Tutorial: Dragon Lizard

From ZBrush Info

by Lonnie Sargent

Contents 1 Low-Resolution Mesh 2 Creating Details 3 Finishing Work 3.1 Light Settings 3.2 Material Settings 3.3 Render Settings

Low-Resolution Mesh

This section of the multipart tutorial covers how to use ZBrush 2’s Edge Loops feature for modeling detailed meshes.

With the introduction of Edge Loops and many other exciting new features in ZBrush 2 we now have more flexibility than ever in our approach to building models. A common method in the 3D world for building models is called “Box Modeling.” A simple cube is taken and formed into a basic shape to which additional detail and form is added. This can be done in ZBrush 2 now as well, but ZBrush offers its own unique base modeling methods which greatly simplify the Box Modeling technique. In Part 1 of this tutorial we shall use ZBrush box modeling techniques to build and define a low-density mesh. Part 2 of the tutorial will explore refining and detailing the model using new techniques and features found in ZBrush 2 . Part 3 of the tutorial will cover texturing, painting, rendering and post work. The two alphas that are used in this tutorial are available in the Image:Lizard Files.zip file.

These tutorials are of an intermediate level. It is assumed you have a basic understanding of ZBrush and its features. If you have not done so, please go through the starting sections of this manual and the ZScripts that were included with ZBrush 2 in order to familiarize yourself with all the new features. Of immediate importance is that you understand and are comfortable with the new polygon selection capabilities presented in ZBrush 2.0.

During the course of the tutorial I work in a document size of 1280 x 960. At the end of each of the steps of the tutorial I highly advise you to save your tool. In the event something happens you can always load the last saved tool without fear of having to start the tutorial from the beginning again. Save your tool and save often!

Now without further ado let us begin our journey.

• Create a basic ZSphere object that looks similar to the one I have created.

You will notice as you create the object that the spheres are different from earlier versions of ZBrush. The spheres are two-toned and you will see triangular vectors within it. The dual colors allow easier manipulation of the spheres and indicate the orientation of the mesh (press A on the keyboard to preview the mesh). The triangular vector inside the spheres indicates the child/parent relationship of the currently selected sphere. The benefits of this feature become more evident when dealing with larger ZSphere objects containing hundreds of branching sphere chains.

• We will be using an Adaptive Skin for modeling so set the Density of the Adaptive Skin to 1 and skin it.
• Clear the document and draw the new skin out onto the document.
• Enter Polyframe mode.

We will be working in this mode through the rest of this chapter. It is possible that your base mesh may not look like the image on the right. If this is the case you may use the selection features in ZBrush 2 to isolate the mesh as shown in the six steps below to reassign polygroups. This is not entirely necessary in this tutorial, as it will not affect the final outcome of the model we are working on but for purposes of following the tutorial you may find it helpful to match your mesh to the mesh I have created in the image on above.

• You may find it necessary to tweak the model a bit by entering EDIT:MOVE and moving the vertices around. Make sure you are in X-Symmetry mode when doing this by pressing the X key on the keyboard.

You should see two red dots appear in symmetrical relation to one another on the model. Move the vertices around until you are satisfied.

• Subdivide the object once by pressing Divide located in the Tool:Geometry palette.

You should now have two subdivision levels. By subdividing we are generating additional polygons, which will help us to further define groupings and place additional edge loops as we model. Before we place the edge loops we must delete the lower subdivision level first.

• Go to TOOL:GEOMETRY and DEL LOWER.

It is located in the same palette as the Divide command. edge loops may only be created on the lowest subdivision level thus for our purposes this step is necessary. Now we will create the eyes.

• While holding the Shift key rotate the object on the workspace until it snaps into a full side view.
• Use CTRL+SHIFT DRAG to select the two rows of polygons depicted in the image below.

With the object at a full side position we will be able to select the polygons needed on both sides of the head at the same time. We need to further isolate the polygons we wish to work on. To do this we will use the constrained HIDE SELECTION feature.

• Rotate the rows of polygons while holding the SHIFT key so that they snap into a top view.
• Then press CTRL+SHIFT and begin dragging the selection box across the top polygons. Release both CTRL and SHIFT but continue to drag the selection box.

You will notice it will turn from green to red. This indicates that any selection made with the red selection mode enabled will remove polygons from the currently selected group. This is the opposite of the green selection mode which selects polygons. This is a handy feature but can be a bit tricky to get accustomed to at first.

You should now have two polygons on each side of the head selected.

