Z-Brush and Environmental Art

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Hey, I was just looking at the Ritual job posting for environmental artists, and it lists Z-Brush as one of the technical skills required. Thus far I've only seen character stuff done with Z-Brush, so I was wondering what kind of environmental stuff it'd be used for.

A silly question maybe, but I'm currently in the Game Art and Design at one of the AI schools, hoping to be an environmental artist, and Z-Brush is not taught, so I'm wondering if I should be devoting more time to learning it, or if I should spend the time getting an early start on my demo reel (Which was my original plan).

Thanks.

Justin Meisse · Apr 2006

hmm, that seems a bit odd, you could use it to make normal maps but it seems a bit overkill to me. I might do some experiments with it this weekend.

once you get over the weird interface it isn't too hard to learn, took me about a day with the gnomon training dvd.

Snowfly · Apr 2006

The guys at Reflexive use Zbrush on everything that "can benefit from a little zbrushing".

http://pixologic.com/zbrush/interviews/mcateer_interview.html

but it all comes down to just that.. whether the object benefits from zbrush or not. if you can throw a junk car into a game as a prop as is, then that's that. but if you can paint dents, scratches, and model deformations in the frame a little better with zbrush, then use it...

JordanW · Apr 2006

I do environment art at work and almost every highpoly model gets some touching up in zbrush. Even though it's hard surfaces everything can benifet from a 'little' organic detail. It's great for scratches, cracks, dents, etc etc.

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Hmm, I suppose that makes sense. I had figured that kind of stuff would've been easier to do without zbrush, but I suppose Ive never used it. I suppose I have some learning to do.

Which gnomon videos did you use Justin? I might have to get them.

Anyways, thanks for the help guys. Hadn't realized it was already being used so much, esspecially in environmental art.

And Tinman (and anyone else who does environmental stuff), any tips in general? Sorry to be a bother, but I figure I'll ask now so I can get a jump on things.

Thanks again.

EarthQuake · Apr 2006

It depends on your pipeline, if its hard to import very dense meshes into the 3d app of your choice its sometimes better to just paint that stuff in a bump map, but imo its generally quicker to do it in zbrush and you get better results. Not to mention you're paining in 3d and never have to worry about lining up things over uv seams. You should DEFINATELY learn zbrush regardless of what type of work you want to end up doing.

Mongrelman · Apr 2006

The castle ruins thing in Underworld Evolution were done in Zbrush.

Luma were interviewed by Pixologic

http://pixologic.com/zbrush/interviews/luma_interview.html

I'd imagine it could be something similar for games, just using normal maps instead.

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Oh wow, thanks for the link to that interview Lupus. That'd deffinatly be a good example of how it coule be use I suppose.

But holy shit... 4TB of memory used for that 2 minutes of footage?!

And thanks for the info Earthquake. I hadn't realized that it was such a nessesity yet. I think I'm going to talk to my Academic Director at my school about Zbrush as well if it is this big now.

Anyways, thanks again. I'm off to educate myself some more hopefully.

Justin Meisse · Apr 2006

{url=http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/mme01.html]Here's[/url] the DVD I got, there's probably free videos on the net that are just as good nowadays

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Alright, thanks Justin. I've been trying to look around on the net some, haven't found many tutorials yet, mainly cause I keep getting distracted by articals or forum threads.

Which brings up another question, I was reading about some other programs such as mudbox and clayshape and a few others, whcih sound similar to Zbrush. Some people were discussing the possibilities of some of these taking over from zbrush in the not-so-far future. I'm guessing this would be an inevitability, but I was wondering how transferable the skills I'll hopefully learn in zbrush would likely be to other programs like these if I need to make a switch? I know it's probably hard to gauge, but I was just kind of curious to know because I keep hearing about Zbrush's "unique" interface.

(And because at one point I heard that using this mudbox thing(which I can't find much info on) compared to using Zbrush is like using Photoshop compared to MSPaint.)

Thanks for all the help everyone, sorry to be a bother.

Snowfly · Apr 2006

Zbrush's interface is unique, yeah, but you can avoid most of it and focus on just the 3D sculpting tools. Those are ridiculously easy, and only require a handful of commands/keyboard shortcuts.

The basic sculpting workflow is simple -> general to specific. There are some special brushes, but like in Photohsop you can get by on just basic hard round. But you can be clever and learn the extra brushes to add to your arsenal.

I'm not sure what the logic is, holding off learning Zbrush and waiting until Mudbox comes out. Sculpt clay

so your skills never go obsolote..

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Oh, that's very good to hear Snowfly, thanks. Haha, I kept on reading about how odd Zbrush's interface can be. Sounds like it shouldn't be too much of a problem for me. Which is good, cause playing around with the demo I can't even get the fartin thing to rotate my view or model. :P

Oh well, I've started looking for tutorials online.

Thanks again.

Snowfly · Apr 2006

The trick is to know that Z isn't a 3D app. The workspace is a canvas. YOu can't rotate it any more than you can spin a canvas in photoshop. And yes, the interface is still odd, but you will come to grips with it eventually

Once you've loaded your model as a tool, enter "Edit" mode and spin it by dragging on the empty spaces around the mesh. Hold down shift to constrain it to 90 deg orthographic angles. Once you leave edit mode and click on the canvas, the mesh is no longer "live" and can't be sculpted. Just hit undo and place the tool on the canvas again, enter edit mode, and continue.

