A quick ZBrush tutorial

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Deviation Actions

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MealeaYing
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Art Nouveau GroupLooping

Patpotlood asked me how I do some of the things I have been doing in ZBrush.
Here's how I make these loops I have been doing.
I have decided that they are now called Patpotlood Loops.

So I should refine this some, I made it for Patpotlood and he says its good to put it in here so...
Here it is.
If you are from Greece there is one extra step, but its not included yet. 

First we need a simple but sort of interesting object to work on:

  1. Make a Sphere 3D on the Canvas.
  2. Turn on Edit Mode. (Yah yah yah....)
  3. Hit the Make PolyMesh 3D button in the Tool Pallet.
  4. Open the Geometry pallet.
  5. In the Dynamesh section turn off Project and hit the Dynamesh Button, this turns it on and Dynameshes your Sphere.
  6. Now turn Dynamesh off (I know this seems stupid but it prevents problems later).
  7. In the ZRemesher section of the Geometry Pallet set ZRemesher to Half and hit the ZRemesher Button over and over till your sphere is under 200 polygons (It gets faster as it goes).

Ok, now we have something low rez to start from, there are a lot of other ways of getting something like that but this is sort of fun and rather random.
Now we mess with it:

  1. Turn on PolyFrame on the right (or Shift F) so you can see.
  2. In the UV Map Pallet on the right open the Create section.
  3. Hit PUVTiles.
  4. In the PolyGroups Pallet hit the Auto Groups With UV Button.
  5. In the Geometry Pallet hit the Divide Button.
  6. Again in the Geometry Pallet hit the Delete Lower Button.
  7. And once again in the Geometry Pallet open the EdgeLoop section. Now things get interesting.
  8. Leave GroupLoops at its default and hit the Group Loops Button. See how you wound up with a lot of circular loops and islands? This may not be ideal, so lets try something else.
  9. Control Z to UnDo.
  10. Set the Loop Slider to One.
  11. Set the GPolish Button to Zero.
  12. Hit the GroupLoops Button again, see the difference? Later we will want all the smoothing but for now we are doing big changes to large areas so no smoothing is good.

Now we extrude, extract or inflate or deflate (and do stuff like set morph targets and things, but thats for later).
Ok:

  1. Hold down Control and Shift and click on the Loops group you just created. The islands should vanish for the moment. (Did that make sense?)
  2. Just above GroupLoops you will see EdgeLoop and its Displacement Slider (Disp), Try setting it to 0.05 and hit EdgeLoop Button. If the extrusion looks like its a little high reduce the slider, if it looks too low increase it, this takes some messing with.
  3. Now hold down Control and Shift again and click OUTSIDE of your object, or on the Canvas if its easier, later that will be harder when things are more dense.

See how you have affected your sphere?
Ok, now we do the WHOLE PROCESS AGAIN (sigh) but with some small changes:

  1. In the UV Map Pallet hit GUVTiles this time. (See? a small but VERY important change)
  2. In the PolyGroups Pallet hit the Auto Groups With UV Button. See how the groups are now totally different?
  3. In the Geometry Pallet hit the Divide Button.
  4. Again in the Geometry Pallet hit the Delete Lower Button.
  5. And once again in the Geometry Pallet set GroupLoops to its default with Four Loops and GPolishset to Fifty.
  6. Hit the Group Loops Button. See how this is different?
  7. Select your loops again by using Control and Shift and click on the loops.
  8. Extrude again using EdgeLoops and now that, since you are at a higher rez, everything is a bit closer together, you might need to reduce how far you extrude them.

You can now go back AGAIN and do it with PUV or GUV Tiles again setting your extrude to something even smaller.
Also if you look closely when you have GroupLoops set to Four you get a few extra rings, try messing with those as well.
Sometimes using EdgeLoop is not practical for various reasons, try using Inflate and the other features in the Deformation pallet instead. Some can cause chaos, in high rez objects avoid Inflate Balloon for example if you want to live to see the sun come up.

If you are from Greece don't forget to turn on Edit and turn off triangles in the grouploops section, ok fine, two extra steps!
GRIN!

What makes me very happy about switching from Puv to Guv is that it automatically creates Art Nouveau looking stuff.

I always thought that Art Nouveau started in France.... Turns out its Belgium, I had no idea.

Thanks Patpotlood for inspiring this!!!
© 2012 - 2024 MealeaYing
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MealeaYing's avatar
MealeaYing
Im just testing formating here, I seriously don't expect anyone to even see this let alone read the whole thing.....