the wrestler (WiP museum_scene)

[PFC666]

Michalis Fantastico
You're a great sculptor
Bravo!

[bio-designer]

Hey Michalis,

I love all your stuff, sculpts as well as the loopwork renders... you always take care with your renders, they are always immaculate, that's how it should be...

Regards

Jon

[michalis]

Row row row the boat, gently into work...

[Patpotlood]

awsome

grtz p

[kokoro]

wonderful! the faces are similar, but slightly different, i like that. each is very expressive.

[michalis]

Thanks Patpotlood !
Thanks Doris.
Back into ZBrush sculpting for me.
Two reason,
1. I'm just in love with the simple (the first on the row) clay brush. I did most of the work with this. (clay tubes, Dam standard, move brush etc of course)
2. I realized what I have to do with the Z shaders, to have a very close preview of what gonna happen under SSS conditions, using a decent (physically correct) pathtracer. (like cycles).
"Anisotropic diffuse" shader parameter then. The best we can have for previewing sculpting, to know how deep is needed to carve on a marble like material. I lowered its value a lot, for the BPR I posted, of course.

[Aberrant]

Hey thanks mealea.
These are still out of control indeed.
Here's another one. All these take ~10 mins to build them. This counts ~100k after displacements. Pretty low I guess so.
I used 2.5d, exporting depth map, but I won;t use it again. I don't like it. I need more control on developing depth maps.

~10 Min to build them! :-O That is amazing. I am an old Zbrush user returning to Zbrush sculpting after 3 years. I have so much to learn!

I read that you are using displacements to generate a lot of the details. Would you mind making a quick breakdown of your workflow? Or even a time lapse video of you sculpting something like this would be greatly appreciated! I know that in Zbrush, there are many ways to do one thing, and you seem to have a great workflow down to be able to make these in minutes. Great work!

[michalis]

Thank you, Aberrant
This is an older post, maps are generated in zbrush but that's all. The rest in blender.
However, you can do a bit similarly in zbrush, though you can't have much control, so some randomness is acceptable.
Follow the thread of Mealea, people are very helpful there.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthr...=1#post1039792
Mealea is really very helpful
As for blender, here is the link for a huge thread and a tutorial. On post #2 I added some interesting links on this rather chaotic thread.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/show...=1#post2245866
Though a blender tutorial/thread, these basic principles are valid under any application, including Zbrush, (well, almost). Modo, 3dmax, maya, LW, etc etc such apps are compatible to this method alright.

[Aberrant]

Thank you Michalis. I appreciate it, and I am going to look at the first link right now.

[MealeaYing]

843 is gorgeous but how do you fix the blotchiness in the render?
This is one of those questions for the Blender forum right?

Or wait.... is that post work?????

[pfrancke]

seeing these things I can only say that Rome wasn't built in a day and I will need to live for 300 more years to produce such beauty. Yet I also recognize that being old does not guarantee the talent, hard work can provide knowledge, but not always talents. Beautiful and inspiring work Michalis!

[michalis]

Thank you Mealea, all done in zbrush. Sculpting, BPR, three lights. PP in Ps. (the overlay noisy thing)
It is a WIP, right? Lot of work is needed now. Building some capitals (column heads, right?) now. On top of their heads.
Still in dynamesh mode, meaning that retopology is coming, more detailed sculpting and baking. To export in blender cycles of course.
@pfrancke
Thank you. Am I that old?
On another thread I read your question:

Could other programs (say Blender, 3dCoat, etc) be used to modify the UV and then import the UV into ZB and then do a Poly-group creation that is
based on that externally modified UV? Or does this only work with PUVTiles/GUVTiles?

