ZBrush Creature Design E-Book

Scott Spencer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 615

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Zero in on the most cutting-edge trend in creature design for film and games: ZBrush! ZBrush allows you to develop a creature for film and games in realistic, 3D format. With this book, you will learn how to create a unique creature from start to finish and search for and repair any foreseeable problems. Clear instructions guide you through using Photoshop in combination with ZBrush to finely render a creature so you can see how it will appear on screen. Experienced ZBrush author and designer Scott Spencer shows you how to start with your concept in ZBrush as a preliminary digital model and then further refine it in Photoshop in order to fabricate a hyperrealistic image. * Guides you through artistic concepts to visualize your creature * Walks you through the process of conceptualizing a creature in ZBrush * Details techniques for using Photoshop to refine your design * Encourages you to use ZBrush as a sculpting and designing tool and then use Photoshop as a painting and finishing tool ZBrush Creature Design helps you bring your creature concepts to life.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Publisher's Letter

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Guest Artists

Introduction

Who Should Read This Book

What You Will Learn

How to Use This Book

Chapter 1: ZBrush as a Character Design Tool

First Things First: Some Notes on Conceptualization

Some Key Design Concepts

Chapter 2: The Character Portrait: Sculpting the Alien Mystic

Designing a Character Bust: Getting Started

Refining the Character Bust

Chapter 3: The Interdimensional Traveler: A Full Body Character Design

Design Journey

Establishing Your Basic Figure

Refining the Head and Face

Revising the Shoulders and Arms

Finishing Touches and Final Passes

Adaboy and the Saints of Alchemy: A Sculpted Novel by Zack Petroc

Chapter 4: Posing the Interdimensional Traveler

Considerations in Posing

Setting Up the ZBrush Document

Chapter 5: Painting the Interdimensional Traveler

Adding Color and Texture with Photoshop Paintover

Beyond Color: Lighting Effects

Final Effects: Noise and Depth of Field

Speculative Anatomy and Creature Design with Tristan Schane

Chapter 6: A Biomechanical Character

Creating the Cyborg Design

Chapter 7: Sculpting a Mermaid Character with Dynamesh

Using Visual Cues to Communicate Character

Introduction to Dynamesh

Creating the Figure

Chapter 8: Sculpting the Forest Spirit

Using Reference as Inspirational Material

Sculpting the Body

Sculpting the Head Shapes

Refining the Face

Refining the Body

Analyzing the Shape Language

Chapter 9: Painting the Forest Spirit

Preparing the Model in ZBrush

Preparing the Scene, Lighting, and Background in Maya

Compositing and Painting in Photoshop

Chapter 10: Rendering the Enforcer

Advantages of BPR

Establishing the Lighting Using LightCap

Create a Skin Material

Paint the Skin Highlights

Image-Based Lighting

Create the Look of Worn Leather

Rendering Metals

Create the Final Image

Chapter 11: ZBrush for Digital 3-D Printing

Methods of Rapid Prototyping

Applications for 3-D Printing

Prepare the Model for Printing

Creating a Maquette

Exporting the Geometry for Print

Appendix: About the Companion DVD

What You’ll Find on the DVD

System Requirements

Using the DVD

Troubleshooting

Customer Care

Index

End-User License Agreement

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. End-User License Agreement

Download CD/DVD content

Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo

Development Editor: Amy Breguet

Technical Editor: Eric Keller

Production Editor: Dassi Zeidel

Copy Editor: Adept Content Solutions

Editorial Manager: Pete Gaughan

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Media Associate Project Manager: Jenny Swisher

Media Associate Producer: Josh Frank

Media Quality Assurance: Shawn Patrick

Book Designer: Mark Ong, Side By Side Studios

Compositor: James D. Kramer, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: Sara Wilson

Indexer: Ted Laux

Project Coordinator, Cover: Katherine Crocker

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: Scott Spencer

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-02433-1ISBN: 978-1-118-22206-5 (ebk.)ISBN: 978-1-118-23626-0 (ebk.)ISBN: 978-1-118-26067-8 (ebk.)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011945017

TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. ZBrush is a registered trademark of Pixologic, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

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Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing ZBrush® Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

Best regards,

Neil Edde

Vice President and Publisher

Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

To my partner Meredith Yayanos, whose love, friendship, and inspiration I cherish.

