Concepting in Zbrush
Hi all, I recently started using Zbrush and have taken quite a liking to it. I have started to do some concepting, and research into the best methods for creating concepts using both Zbrush and Photoshop. I believe that the best tools to start with are ShadowBox, Dynamesh or Zspheres depending on the subject. I will then use polypainting and basic posing to rough out what it will look like, then render out various images using different materials and composite them in photoshop. I will then touch up the images and paint in light ect.
I started by doing a character and an asset to set a baseline for further concepts. I began with the rock and spent around 40 mins in zbrush and an hour in photoshop. I then did a character, some sort of spirit, which took around one and a half hours in zbrush and two hours photoshop (i got a bit carried away
). I will post the prosses shortly.
I started by doing a character and an asset to set a baseline for further concepts. I began with the rock and spent around 40 mins in zbrush and an hour in photoshop. I then did a character, some sort of spirit, which took around one and a half hours in zbrush and two hours photoshop (i got a bit carried away
). I will post the prosses shortly.
Replies
I began with a cube, sub divided it a few times and turned on dynamesh.
After a while it started to look like a rock
I did some basic poly painting and rendered out various images
Composited them in photoshop and did some basic paint overs
Began with a sphere, and used dynamesh agian
Created the basic shape
Added detail and some poly paint
And finaly spent a little to long in photoshop :P
Like, I get how Zbrush could be used to concept, but I don't think it's fast enough when you need to pump out several very vastly different ideas instead of just several versions of a helmet.
I'd say if you're purely looking to do concept art, just keep working in 2D until it's absolutely necessary to use ZBrush.
This is actually an personal research assignment that I am doing at collage, after your last post I modified my brief slightly and had to get the OK from my teacher. This isn't purely about concepting, its about creating a final concept piece for marketing that will resemble the final product, without having to use reference for sculpting.
I am new to zbrush, so I thought that I would keep it simple, however I do plan to create some more advanced concepts as I improve as this assignment is mainly about improving my skills in zbrush and photoshop.
I was told to post up my brief, so here is the brief version
"I plan to improve my skills in concepting Using Zbrush and Photoshop by creating a number of character and asset designs and highlighting a range of tools that improve speed and quality in zbrush, such as ShadowBox, Dynamesh, Zspheres, polypainting and basic posing.
For all concepts I plan to already have approval, doing some basic sketches and thumbnails, then use zbrush to create a basic sculpt, before using photoshop to create a final concept piece for marketing that will resemble the final product and reference will not be required for sculpting.
I will start in zbrush using ShadowBox, Dynamesh or Zspheres to create a base mesh, sculpt in major features and basic detail. I will then use polypainting to define different materials and render out various Materials(zbrush shaders), essentially getting various render layers, to then be composited and touched up in photoshop.
I will provide written documentation on each tool I found the most useful, as well as a video of me using the tools to create a final concept and images of other final concepts that i created using the same pipeline."
Your character seems a little bumpy. Did you work in low poly resolution first?
So for example with the last one, if you wanted to make some tribal genie guy, I would look for genie images, general anatomy images for his body, possibly some interesting effects to render out for glowy bits, and various tribal masks and stuff like that. Mix and match put it all together and discover your own forms and unique concept.
Good luck!
I created a portal inspired mech head, after building up an idea and looking at some reference, I used Dynamesh to get the basic shape, then the masking tool and hard polish to smooth it out and apply poly-paint. i then used Photoshop to composite the image and apply basic layer-styles. I believe that shadowbox would be very useful to begin a hard surface object, but i am still learning zbrush and will test this out on future projects.
I believe that the power of 3D concepting comes from being able to see the idea from all angles. In future i will be concentrating on producing 4+ angles for each sculpt, minimizing time in Photoshop, using it more as a composting program, looking into writing Photoshop actions to speed up workflow.
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Render layers
Knock out more than one sculpt per idea. The name of the game is ideation which requires some breadth of volume.
I won't beleaguer you about using ZBursh to do concept work since it seems this is all tied with an indepedently guided cirriculum you've tied in with your uni class.
My plan is to set up zbrush macros to change materials, render and save out images. Then set up a photoshop droplet to import and composite all the render passes. Once i have set these up i plan to use my wacom tablet to create a master macro that will jump between programs, render and composite all at the touch of a button.
This should make 3D concepting much quicker and more feasible. Once i have refined this process i will post up the results
I was trying to improve the speed that i could produce work as this is the major limitation i have been facing. However zbrush seems to have a problem where you can not make a hotkey for saving out a rendered image, which has ruined my plan.
I agree that zbrush is not a concepting tool, nor is 3D concepting feasible at present. What i am looking into is what 3D concepting is good for, as it is likely that new programs will emerge that will be better for 3D concepting.
As you can see they are fairly similar, I would have liked to modify the bodies more but chose not to because of time constraints.
This isn't really a surprise, as it isn't what zbrush is designed for, however it did help me develop my skills in zbrush which was one of the reasons for choosing to research this topic.
3D concepting is good for getting a very strong concept, allowing an idea to be fully explored, however, Zbrush does not offer the correct tools for it to be a viable 3D concepting program,
A 3D concepting program need to be able to create highly polished content very quickly (possibly by limiting customisation), allow for rapid iteration of a single model, focusing on strong material definition, better painting tools, post rendering effects and good compositing tools.
A big thanks to everyone who gave me feedback and helped me one my way