• Create an Edge loop on the selected polys.

It will be necessary to move the vertices around so they conform more to the shape of the original polys.

• Enter EDIT:MOVE mode to do this.

Ultimately when the model is subdivided several times this “square” area will become rounded.

• Hide the outside edge loop of polygons by CTRL+SHIFT+LMB Clicking on them.
• Create another Edge loop and move the vertices once again. This time move the vertices inward to create depth.

This will become the basis of the eye socket later on. Once you have completed cutting in all the additional edge loops for the eyes and moving the vertices accordingly you should have something similar to the picture below.

It is important to cut in all the edge loops that we need at this stage. If you wait until after you have modeled in details to add edge loops you will be in for a nasty surprise. edge loops add geometry and if you add geometry after you have detailed your model you will find the change in mesh topology will destroy much of the detail you created. So it is a good habit to train oneself to think ahead and get those loops in early on during the initial model development.

Next we will select the jaw area and begin to add edge loops using the same method we used for the eyes.

• Select the polygons just below the eyes all the way through the first row just behind the eyes.
• Create an edge loop and move the vertices if need be.
• Hide the edge loop of polygons you just created.
• Clean up the vertices by moving them.
• Create another edge loop.
• Hide the outer edge loop once again and create another edge loop (not shown here).

Your model should now look similar to the image below.

Move vertices around a bit and make any final adjustments that beg for attention.

• Use the same procedure to create edge loops for the nostrils.

Next we shall create the top ridge of plates that run along the top of the head.

• Select the polygons that run along the top of the base of the nostrils all the way to the back edge of the neck as shown in the image at the right.
• Next you will create an Edge loop.

It should look similar to the image at the right.

• Make sure to move the vertices on the outer edge out closer to those edges.

Now we are ready to move on to making the actual ridges.

To create the ridge polygons on the back of the head we will use edge loops to extrude and make new polygons for us.

• To do this we first select the polygons that will become the tops of the ridges.

The front three polys will each become a separate ridge and the back two polys near the base of the neck will form the largest ridge.

• Select just the tops of the polys (see bottom of image) then enter EDIT:MOVE and move the vertices upward.
• Next click on the EDGE LOOP button.

New polygons will be created between the original position and the new position of the vertices. The blue edge loop in the image shows what this would look like when done correctly. The last step would be to move any vertices around that might need tweaking to get the final form. Following this same procedure we will create a set of horns for our dragon creature.

• Select the polygon that is about midway between the jaw and the base of the neck.

Make sure to select it on both sides of the head and be certain you are in symmetry mode.

• Create an Edge loop around these selected polygons.
• Then select the inside polygon and using EDIT:MOVE move the vertices out and away from the head.
• Create an Edge loop and you should have the first building block of your horn.

• Repeat the process and while you are moving the vertices about make sure to turn them ever so slightly as you proceed so the horn has a gradually twist toward the front of the face.

• Finish off by moving the vertices to give the horns final shape.

Creating the neck plate at the base of the neck involves the same Edge loop extrusion process.

• Select the last two rings of polys on the base of the neck.
• Using Edit:MOVE, move the vertices up and outward away from their original position.
• Use the Edge loop command to generate the additional polys. Then immediately follow it with another Edge loop command.

You should get results similar too the image on the right. We are after that small ring of polys on the inside edge so make certain you generate them with the Edge loop command.

• To finish off the neck plate, move the vertices to form a nice sweeping form. Flare it out near the top and tighten it up near the bottom of the neck.

Don’t be afraid to exaggerate the form a bit. However, be careful to keep the vertices in a neat and orderly fashion. If they become jumbled up now, then they will be all the more messy to work with once you have subdivided the mesh several times. It is much easier to set things correctly now than to fix them later.

The last step in creating our base mesh will be to determine areas that should have sharp edges. We will do this around the eye socket, the base of the horns, and the base of the neck plate.

• Simply select the yellow eye polygons, all the polygons that comprise the horns, and the blue and purple polygons that make up the neck plate.

• Next simply press the Crease button located in TOOL:GEOMETRY menu.

Small dotted lines will appear around the edges of your selected polygons. When subdivided, these edges will remain weighted or crisp and will not be smoothed. The CreaseLvl setting next to the Crease button tells ZBrush how long the crease will be propagated when subdividing. If left at the default value of three

then the crease will remain in effect through three subsequent subdivisions after which it will begin to smooth. Crease is a very powerful tool that can aid you in both organic and mechanical modeling. The final model should look similar to the image depicted below. If you feel confident enough about the tools I encourage you to experiment and make alterations. Experiment and have fun.

