CGSociety :: Special Feature
15 October 2009, by Paul Hellard
Joseph Drust Senior Character Artist Vicious Cycle Software.
The new features in ZBrush 3.5 allow myself as an artist to explore my creative freedoms even further then before. The Pixologic team has really outdone themselves, ZBrush 3.5 is sculpting with real clay (but with undoes, symmetry, and about a thousand other additions.)
Backtrack
The introduction of the new Backtrack settings allow for pinpoint drawing of line strokes when creating hard surface objects. Noise is outstanding allowing the artist to quickly create surface variation across an entire model instantly.
The ability to export out HD normal and HD displacement maps removes the restraint of ever reaching too much detail.
The new gradient system allows for an entirely new level of polypainting; with new masking abilities and Ambient Occlusion being built in I find myself no longer needing to branch out to external texturing program
Pixologic has not only raised the bar for Digital Sculpting yet again, but also in tutorials and learning. The Pixologic ZClassroom is an excellent learning system, with hundreds of free, easy to follow video tutorials. New and old users to ZBrush can easily gain information on controlling all the new 3.5 features (as well as the existing ones from 3.1.)
Martin Krol freelance modeler and consultant.
HD geo
One of the bigger standout features is definitely HD geometry and being able to generate higher quality maps out of ZBrush. The difference is enormous. Quite literally, sometimes 20 million polys is just not enough to get all the detail that you might need. On a recent job, I've had to build a model in a relatively short period of time that needed to look presentable from close up. There were shots that went full body and pulled closer into the model.
Without the ability of generating HD normal maps and displacement, the results were decent, but the closeups were suffering, because there just weren't enough polygons to create sharp displacements and normal maps. I didnt want to muck around with having to split the object into 60 pieces so that each object could have more polygons. HD geo allowed me to keep objects grouped and just increase the polycount to what I needed for that group. In this case I went upwards to 200 million polys for the entire object. Going in and out of HD sculpt mode takes some time out of the workflow unfortunately, but that time is given back to me because I don't need to micro-manage 60 objects, generating multiple maps.
HD geo is stored internally, it allows me to actually sculpt at lower subdivisions than I would usually do so I don't use up too much RAM on raw polygons. This allows me to load up more objects for a scene, as a result, because HD is kept nice and compact. Think of it as automatic archiving of a huge project. Press A and ZBrush unzips the data you need for that particular section of the model. When you are done using that data, press A again and ZBrush zips that data right back up. It's fast considering what it does, and the file size isn't all that big either, which makes it easier for me to keep saving multiple versions of one file incase anything were to go wrong.
Speaking of things going wrong, ZBrush has a recovery tool now. I haven't been able to test it however because by the time it was added, ZBrush was stable enough that I wasn't getting anymore crashing. I would love to hear from people how it works (if they use it). It is disabled by default though in the preference menu.
The new ZSphere Sketch mode is a lot of fun. It gives you the ability to create the wildest of objects and forms with very little hassle. A few objects created by Ofer Alon are included in the base install and they are pretty wild in design. Some of the more interesting designs that were done by the beta guys were actually not even character related. Joel Mungeon used the new ZSpheres to create patterns for a really fancy fence, and Ofer created an example of a man riding his futuristic vehicle. The great thing about the new ZSpheres is that it really brings us closer to a traditional way of working, because you have the option to work around an armature if you choose to, and then you can sculpt away from there. It gets you closer to where you need to be. If you save our your armatures and ZSphere sketches, then over time a library of these sketches will be useful to save yourself all sort of time as all you will have to do is repose your object to create a new variation quickly.
The other ability introduced by the ZSpheres that hasn't really been talked about much is that the new ZSpheres can actually be drawn not only over the armature, and not only are they able to draw over themselves, and outside of your armature, but you are also able to draw them over background objects. This will allow users to create all sorts of appendages, and details for their characters with very little effort. It works very much like the retopology workflow. Just load up an object that you want to use as reference, append a ZSphere subtool, enter ZSketch and go to town.
Joel Mongeon freelance modeler
Beta testing ZBrush 3.5 has been a lot of fun and extremely insightful. I definitely feel like I have a deeper understanding of the package since beta testing and interacting directly with the developers. The guys at Pixologic are so passionate about what they are doing it's hard not to get carried away trying out new features till the wee hours of the morning.
What I love about ZBrush 3.5 and ZBrush in general is that it doesn't try to copy what the competition is doing but rather try and remove any barriers between your mind and the screen. Some people have a hard time with the interface but I find it really opens up a world of exploration of the tools available to you. Who knows you might just find a button or slider hidden deep down somewhere that lets you create something you thought was impossible for ZBrush.
