ZBrushCentral

Cyamidae Male (la vérole de Benthogyrinus) Movie added

Hi all. It has been a long time since I posted on ZBrushCentral.

This creature, the Benthocyanus Ornate I did for a book in progress, “Tomorrow, the animals of the Future” which I’m working on with the paleontologist J.Sébastien Steyer. The book will be available sometime in early 2012.

Before showing a little breakdown/making of, I would like to share you a little bit about my work and this book. Dr. Steyer is helping me design the evolution of creatures like they would look not in a hundred years but more in hundreds of thousands of years. Everything is based on real hypotheses like we are doing for creatures of the past, but this time for the future.

The timelapse video below is an interview of Dr. Steyer and myself. (Sorry, it’s in French). You can see a description of what a parrot of the future would be like. To be realistic, we started (at 00:56) with the bone structure and then build everything on top of that. When the book will be released, we will share extra illustrations of this work!

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Now, the video and below that, the technical description!

Making of

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For this project, I used only DynaMesh and traditional sculpting features. Nothing complex at this stage: I’m using the DynaWax128 Project from LightBox.
Because I’m sculpting freely, I don’t want to be distracted by the sculpting “environment”, so there is no perspective and no floor.
For almost all my digital sculpting models, I’m working with only a few brushes and tools at this stage: Move, Mask, Smooth and TransPose.

I then duplicated this SubTool 4 times and merged them into one:

For the head, I started with a new DynaMesh and started to shape it with the ClayBuildup, Move and Shift brushes. I always keep my finger over the Shift key, to being able to smooth or to snap my view to 90° angles without hardly thinking about it.

The labial parts (in yellow) are a new DynaMesh SubTool, like the “Rostre” (in green) while the mandibles (in orange) have been made with the awesome CurveTube brush.

Then I refined and modeled the shapes further with the Move, ClayBuildup, Standard and Smooth brushes. Next I used the TransPose action line in Move mode to set the good position before merging all the SubTools.

The antennas were created with the CurveTube brush (duplicated twice) and positioned through TransPose like in the previous step. They were refined with the Move and Smooth brushes before again duplicating and merging the SubTools into one. To finish this part, I scale and move them to set the desired position and size.

For the next steps, it’s still the same workflow with a new DynaMesh primitive and the same brushes. The difference is that I used a negative inserted mesh to create clean cuts in my models.
I also continued to merge the new SubTools into one after having finished with my mesh manipulation and positioning via TransPose.

This is an assembly of the existing elements:

For the next parts I just repeated the same process again and again.

These 2 x 4 pieces were a little bit more difficult to create, but ultimately it’s still a mix of DynaMesh and the usual brushes, combined with the CurveTube. When done, I duplicated and mirrored them. The final position was of course done through TransPose.

This is an overview of the creature, from the front and back sides. For the fine details, I used mainly the Standard brush, combined with the Spray stroke and Alpha 07. To finish the model, I deactivated symmetry and worked on the overall model to refine it.

For the final render, I changed my document size to a print size of 4480 x 3360 pixels, redrew the figure and did my render using the BPR. For the book and printing purposes, the texturing and compositing were done in Photoshop in CMJN mode and 300 dpi.

That’s it! I hope it will inspire your need to work (and play!) with ZBrush! This creature was done in less than one hour with this wonderful digital sculpting tool. (And 20 years of sculpting and animals observation.)

This sculpting walkthrough is an exclusive for ZBrushCentral and as I said in introduction, will be a part of the book: “Demain, Les Animaux du Futur” (Tomorrow, the Animals of the Future), a prospective of Earth in 10+ million years and co-written with J.Sébastien Steyer.

You can visit my personal website at http://www.marcboulay.fr/ and our company website at cossima-productions.com

Thank you for having read this Making Of!

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such a cool video!!, so much to see (and learn from)!!!:slight_smile:

Hi !

This video is a good lesson of Zbrush and also a feast for the eyes, eager to contemplate the future, if there is more!
Good luck and thank you!

Mr. Froux :smiley:

enjoyed your video…would like to see the model with a normal mat though…but looks great still

benthocyamus_ Movie_11a_dorsal.jpg

benthocyamus_ Movie_11a_ventral.jpg

nice scary bug
Thanks for the Video also!

Superb!

But for my own information, is it a whale’s parasite ?
Or a pure expectation, invention sort of alien ?

If you want to have more information about my work methods, I added a short “Making Of” and an interview with Dr. J.Sébastien Steyer and myself.

And also, a big thanks to France Pixologic’s Thomas Roussel for translating my texts and for all the work he does for the ZBrush community :wink:
You can view the “making of” movie in the beginnng of my thread (above).

Enjoy!

benthocyamus_ Movie_11a_compo-color-dorsal_01.jpg

Brilliant work! The vids are very inspirational!

  • Polo2011 > Thank’s. “There is only one virtue, knowledge, and a vice, ignorance.”
    Socrates :wink:

  • Froux > Thank’s my ZBrush young student. Only the present is important :wink: :cool:

  • SketchZombie > This sculpture is simple. This is a book illustration.

  • Pid18000 > Thank you :wink:

  • Michel > Yes, the source is as you said. Bravo!

  • SolidSnakexxx > Thank you. Arthropods are very inspiring

Je suis très intéressé par votre bouquin !
Mais où et quand le trouver ?

Very interested by your book !
But where and when ?

Merci 1000 X Michel

Le livre “Demain, les Animaux du Futur” sera édité en 2013 :wink:

really cool video! lots of great tips:+1: