 04:36 | So we've got the Overall Weight here.
| | 04:38 | So we want to take the overall (remapValue) node,
middle-mouse drag it over to Overall Weight.
| | 04:43 | Here we've got the Primary Weight,
remapValue node, going to middle mouse, drag
| | 04:47 | this over to Primary Weight here and
then Primary Shininess, same thing.
| | 04:53 | As it is now, we haven't changed any
of the graphs in the remapValue nodes.
| | 04:58 | So the result we would see in a render
is no different than if we simply plugged
| | 05:03 | this specular map directly into the skin shader.
| | 05:06 | Let's just do a quick render to
see what that would look like.
| | 05:13 | Okay, let's save this image and compare the two.
| | 05:18 | So it's looking a lot better, but we
still need to be able to control the
| | 05:22 | values more specifically.
| | 05:24 | For example, the inside of the
mouth isn't nearly shiny enough.
| | 05:27 | By creating remapValue nodes, we can
have much finer control over how our map is
| | 05:32 | going to interpret it in the renders.
| | 05:34 | It also will make it easier to
adjust settings because you can tweak some
| | 05:38 | sliders rather than having to go
back to Photoshop and edit maps there.
| | 05:42 | In the next movie, we're actually going
to be making those modifications to the
| | 05:46 | remapValue node in order to bring
out more specularity in certain areas.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing remap value nodes| 00:00 | We're going to use the remapValue
node to modify and amplify the spec map.
| | 00:05 | By doing so, we can create a variety
of shininess across the Dewhopper's body
| | 00:10 | and thereby increase its
realism and artistic appeal.
| | 00:14 | So before we touch anything, I want to
do a render of the Dewhopper just to get
| | 00:18 | a sense of where we're at.
| | 00:19 | Make sure you've got the
Perspective view selected and click Render.
| | 00:24 | Okay, so as we saw before, with the
specular map as it is, we're not quite
| | 00:29 | getting the level of shininess that we
need out of the mouth and not quite out
| | 00:33 | of the boney plates as well.
| | 00:34 | So let's save this render so we
can compare it with the after image.
| | 00:39 | Go ahead and close your Render view.
| | 00:41 | Okay, let's find our skin
shader here in the Hypershade.
| | 00:44 | Go ahead and click on it and let's graph it.
| | 00:47 | I am just going to zoom in closer
here so we can see what's going on.
| | 00:53 | Remember, we've got the Specularity
map right here and it's being piped into
| | 00:56 | three different remapValue nodes,
which are then being piped into the shader.
| | 01:00 | Let's go ahead and click on
the Overall Weight remap node.
| | 01:05 | So over here in the Attribute Editor,
I am actually going to slide this thing
| | 01:08 | down, to see this better.
| | 01:10 | You remember that this node is taking
the black to white values of our map and
| | 01:14 | converting them to numbers.
| | 01:16 | So down here where the image is
black, it's outputting a value of 0.
| | 01:20 | Where the image is white
it's outputting a value of 1.
| | 01:23 | Now if we click and drag this, you'll
notice we can't go any higher than 1.
| | 01:28 | However, some of the values that
we need output are higher than 1;
| | 01:32 | in one case, over 100.
| | 01:34 | We're going to deal with that by
changing the Input and Output Ranges.
| | 01:39 | So let's scroll down a little bit.
| | 01:41 | Open up the Input and Output Ranges
and scroll down a little bit more.
| | 01:45 | Now for the Overall Weight, you
might remember that the highest value we
| | 01:49 | needed to output was 2.
| | 01:52 | So we can change the Output Max to 2.
| | 01:54 | This is going to multiply any
of the values in the graph by 2.
| | 01:58 | So now any pixels that are white are
going to have a value of 1 and then
| | 02:02 | multiplied by the Output Max of 2.
| | 02:05 | So it's actually any white pixels
are now going to have a value of 2.
| | 02:09 | So the inner mouth and the specular
map is white that is now going to have a
| | 02:14 | value of 2, which is exactly what we want.
| | 02:16 | For the Overall Weight, the boney
plates should have a value of 1 in the skin
| | 02:21 | shader and those boney plates
are a mid gray in the specular map.
| | 02:26 | So I want to set them to about 0.500.
| | 02:29 | Now remember, they are going to get
multiplied by 2 down here, so the actual
| | 02:33 | Output value is going to
be 1, which is what we want.
| | 02:36 | Now let's set the graph for the dull skin.
| | 02:39 | The value that we wrote
down in Chapter 8 was 0.300.
| | 02:43 | So we need to divide that by 2 and set
the graph to 1.500 in the dark gray values.
| | 02:48 | So I am going to click to make another
one here and I want to set this to 1.500.
| | 02:55 | Okay, let's go through to the other nodes now.
| | 02:57 | Let's do the Primary Weight.
| | 02:59 | The highest value is going be 4.500,
so let me put that into the Output Max.
| | 03:05 | Now I've already done the math, so I
am just going to put in the values.
| | 03:09 | For the boney plates, I want to type in
0.100 and for the dull skin, I am going
| | 03:17 | to click down here in the dark gray
area and type in a value of 0.060.
| | 03:25 | And now finally, the shininess;
| | 03:27 | the shiniest parts of the
Dewhopper actually had a value of 111.
| | 03:30 | So I am going to set that into the Output Max.
| | 03:36 | The mid gray parts of the map needed to
have a value of about 0.100 and the dark
| | 03:43 | gray parts needed to have a value of 0.050.
| | 03:49 | Okay, make sure we've got our
Perspective view selected and let's do a render
| | 03:52 | to see what we get.
| | 03:56 | Okay, let me save this image and let's
compare it to the other one. All right!
| | 04:01 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 04:02 | So you can see we've got a medium
amount of shininess on the boney plates, a
| | 04:07 | large amount of shininess on inside of the
mouth and it's pretty dull everywhere else.
| | 04:11 | This is where the power of
remapValue nodes comes in.
| | 04:15 | Instead of having to go back to
Photoshop and rework the layers and re-export
| | 04:19 | maps and then re-import them into Maya,
we can just fiddle with some numbers in
| | 04:23 | the remapValue node.
| | 04:24 | That makes it so much easier to
change anything that we need to do.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
10. Posing the ModelDesigning the pose| 00:00 | At this point the Dewhopper is
ready to be set up for animation.
| | 00:03 | Although, the rigging and animation of
the character is beyond the scope of this
| | 00:07 | course, there is one thing you can do
as a modeler to show off your creation.
| | 00:11 | By posing the creature, you can
present it in a way that depicts it in its
| | 00:15 | natural habitat or expresses its personality.
| | 00:18 | Unlike humans and familiar animals,
people have never seen a Dewhopper
| | 00:22 | before, so they wouldn't know if its
neutral modeling and rigging pose was
| | 00:26 | its natural standing pose.
| | 00:28 | In order to make the model look more
appealing and to remove confusion about how
| | 00:32 | it's supposed to stand, we
are going to be posing it.
