ZBrush Action Hero Contest

Any ZBrushers out there?

ZBrush is the industry standard for digital sculpting. Pixologic, the company that produces it, is running a superhero contest. I'm pretty pumped about this and I think I will be doing a re-imagining of one of my cox characters.

If people are interested, I will post my concept art here, as well as the wip stages of my entry. Regardless, if you are interested in 3d art this is a great contest to follow. The talent at that site is incredible and people will likely be talking about their progress and showing examples of their methods.

I'd be satisfied with just learnng how to use that program. lol

I totally want to see your progress. Post!

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I totally want to see your progress. Post!

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"Ditto," says the lurker.

I'd love to see your progress as well. ZBrush is an amazing program and I've seen some mind blowing things come out of it.

Checked the videos, that looks like an extraordinary piece of software.

Here are some preliminary designs

This is a re-imagining of my old arena scrapper Soft Assassin (spines/sr). I'll be including some backstory/power description on my thread on the contest page.

Nice look. I really like the third one, knowing the backstory and powers are always neat

Hiya,

Here is what I posted for the backstory/powers:

Backstory:

A failed chapter in genetic engineering, hybrid spore X-79 was developed as a food source that could thrive in harsh climates and in low-gravity outer space greenhouses. It demonstrated great adaptibility under a wide range of conditions, but was eventually revealed to generate highly toxic byproducts in the course of it's growth cycle. When the project was canceled, lead researcher Linda Hayes smuggled a sample of the spores out of the lab and resolved to continue it's development on her own.

The sample X-79 developed a rudimentary intellect and mobility and escaped containment. The home lab was contaminated with the spores and the toxicity killed the woman when she came into contact with them. The spores then colonized her body, modeling their continued physiological development on her anatomical structure. Somehow portions of Hayes' memories and emotional makeup were assimilated by the developing spore creature.

A week after Hayes stopped showing up at the research facility, a coworker discovered her poisoned remains in her apartment. There was no sign of any contamination in the building. The following week, the manager of the research facility found a cookie tin on his desk. When he opened it, lethal poison sprayed out killing him instantly. The fluid coalesced into a green skinned woman who went on a murderous rampage through the administrative wing, killing executives and security forces with poison barbs launched from her body. The woman critically injured several armored swat team members in hand to hand combat before diving out of a third story window and running off into the nearby woods where she successfully evaded pursuit.

Since then the creature has done contract work for various criminal organizations who have dubbed her the "Soft Assassin." She has also occassionally assisted superheroes and law enforcements agencies in times of crisis. Her motives remain a mystery.

Abilities/Characteristics:

--Decentralized nervous system. Although Soft resembles a human female, her body is composed of interconnected spores. She has no internal organs and can easily survive wounds (eg. taking a bullet to the head or heart area) that would be fatal in an actual human. Although she has a face and eyes, the creature can actually see from any clear suface of her body, so in reality she has no front or back. She typically moves as an athletic woman, but could just as easily walk on her hands, all fours, or some variation thereof for as long as desired.

--Density control. Soft's normal consistency approximates human flesh. She can increase the hardness of her surface area to thick leather with little effort. With concentration she harden small areas, like her fists, to the consistency of rock. Conversely, she can reduce cohesion until her mass flows on the ground like syrup.

--Superhuman strength and reflexes. Soft's reaction time is much greater than that of even a trained human being. She is able to dodge automatic weapon's fire and perform extreme feats of agility (walking across a tightrope on two fingers). She is able to lift a couple hundred pounds with ease, and can press roughly half a ton over her head for a short duration. She has an acrobatic fighting style that is difficult to anticipate based on the essentially inhuman ways she can move her form.

--Stamina. Soft can perform strong exertion for about 12 hours before beginning to fatigue. She doesn't require sleep or air, although she replicates breathing in order to simulate human speech. She heals quickly, recovering almost instantly from knife wounds and small arms fire. Blunt force doesn't generally cause her much damage although she can be stunned if the spores are dispersed strongly enough.

--Toxins. Soft can generate poisonous spikes from almost any part of her physique and fire them with great force. She can also generate corrosive toxins on any surface to burn through restraints or augment hand-to-hand strikes against armored opponents.Altough she generally will fire a volley of spikes at a single target or small group at one time, she is capable of firing a burst of toxic needles in a 360 degree radius around herself all at once. Soft wears a vinyl uniform with permeable sections that help her control the discharge of the spikes and make the attacks more accurate.

Very cool concept. I love the idea.

Thanks Larissa!

Here is a screenshot of my initial base mesh in ZBrush. Zbrush has an system for generating meshes called ZSpheres, which you can see on the left. It's kind of cludgy, people usually generate their base mesh in a more traditional 3d app then import it for sculpting.

Anyway, I'll refine this initial mesh with a better distribution of polygons, then I'll be ready to start sculpting.

Lumpy.

Ok here's the refined base mesh. Hopefully this will be adequate for sculpting.

Nice start. You might want to check out articles on super hero preportions. Your head to body ratio looks like he's 12-16 years old.

You might want to start with Zbrush's default male model. "Super Male Model" or something like that if I remember right.

Yeah, I saw your post and was going to jump all over this one until I read the rules. I use ZBrush at work, which means it's licensed to work, which disqualifies me . It states the software must be licensed to the individual, unless you own the company the software is licensed to.

Very irratated. Oh well, maybe next time.

Todd

Actually, the last I read in the contest thread they were allowing people to participate with licenses that belonged to their work. I don't remember what hoops you had to jump through to verify this, but if you want to go for it I think you can.

I should have an update on this soon. The base mesh is pretty chunky due to being derived from zspheres. Those aren't my desired proportions though I don't generally for super hero proportions anyway. Also its a female character.

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Actually, the last I read in the contest thread they were allowing people to participate with licenses that belonged to their work.

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Oh my.....they changed the rules! I jumped over there the day you posted originally and it didn't have the "unless given permission by a company officer", thing, it actually something like "unless the individual is the owner of the company".

Shweeeeet. May have found my next contest to chase .

Thanks man.
Todd

p.s. ...I'm seriously going to need to learn how to work ZBrushes "transpose" feature better.

Hola,

Here is an update of my contest entry.

I took a couple weeks off due to the holidays. The link is to a shot of the face. If you look in the folder with the other pics, there are two new ones that show the progress of me roughing out the body. I haven't linked them here because of...nudie digital clay.

It's looking good so far. How many hours have you put into it?

Not sure really, maybe around 20 hours including generating the base mesh.

I've got a few updates in my contest folder on my Deviant page. Two are of the head and my progress sculpting the hair:

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There is also an update of the body which shows the current proportions and anatomical detail. I hope to have the hair done soon then I'll start on the costume.

Here's a couple more updates on the head, about ready to work on the costume:
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Very cool, it looks great.

Thx Larissa!

Here's the latest update: costume

Just starting to rough out the torso area of her uniform.

Hola,

Here are some more updates:
Shoulder and leg update
shoulder detail
leg detail

Very detailed there. Are you going to do both sides the same? Is that difficult to duplicate or are you going to have to resculpt it for her other side?