Thursday, October 14, 2010

I'm late to the party..

I'm late to the zSphere Party, but it's better late than never, eh?

So, whilst figuring out how to manipulate zSpheres and sketch with them, I created this monstrosity:



 Kind of gross.

So I ended up with this after a few hours:

 This...was better but I wasn't happy with it at all. In my ignorance using zSpheres, I screwed up the symmetry on the model and I needed to retopologize it anyway, so off to TopoGun I went.


I ended up only retopoing the head, since the neck just wasn't working. After some work with Maya, I ended up with this low poly version, complete with teeth, gums, skin flaps, and tongue.














I am much, much happier with this. After I bring it back into Zbrush for a few hours, this is what I've ended up with:



















So, all in all it was a fun exercise. I have to admit, he's pretty generic, but it was something good to learn with. I did learn a lot!

I am still more comfortable with bringing in low poly base meshes from Maya, as that was the first way I learned how to do things, but I definitely see the value of using zSpheres and sketching with them. It is very organic and natural and I find it to be a very powerful tool. I am sure I will be using them again in the future.

One thing I do notice, though, (and this is easily fixable through reposing with the Transpose tool), was that my final product was much stiffer than the original sketch. I should go back and repose it, because it has lost it's original essence.

Programs used:
ZBrush 3.5 R3
Maya 2010
TopoGun

This exercise took me about 13 hours, give or take. It was done over the span of four days during my free time.

3 comments:

ladyliberty said...

Awesome detail. I likes it a lot!

Brian Tsang said...

nice stuff KC!

Unknown said...

Awesome. My retopo dragons are much less technical. Yours is just great.

Generic done well is my taste =) Your dragon is devilish and one of the best I've seen.