| | 00:35 | First of all think about what your
creature could be doing, what's its
| | 00:38 | behavior, is it an aggressive
predator or is it skittish prey, what kind of
| | 00:43 | situations could it be in?
| | 00:45 | This is a good opportunity to look at photos
of similar animals and to see what they do.
| | 00:50 | You should also probably
sketch out a few ideas on paper.
| | 00:53 | I'm going to put the Dewhopper in a
defensive pose, as if arrival creature is
| | 00:57 | trying to take away its territory.
| | 00:59 | A pose is a moment in time
that exemplifies an action.
| | 01:03 | It should imply what happened
before and what will happen after.
| | 01:07 | We can experiment with the pose quickly if
we go back to the original ZSphere structure.
| | 01:12 | The first step in posing is to
establish a shift in weight of the whole body.
| | 01:17 | Now you can't directly rotate the
whole body by rotating the root ZSphere.
| | 01:21 | So if I go up to the Rotate tools and I try to
rotate the ZSphere, it's just not going to work.
| | 01:26 | So I am going to undo that.
| | 01:28 | What you can do is rotate the entire
creature in the Deformation palette.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to open this up -- and
actually let's go back to Draw mode and in
| | 01:37 | rotate we can just slide this and just
move the Dewhopper one way or the other,
| | 01:43 | and maybe I want to rotate in the Y-
axis a little, bit and maybe in X, by
| | 01:48 | leaning forward a little bit.
| | 01:50 | Actually something that can help you
a lot here is by turning on the Floor.
| | 01:53 | I am just going to click this button
here and now we can see how he is oriented
| | 01:57 | relative to the floor.
| | 01:59 | If you start off with a tilted angle to
the body, the pose is likely to come out
| | 02:03 | looking a lot more dynamic.
| | 02:04 | Okay, now let's start rotating individual limbs.
| | 02:08 | Go up to the Rotate tool and now you can
just click and drag on individual limbs here.
| | 02:14 | So the Rotate tool will rotate limbs
around in a pretty predictable way.
| | 02:17 | If you go into the Move tool, it
behaves a little bit differently.
| | 02:21 | Let's click on the segment between the ZSpheres.
| | 02:24 | It obviously kind of rotates, but the
limbs below that joint cannot stay in
| | 02:29 | the same orientation.
| | 02:31 | If you use Move tool on this ZSphere,
then it will stretch out the joints and
| | 02:36 | that's probably not what
you want when you are posing.
| | 02:37 | So I am going to undo that.
| | 02:39 | So let's go back into the Rotate tool
and just start moving things around.
| | 02:44 | Try to find a pose that you are happy
with, maybe I'll tilt the head to one side
| | 02:50 | and let's move the tail around a little bit.
| | 02:53 | I actually have the tail kind
of swishing off to one side.
| | 03:02 | It's easy to go really fast at this point.
| | 03:04 | So you don't have to be
locked into any one pose.
| | 03:07 | You can try out lots of different variations.
| | 03:18 | Probably a good idea to make sure
that the two feet are resting on the
| | 03:21 | exact same level and maybe you can have one
of these legs come down lower than the other.
| | 03:28 | So maybe it's lifting one of its legs
up off the ground and I might need to
| | 03:37 | rotate the entire thing so that this leg is
resting on the same level as these two legs.
| | 03:41 | Okay, we are just going to move the
rotation here and see if we can get this a
| | 03:45 | little bit closer to even-- all right!
| | 03:46 | That's pretty good.
| | 03:48 | Let's rotate these legs down.
| | 03:54 | So in the later chapters we've been
dealing with a lot of fine-tuning.
| | 03:57 | So it might take a little shift and
thought process to go back to the idea of
| | 04:01 | making big sweeping changes.
| | 04:03 | Getting a good pose can take a while,
especially if you've never done it before.
| | 04:07 | Do some variations and ask yourself
and other people if the pose is reading.
| | 04:11 | By reading, I mean if the pose is
clearly communicating the creature's emotions,
| | 04:16 | situations, or personality.
| | 04:18 | When you get a pose that you
like, save it out as a ZTool.
| | 04:20 | We'll be loading it up in a later movie to
use as a guide when posing the actual model.
| | 04:26 | Working at a pose in ZSpheres' first
is a great way to achieve an appealing
| | 04:31 | look, because it's faster than
directly posing the sculpted model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking subtools to the main body| 00:00 | When posing the body, the
various SubTools won't move along.
| | 00:04 | If I pose the head for example, the
teeth and the eyes will stay floating in
| | 00:08 | space right where they are.
| | 00:10 | In order to make them follow along
with the body, we'll be using contact
| | 00:14 | points to lock them down.
| | 00:16 | But first, there's just one little loose
end to tie up, he's only got one eyeball.
| | 00:21 | In order to make the other one,
just follow these few simple steps.
| | 00:24 | Let's go into the SubTool palette
and make sure that we have got the
| | 00:27 | eyeball selected, great!
| | 00:29 | Now let's click
Duplicate in the SubTool palette.
| | 00:32 | Now let's go down to the
Deformation palette and click Mirror.
| | 00:37 | Notice we have this little pop-up that
says the function cannot be applied to a
| | 00:41 | mesh with multiple subdivision levels.
| | 00:44 | That's simple enough to fix.
| | 00:45 | What we need to do is go up to this
duplicate and go to the highest subdivision level.
| | 00:50 | So I am just going to hit D,
until we go up to the highest level.
| | 00:53 | Now let's open up the Geometry sub-
palette and I am going to delete all the
| | 00:57 | lower subdivision levels.
| | 00:59 | Now let's go back to that
Deformation palette, click Mirror.
| | 01:03 | Let's look at it, yup!
| | 01:05 | We got an eye on the other side now.
| | 01:07 | Now let's go up to our SubTool palette
and just rename this one, and we'll just
| | 01:13 | change the name to eye left.
| | 01:16 | Okay, now to link all the SubTools to
the body, contact points work by defining
| | 01:21 | a few points on the body
that a SubTool should stick to.
| | 01:25 | Let's do the tail spikes first.
| | 01:26 | I am going to select them and let's zoom
out, so we can get a better look at them.
| | 01:31 | And then I am going to hit F a few
times to see if I can zoom in on it.
| | 01:36 | Nope, it looks like it
won't work. Now I can zoom in.
| | 01:43 | Okay, now let's go and
open up the Contact palette.
| | 01:48 | Right now this doesn't seem to make a
lot of sense, but what this is going to do
| | 01:52 | is allow us to store contact points.
| | 01:54 | The way we use contact points is by
going to one of the Transpose tools.
| | 01:59 | Now we click and drag from the
tail spikes to some point on the body.
| | 02:04 | So now this transpose manipulator is
defining two points, one point on the tail
| | 02:09 | spikes and one point on the tail.
| | 02:11 | Now save that relationship between those points.
| | 02:14 | I'll go ahead and do that again.
