My name is Daniel Lieske and would like to start this thread to show my ZBrush experiments. Originally I'm a 2D Artist and I have done quite a lot of digital painting in the last years. I use ZBrush since the 3.1 release and I'm really fascinated by this piece of software. Perhaps let's see what I have done in ZBrush so far:
I started humble, like everone I guess.
after the first tests and this head I started a goblin bust:
These first steps were quite within the confines of what I did know about conventional 3D modelling to this time (i have some Maya experience). Things became much more interesting when I encountered the Clay Brush!
[Thanks to Ralf Stumpf for his great MatCap Material]
After that I decided to test my new skills on a bigger project. Here is my approach on the famous Alien monster:
[Shader by Ralf Stumpf]
[Shader by Ralf Stumpf]
[Shader by Ralf Stumpf]
I also did a selfportrait. The first time that it came in handy that I have no hair!
[Shader by Ralf Stumpf]
Ok, this was quite a load. Since I'm a 2D Artist I also did dome experiments in ZBrush using the 2.5D canvas. Here you see the Deco Brush in Action:
These were the textures I used for the last image:
Well, what shall I say - I'm quite taken away by this software and I'm looking forward to more experiments with this amazing tool. Your input is greatly appeciated and I hope we will have some fun together in the future!
Great work by the way, I really like your sculpting! By the way the bronze and greyClay shaders by Ralf Stump are my favorite for presentation, seeing that you used them here also Zbrush is an a great and addictive program, so keep at it, I'm interested in seeing more great work from you in the future
Your 2D digitals are magnum opuses. The Journey Begins entry character is iconic. Awesome to see an artist of your caliber using ZBrush as a means to 3D expression. Looking forward to seeing some animations and ZBrush sculpts rendered in Mental Ray.
Amazing first ZB works. Please post as much as your time allows (including more 2d preliminary sketches).
Thanks for your warm welcome you three! Rest asured that I will put everything in here which is in any way related to ZBrush. If preliminary sketches are welcome I surely will add them to my postings.
But did you know what you can do with ZBrush when you put a perspective plane on the 2.5D canvas? I'm really amazed, here are some test:
I did remember that tools on the 2.5D canvas align to the surface normal of other tools. It struck my like lightning that you could use this functionality on a perspective plane. The only in 3D edited object above is the ground terrain, everything else is painted on the 2.5 canvas after the terrain was droped to it.
Another one:
This time with color. The trees are made by snake hooking little point out of the terrain on the 2.5D canvas. All buildings and the holes are also painted in 2.5D
Suddenly the fibre brush makes sense to me. Interesting thing: the rocks were all "painted" as cubes and then manipulated with the smudge brush to look smoother. All in 2.5D!
A more sophisticated test. Terrain was modeled in edit mode and dropped in perspective. Trees and rocks were put into the scene on the 2.5D canvas and then rotated in place in edit mode. From then on everything was painting the 2.5D canvas. The roots of the trees are made with the snake hook in 2.5D. Done some compositing in Photoshop afterward.
I guess I bore the hell out of you with my clumsy test images here but I did not even know you could do something like that in ZBrush. I always saw the 3d sculptings and thought that's it.
I surely will use some of these techniques in terrain concept art. It's a very fast way to sketch the look and feel of complex landscapes and do lots of variations in a short time.