Creating Details

With the base modeling complete, the tutorial now moves to the subject of high resolution details.

In this second chapter we shall be focusing entirely on detailing our model using many of the new features to be found in ZBrush 2.0 . We will take a look at how alphas can be adjusted and put to good use, how to create custom alphas on the fly while modeling, and how to use Projection Master to advantage painting in details. So fire up ZBrush 2.0 and load the model you created from Chapter 1 of the tutorial if you haven’t already done so. Let’s have fun.

• The first step will be to Divide the mesh twice.

This should place the mesh at three subdivision levels.

During this “roughing out” phase I like to use several TRANSFORM:EDIT BRUSHES . These can be found in the Transform palette. My particular favorites at this stage of the modeling are Standard and Inflate . I switch back and forth on brush sizes large sizes to cover large areas and small sizes to do finer edge work. Generally a Zadd setting of around 8 to 12 will suffice. It is at this point where all the extra edge loops we created around the eyes and mouth will come in handy. With the added geometry in those areas we can inflate and add detail much easier without fear of stretching too few polys over a wide surface area. Should you run into a situation where an area has become overworked and looks a bit nasty then just use the Transform:Edit Smooth Brush and smooth out the polys. This edit feature is ideal for fixing mistakes, smoothing rough spots, or even flattening the surface of an area. You can also store a morph target and then use the Morph brush to revert to the stored geometry.

After you have worked over the model use Edit:Move to move large areas like the neck flab into a more natural-looking state.

You will want to take the opportunity to shape the eye at this point. Move the polygons around the eye area to create a round socket. You can clean up afterwards if need be with the Smooth Brush.

• The ridges on top of the head need to be a bit larger so CTRL+LMB CLICK to select them then perform an inverted selection by SHIFT+CTRL+LMB Dragging across the document area away from the model.

This in effect hides the area you selected first and reveals the areas that were hidden.

• CTRL+LMB CLICK anywhere within the document window but not on the model itself. This will mask the visible area.
• You can now reveal the entire model and as you can see the entire model save for the tops of the head ridges has been masked.

Set your brush size to a large size (around 50) and proceed to EDIT:MOVE the vertices until you get the shape and form you are after. The masking ensures that the rest of the model will remain unaffected when we use our large brush size to move the vertices of the head ridges.

• We need to tighten up a few lines so let’s use the Pinch Brush.
• Set ZAdd to 50 and set the brush size to about 8 or 10.
• Use it on the line between the lips and also near the base of the horns where the horn meets flesh.

This will tighten the lines and give a nice sharp form. I often use Pinch on eyelids, lips, teeth, and around the nostrils. It is also a very handy tool for making scars. Let’s add a little more detail around the mouth.

• First Divide the mesh two more times.

You should be at five subdivision levels now.

• Using the Standard Brush turn on Zsub with a setting around 10 and a small brush size and sub out the areas where the two teeth will be placed.
• Use the Smooth Brush to smooth out areas that get a little rough and continue.
• Next use Zadd with the Standard Brush and begin working in some basic teeth shapes.
• Use Inflate Brush and Pinch Brush to punch the details, especially around the edges of the teeth.

There is no need to overwork it at this point since we will be coming back to the teeth once we have subdivided again.

• Use the Inflate Brush to add in some detail around the snout area.
• Use Edit:Move to push some of the polys around to get a more pleasing shape.

I did that with the nose to get more of a slope on top. Now let’s add some bumpy bits to the model.

• Use both Standard Dot Brush and Inflate Dot Brush to place some bumps and warts around the face area.

I used the Standard Dot Brush with a high setting to create the little horns near the mouth opening. Now it is time to roll out the big guns and get Projection Master cranking.

• Divide the mesh two more times.

This should put it at seven subdivision levels. Be warned, at this level the mesh will most probably be around 1.5 million polygons. If your system has limited resources you may want to limit the subdivision to 6 levels instead of 7. Remember that you can speed up interaction with a high polygon mesh by going to a lower subdivision level before rotating it, hiding all but the area that you wish to work on, and then returning to your highest level.

• Rotate the model so it is in a side viewing position.
• Activate Projection Master.

• Turn off Colors and make sure Double Sided, Fade, Deformation, and Normalized are all marked. Click the Drop Now button.
• You are now ready to begin displacement painting.