| | 02:17 | It doesn't really matter which point to
which point you connect, just as along
| | 02:22 | as it's a part on the body that's
not going to deposed or deformed.
| | 02:25 | Let's do that second time and now let's
just rotate around and do this a third time.
| | 02:35 | Okay, now let's do this to one of the eyeballs.
| | 02:37 | I am going to go up to the
SubTools and get the left eye.
| | 02:40 | Now let's zoom out and let's
get on close here on the left eye.
| | 02:47 | Now it's the same procedure.
| | 02:50 | There's just one thing to watch out for.
| | 02:52 | We may be posing the eyelids, so you
wouldn't want to drag the manipulator from
| | 02:56 | the eye to an eyelid.
| | 02:58 | We want to drag to a more solid part of
the head, otherwise the eyeball may move
| | 03:02 | when the eyelid is posed.
| | 03:03 | So I am going to drag from the eye to
one of the solid points on the horns.
| | 03:08 | Let's go back down to the Contact sub-
palette and let's store that first contact point.
| | 03:14 | Now let's do it another time to
another solid point, let's store that one and
| | 03:20 | then just one more time.
| | 03:23 | When we are doing the lower teeth, the
tip of the jaw is a good place to connect
| | 03:27 | with, because it's going to move very rigidly.
| | 03:30 | Go ahead and do this for all the other SubTools.
| | 03:33 | After posing the body, we'll come
back to this palette and hit Apply.
| | 03:37 | That's going to make the SubTools
follow along with their contact points, but
| | 03:40 | for now we are ready to start posing the body.
| | 03:43 | I like using contact points to
pose my SubTools most of the time.
| | 03:46 | There are alternatives like a plug-in called
Transpose Master, but it tends to be buggy.
| | 03:51 | If your model has SubTools that need
to bend with the body like clothing, you
| | 03:55 | can also manually move, rotate and pose them.
| | 03:58 | In the next movie, we'll actually be
posing and making these SubTools move
| | 04:03 | according to their contact points.
| | 04:04 | It's going to save a lot of time,
because by using contact points, we won't have
| | 04:09 | to move these SubTools manually back into place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Posing with transpose tools | 00:00 | The Transpose tools in
ZBrush are very useful for posing.
| | 00:03 | You can select which parts of the
body you want to move and then insert a
| | 00:07 | Transpose Manipulator.
| | 00:09 | When you rotate the manipulator, it
bends the joint, kind of like a bone
| | 00:13 | underneath muscle and skin.
| | 00:14 | It just requires getting used to
a few new tools and procedures.
| | 00:18 | So let's learn how to do it.
| | 00:19 | We are going to load two
Exercise Files in this movie;
| | 00:22 | first the unposedmodel.
| | 00:23 | So let's go to File > Open and let's
navigate to our Exercise Files > Ch_10 >
| | 00:30 | Folder 10_03, all right, I am
just going to hit F to zoom out.
| | 00:35 | Now let's load in the posed ZSpheres.
| | 00:38 | Go to the Tool palette and
load in the posedzspheres.
| | 00:42 | Now let's go back to the
first model we brought in.
| | 00:45 | We need to append the
posedzspheres to that tool.
| | 00:47 | So let's go to SubTool and click Append
and bring in the posedzspheres. All right!
| | 00:54 | Go ahead and select your main Dewhopper
body and we don't need to see any of the
| | 00:59 | other SubTools right now.
| | 01:01 | So I am just going to hide all of these so
that we just see the ZSpheres and the body.
| | 01:06 | Now let's see the Floor.
| | 01:08 | I am going to turn on this Floor here,
so now we can align the body with
| | 01:11 | the floor more easily.
| | 01:13 | Something else I want to do is turn
on Transparency, so that we can see the
| | 01:17 | ZSpheres through the body.
| | 01:19 | So go up to the Transform
menu and turn on Transparency.
| | 01:25 | Now we are ready to start posing the body.
| | 01:28 | Just like posing the ZSpheres, you
want to start by rotating and moving the
| | 01:32 | whole body, so that the hips are
angled just like the posed-version.
| | 01:36 | So let's look at this from the Top view.
| | 01:37 | I am going to hold on Shift, so it
snaps to a perfect Top view and I am going
| | 01:41 | to pick the Rotate Transpose tool and
I am just going to click and drag out
| | 01:45 | here from the hips.
| | 01:47 | Now I can rotate this and it's
going to rotate from the pivot point of
| | 01:51 | that Transpose tool.
| | 01:53 | Let's look at it from the front.
| | 01:55 | So I can also rotate it a little bit at
this angle and maybe I can pivot from behind.
| | 02:01 | I might want to draw out another
manipulator, so I can see it more easily,
| | 02:04 | and just rotate it until the core of the
body aligns closely with the posed ZSpheres.
| | 02:11 | Let's see from the side.
| | 02:12 | Yeah, it looks pretty good.
| | 02:14 | Maybe I can rotate just a little bit.
| | 02:19 | Now let's pose the limbs.
| | 02:20 | We are going to move from the
center of the body outwards.
| | 02:24 | The extremities should be
the last thing that you pose.
| | 02:27 | The Transpose tools come with
a special way to create masks.
| | 02:31 | In addition to painting masks like
usually in draw mode, you can create masks
| | 02:35 | that follow the direction of limbs.
| | 02:37 | It makes more sense if
you just see it in action.
| | 02:40 | I am going to hide the ZSpheres for a
minute just to make this easier to see.
| | 02:45 | Now let's zoom in on the hips.
| | 02:48 | Now with one of the Transpose tools
active, you want to hold down Ctrl and then
| | 02:53 | click and drag along the limb, and
what you see is a mask that kind of wraps
| | 02:59 | around the limb, so you want to get
that order of the mask kind of right at the
| | 03:04 | center of the bending part of
the joint, and then just release.
| | 03:08 | This technique is a lot faster for
selecting limbs than painting the mask by hand.
| | 03:13 | Now we need to reposition this
manipulator, so that it's more closely aligned
| | 03:17 | with where a bone would be.
| | 03:19 | So you can just grab the outer ring of
this manipulator and just position it
| | 03:24 | where a bone might be.
| | 03:25 | Let's see from the Top view, it
looks pretty good, okay, cool!
| | 03:29 | So let's bring back the posedzspheres so
that we can see where we need to move this.
| | 03:34 | When you want to rotate the joint, all you
have to do is click and drag on the inner circle.
| | 03:38 | Let's see how this looks from the
side view, all right, pretty close.
| | 03:46 | It can feel clumsy at first, but
once you get the hang of masking and
| | 03:51 | positioning manipulators and
rotating them, posing with Transpose will be
| | 03:55 | a great way to work.
| | 03:56 | You can also modify the
transposed masking to get a better result.
| | 04:00 | Let's do an example with the tail.
| | 04:02 | I am going to move so that
I can see that more easily.
| | 04:06 | So I am going to hold down
Ctrl while I click and drag.
| | 04:10 | So it's creating a selection around the tail.