Acknowledgments

There are so many people who bring a book like this to life. I would like to try to thank each of them here. This includes those with a direct hand in the editing and layout as well as those whose support makes this kind of endeavor possible. First, I’d like to thank my partner Meredith Yayanos for her loving support, and Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger for their friendship and support. I must thank Richard for giving me such a unique opportunity to travel across the globe and work every day with so many amazingly talented people. I also want to thank Karl Meyer, Brian Sunderlin, and Gentle Giant Studios for giving me a place to start my journey and remaining close and valued friends and mentors to this day.

Thanks also to all the talented artists I have the good fortune to work with at Weta. Thanks to Eric Keller for serving as technical editor and for sharing his expertise by writing on the ZBrush Materials system. Were it not for his experience and knowledge in this area, we would be missing out on a whole range of techniques. Thank you to Ofer Alon, Jaime Labelle, and Paul Gaboury at Pixologic; and to Alex Alvarez, Eric Miller, and everyone else at Gnomon.

A huge thanks to Desmoda and the team at Ownage for the exceptional, quick, and high-quality 3-D printing they did for this book. I encourage anyone with an interest in printing 3-D models from their ZBrush designs to seek out ownage.com and send Desmoda an email. There is nothing quite like holding a physical copy of your maquette in hand in the real world.

Thanks go as well to 3d.sk for allowing me to use their reference images in this book. I have used 3d.sk as a reference site for the past six years and they are an invaluable resource. I cannot express how important it has been to have constant access to an almost unlimited number of royalty-free, high-res, reference images of all kinds of humans, animals, props, and costumes. Please check them out if you haven’t already at www.3d.sk.

I’d also like to thank some of the artists whose tools and techniques have inspired and informed my own process: Neville Page, Zack Petroc, Bryan Wynia, Tristan Schane, Alterton, Paul Tobin, Jerad Marantz, Aaron Simms, Scott Patton, Cesar Dacol, Ian Joyner, and JP Targete. Thank you to Tristan Crane for use of his exceptional photography to illustrate depth of field. I cannot possibly list everyone by name and I apologize to anyone who I have left out. I would also like to thank those incredibly talented artists I am fortunate to work with every day and whose work never ceases to inspire and inform me: David Meng, Greg Tozer, Will Furneaux, Paul Tobin, Gary Hunt, Jamie Beswarick, Mike Asquith, Daniel Falconer, Greg Broadmore, Christian Pierce, Daniel Cockersell, Kim Beaton, Warren Beaton, Steve Lambert, and the many other Weta artists who surround me.

I also must thank the wonderful team at Wiley who helped me through the process and were always professional, patient, attentive, and helpful. Thanks to Mariann Barsolo for managing the process and helping it along. Thanks to Amy Breguet for her expert developmental editing and to Pete Gaughan for guiding the direction of the book and helping to keep it on track and clear. Thanks to Dassi Zeidel and her production team for their masterful copyediting and layout, bringing the final product to light. Thank you all for your exceptional patience with this book and with me.

About the Author

Scott Spencer is a digital sculptor and concept designer at Weta Workshop in Wellington, New Zealand. He uses ZBrush every day as a tool for creating creature and character concept art. His most recent and exciting project is Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. His background is originally physical sculpture for the makeup effects world. Over the years he has worked in various media, creating digital characters for film, broadcast, and games as well as physical sculptures for concept design, promotion, and other applications. Over the past few years Scott has worked on various film projects in the Weta Workshop design department. Scott is fortunate to work as a designer as well as a sculptor, painter, and fabricator on many of the films that come through the workshop. This allows him to remain excited and stimulated by working in various stages of the creative process.

About the Guest Artists

Huge thanks to those artists who loaned me their expertise and agreed to share their tools and techniques in the book. The presence of industry professionals like them raises the overall quality of the book and exposes readers to more than just one artist’s perception on this creature and character design process. I want to thank all of these talented folks for their time and effort.

Alterton

Born in Trelew City, Chubut province, in the cold lands of the Argentinean Patagonia, Alterton quit a prominent career in orthodontia to become a full-time sculptor for the collectibles business. As a traditional sculptor he has worked for companies such as DCDirect, Art Asylum, and Diamond Select Toys, and as digital artist he has done work for McFarlane Toys, Pop Culture Shock Collectibles, Hollywood Collectors Group, and Disney Development.

Eric Keller

Eric Keller has been a professional 3-D artist and high-end animator for film, commercials, and TV for over twelve years, creating animations and effects for films and commercials at the leading studios in Hollywood. He is currently visual effects supervisor working on E. O. Wilson’s Life on Earth project. Keller got his start developing animations for scientific visualization at the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where he worked with some of the world’s leading researchers. He is the author of Mastering Maya 2011, Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator’s Guide, and Introducing ZBrush, all from Sybex. He has also written numerous tutorials for industry magazines and websites.