I used Alpha Brush 03 with a Focal Shift setting of 70 in conjunction with the Simple Brush using DragRect stroke to lay in the rough areas on the skin.

• Use small values of Zsub and Zadd.

I generally use a setting of 1 or 2. When working in Projection Master at this point we are only concerned with creating surface detail so we will be working with Zadd and Zsub exclusively. You should not at this time have any other Drawing features enabled such as RGB or Material . The scale texture on the bottom of the neck was created using a custom Alpha that I created on another layer while working on the model. The Resources\Sargent folder contains the two alphas that were used.

• I used the Single Layer brush with ZAdd and DragRect stroke to lay in the scales.

• Once we are done with this level of detailing, activate Projection Master again and click on the Pickup Now button.

The detailing we painted will be picked up and the displacement will be calculated and applied to the mesh.

You may notice the detail is a little less defined and not as sharp as it was when we were painting it on. The crispness of the detail is completely dependent on the mesh density of the model you are applying it to. To retain high levels of fine detail it will be necessary to create models with polygon counts in excess of one million polygons. If your computer has the resources you can go significantly higher. If you are having difficulty working on the entire model in this manner you can select portions of it and hide the remaining mesh. Projection Master can be used on selections just as easily as the whole model. Working on small select areas will help to optimize computer performance and make it easier to manipulate large polygon meshes.

• Now, using Projection Master and various alphas, continue to paint in details.

I specifically like to use Alphas 7 and 8 with Focal Shift set to around 90 or 95. These alphas in conjunction with the SimpleBrush and SingleLayer Brush make good work of laying in lines and creases.

• Use a Zadd or Zsub setting of 1 or 2 and set the stroke to Freehand with Zero spacing.
• You can also at this stage accent certain areas of detail by adding to them.

For example the scales on the neck of our dragon creature could use a little more definition.

• Use the SimpleBrush and Zadd to accentuate some of the larger scales.
• Do the same on the ridges on the top of the head and the lips around the mouth.
• Put lines and creases around the eye socket.

Another custom alpha was used for the bumps on the head. It is also found in the Image:Lizard Files.zip file.

• Activate Projection Master and Pickup the model.

The details will be applied to the mesh.

• We repeat the process to detail the horns and the neck plate.

Notice I selected the horns and neck plate and worked on them individually. This makes it much easier to get into tight hard to reach areas. It also takes the strain off system resources.

Here we have the final result.

I encourage you to experiment with detailing in Projection Master using your own custom alphas and settings.

Finishing Work

With high resolution detail sculpted, we’ll complete the project by focusing on 2.5D painting, lighting, materials and rendering.

• If you do not already have it available go ahead and load the Dragon Head you created in the previous chapter.
• Draw it on the workspace and move it into final position.
• Enter Edit mode by pressing the T key on the keyboard and choose a light sandy brown color from the Color menu.
• Fill the object with this color (Color:Fill Object) and drop it to the workspace by pressing the T key again.

It is not necessary to choose a material at this time. We will be creating custom material later on. The default Fast Shader material will suffice for now.

Now we will begin to paint in darker and lighter values of color.

• Select the Paintbrush, SprayStroke, activate RGB mode and set RGB value to 20.
• Select a darker brown and choose a Draw size of around 80.
• Begin making strokes across the model and darken areas to suggest shadow.

The paintbrush allows you to lay increasing values of color with each stroke so apply it in short overlapping strokes. This will keep the color from looking too uniform. We will do the same for adding lighter areas of color.

• Using the same technique as before select a light crème color but change the brush size to 40 and apply it with the Dots stroke.
• Work in light areas around the face and surface areas that should be emphasized.

• Change the color to a medium red and set the brush size to 80.
• Change the RGB setting to 5 and paint in some red to give the color work a little more impact.
• Switch to a light Cyan color and do the same.

• Select the Shading Enhancer tool. Set RGB value to 10 and select the Dots stroke.
• Set the brush size to about 20 and use the Shading Enhancer tool to lighten up areas that should be highlighted.

This includes raised features such as the brows and head ridges, areas around the mouth and neck folds etc.

• Use the Shading Enhancer tool to darken in recessed areas by holding the ALT key.
• Paint darker areas where the facial features recede into shadow.

We will now add an eye.

• Begin by selecting the Sphere3d tool from the Tool menu.
• Select a dark red color and choose the Toy Plastic material.
• Create a new layer in the Layer menu.
• With this layer selected draw the Sphere3d into the eye socket.
• Press the W key on the keyboard to bring up the Gyro. Move the eye into position. When done press the W key again.