| | 04:14 | Now once the mask is made, you can
smooth it, if you hold down Ctrl and
| | 04:18 | just click a few times.
| | 04:19 | I am actually going to hide the
posedzspheres just to make that easier to see.
| | 04:25 | So it smoothes a little bit each time you click.
| | 04:28 | It might not be very apparent, but you
might be able to see now that this mask
| | 04:33 | is much blurrier than it used to be.
| | 04:35 | Okay, now let's rotate the tail.
| | 04:37 | I am going to click and drag and just
create a pivot point here and now we can
| | 04:43 | drag up here and rotate the tail
around, so let's say we move it down here.
| | 04:47 | You might need to create a
few different manipulators.
| | 04:50 | You can also rotate if you
click and drag in the middle here.
| | 04:53 | It's kind of like twisting it.
| | 04:57 | You can also use transpose
manipulations with hand-drawn masks.
| | 05:01 | So let's go into Draw mode and I am
going to clear the mask, holding down
| | 05:04 | Ctrl+Shift+A. Now let's go
paint a mask on the lower jaw.
| | 05:09 | Let's look at it from a different view here.
| | 05:21 | Now let's invert the mask.
| | 05:22 | I am going to go down to Masking and
just click Inverse, because we want to move
| | 05:27 | the lower jaw and now let's
place a manipulator in there.
| | 05:31 | Go to Rotate and let's
just draw a manipulator out.
| | 05:33 | Now we can go ahead and lower that jaw down.
| | 05:41 | So I would probably spend a good
several hours doing the posing on this
| | 05:45 | character making sure that the masking is
done nicely and that the poses look natural.
| | 05:51 | Posing limbs with transposed masking
and rotation is a great way to put some
| | 05:55 | dynamism and action into the pose.
| | 05:57 | I use it all the time to reposition
limbs and even to use it as a way of
| | 06:01 | modifying a character design.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Polishing the pose| 00:00 | Now that the body has been posed, we can
use the contact points that we set up a
| | 00:04 | few movies ago to snap the subtools into place.
| | 00:08 | Let's open up our SubTool
palette and select the tailspikes.
| | 00:13 | Now let's scroll down to the Contacts palette.
| | 00:16 | You can see because these three
contact points have been grayed out.
| | 00:19 | That means that there are already
contact points stored in those locations.
| | 00:23 | One strange thing you have to do before
applying the contact points is increase
| | 00:27 | the Strength to 100.
| | 00:29 | This means that it will move the
tailspikes 100% of the way between their
| | 00:34 | original position and the new pose.
| | 00:36 | I'm not really sure why you'd want it to
go anywhere other than that, but that's
| | 00:41 | one setting in ZBrush.
| | 00:42 | So always set this to 100 and click Apply.
| | 00:45 | It looks great, let's do that to the others.
| | 00:50 | Selecting one of the eyes, change
the Strength to 100, and click Apply.
| | 00:58 | EyeRight, Strength is
already at 100 and click Apply.
| | 01:02 | Let's do the teethlower, Strength to 100, and
Apply, teethupper, Strength to 100, and Apply.
| | 01:17 | If you decide that you want to pose
the body some more after snapping the
| | 01:20 | subtools, you'll have to delete the
contact points by clicking Del three times.
| | 01:26 | Then, you can redraw contact
points just like we did before.
| | 01:30 | After that, you could pose the body some
more and then reapply the contact points.
| | 01:34 | So, for that reason, I usually like to
make sure that the positions of all the
| | 01:37 | limbs are finalized before
snapping the subtools to the body.
| | 01:41 | But, even if you do decide to make some
changes, it's not the end of the world.
| | 01:45 | It doesn't take all that much
time to re-setup contact points.
| | 01:48 | Using Contact to pose subtools is
clearly faster and more accurate than trying
| | 01:53 | to position them all by hand.
| | 01:54 | It can be really satisfying
when it all comes together.
| | 01:57 | Let's check out the dewhopper
and its finished pose with all the
| | 02:00 | subtools applied.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing touches in ZBrush| 00:00 | Anytime you create complex 3D models,
there is always going to be finishing touches.
| | 00:05 | That's certainly true in this case.
| | 00:07 | We've got several loose ends to tie up.
| | 00:10 | We have got to fix some fine-tuning to
the pose and we have to integrate the
| | 00:13 | pose with the Maya scene.
| | 00:15 | First, let's fix up some posing issues.
| | 00:18 | The Transpose tools have been great for
positioning all the limbs in the right place.
| | 00:22 | However, it often needs a little extra
work to get everything looking right.
| | 00:26 | For example, I want to zoom in on one
of the hind legs, and take a closer look.
| | 00:34 | You can see that the way we bent
this limb, is part of the calf is
| | 00:38 | intersecting with the thigh.
| | 00:40 | In this case, the calf and hamstring
muscles should press up against each other
| | 00:44 | rather than just sticking through each other.
| | 00:46 | So the Move Topological Brush
actually works really well here.
| | 00:50 | I am going to hit B+M+T and you just
want to get yourself back in a sculpting
| | 00:53 | mindset, and just kind of push
things until they fit correctly.
| | 01:02 | Something else that's useful here is the
masking portion of the Transpose tools.
| | 01:07 | So I can hold down Ctrl and click-and-
drag while in any of the Transpose tools.
| | 01:11 | That way, I can mask off
just one side of this joint.
| | 01:14 | I can go back into Draw, and I can
adjust the position of the calf muscle
| | 01:18 | without interrupting the
position of the hamstring.
| | 01:25 | I can just invert the selection.
| | 01:26 | If I go to the Masking palette, click
Inverse, now I can adjust just the hamstring.
| | 01:38 | Okay, let's look at another issue.
| | 01:39 | I am just going to clear the mask by
hitting Ctrl+Shift+A. I want to zoom in on
| | 01:44 | the front left foot.
| | 01:49 | It's pretty good, but you can see that
the toes feel a little soft, and round,
| | 01:53 | and also some of the angles
got a little crooked when posing.
| | 01:56 | Let me just subdivide the model a few
times by hitting D. So you can use the
| | 02:00 | Move Topological Brush here as well to
just kind of move things back into place.
| | 02:09 | Also, looking at these drawings from the
side, they look a little soft, and mutantly.
| | 02:13 | So I want to adjust them to make them
look a little bit more firm, kind of
| | 02:17 | like there is a rigid joint inside of each one
rather than looking kind of soft and rubbery.
| | 02:21 | I just want to change my brush size
here to get a little more fine-tuned
| | 02:29 | application of this brush;
| | 02:30 | maybe a little bit bigger here.
| | 02:39 | So you want to get back in a kind
of sculpting mindset now, just making
| | 02:47 | things look good in pose, maybe define some
of the knuckles here a little bit more clearly.
| | 02:53 | Okay.
| | 02:53 | So now that I've pushed things around, the
joints are starting to look a lot more solid.
| | 02:57 | I would definitely want to spend longer
than just a few minutes on this in order
| | 03:01 | to make the model look its best,
but let's move on to the next step.