Mongrelman · Apr 2006

Register for free at www.3Dbuzz.com and you can get some free videos here http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_dl_tr.php

But it's as Snowfly said, once you understand the very basics you can do loads with just that. In the 'classroom' area of the pixologic site you can see lots of little tricks and things you can do in zbrush. Seems that just when you think you know what the program can do, someone comes out and shows something else that you never would have though of.

Kevin Albers · Apr 2006

There are all sorts of things you can do with zbrush as an environment artist. As others have mentioned, it's great for adding some scratches, dings etc to objects. I've used it for making terrain, ranging from huge mountains to craggy boulders. Recently I've been using it to make a bunch of bas relief carvings in an environment that has a lot of ornate details.

It's certainly a great tool to have familiarity with, for pretty much any game art position.

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Ahh, alright, thanks snowfly. That makes sense. And thanks for the link lupus. One thing though, the video's they have on 3dbuzz are for Zbrush 1.5, and the interface looks very different (I've heard there was quite a change between 1.5 and 2.0 as well). Will it make a different for me? If not I'll be watching the video's tomorrow, but if it does I might need to look elsewhere. And I hadn't even thought of things like carvings and stuff, I suppose there is a lot more to do with it than I'd thought.

Thanks again guys, you've been awesome!

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

So that I don't have to start a new thread for such a small problem, I'll ask this in here.

I've been testing out normal map stuff, just tried Cholden's shotgun shell bullet tutorial. For some reason my normal map doesn't seem to get all the information from the high poly version.

Here's some pictures to better explain and hopefully help with an answer

Normal Map

The first is the high rest UV's, the second the low res.

Thanks.

[edit]I found the problem with the wierd shading at the top of the bullet, had to update that colour map, idiotic mistake. However I do still have a question about it. It only generates anything on the normal map if I have the edge loop at the bottom of the indent on the top of the shell set to soft. Is there a reason it won't work with hard edges?[/edit]

Snowfly · Apr 2006

it's a bit cumbersome to explain, but easy to grasp. that's a case of normals not being captured on account of being completely perpendicular with the low poly surface. it works with the edges smoothed because the normal is averaged and not at a complete 90 degrees to the low poly.

poop explains this well in his tutorial:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm

on a side note, you might want to model the actual curved surfaces of the high poly bullet to generate a much more interesting normal map.

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Hmm... alright, that stuff makes some sense. I'll have to read poop's tutorial, his still is generally awesome.

And yea, that's probably true. I was just following Cholden's tutorial, it was very basic, so it was good to get me started.

Thanks a bunch man.

StrangeFate · Apr 2006

Personally, i think the use of Zbrush in enviromental art is rather limited.
Take the castle scene posted, if it was for a game, you'd end up with 2-3 tiling textures for the whole thing, Zbrush there wouldn't really help you.

As far as scratches etc go, i do everything right now with the modo 201 beta, painting the bumpmap directly in realtime which perfectly replaces any use ZBRush ever had in environmental art. Plus, it's 10 times faster as you dont have to deal with any crazy mesh import/export or baking.

I really hope there will be more alternatives (like modo) to Zbrush in the future, because ZBrush seems quite wastefull for the simple yet often time consuming things you need done in environments (scratches, modeling entire stone/bricks walls etc).

Sa74n · Apr 2006

is the modo201 beta a public beta or only for licensees or special companies? i'd like to take a closer look at it.

StrangeFate · Apr 2006

it's not public i'm afraid, they're just ironing out bugs. Shouldn't take long till release i hope.

They have a free 30 day trial version for modo 103 and i'm sure they'll have the same for modo 201

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

What exactly is different about Modo compared to other programs? Sorry, I'm not familiar with it.

Sage · Apr 2006

http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=112097&Main=109701

Here check it out, it looks very promising it kind of reminds me of when Vue D' Esprit came out and Bryce was the best thing around to make enviornments in the low buget market. Well Bryce interface is crappy to say the least hence why I hardly ever used it and never upgraded past version 4. Zbrush is nice but it should be sooo much better. We'll see if Modo does the same to Zbrush.

Tulkamir · Apr 2006

Hmmm... looks like a cool program, though I'm not sure that I saw it doing anything Maya/zbrush don't? I dont know some of this stuff that well though, so what was the major selling point on it?

Also, it looked to me like the idea is to use it with Zbrush, not fully replace it?

Sage · Apr 2006

The selling point in Zbrush to 3D artist is that, look how easy you can model, and oh and you can paint in real time by the way. Look how easy it is to do all this stuff. Modo selling point is you can model everything like you would in Max or Maya and by the way you make all your texture work in it as well in an interface that you are used to and in real time. Zbrush has some issues in how it's 3d modeling is implemented it seems like it is sort of an after thought. In Modo modeling and texturing seemed to be geared toward the precise needs of a 3D artist. Time will tell.

Alex

Z-Brush and Environmental Art

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