Chris Bostjanick's Demon Head
From ZBrush Info
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Maya to ZBrush
I'm going to begin with working between Maya® and ZBrush, and my preferred mesh topology for importing into ZBrush.
First, when creating the base in Maya, I like to keep face spins, extrudes, and geometry twisting to a minimum. I keep the base geometry lightweight usually between 100 and 3,000 polygons (all quads), just enough to complete the base form. I also lay out all of my UVs when creating the base model.
To go between ZBrush and Maya, I simply move .obj files back and forth. In Maya, use the File>>Export Selection menu entry to choose to export as an OBJ file, and in ZBrush, use the Tool:Import button to import the OBJ files. If you have multiple models, you'll need to do each individually.
SubTools
When I model a complex object, I like to work on it as if it were composed of different parts. ZBrush's new Subtools feature is ideal for this. Once you've imported all of the different meshes making up your model, you can combine any or all of them into a single tool using Tool:SubTools:Append. You can still hide or show the individual parts of the model.
Once all of the separate meshes have been assembled as subtools of the full tool, you can display any combination of them:
Depending on how your meshes were created, they may not line up the way you want them to. I move the OBJs back into Maya to fix this. This needs to be done with a bit of care, as by default, Maya changes the OBJ vertex order when it imports, which will mess up things when you move the OBJ back to ZBrush (for, for that matter, various other programs). Fix this using Maya's File Type Specific Options, as shown here.
Subtools were a big help in another way. I was really struggling for a while to decide what the hair should look like as a 3d form. Subtools let me explore several different options in parallel before making a final choice. Once I did the final, I could either just delete the unused hair subtools, or turn them off in case I did want to go back to them later on.
Mesh Extraction
Now I want to add some additional submeshes to the ones that we already have. For what I want to do, mesh extraction is perfect. I just mask out the area I want to extract (see Masking) and press the Tool:SubTool:Extract button, with edge smooth, surface smooth, and thickness set to 1, 1, and 0 respectively.
I then exported the new subtools into Maya, where I converted tris to quads and did some more low-level mesh editing to make for more interesting skin, and then once again back to ZBrush.
Sculpting
There are so many great new ways to sculpt in ZBrush, too many for me talk about them all. So I'm just going to go over a few I used the most.
First, I used the Flatten brush (see the Brush Palette) to smooth and give roughly flat surfaces on the teeth (mostly).
One of the most powerful new tools I've ever used is the new Lazy Mouse. It's just amazing, and everyone can easily take advantage of this new tool to sculpt, paint, and do other tasks with great precision. When you activate Stroke:Lazy Mouse, the brush point is dragged behind the mouse cursor, which means that big changes of direction in the mouse turn into small changes of direction of the brush.
It's really easy to use this and you'll get it right away, but hard to describe. I used to couple of the lazy mouse modifiers (again, see the Lazy Mouse reference), and here's a quick picture of the effect.
Notice how nice and smooth those serpentine strokes are! LazyStep gives me the dotted line effects, but of course, you can use the lazy mouse with other strokes, brushes, and alphas for many more effects.
I used the lazy mouse for a lot of the detailing on the facial muscles. Isn't it nice to see how the smoothness of those muscle fibers makes them look stretched and taut?
Layers
Layers are another feature I found to be extremely handy. They let me separate out different types of detailing, turn them off and on, dial in how strongly they were applied, and in general allowed me to do a lot of experimentation without irrevocably committing to any one choice.
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Layers are so easy to work with that it's not even necessary to explain them here, but I'll mention two things:
- I found it was best to keep layers for detailing mostly on high subd levels. They're really at their best when you don't make overlarge changes between a layer and the base mesh.
- Don't forget to name your layers!
Now alphas work in full 3D! I used this to add cracks and other surface details very quickly. In this case I used some 2k grunge maps. This is a great place to use layers. Also, I found that I really liked using alphas with the DragDot and Spray strokes.
Once I had some cracks I liked, I used the new Cavity Masking feature, another great new feature that lets ZBrush automatically mask small surface details. I just turned on Tool:Masking:Mask By Cavity, and then could paint more depth into the cracks without affecting the surrounding surface.
Cavity masking has just a few simple settings, and you'll easily figure them out by playing around for a few minutes.
And here's the final result!
