This week was all on the computer. I can’t say that I planned it that way, it’s really just how it turned out. Though, I did start the week out with the intentions of making more focused effort in learning ZBrush and finishing up the Halloween card. And I think I succeeded. I got a little more done on the Halloween Card and I spent some time experimenting in ZBrush and trying some new stuff.
As part of my more focused effort at learning ZBrush I decided to start on the tutorials at ZClassroom. That’s the tutorial site for ZBrush on the Pixologic website. I figured that I might need a refresher in the very basics so I started with the getting started set. It turned out to be kind of a good idea. While I was watching one, the demonstration that was really just for strokes or something like that, showed me a way that might making eyelids easier. So I thought I would have to try that. Then there was something about ZSpheres which made me think about something else that I want to try for the Worm Guy. Which lead me to find the book I have and see if there are steps in it for doing what I want to do. And this is sort of how my brain works. One thing leads to something else and then on to something else. And then some time to simmer before doing something with it.
While the ZBrush stuff was simmering, I decided to tackle the stool for the Halloween
Card scene. It’s really just a few cylinders with some refinement. For the seat, I added a couple of edge loops and then made the profile a bit more rounded which was done using the scale tool. The legs got the same treatment for the bottom part. For the part that connects with the seat, I added edge loops as well but I scaled the end down some so that it looks like it’s fitting into a hole in the bottom side of the seat but the hole is just a little smaller than the full leg size.
Once I got the stool done I figured that it wasn’t too late, or maybe I read the clock wrong. Either way, I decided to see about importing the jack’o lantern into the scene. It worked out pretty good. The only really issue was that the jack’o lantern was so bit that it engulfed the house, and then some. So I did a lot of scaling down to get it to fit on the stool on the porch.
With the jack’o lantern in place, I started thinking about the materials. I’d been thinking about what I could use for the candy wrappers, so I started with those. I wanted to see how they were going to look. Before I knew it, I had 5 different color wrappers and all the candies with a material applied to them. From there I just kept at it. I do still have one more thing to model for the scene and once that is done I’ll finish up materials, add lights, and then a camera. I think for this one I’m going to use a camera view for the final render. Until then, here are a few renders of the scene as I was working on it. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, I did stay up a bit too late working on it. Where does the time go?
I originally had plans for Friday night but they got changed so after my haircut on Friday I found myself with a free evening. I considered all the things I might do and decided that I’d spend some time playing in ZBrush. I wanted to try the idea with the eyelids to see how that might work. After a couple of restarts or re-initializing of ZBrush I started getting into this character. I mostly use the clay build up, the standard, the move, the Damian standard, and the smooth brushes. I tried to keep the polycount low as long as I could. I also tried working with the perspective off. There have been a couple of things I’ve come across where they specifically talk about turning that off. So I did the modeling with it off. Then I exported an image of it first with no perspective and then with perspective turned on. As you can see it does make for a very different image. I also remember one of the speakers at the summit this year talking about adjusting the camera so that you can set the depth at something closer to the human eye. I may try that next.
Saturday mornings I normally do chores before I go to Taekwondo but since I knew what I was going to do after class was going to make a big mess, I didn’t see a point in doing those chores before. Instead, I decided to play in ZBrush again. I was going to try using the clipping brushes and see if that would make it easier to model the robot that I sketched and now have as my wallpaper on my phone. Of course a robot, at least the one I sketched, would require hard surface modeling techniques as opposed to organic modeling techniques. Which is a challenge for me in ZBrush. The clipping brush took a couple of tries to figure out and I was able to finally make it do roughly what I wanted it to. I got to spend a bit more time with the transpose tool. At one point, after I’d done some modeling and had some detail added, I started to rotate the object again, just a little because it wasn’t sitting quite even, I forgot that I still had symmetry turned on and so when I went to rotate the whole object one way, what happened was that I ended up rotating the two halves sort of into each other. When I did that it added some personality to the sculpt and I turned it into a gremlin type creature. That was a nice ‘happy accident’. With this sculpt, when I exported out the image, I was still testing the perspective thing and I decided to try the BPR (best possible render) thing and export that out. So the first image is no perspective and a straight on view. The second is with perspective on, a view at a slight angle and it’s a BPR image. I think it’s kind of cute. I might even make a body for it.
See, all digital this week. Not sure what the next week will be. I have several more tutorials that I want to watch and I still want to try that thing with the ZSpheres for the Worm Guy. And I want to get the Halloween Card finished. I’m getting closer. And yes, I have both paintings that I want to work on. There just aren’t enough hours in my days for me to work on everything I want to, everyday.