Jerad S. Marantz

Jerad S. Marantz has been obsessed with creature design for as long as he can remember. As a child he was always seen hunched over a sketch pad, drawing away. Marantz started his career at the early age of 14 by interning for low-budget practical FX houses with an emphasis in studying sculpture. Originally, he wanted to become a practical FX artist, but as he pursued that line of work, he discovered his true passion was designing. After graduating from Pasadena Art Center College of Design in 2005, Marantz was hired as a freelance concept artist for Stan Winston’s Studio. Marantz has since designed for several practical FX houses, visual FX studios, and video game companies. He is currently the lead artist at The Aaron Sims Company.

Marantz’s credits include the films Clash of the Titans, Suckerpunch, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Avatar, Green Lantern, Transformers 3, and X-Men First Class. He has also worked on the television shows American Horror Story, Grimm, and Falling Skies, and several games, including Infamous 2, Tabla Rasa, and Guild Wars.

His work can be seen at jeradsmarantz.blogspot.com/

Zack Petroc

Zack Petroc is CEO of Zack Petroc Studios and Model Supervisor at Disney Feature Animation.

With a commitment to driving the digital entertainment industry forward, Petroc continues to develop new techniques that redefine how digital tools impact the art and design of storytelling. In 2005 he opened Zack Petroc Studios to focus on the development of unique new content and one-of-a-kind training tools. The Studios’ first independent project, Adaboy, gives viewers direct access to behind-the-scenes story development techniques, allowing them to follow along as it evolves from concept to completed project. See www.theadaboy.com.

Additionally, his studio has worked on the development of several feature films and video games with a recent client list that includes Disney Interactive, Scott Free Productions, SCEA, Walt Disney Imagineering, Snoot Entertainment, Hasbro, and Paramount Pictures.

In addition to lecturing at universities across the United States and abroad, Petroc has headed several workshops and training seminars at leading industry companies. Recently he began creating and distributing advanced training tools available for purchase and instant download via his website www.zackpetroc.com.

Tristan Schane

Born and raised in New York City, Tristan Schane started his professional career at age 15 as a comic book artist, which was his boyhood fantasy. He has been a full-time working artist since he was 19. After several years in the comics business, he started doing fine arts oil painting and sculpture and also moved to book cover illustration for sci-fi and fantasy novels. Schane has done concept art for DragonBall, The Mist, Thor, and the TV series Numb3rs and Teen Wolf. His most recent ZBrush creature work includes Green Lantern and Terra Nova. His fine artwork can be seen at www.TristanSchane.com and his concept work can be seen at www.TristanArtForm.com.

Paul Tobin

Paul Tobin graduated from Massey College of Creative Arts, in Wellington, New Zealand, in 2002 and has been a concept designer at Weta Workshop since 2003. He has worked on The Hobbit, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, King Kong, Avatar, District 9, and The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. In addition to his role as a concept designer, Tobin is a freelance illustrator, and in 2010 created White Cloud Worlds, an anthology of sci-fi and fantasy artwork from New Zealand, with foreword by Guillermo del Toro. See www.whitecloudworlds.com.

Tobin also teaches Digital Illustration at Massey College of Creative Arts and runs Whitecloud Workshops. You can see Tobin’s portfolio at www.paultobin.co.nz.

Bryan Wynia

Bryan Wynia is a Senior Character Artist at Sony Santa Monica. Previously he worked at Naughty Dog where he contributed on Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3. He also works as a freelance character designer and sculptor. Some of his clients include The Aaron Sims Company, Gentle Giant Studios, Electric Tiki, and Masked Avenger Studios.

His work has been featured in Famous Monsters of Filmland, Imagine FX, 3D Artist, and 3D World. Wynia has a passion for teaching and sharing his creative process. He has taught classes and workshops at The Concept Design Academy, Gnomon School of Visual Effects, and Art Center College of Design. You can find out more about his artwork at bryanwynia.blogspot.com.

