This week I started working on a dragon model so I could work along with the exercises in the book I have for Zbrush. I worked on it off and on but not very consistently as I wanted to work along with the book and didn’t feel I had a long enough segment of time to really get into it.
I also started over once. My first attempt had a head shape that was more canine looking than I wanted. I wanted my dragon head to be more reptilian. I tried fixing it and it just wasn’t working so I started over and now I have something a little more crocodile like.
Once that was done it was time to learn to use the masking tool to extract or expand the throat. I was able to do this fairly easily. However, it appears I may not have done it quite right. The way I did it was correct, I did the mask and the invert and then adjusted the area that I had originally masked and was now available for editing. The problem really has to do with the result. It’s not very compatible with the next step, creating the neck.
Creating the neck involves learning about selecting polygons and creating poly-groups and edge loops. These are all really important tools and techniques to learn. The book gives good steps for doing all those things and the pictures help too. Yeah, it sounds and reads to be a lot easier than it was. I chalk this up to the shape I ended up creating when I did the throat step. I might have gotten a bit carried away in the extraction of it.
After fighting the polygons to get just the back of the head selected I was able to create the first edge loop. My next attempt went horribly wrong. Thank heaves for ctrl+z. Wow. Not sure why but my second edge loop got all distorted. So I figured out how to keep that from happening so I was able to get through that set of steps. Of course, as I’m doing this I’m hiding everything I’m not working on. When I finished creating my edge loops I unhid everything. This is where I figured out I hadn’t done something right. My poor dragon looked like it had a growth or something protruding from the back of it’s skull.
This is the point where my brain is tired and it’s time to take a break. I’ll probably step back to where I did the throat extract and pick things up from there. I think that may be easier than just “fixing” it.
I’m learning lots of good things that I know will make creating models so much easier and better. Whew. As with anything, it just takes time. And, it takes doing it wrong or making mistakes to really learn and understand what a tool can do and what to do to make that tool work best.
I’m not even half way through the tutorial so I’ve not doubt I will have more mistakes to make. It should be interesting.