Wow. It’s October already. It certainly doesn’t feel like what I still expect October to feel like. Though to be honest, I’m not sure October has felt that way for several years. Maybe it’s time to expect October to feel like early September? Of course, it doesn’t really matter if it feels like October out or not, the calendar says it is almost Halloween.
Since I am now into the last few weeks before Halloween, I think I may want to shift gears and get back to finishing up that Halloween Card. No, I didn’t do it this week so no new photos of it yet. This weekend was the 3rd Annual ZBrush Summit from Pixologic so I spent most of my weekend, from Friday afternoon to late Sunday night, in front of my computer watching some really great presentations and getting lots of tips, tricks and interesting information.
As noted, by the 3rd Annual part, this is the third year for the ZBrush Summit. I’ve attended in some fashion every year. Last year I went in person and this year, like the first year, I watched from home. It’s a lot of fun to actually be there. The other people in attendance are, so many of them, as talented as the people presenting. While I got a lot out of last year’s experience being there, I think to get the most out of it you need to get involved with the community and get known, at least a bit, that way, and then go. The ZBrush community is something else. Helpful, encouraging, talented, diverse. And that’s what I know just from the summits. I admit, I’ve been a bit intimidated by some of the talent in the ZBrush community. Some of the posts on Facebook as well as on ZBrush Central just blow me away. This year, though, I am going to try to get up the nerve to post a sculpt on either ZBrush Central or Facebook and see how it goes.
As far as the cool news from this year’s summit. They are releasing ZBrush Core. It comes out October 14th. It will be considerably less expensive than the full version, though not pocket change. It does have a lot of the really cool stuff that the full ZBrush has but they have tried to trim it down a bit and make it less confusing. They are also changing the transform line tool to a regular transform gizmo. The gizmo got the biggest applause when it was announced. The presenters, Paul and Joseph, acted a little surprised at this. I don’t know why. It’s one of the most basic tools you need and yet for me it’s been one of the most difficult to figure out. I can use it now but I am not a wizard at it for sure. So the transform gizmo is exciting news. The other exciting news is that they are working on ZBrush 5. It’s not near ready yet though. So they will be releasing ZBrush 4R8 to give us
some of the tools that are in the Core now. And 4R8 will be a free upgrade for those with ZBrush 4R7 already. That’s cool! Ah, a proper transform gizmo. That will be so nice.
The second day of the summit, Saturday, had a nice blip in it. Apparently a large portion of Los Angeles lost power. Yes, including where the summit was being held. That caused an interruption in the LiveStream for about an hour. They did make it back to finish out the program Saturday they just cut the after presentation interviews out. I confess, I didn’t stay tuned for the entire rest of Saturday. I was back again at it on Sunday though.
Some of the people that were presenting were from Naughty Dog Studios, Square Enix, Anatomy Tools, Blizzard Entertainment, Bethesda Game Studios, Disney Animation, Laika Entertainment, Oculus and several others. Everyone had a great presentation and offered so much information and tips and tricks and how they do things and things to keep in mind. My brain was full after the second presentation Friday night. And yes. I learned stuff. Stuff that will be helpful in both my computer art as well as my traditional art. And as I have every year so far, at the end of it I can only think, “I have so much work to do.” That’s not just the work for projects already on the board. That’s practice, and learning, and studying. The summit’s over. I guess it’s time to dig in and get back to work.
In addition to spending the weekend watching the summit, I did get a bit of art done this week. I’m a little surprised myself. I’m mostly surprised at how far I’ve gotten on the Ovation Guitar painting. I had started the second layer of color, the flame red. And
I’ve managed to make pretty good progress with it. I’m nearly done with that layer and after that I think I’ll work on a few of the holes and maybe the strings next. I need to do the binding but as I’ll need to mix the color for that and there is a lot more of it to do than say the strings, which I’ll also need to mix the color for, I’ll probably hold off on the binding until a weekend.
I did a little sketching while watching part of the summit this weekend. I haven’t done that in a while and decided that I might do well to doodle while I was watching and listening to some of the presenters. So that’s what I did. I have no idea who this person is. He does look like someone though.
I even managed to get myself into ZBrush and play a bit. I worked on the worm some. I did a little more refining and gave him eyes. I’m going to have to redo him though. Some how as I was building him I got everything really turned around and off center and so I wasn’t able to use symmetry, though now I think I might have been able to fix that. I might need to ask the summit guys. Hmm… Anyway. As a result of being off center and not being able to use symmetry, he’s a little lopsided. But if you only look at one side at a time and not straight on or in a 3/4 view, he looks pretty cute. I did spend a bit of time trying to get UV’s for him both in ZBrush and 3DS Max. That took a long time but I finally got something and it was going well and then I crashed 3DS Max. I tried to go back in and apply my file back but, yeah, that didn’t work. It was a mess.
And finally. That guy from the sketch kind of stuck in my brain. Probably because of how I started him on the paper. I used a couple of strong base shapes to start from, not the typical oval shape. I’ve been watching some of the sketches that Danny Williams
(PointPusher) posts and that’s a little like how he starts so I though I’d try it. It turns out that it can help to start out that way in ZBrush as well. Though to be fair, in ZBrush I did still start out with a sphere. Then I masked off part of it so that it wouldn’t be impacted when I took the move tool and pulled out a big part of the bottom section of the sphere. This gave me the chin and jowls. I made use of the masking technique a few more times to make adjustments to areas and not impact the areas around them. It’s a pretty cool trick. It’s also great for things like eye sockets and nasal passages. Mask off the hole, invert the mask and then pushed the now unmasked area back up into the head. For this guy I used a lot of the move tool as well as the clay build up brush, and of course the smooth brush, I also used a brush called Damian Standard and the inflate brush. I think this might be
my best sculpt so far.
And that’s if for this week. I’m not quite sure what I’ll be getting up to for the next week. It is October. I really need to get back to the Halloween card. And I’m on a bit of a roll with the Ovation so I’m thinking they will probably be in there somewhere.