Introduction

Welcome to ZBrush Character Design. In this book, we will take an in-depth look at the tools and thought processes behind creating compelling character designs using ZBrush and Photoshop as our primary tools. We will be using ZBrush not just as a modeling or painting program but as a fully featured conceptual design tool, like many creature and character designers do for the film and game industries. The point of these lessons is to create compelling and evocative images of characters with assets that can be further developed by a digital team in a production pipeline. This mirrors the production techniques used in many studios today. By learning how to use ZBrush and Photoshop together as concept illustration tools, you will discover ways to create exciting characters quickly in an evocative style that excites viewers and gives them an idea of how the final character may appear on screen. These tutorials also focus on the design process—the thoughts and motivations that go into guiding the decisions I make while creating a specific character. We will look at compositional concerns, structural and proportional judgments, color language choices, as well as how to exploit the rules of basic 2-D design with shape relationships to communicate character traits. We will even look at how to influence the viewer’s perception of an alien character by utilizing visual cues in the face and body shape based on human preconceptions. These are extremely useful things to understand and I rarely see them discussed in one place. I hope that pulling together some of my own thoughts in the form of these projects may help other artists expand their own process when it comes to creating new characters.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is for anyone who wants to sculpt creatures and characters in ZBrush and take them to a final-image finish. It is best to work from the first exercises through the book because many of these chapters are project-based. These projects span several chapters so that we can address the concerns inherent to each stage. The Forest Spirit, for example, is broken into sculpting, posing, and painting stages. This allows us to give specific attention to the concerns of each stage in development.

Because this is a visual process and a series of still images can show only so much, I have included most of the exercises on the DVD/download files in video form. You can watch these and see the steps performed in real time to get the clearest possible picture of the steps shown.

This book, is for the intermediate ZBrush user. I assume a certain amount of experience, but I have also been careful to include enough information so that a new user can grasp the topics quickly. For a more foundational introduction to the tools, I recommend looking at Eric Keller’s Introducing ZBrush, also from Sybex.

What You Will Learn

In this book, we will be looking at a series of design projects using a combination of ZBrushandPhotoshop. Just like in my previous books ZBrush Character Creation and ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy, we will focus on the artistic considerations as well as the technical applications. In this book, I move deeper into exploring how I approach a variety of different design problems. We have already covered the ZBrush program in the two aforementioned books. In this title, we will set up a series of projects and look at how to approach them using the specialized toolsets of ZBrush and Photoshop with the intention of creating a final character design suitable for film, television, games, or the collectibles market or even your own fine art.

By approaching the projects in this way, I will illustrate the thought process behind the decisions made when creating a character. Most concepts don’t spring from nowhere; on some level decisions are made to hopefully create the most compelling images possible. I will share with you some of the ways I approach creating characters for film, games, and just for fun.

We will look at several different character projects. Each project is presented as a design problem or a “brief.” This brief is then resolved using various techniques combining ZBrush and Photoshop. This is intended to show a more holistic approach to using ZBrush as a character-design tool rather than focus in on specific technical elements. In my previous two books, I have shown the program in depth as well as a workflow for sculpting a human figure. Here I will illustrate how to use the tools we already have in a logical way. We will look at why we make some decisions in designing the character—for example, why some shapes are placed as they are. Finally we will look at some unique workflows to illustrate how we use ZBrush and Photoshop to move from an idea to a final image.This is an exciting journey because we will learn much more than just how to sculpt or how to use ZBrush. As we work on these projects, I hope to help you see how I personally think about a design while I work. I have found that it’s very helpful to understand how other artists approach the thought process of sculpting and design. For example, I work with a very talented sculptor and designer named Jamie Beswarek. Jamie shared with me his design theory that when you look at a maquette, it should represent your first encounter with a character. The look on his face, the posture, the attitude should all be carefully designed to inspire the feelings you want associated with the character. This applies to digital maquettes and painted imagery as well.

It is my hope that by sharing my own process in this book I may inspire some new considerations in your own workflow.Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share these lessons with you!

How to Use This Book

I have structured the text to be entirely project based. We begin with basic design sculpting and then quickly move into gradually larger projects. All the chapters are self-contained lessons and result in a finished piece. Many chapters feed into each other—for example, “Sculpting the Interdimensional Traveler” naturally flows into a chapter on posing the figure, which then leads to a chapter that focuses entirely on the painting process. For this reason, I think it is important to start at the beginning of the book and work through each lesson.

This book will be especially useful to those who have some ZBrush experience but want to find ways to explore the sculpting and painting process in more detail. Once we know where the tools are in a program, we enter into an exciting phase where we start to want to find ways to effectively use them together. This is less a book about technicalities and more a book on technique. I hope those artists eager to find new and exciting ways of creating imagery with ZBrush will find these lessons helpful.

Hardware and Software Requirements

To complete the core exercises of this book, you need ZBrush 4R2 or higher. Some sections also include material related to Photoshop and Maya and using these programs together with ZBrush. Hardware requirements are a PC or Mac running ZBrush with a gigabyte or more of RAM. The more RAM you have, the better the results you can get with ZBrush.