| | 03:05 | I want my pose presentation renders to
have just a little extra kick of detail.
| | 03:10 | For that, we can send the second
SubDivision Level of the body back to Maya
| | 03:14 | instead of the lowest SubDivision Level.
| | 03:16 | So let me just hit Shift+D to go down to the
lowest SubDivision Level and let's zoom out.
| | 03:24 | So the model looks pretty decent at
this SubDivision Level, but if I hit D one
| | 03:29 | time and go up a SubDivision Level, you
see that we just get an extra amount of
| | 03:32 | detail out of the model.
| | 03:34 | So we're going to send this
back to Maya instead of the lowest.
| | 03:37 | So let's go to the Geometry
palette and click Del Lower.
| | 03:42 | This is going to make the current
SubDivision Level the new lowest level.
| | 03:45 | So this is the level that gets
sent back to Maya when we use GoZ.
| | 03:51 | Okay, let's open up the Exercise File
for Maya now, going to File > Open and
| | 03:57 | we need to go back to the Desktop >
Exercise Files > Ch_10 > folder 10_05 finishing.ma.
| | 04:08 | Here, we have everything just as
we left it in the texturing chapter.
| | 04:11 | Now, we are going to go ahead and
delete the dewhopper objects because they are
| | 04:16 | going to be replaced with
what we send back from ZBrush.
| | 04:18 | Let's go ahead and delete the
tailspikes, the eyeball, the teeth, the body.
| | 04:26 | Now, let's go back to ZBrush and use
GoZ, slide up in your Tool palette and
| | 04:30 | let's click All to send all
of the subtools. All right!
| | 04:33 | It looks like it worked.
| | 04:36 | The final tweaking of the
pose actually takes a long time.
| | 04:40 | I usually spend at least a few hours
fine-tuning the joints and working out any
| | 04:44 | last-minute details.
| | 04:46 | It's this final polish that can
really help a model look its best.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing touches in Maya| 00:00 | Now we just need to reapply the
shaders to all the different body parts, so
| | 00:04 | it's looks like our top teeth are
currently selected, let me just zoom in and
| | 00:11 | closer, so I can select that, and
hold down the Shift to select the bottom
| | 00:15 | teeth, and then in the materials,
just hold down the right mouse button and
| | 00:19 | Assign Material To Selection.
| | 00:20 | All right let's do the body now, and
then hold down the right mouse button and
| | 00:25 | Assign Material To Selection, just a
little note, in the viewport the skin
| | 00:29 | shade is always going to look red,
because the viewport can't display the sub
| | 00:33 | surface scattering.
| | 00:34 | And now for the eyeball, let's apply
that Eye Shader, let's go around to the
| | 00:41 | other eyeball and actually we can just
hit G to apply the last function that we
| | 00:46 | just did, and there's one more to do,
tail spikes and that actually has the same
| | 00:52 | shader as the body, so just going to
hold down the right mouse button and Assign
| | 00:55 | Material To Selection.
| | 00:58 | Now when we used GoZ it actually
created a few shaders that ZBrush sent over
| | 01:03 | Maya, we can delete those by
going to Edit > Delete Unused Nodes.
| | 01:09 | We just want to get rid of those shaders,
because they will just be in the way now.
| | 01:12 | Okay, now let's position the ground
plane, so that the feet are resting
| | 01:15 | perfectly on top of it.
| | 01:19 | Now I want to be able to move the ground
and the rim around it at the same time,
| | 01:23 | so actually I'm going to parent them together.
| | 01:26 | So select the rim and then Shift+Select
the ground and hit P. What this does is
| | 01:32 | it connects that rim to the ground,
so now if we select the ground;
| | 01:36 | it also selects the rim, now we
can move the two of them together.
| | 01:40 | So I'm going to go into Move mode by
hitting W and let's just slide this down to
| | 01:43 | the feet are resting right on the
ground, let's zoom in so I can see this
| | 01:47 | better, let's zoom out and see how this looks.
| | 01:56 | I think the ground is actually too big;
| | 01:58 | it's making the Dewhopper look kind of small
in comparison, so we can shrink the ground down.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to select the ground,
hit R to go into Scale mode and let's
| | 02:05 | just shrink this a bit.
| | 02:09 | Now we might have to position it a bit more
to be perfectly aligned with the feet, and OK.
| | 02:15 | Now let's deselect the
ground to see how that looks.
| | 02:17 | Now there are a few places where the
feet might be slightly off the ground or
| | 02:22 | even the feet penetrating with the
ground, so let's fix this up with some soft
| | 02:26 | selections, go ahead and click the
ground and then I'm going to hold down the
| | 02:30 | right mouse button and go into Vertex mode.
| | 02:33 | Now let's select the Vertex down here
by this foot and we're already in Soft
| | 02:38 | Select mode, but I want to increase the
size of the soft selection, so just the
| | 02:42 | B key and then click and drag, and
we'll scale the size of this fall off.
| | 02:46 | Now we can position the ground just
under this one foot by moving it up or
| | 02:49 | down, so I just want to move it
down enough, so that that foot is not
| | 02:53 | penetrating through the ground.
| | 02:54 | All right, let's see how it
works with the other feet.
| | 02:56 | It looks like this one is floating
above the ground just a little bit, so I'm
| | 03:00 | just going to select the Vertex
underneath the feet here, and has moved the
| | 03:04 | ground up a little bit and
let's see about the last foot.
| | 03:12 | Actually that one is pretty good;
| | 03:13 | I am going to leave that one where it is.
| | 03:15 | Finally, let's parent all of the
Dewhopper objects to the body, so that if we
| | 03:19 | want to move the body anywhere, all of
those eyeballs and teeth and tails spikes
| | 03:23 | will go along with it.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to select the tail spikes
and Shift+Select the eyeball and let me
| | 03:30 | zoom in closer so I can get that, Shift+
Select the teeth and let's get that last eyeball.
| | 03:35 | Finally, I am going to select the body
and when I hit P, everything is going to
| | 03:42 | get parented to the last
thing that was selected.
| | 03:44 | So now if I select the body and move it
anywhere, everything else is going to go
| | 03:48 | along for the red, go ahead and hit
Z to put that back where it belongs.
| | 03:52 | Now let's parent the body to the
ground, so we've got the body with all
| | 03:56 | those SubTools selected.
| | 03:59 | Now if I hit Shift and click the
ground, now we've got everything selected.
| | 04:03 | I'm going to hit P again, so now
everything is parented to the ground.
| | 04:08 | This will make it easy to spin the whole
thing around for a turntable animation,
| | 04:13 | so if I just hit E to go into Rotate
mode, you can see we can rotate everything
| | 04:16 | together as one, so just hit Z to Undo that.
| | 04:20 | The finishing phase of modeling is
important for the final presentation and
| | 04:24 | usually takes a lot longer than
just a few minutes that we spent here.
| | 04:28 | It's about fixing up little things
like object intersecting each other and
| | 04:32 | tweaking the last few details,
so that they will look just right.
