Good ZModeler Tutorials?
interpolator
I've recently decided to start actually giving ZModeler in ZBrush a chance, and it seems to have way more potential than I ever gave it credit for. It seems like it could actually be very fast and powerful when used properly, but the workflow is very alien from traditional polymodeling.
Grasping what the tools functionally do is one thing, but the approach needed for it is something else entirely, with everything made to be extremely quick and freeform, without a lot of exact control.
I was hoping to find some good videos on how to make effective use of it, but it's been difficult. I've found some decent ones here and there, like Michael Pavlovich's stuff. But the majority of it falls into one of a few categories;
1) The person isn't accustomed to the workflow, and everything goes laughably slow and turns out blocky.
2) It turns out to just be a dry video-manual overview of the tool's functions.
3) The audio is terrible and I either can't understand what is being said even with maxed volume, or keep nodding off from the low, monotonous tones. Alternatively, many are just timelapses with no audio whatsoever.
I'm hoping someone could point me to some good tutorials on using it. Ones focused on the process of actually creating things.
Grasping what the tools functionally do is one thing, but the approach needed for it is something else entirely, with everything made to be extremely quick and freeform, without a lot of exact control.
I was hoping to find some good videos on how to make effective use of it, but it's been difficult. I've found some decent ones here and there, like Michael Pavlovich's stuff. But the majority of it falls into one of a few categories;
1) The person isn't accustomed to the workflow, and everything goes laughably slow and turns out blocky.
2) It turns out to just be a dry video-manual overview of the tool's functions.
3) The audio is terrible and I either can't understand what is being said even with maxed volume, or keep nodding off from the low, monotonous tones. Alternatively, many are just timelapses with no audio whatsoever.
I'm hoping someone could point me to some good tutorials on using it. Ones focused on the process of actually creating things.
Replies
Either way, I'd love to either move completely into Zbrush for all modeling, or phase Zbrush out and move into Mudbox. Unfortunately, Zbrush has a few tools that are so good, it still makes the most sense to me to keep with autodesk and zbrush together.
Sorry no answer for the topic question.
Depending on what you're trying to do with those cuts, you would probably use booleans instead to either carve out the geometry, or paste it on.
The Ctrl+Shift slices work as well.
I'd almost never try to use it to get clean lowpoly geometry, but instead to create the base for a highpoly which would get retopologized later.
At first it might seem inefficient to create something you'll have to retopologize when you could have otherwise avoided it, but that's part of how I originally underestimated it.
The sheer speed of the tools themselves and the ability to mostly ignore topology, combined with how easily something like Maya can do retopo anyway, seems to have a pretty impressive result.
Normally there'd be a lot of points where you pause and consider how to model out a particular shape, but in ZBrush you just say "^#$! it" and throw a boolean at it.
I've also grown accustomed to matching things up perfectly in other tools. Possibly too much. But in ZBrush you pretty much just eyeball it, which has turned out okay so far; if it looks fine, that's all that actually matters. Even if a surface isn't perfectly level, or a couple pieces aren't perfectly symmetrical, if you don't see it then someone randomly glancing certainly won't.
Only caveat is that it goes directly from point to point, so you cant make a split partway down an edge with it. You'll have to use Edge > Split to do that.
But since one is a point tool and the other is an edge tool, you can have them both active simultaneously.