It is also imperative that you have a Wacom tablet. While it is possible to use a mouse with ZBrush, it is like drawing with a brick. A Wacom or other digital tablet will open the doors for you to paint and sculpt naturally. Personally, I recommend a Wacom Cintiq. There are two variations of this tablet screen available as of this writing: the desktop model with a 21-inch screen as well as a smaller portable model. The Cintiq allows you to sculpt and paint directly on the screen and can vastly improve the speed and accuracy with which you can use ZBrush. It is essential to use some form of Wacom tablet, be it a Cintiq or a standard Intuos, with ZBrush.

The Companion DVD and Downloads

On the DVD, I have included several support files for each chapter. Many exercises have video files accompanying them. The video files were recorded using the TechSmith screen capture codes (www.techsmith.com) and compressed with H.264 compression. The videos will, I hope, help further illustrate the sculptural approach I take in ZBrush. Being able to see a tool in use can better illustrate the concepts than still images alone. In addition to videos, I have included supplementary materials such as sample meshes, materials, and brushes. There is more material than we can fit on one DVD so some material is available on the book’s website, www.sybex.com/go/zbrushcreaturedesign.

For e-book Readers

If you purchased an e-edition of this book, you may download the project files by going to wiley.booksupport.com and entering the book’s ISBN.

A Special Deal for Readers

Zack Petroc and 3d.sk (mentioned before) are offering promotions to readers of this book. Zack Petroc is offering a discount on membership to his tutorial site, www.zackpetroc.com, and 3d.sk is also offering a discount on membership to the photo reference site www.3d.sk. Please see the respective websites or the DVD or download files for more details.

How to Contact the Author

I welcome feedback from you about this book or about books you’d like to see from me in the future. You can reach me by writing to [email protected]. For more information about my work, please visit my website, www.scottspencer.com.

Sybex strives to keep you supplied with the latest tools and information you need for your work. Please check www.sybex.com/go/zbrushcreaturedesign, where we’ll post additional content and updates that supplement this book if the need arises.

Thank you for buying this book. I hope you enjoy the exercises within as much as I have enjoyed putting this book together. Being surrounded by like-minded artists who all have something to contribute makes every day a learning experience. It is an honor for me to share some of what I have learned with you. I hope you enjoy this book. Happy sculpting!

Chapter 1

ZBrush as a Character Design Tool

In the past few years ZBrush has gained an enormous amount of ground among professional concept designers as a fast way to develop organic ideas for character design. This process has many advantages over traditional clay or painting techniques. For example, ZBrush allows you to implement real-time edits while sitting in front of a director, taking feedback as you work. With this approach, quick variations can be created and compared so you can be sure the best solution is arrived at as soon as possible. This work flow has gained significant popularity as it can greatly enhance and speed up the design process.

Another advantage of this approach over conceptualizing designs in clay is that there is far less of a wait for sculptural changes to be made. In most cases, massive design alterations can be implemented in a matter of seconds! In addition, with the ZBrush layers tool variations on the sculpture, texture or color can be stored on a single model and compared to each other. You can even use the ZBrush timeline tools to examine how the character may move or change shape. This kind of digital work flow offers huge advantages for everyone from the designer to the director and the artists in the production pipeline who will eventually bring the design to life.

With all these advantages, one of the strongest benefits to using ZBrush as a character concept tool is the ZTool itself. Once a character design is approved, there is a 3-D model already in existence. This ZTool can be passed on to the artists in the models and textures departments. There will be no need to remodel the concept design. The artists will be free to create animation-ready models of the design for further development. It is often in this stage that more changes are made to a character. I feel that the design process is not done until the final shot is on screen. The process is evolutionary, and there are many artists involved in the journey.

In the recent ZBrush update, Pixologic has created new tools that allow the same level of gestural intuitive design to be applied to mechanical and hard surface forms as well. We will look at using these tools to create mechanical elements for our biomech design.

One unique application of the digital assets created in ZBrush is the 3-D printer or mill. Anything created in ZBrush may be printed as a digital maquette for reference to other departments. There are several low-cost companies offering this service to the public, and the prices will only continue to drop while print quality improves. We will look at how to prepare a model for exporting and 3-D printing to create a physical design maquette. shows an actual design maquette created in ZBrush and printed on a 3-D printer. There are even situations where I have created full-sized props by sculpting in ZBrush and having the data milled into foam and further finished by sculptors and other artists. The possibilities for this tool really are endless, and new avenues continue to open up.