A rookie asking for help.

BundleJumper

Hey everyone.

I just recently began learning how to use Zbrush and made my first character in the program. I thought it turned out okay but mostly because I had a lot of images on the backdrop that i modeled after.

I was wondering if anyone has any good small exercises that would help me improve my sculpting. I work in the program each day and just mess around, but it sadly doesn't feel like i am actually progressing anywhere.

So if anyone has a good tip or beginners tutorial or exercise then that would be much appreciated.

-BundleJumper

2cat

Hey, I had the same issue as you. Or really, I still have.

One good thing is to post art in the 3D Showcase & Critiques forum.

One thing I do is I try to set challenges for myself that I feel are important to improving. Something you always see with people who start sculpting is everything is lumpy. Of course I had that problem as well and one of my goals was to make clean looking sculpts. I'm not there yet by any means but I do feel I have a good control over my sculpts in that regard. Now I feel my medium and small detail is lacking so I will have to work on that as well in future projects.

I personally only followed one ZBrush tutorial, by Shane Olson. I felt he really explained why tools work the way they do. There's a Gumroad tutorial thread in this forum by Jeff Parrot that has a ton of tutorials, here's Shane Olsons on Gumroad

And the other thing is just work work work. Log hours. Which reminds me to do this more as well. I'm just a newbie myself, hopefully real pros can shed a better light on this.

Good luck!

DavidCruz

Hello bundle Jumper.

I should have did this but you don't have to make my beginner learning mistakes.

Now if I was learning for the first time I would make small achievement goals, so say you want to mimic a texture such as metal or leather or anything along these lines.

Make a small project even a simple plane panel or anything like this can help you understand how materials look and feel.

I think you can learn a lot from these small goals, once you get a better understand of what goes into characters and not just the organics but the tools they use the clothing or armor they wear will go along way in the future creations for your characters.

That is what I would have done if you wanted small projects to build a foundation of knowledge as quickly as you can.

Best of luck and kind to think of it I have to set some time aside to do exactly what I would have you do.

Win,win good luck.

Moltar

There are fantastic tutorials for Zbrush on Digital tutors (the angry worm is a great example) that will help, some of their tutorials extend to substance painter also.

Although, don't get locked into endless tutorials without putting your new skills to use. After each tutorial take what you have learnt and apply it too your own work. This builds a good habit and exercises your creative abilities. Anything you find difficult, say, your model detailing is too simplistic - try looking at real life images of the detail you wish to achieve, then do your best to recreate. Practice and practice and you will get there.

What you put in, you always get out.

PyrZern

Check our very own monthly character challenge. The scope is pretty big for a rookie, but you will learn some good amount from it. And there are others you can just kind of follow along too if you choose to.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=153556