In blender, of course you can. You can do much more, you can move the UV islands, place them exactly where you like. In fact, this is the only decent way. The advanced way, the easy way. If you are familiar with blender. If not... well, ask Mealea.
3dcoat is an application that is dedicated to such workflows. Not in our case. You need a UV editor capable to do a specific unwrapping. The result should be UV islands that are aligned to horizontals and verticals, as the displacement map is. In blender there is the superior "follow active quad". In Zbrush the GUV (and the PUV). 3dcoat can't do this. Is great for figures though.
What you have to do: Export the obj to blender (export options, uncheck groups!). Do the unwrapping (follow active quad) if you know how. Export the as obj to zbrush again. Now if you apply a texture you'll find the UVs there. For some reason, zbrush inverts UVs vertically, so ask to invert it again.
In post #848 the second link is for a blender basic tutorial, on this technique.
It starts actually like this
"Inspired by some zbrush technics of my good friend MelaleaYing. " So, she is a good friend after all.

We can UV unwrap (GUVs or PUVS or both) in zbrush. If we unwrap visible groups results may look better. However, opening the obj file in blender and having a look in the UV editor, these group UV islands are overlapping each other. It means that you can't bake on such a UV set, you can't bake a possible polypaint there. (but you can always export the whole dense mesh as VRML and blender will render the polypaint directly. VRML exporter can be found under the 3d print plugin of zbrush)

[Psy-Fi]

Ha! I was getting jealous of the fun so there, I joined here as well

Great pieces Michalis as always!

[MealeaYing]

Thank you Mealea, all done in zbrush. Sculpting, BPR, three lights. PP in Ps. (the overlay noisy thing)
It is a WIP, right? Lot of work is needed now. Building some capitals (column heads, right?) now. On top of their heads.
Still in dynamesh mode, meaning that retopology is coming, more detailed sculpting and baking. To export in blender cycles of course.
@pfrancke
Thank you. Am I that old?
On another thread I read your question:

In blender, of course you can. You can do much more, you can move the UV islands, place them exactly where you like. In fact, this is the only decent way. The advanced way, the easy way. If you are familiar with blender. If not... well, ask Mealea.
3dcoat is an application that is dedicated to such workflows. Not in our case. You need a UV editor capable to do a specific unwrapping. The result should be UV islands that are aligned to horizontals and verticals, as the displacement map is. In blender there is the superior "follow active quad". In Zbrush the GUV (and the PUV). 3dcoat can't do this. Is great for figures though.
What you have to do: Export the obj to blender (export options, uncheck groups!). Do the unwrapping (follow active quad) if you know how. Export the as obj to zbrush again. Now if you apply a texture you'll find the UVs there. For some reason, zbrush inverts UVs vertically, so ask to invert it again.
In post #848 the second link is for a blender basic tutorial, on this technique.
It starts actually like this
"Inspired by some zbrush technics of my good friend MelaleaYing. " So, she is a good friend after all.

We can UV unwrap (GUVs or PUVS or both) in zbrush. If we unwrap visible groups results may look better. However, opening the obj file in blender and having a look in the UV editor, these group UV islands are overlapping each other. It means that you can't bake on such a UV set, you can't bake a possible polypaint there. (but you can always export the whole dense mesh as VRML and blender will render the polypaint directly. VRML exporter can be found under the 3d print plugin of zbrush)

GRIN!!!!!!
Obviously Im your friend you MONSTER!

What is PP though? You keep mentioning it but I have no idea what it is.

Wait....
VRML is still around?
That was a failed attempt to get 3D stuff onto the web, it almost never worked so people did other things, that from the early 90's.....

[michalis]

Thank you mealea, Obviously I'm the monster, obviously you are my friend!
PiPi stands for PostProcessing.
You'll find VRML exporter under the 3d print Z add-on.
It will export the full mesh, plus the polypainting information. (this is the trick)
For instance, imported in blender, under cycles nodes setup, add an attributes node. The default name of the polypainting set (as Vertex painting under blender) is Col (watch out, case sensitive writing). So write it on the attribute node, plug it in diffuse node as color and render polypaint directly. No UVs or maps have been used in this case.