• 
  To texture the eye choose the Shading Enhancer brush. Set RGB intensity to 10 and the brush size to 18. Select Alpha 01.
• Start by working on the area of the Iris.

Lighten it up until you are satisfied with the results.

• Decrease the size of the brush to get sharper highlights.
• To paint in the pupil choose the Simple Brush from the Tool menu. Set RGB to 100 and select black from the Color menu.
• Select Alpha 12 from the Alpha menu and set stroke to DragDot with a size of 8 and place the pupil on the eye. Next select Alpha 09 from the Alpha menu and set the brush size to 22.
• Position this dark circle as shown in the above image.
• Select the Shading Enhancer brush again and set RGB intensity to 5 with a brush size of 15.
• Add additional highlight around the darker area outside the pupil to give it additional interest.
• Change brush size to 8 and the RGB intensity to 20.
• While holding the Alt key draw in dark areas around the outside edge of the pupil and around the top edge of the eye just under the top eyelid.
• Select the Simple Brush, set RGB intensity to 20, select the Dots stroke, and set brush size to 4. Choose a golden yellow color from the Color menu.
• Add a few bits of color to the iris area.
• Select the Shading Enhancer brush and set the brush size to 8 with RGB intensity of 20 and darken the middle part of the iris slightly.
• We are ready to apply lighting, materials and render settings.

I have provided snapshots of all the settings to help you in setting up your final render.

Light Settings

• Light 1: Sun
  • Intensity: 1.21
  • Color: White
  • Shadows: 50 with intensity 100 blur 2

• Light 2: Sun
  • Intensity: .45
  • Color: 255, 143, 106
  • No shadows

• Light 3: Sun
  • Intensity: .40
  • Color: 197, 250, 247
  • No shadows

Material Settings

I used two materials, which are identical except Material 2 has a specular value of 20.

• Created from the BasicMaterial
  • Ambient: 0
  • Diffuse: 75
  • Cavity Intensity: 15
  • Cavity Colorize: .3
  • Cavity Color: 236, 223, 206

• Apply the new material to the model by Copying the material and Pasting it into the Fast Shader material slot.

The entire model will now be covered in the custom material we created.

• Paste the material into another material slot and increase the specular value to 40.
• Using the Simple Brush with only Material selected (Rgb, Zadd etc turned off) paint in the specular material around the eyes, mouth, nose, and skin folds.

Render Settings

• Fog enabled with Intensity 100 and Depth 2 of .7
• Alpha used in Fog Alpha
• Contrast Adjustment: 25

See Adjustment graph in picture

• To create the fog alpha select Alpha 01 in the Alpha palette and press Alpha:Make TX.
• Go to the Texture palette and select the newly created texture. Click on the Invert button to invert the texture.
• In the Render:Fog menu click on Fog Alpha and select the fog texture we created.
• Click on Best render to generate the rendered image.
• Once it is rendered, press Texture:Grab Doc.

This is a fast way to capture the entire document as a texture.

• Next create a new layer from the Layer palette.
• Deactivate the other layers and make sure you select the newly created empty layer.
• Turn off Fog in the Render palette.
• Select the rendered image we grabbed in the Texture palette. Select the Flat Material in the Material palette. Fill the empty layer with the grabbed image and flat material.

You can do this from the Texture palette by pressing the Crop And Fill button. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl+F.

We are almost done. The color is looking a little flat so let’s liven it up a bit with the Saturation Brush .

• Select the Saturation Brush from the Tool palette. Set the RGB value to 2 and the brush size to 60.
• Now paint over areas of the model to increase the color levels.

Be careful not to overdo it.

• After adjusting the color in this fashion select the Contrast Brush from the tool palette. Set RGB intensity to 5 and choose Alpha 07 from the Alpha palette. Make sure you are using Dots stroke.
• Drag the brush across portions of the image to increase contrast.

A little goes a long way so don’t overdo it.

• Finally choose the Blur Brush from the Tool palette and blur some of the farther edges of the image.

Feel free to experiment with the other 2d brushes in the Tool palette. We have now completed our image.

This tutorial has touched upon several key elements used when working with ZBrush 2.0 . There are numerous other techniques that can be used to accomplish the same results we arrived at here. I encourage you to play and have fun with all the various tools. You will be surprised at just how many ways there are to skin the proverbial cat within ZBrush 2.0 .