| | 04:35 | Every project is different and will have
unique adjustments to make at the stage.
| | 04:39 | They say that the last 10% of a
project takes 90% of the time and that's
| | 04:44 | definitely true when making digital creatures.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
11. RenderingFine-tuning lights and render settings| 00:00 | So far things like render quality,
light samples and shadow detail have been
| | 00:05 | kept low so that we could do fast test renders.
| | 00:09 | Now it's time to get final render quality,
so we need to start turning up the settings.
| | 00:13 | We'll be hitting lots of little things
in this movie, but the main concept to
| | 00:17 | keep in mind is to only
make one change at a time.
| | 00:20 | We'll be doing a test render
after every setting that we change.
| | 00:24 | If you change several things at once
and then the render doesn't come out
| | 00:27 | right or it takes too long, you won't know
which setting it was that caused the problem.
| | 00:32 | By changing just one setting at a time,
you get a better understanding of what
| | 00:35 | they do, so let's start
with our Render settings.
| | 00:38 | I'll go up and click this button.
| | 00:40 | We want to change the image size to
720 HD, so let's scroll down and set the
| | 00:48 | image size and from Presets, let just
scroll down a bit here and find HD 720.
| | 00:54 | This will give us higher
resolution renders than the default.
| | 00:58 | Now let's do a render and see what we get.
| | 00:59 | Okay, let me move this over here so we
can see more of the render, okay, let's
| | 01:06 | save this image, so that we can compare
it with any future changes that we make.
| | 01:10 | Okay, close the Render window and
let's go back to our Render Settings.
| | 01:15 | The next thing I want to change is the
quality preset, so click the Quality tab.
| | 01:20 | Let's open up the Quality Presets.
| | 01:21 | I'm just going to click and come down
to Production as you may notice a few
| | 01:28 | different things changed.
| | 01:30 | The Min Sample Level went from -2 to 0,
the Max Sample Level went from 0 to 2
| | 01:38 | and the Filter went from Box to Gauss.
| | 01:40 | The explanation of what these
settings do is very technical and beyond the
| | 01:44 | scope of this course.
| | 01:45 | In simple terms the changes increased
the amount of detail that goes into every
| | 01:49 | pixel of the render.
| | 01:50 | Now there's one other change to be aware of,
let's open up the Indirect Lighting tab.
| | 01:55 | The production quality preset doesn't
include final gathering by default, so we
| | 02:00 | need to go and turn that back on in
order to get the bounce to light effects.
| | 02:04 | Now let's do another render to compare.
| | 02:06 | All right let's save this image and
compare with the previous one, you might not
| | 02:14 | be able to see quite so much of a
difference right here, let me zoom in closer,
| | 02:20 | so there's several things to notice here.
| | 02:22 | The new render is much cleaner and less noisy;
| | 02:26 | edges are smoother and not so blocky.
| | 02:29 | In addition to being better looking,
the new render also takes about twice
| | 02:32 | as long to compute.
| | 02:34 | So 2 minutes and 43 seconds for this one
and minute and 3 seconds for the previous one.
| | 02:40 | Now that number is going to very greatly
depending on what kind of computer you have.
| | 02:44 | So in this new render you can see that
some of the shadows are still kind of grainy.
| | 02:48 | For example, right back here on the rim;
| | 02:50 | it looks kind of noisy, so let's fix that up.
| | 02:53 | We've already saved this rendered, so I'm
going to go ahead and close this window.
| | 02:56 | I want to close the Render Settings
for now and let select the Keylight.
| | 03:03 | In it's attributes I'm going
to change its Shadow Settings.
| | 03:06 | I am going to slide this down, so we
can see more of the attributes and let's
| | 03:09 | open up its Shadow Settings and
let's scroll down to the Shadow Rays.
| | 03:15 | I want to change this from 8 to about 30, so
that we will have more detail in our shadows.
| | 03:21 | Now let's open up the Render
view, but not do a render yet.
| | 03:25 | So this button right here
will show us the previous render.
| | 03:27 | There is a little trick
that will help speed things up.
| | 03:30 | What you can do is just click and
drag a box over a portion of a render.
| | 03:35 | Now if you click this Render region
button, it will only render that small
| | 03:39 | section and it will go a lot faster.
| | 03:43 | If you only need to see a small part of
a render for comparison, this will save
| | 03:47 | time by not having to render the whole image.
| | 03:49 | All right, it finished, let's save this
image and let's zoom in to see what changed.
| | 04:04 | Okay, so notice especially right about
here when I flip between the two images,
| | 04:07 | there is a definite change in
the graininess of that shadow.
| | 04:11 | The setting of 30 turned out to
be pretty good for the situation.
| | 04:15 | Depending on what you're doing,
you may want to go higher.
| | 04:17 | Remember the blurrier the shadow, the more
shadow raise you need to make it look smooth.
| | 04:23 | A sharp shadow doesn't need as much,
and a setting of 30 may slow down your
| | 04:26 | renders unnecessarily.
| | 04:28 | Now it looks like there's still a lot
of graininess in the rim, let's close the
| | 04:32 | Render view and see if Ambient
Occlusion has anything to do with that.
| | 04:35 | Let's go into the hyper shade and open
our Textures tab, and let's scroll down
| | 04:39 | until we find the ambient
occlusion node, here we go.
| | 04:43 | Let's try doubling the samples to 32.
| | 04:50 | Basically this number is just going
to increase the number of competitions
| | 04:53 | that go into calculating the ambient
occlusion, thereby making it smoother, so
| | 04:58 | let's see what happens.
| | 05:00 | Again, let's open up the previous
render and we'll just select a smaller box
| | 05:05 | right now, since we don't need to see
the shadow from the Keylight and let's go
| | 05:09 | and click Render region.
| | 05:10 | All right, let's zoom in on it and let's
store this render and I'm just going to
| | 05:19 | flip between it, okay.
| | 05:23 | The graininess is almost gone.
| | 05:25 | It may not be worth it to try to get
rid of all graininess, you have to balance
| | 05:29 | quality with render times.
| | 05:32 | If you bump up all the settings to
10 times the default, you might have
| | 05:36 | perfectly smooth renders, but they would
also take so long that it might not be worth it.
| | 05:41 | Now let's render the whole thing.
| | 05:43 | I want to zoom back out by clicking the
1:1 button, so it displays the image at
| | 05:47 | real size, and now let's click the Full Render.
| | 05:51 | Let's compare this final render with
the first one that we did, so that we can
| | 05:55 | directly compare the difference.
| | 05:56 | I'm going to save this one
and then let's go and delete the
| | 06:00 | intermediate renders.
| | 06:02 | So let's see, here's the first one, let
me go to the second one that we made and
| | 06:06 | just click the trash can, and click
the trash can a few more times, until we
| | 06:11 | have deleted all the first and the last.
| | 06:13 | All right, let me zoom out of this
render, so I can see how long it took.
| | 06:19 | It's kind of hard to see this number right here.
