Just wow. I've been trying to get Zbrush, 3DS Max and Maya for sometime and now I'm getting them all free next week. I got a hookup :-) Keep up the great work. Looking forward to the final piece and any others you make. Rock on!
Empress is right.. the video REALLY puts it into perspective. for some reason i didn't think about you having done that right from scratch and all by hand.. i thought there were some shortcuts somewhere, but nope..
...apparently you just rock that hard.
My first MA: It's a No Good day. (Arc ID: 92684)
@CybinMonde: Nethershift - (50) - Dark/Regen/Dark scrapper (Infinity)
@Solunis: Desumater - (27) - Elec/Dark brute (Pinnacle); Syrah - (23) - DB/WP scrapper (Pinnacle) (proud member of Pinnacle on Tap)
Wow. That movie makes Zbrush look like a cool tool. I'm impressed with the way some of the features seems to work, and love the idea of painting right into the model instead of using Photoshop as an outside tool and doing regular refreshes.
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Wow. That movie makes Zbrush look like a cool tool. I'm impressed with the way some of the features seems to work, and love the idea of painting right into the model instead of using Photoshop as an outside tool and doing regular refreshes.
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Yeah, Zbrush has some pretty nice drawing tools, but the really cool thing is there's a plug-in for Zbrush that lets you bounce back and forth between Zbrush and Photoshop so you can use both sets of tools seemlessly. The only bad thing is I don't know if a new version of that plug-in is out for Z3 yet.
Although I started with a sphere I still have to point out a big piece of what's missing in the video is creating a new mesh on top of the basic head shape to correct any topology problems that dragging large sets of polys around leads to. Creating the 'corrected' mesh was a manual process but not too bad with the new tools. It went pretty quick. Then after the new mesh was created I modeled the medium and high detail stuff.
Oh, *** I apologize for the geeking out here but ***, Doug get this, with the new Z3 you can paint your texture on the model before laying out the UV's! If you've got a high enough rez model. That was another feature I was testing out with the Rikti. So right now I've got the painted head in Z3 (3mil polys or something like that), and a low rez version in Maya (1,100 polys more or less). I'm laying out the UV's in Maya then I'll import it back into Z and transfer the Texture to the low rez model. I'll probably step up the resolution on the low rez to 4,000+ to make it easier for Maya to handle when I take it back in there to render in Mental Ray. *** geekout is done ***
Anyhow, it's a fun program to relax with.
Thank all you guys for the comments and feedback, hopefully I'll be able to finish him up in the not too distant future. I've got about 1/2 of his base armor (torso) modeled so far in Maya.
Thanks again,
Todd
"Scumball in the side pocket." - 8 Baller
That looks awesome, 8. Zbrush 3 is my first stint into Zbrush and I'm honestly not sure why I waited so long to get it. I bought Mudbox first but when I heard Zbrush tackled some of the issues I've had with previous releases, I couldn't help it. Like you, I use Maya to make the base cage before moving it across.
The texturing without UVs thing is cool, but just an FYI if you ever plan on using Z3 for normal mapping - it's actually broken at the moment.
I envy that work. I definately wish I knew something about how to do that stuff.
How long have you been doing this stuff?
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The texturing without UVs thing is cool, but just an FYI if you ever plan on using Z3 for normal mapping - it's actually broken at the moment.
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Yeah, but I saw on the forums that someone posted a wonky work around for now, but I haven't had the need to try it out yet.
Thanks,
Todd
"Scumball in the side pocket." - 8 Baller
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How long have you been doing this stuff?
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Well depends on what you classify "this stuff". I started doing basic CAD 3d stuff on the Atari 1040ST waaaaay back in....ummm.....around '90 something. I moved on to Stratastudio on the Mac after seeing Myst. So '94, '95ish. Since then I've played around in Raydream, Lightwave, Maya, and support programs like Bodypaint 3d and Zbrush.
So, a while I guess. 
At one point I wanted to do 3d stuff for movies, but it wasn't meant to be.
Thanks,
Todd
"Scumball in the side pocket." - 8 Baller
Hey, that is just amazing. Sorry if you answered this but did you do the model start to finish in zbrush, or did you start in Maya or 3DMax etc and create a basic model, then move it to zbrush for the detailwork?
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Hey, that is just amazing. Sorry if you answered this but did you do the model start to finish in zbrush, or did you start in Maya or 3DMax etc and create a basic model, then move it to zbrush for the detailwork?
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Normally, at least in the past, I would create a base mesh in Maya then import the extremely low rez model into zbrush. However, since I was using this to try out new features in Zbrush 3 I started from a basic sphere in Zbrush, did the base modeling which was about 45-60% of the basic shape. Then used Zbrush 3's new topology tool to create a low rez model, with improved topology in Zbrush. As another test, I did export THAT low rez model to Maya where I added the bust/chest polys but that was really just to check things out and make sure wonky things weren't happening between the two. Then back to Zbrush. So really, 98% was all Zbrush.
I was pretty impressed with the topology tool so that may acutally make Zbrush a viable place to do low poly modeling now, although I'll still use Maya or Bodypaint to lay out the UV's.
To clarify something about Zbrush, it's really a tool to suppliment other 3d apps. Not so much a full stand alone 3d package.
Todd
"Scumball in the side pocket." - 8 Baller
Ummmm, like WOW! Dude thats frickin SCHWHEAT!!!