| | 06:21 | Okay, 4 minutes 7 seconds for the last
one, and 1 minute, so about four times as
| | 06:27 | long to get the extra detail out of
this image, let's zoom in to just see how
| | 06:32 | much better the detail is.
| | 06:36 | Okay, so it's grainy and blocky
here, and it's smooth and clean here.
| | 06:40 | I don't turn up Render Quality until I
get close to the end of a project, this
| | 06:45 | is because I don't want to wait forever
to renders while I'm setting up lights
| | 06:49 | and testing out textures.
| | 06:51 | Again the other big thing to remember
is to turn up Render in Shadow Settings
| | 06:55 | one at a time so that you know
exactly what effect it has on the render.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Batch rendering a turnable animation| 00:00 | One presentation render is great, but
to really show off your work you'll want
| | 00:04 | people to see it from all angles.
| | 00:07 | A turntable is an
effective way to get this done.
| | 00:10 | We'll be using simple keyframe
animation to turn the model around.
| | 00:13 | I want the turntable animation
to take place over 300 frames.
| | 00:17 | The exact number isn't all that important,
but 300 frames is about a good amount
| | 00:22 | of time to make the turntable turnaround.
| | 00:23 | So let's go down here and double-
click and put 300 into this box.
| | 00:29 | This changes the playback range to 300 frames.
| | 00:32 | So right now we're on the very first frame,
which is good, and let's click on the ground.
| | 00:38 | Everything is parented to the ground,
so all we need to do is rotate the ground
| | 00:42 | and everything else will rotate along with it.
| | 00:43 | Now let's go to the Channel box, so
we can see the translation options.
| | 00:47 | Now we want to rotate this in the Y-
axis, so I'm going to hold down the right
| | 00:52 | mouse button and go up to Key Selected.
| | 00:56 | Notice that this turns red that means
that there is currently a keyframe on this
| | 00:59 | frame and over here there's a red tick,
which means that there's a keyframe here
| | 01:03 | as well, and we just need to go to
the last frame and we need to change the
| | 01:08 | rotation value to 360 degree.
| | 01:12 | Now I want to put a keyframe here as
well, so hold down the right mouse button
| | 01:15 | on Rotate Y and go up to Key Selected.
| | 01:17 | All right, let's deselect the ground and see
if this worked, go ahead and hit Play here.
| | 01:26 | Looks good, let's just bring
this back to the first frame.
| | 01:29 | There are a few more things to setup.
| | 01:32 | Let's go to the Viewport menu and
go down to Camera Settings and click
| | 01:35 | Resolution Gate, Camera
Settings and Resolution Gate.
| | 01:44 | This helps you to see
exactly what will be rendered.
| | 01:47 | Now let's scrub through the animation.
| | 01:52 | This helps you to make sure that during
the turntable, everything stays in frame
| | 01:56 | for the whole cycle.
| | 01:57 | Now it looks like right about here the
tip of the tail just touches the top of
| | 02:01 | that, and that's kind of awkward, so I
want to zoom the camera out just a little
| | 02:04 | bit so that that doesn't happen.
| | 02:05 | All right, that's looking better.
| | 02:12 | Now notice when you click
Play, it goes kind of fast.
| | 02:17 | That's because it's not
playing back in real-time.
| | 02:20 | So I'm actually going to right-click
on the Play button, go to Playback Speed
| | 02:25 | and go to Real-time, now let's see what happens.
| | 02:30 | Okay that's a much more natural speed.
| | 02:37 | We're going to be rendering out a
sequence of images for the animation with
| | 02:40 | each frame in a separate numbered file, so
let's go to our Render Settings to set that up.
| | 02:47 | In the Common tab, let's
give the renders a name.
| | 02:50 | So under File Output, I'm just going to
click in this box and call it turntable.
| | 02:55 | It could be called anything really.
| | 02:58 | And the Image format, I want to change
this to PNG, I like PNG because it has
| | 03:05 | lossless compression and it
also gives you transparency.
| | 03:08 | Now let's click on Frame/Animation extension.
| | 03:11 | This is basically where you can pick
from a series of options that combines
| | 03:15 | the name with the frame number, and it really
doesn't matter exactly which one you choose here.
| | 03:21 | I kind of like this one because you get
the name, which will be turntable, then
| | 03:25 | underscore and then the number of the frame.
| | 03:28 | It's just easy to keep track of this way.
| | 03:30 | And then I like to
change Frame padding to three.
| | 03:33 | Now watch what happens up
here when I change Frame padding.
| | 03:38 | This makes it so the frames will be
in order, if you look at them in your
| | 03:42 | Windows Explorer or in your Mac Finder.
| | 03:45 | Okay, further down let's look at Frame Range.
| | 03:47 | We want to render the entire turntable,
so we want to start at frame 1, which is
| | 03:51 | good, and let's end at frame 299.
| | 03:55 | Now we're not going to render all the
way to 300, because after the 360 degree of
| | 04:01 | rotation, the last frame
is the same as the first.
| | 04:04 | Okay, all the other settings should be good.
| | 04:07 | I just want to look at one other thing.
| | 04:09 | Up here at the path, this is where
the renders are going to be placed.
| | 04:14 | You want to keep note of where this
folder is, so that you can go find your
| | 04:17 | renders when they're done.
| | 04:18 | This path will probably look different
on your computer than it will on mine;
| | 04:22 | unless your name is also Ryan
Kittleson, then it might be the same.
| | 04:25 | We're ready to close out of Render Settings.
| | 04:27 | We need to switch from the Polygon menu
set to the Rendering menu set, and let's
| | 04:33 | go up to Render menu and
go down to Batch Render.
| | 04:38 | Now notice down here it says
that it's rendering with mental ray.
| | 04:41 | Batch Renders actually start a separate
program that runs in the background to
| | 04:46 | render the sequence.
| | 04:47 | If you want it at this point, you can
even shut down Maya, while mental ray
| | 04:51 | renders to save memory.
| | 04:53 | As it renders, you'll get a status
update of the progress of each frame, you
| | 04:57 | could also go look in the folder where
it is saving the images in order to make
| | 05:01 | sure that everything looks good.
| | 05:02 | If there was a problem, you could
cancel the Batch Render by going up to the
| | 05:06 | Render menu and clicking Cancel Batch
Render, then you can fix whatever the
| | 05:10 | problem was and try again.
| | 05:13 | Depending on how faster your computer is
rendering all these frames could take a
| | 05:17 | few hours to a few days.
| | 05:19 | I usually start Batch Renders at
the end of the day before I go to bed.
| | 05:22 | Nothing like waking up to the
smell of fresh renders in the morning.
| | 05:26 | In the next movie we'll be picking
it up with all the renders ready to
| | 05:29 | work within Photoshop.
| | 05:30 | Turntable animations are a
great way to present your work.
| | 05:34 | The 360 degree view, lets people see
exactly what you've been working on.
| | 05:38 | It is good to show turntables to
clients, coworkers, and supervisors;
| | 05:42 | so that they can all bask in the
glory of your hard work or terror to
| | 05:46 | shreds, one of the two.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Polishing the renders in Photoshop| 00:00 | Here in the Exercise Files we've got a
series of almost 300 images that Mental
| | 00:05 | Ray rendered hot and steaming on my hard drive.
| | 00:08 | Let's use Photoshop to combine them
into one movie and also do a little
| | 00:12 | adjusting to make them look even better.
| | 00:14 | With newer versions of Photoshop you can
do basic video compositing without ever
| | 00:19 | having to go to After
Effects or any other video program.
| | 00:22 | So let's go to Photoshop.
| | 00:23 | I am going to go to File and Open and
let's navigate to our Exercise Files,
| | 00:29 | Chap_ folder 11_03, and just
select the first one in the series.
| | 00:36 | Now we need to tell Photoshop that
this is an image sequence, so let's
| | 00:39 | click Image Sequence.
| | 00:40 | All right, let's open it up.
| | 00:42 | Now Photoshop asks us what frame rate we
want to use, 30 is fine I'm going to hit OK.
| | 00:49 | So we've got our render here.
| | 00:50 | You can tell this it's in animation
layer rather than a normal layer, because of
| | 00:54 | this little film strip icon
here in the Layers palette.
| | 00:57 | Let's open up the Animation palette so
that we can actually view the animation.
| | 01:01 | Let's go to Window and click Animation,
so we get a little time slider down
| | 01:06 | here, we can click and drag
to this and see the animation.
| | 01:16 | Let's put a background color in
here to make this more interesting.
| | 01:18 | I want to create a new layer and
let's move it down below our animation.
| | 01:25 | Let's make a gradient rather than a
solid color, so I'm going to pick a
| | 01:28 | foreground and a background color, oh I
don't know, maybe I'll pick a green out
| | 01:33 | of our Dewhopper's eye. Yeah, that's good.
| | 01:38 | And let's do the other colors as well, may
be a lighter green for this one, and OK.
| | 01:44 | So we've got two shades of green
here in our foreground and background.
| | 01:49 | I'm just going to go up to the Paint
Bucket and hold down the mouse button so I
| | 01:54 | can select the Gradient tool.
| | 01:56 | Now I'll just click and
drag to draw out a gradient.
| | 02:00 | Feel free to experiment with different
colors or different directions of the
| | 02:03 | gradient, whatever you like.
| | 02:05 | We can also adjust the animation
as if it were any regular layer.
| | 02:09 | For example, I'm going to use
curves to adjust the brightness.
| | 02:13 | So let's make an adjustment layer.
| | 02:14 | Let's click in our Adjustment Layers
and go and pick curves, and then I want to
| | 02:20 | open up my Layers palette just to make
sure that the Adjustment Layer is above
| | 02:23 | the Dewhopper, because the Adjustment
Layer is only going to adjust layers below it.
| | 02:28 | So let's go back to the Adjustments,
now we can make the image brighter or
| | 02:32 | darker by clicking and
dragging on this gradient here.
| | 02:36 | So if we want to bring a little bit
more of a contrast into the image, what we
| | 02:40 | could do is drag up on the bright
part of the image and then make another
| | 02:44 | adjustment and drag down in
the dark part of the image.
| | 02:46 | Now sometimes you have to do this;
| | 02:49 | I actually setup the lights so that
there's a pretty nice range between light
| | 02:52 | and darkening image, so I don't
actually have to adjust this too much.
| | 02:59 | It's also a lot faster to adjust things
like this in Photoshop, than it would be
| | 03:03 | to tweak settings of a
light and re-render in Maya.
| | 03:07 | When you're happy with how it looks,
you can render out of video, let's go to
| | 03:11 | File > Export > Render Video.
| | 03:18 | Okay, so let's give it a name, I'll just
call it turntable and we want to select
| | 03:23 | a place to save it to, so
Chapter 11, 11_03 should be fine.
| | 03:28 | You can also choose a file
format and a video codec;
| | 03:32 | video formats in codecs are a
whole course, all their own.
| | 03:36 | However, for most purposes I get pretty
good results with a QuickTime movie and
| | 03:41 | the H.264 codec, so let's click
on Settings and make that happen.
| | 03:46 | Okay, so we get some video settings here,
I'm going to click Settings again, and
| | 03:50 | Compression Type, let's click
the drop-down and pick H264.
| | 03:55 | Everything else should be pretty good;
| | 03:57 | I'm going to click OK.
| | 03:57 | All right, and let's click OK
again, and now click Render.
| | 04:02 | It might take a few minutes to do, but
it's not going to take nearly as long as
| | 04:08 | it did to do the Batch Render.
| | 04:09 | Now here comes the most exciting
part of the whole process for me.
| | 04:13 | Opening up the freshly exported video file,
is like Christmas morning all over again.
| | 04:18 | So let's go to our exercise files,
and let's see up at the top, we've got
| | 04:24 | turntable, let's double-click and play it.
| | 04:31 | Let's see, let's view it full-screen.
| | 04:37 | Now you've got something that you could
send to friends or relatives or post to
| | 04:40 | YouTube, or even if you're
brave enough, show a client.
| | 04:44 | If you're anything like me, you'll
obsess over every detail and see about 3000
| | 04:49 | things that you'll want to change. That's okay.
| | 04:51 | You can rework textures in ZBrush
and re-export maps to Photoshop;
| | 04:55 | you can adjust the pose and the lights
as much as you need to, in order to get
| | 04:59 | the results that you're after.
| | 05:01 | Photoshop is a great tool to use at
this stage of the process, you can adjust
| | 05:05 | colors and brightness almost instantly,
rather than waiting for renders every
| | 05:09 | time you want to tweak something.
| | 05:11 | It's also very convenient that it has
simple video capabilities built into it,
| | 05:15 | so that you don't have to use
other programs for this type of work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionWhat's next?| 00:00 | You have reached the end of the
Digital Creature Creation process in ZBrush,
| | 00:04 | Maya and Photoshop, but there are
so many great places to go from here.
| | 00:09 | lynda.com offers lots of great
courses to help you on to the next level.
| | 00:14 | You can learn more about animating
the Dewhopper with Character Animation
| | 00:17 | Fundamentals with Maya, or you can
learn how to put it into a game, with Game
| | 00:22 | Character Creation in Maya.
| | 00:24 | You could also create an environment for
the Dewhopper to live in, with Maya 2011:
| | 00:28 | Creating Natural Environments.
| | 00:29 | There are also lots of great
communities online where people are helping each
| | 00:33 | other with the finer points of
sculpting in ZBrush, such as zbrushcentral.com.
| | 00:38 | You can also learn more about
Autodesk products like Maya, by going
| | 00:42 | to area.Autodesk.com.
| | 00:44 | Thanks for watching this course.
| | 00:46 | I hope you gained some insights into
creature creation that will benefit you
| | 00:50 | for years to come.
| | Collapse this transcript |
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