Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Amazon Exclusive: Scott Spencer's Favorite ZBrush Tricks
1. Move your light often. When sculpting try and use the basic material instead of the matcap shaders. The basic material allows you to interactively light the surface as you work. This makes judging your forms much easier since you can see shadows moving across the surface.
2. Use specular highlights. When working make sure you have some level of specular shine on the surface material. Specular highlights allows you to easily see the high points of the sculpt as well as pick out the fine details of the surface texture.
3. Store morph targets. When adding high frequency details it is a good habit to store a morph target of the model with no high frequency details. This will allow you to use the morph brush as a kind of "detail eraser", blending out the skin texture partially or completely as you work.
4. Use custom alphas. While ZBrush has many wonderful alphas preinstalled, get in the habit of finding useful images and storing them as your personal alpha library. You can quickly build up an in-depth and original collection of skin textures. Not only will this help you avoid clichéd alphas, it will also help you learn about the various kinds of wrinkle and scale patterns in nature by looking at the reference you collect.
5. Create and use custom menus.Use the custom menu options under preferences to group your most used buttons and options in one personal menu. This menu can then be mapped with a hotkey and called up at the touch of a button from anywhere in the user interface. This is an incredibly useful tool for speeding up your working time.
6. Create and use hotkeys. Another method to increase speed is using hotkeys. ZBrush has default hotkeys which can be found in the tool tip when hovering over a menu option. You can change these keys and set new hotkeys by pressing control and clicking on a menu option. ZBrush will the ask you to press the key combination you wish to assign as a hotkey.
7. Combine extraneous subtools. Your subtool menu can quickly become cluttered with extraneous parts. Two separate eyeballs for example are unnecessary and just add to the length of the subtool menu. Using meshInsert to take one eyeball and combine it into the other reducing two subtools into one. This can also be accomplished with the ZBrush plug-in SubtoolMaster. For this to work make sure the two tools have the same number of subdivision levels. This will ensure that both models retail their multiple levels of resolution when combined.
8. Frequent the ZBrushCentral website. The ZBrush user community is one of the most supportive user communities I have encountered. Visit ZBrush Central for updates on new tools, techniques, and plug-ins as well as conversations with other artist seeking critique on their work. If you have a question, posting in the forum will get an answer for you in no time.
9. Use ZMapper to check UVs. ZMapper's morph UV function is a quick and easy way to verify the UV set on a particular ZTool. This can be extremely useful in a production pipeline where you need to verify UV coordinates before proceeding. By simply loading the ZTool into ZMapper and activating morphUV you can check for the correct UV layout as well as visually can for any obvious overlaps or errors in the UV shells.
10. Sketch in ZBrush. Using a ZBrush primitive or a generic mesh, sketch characters often. These don’t have to be show reel pieces just little experiments in using the tools and learning about form. I do at least one sketch a day I never plan on showing publicly. This frees me to make mistakes and just relax. It also helps me learn new things about both using the ZBrush tools as well as sculpting form. Just like you may keep a private sketchbook for ideas and fragments, keeping a ZBrush sketch folder will help you stay active. It can also serve as a great source of inspiration when you want to pick up a rough character and take it to a finish.
11. Use reference. Always have reference handy when working. I personally use photo of real people as well as figurative sculptures when I work. It is hard to go wrong referencing how Michelangelo, Bernini, or Giambologna approached a particular problem in figure sculpture when you work. By referencing the masters you will learn while your work benefits. It is also a good idea to do master copies in your spare time. By trying to copy your reference exactly, you learn an amazing amount about how an artist thought and dealt with specific problems.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Excellent Resource for Zbrush
Customer Rating:
This is a pretty good book. I always have reservations about buying books on 3d software. It usually follows the example of, make a cube (giving detailed instructions of course), then says shape it into a torso and the next image is a fully detailed torso showcasing the pecs, abs, wrinkles and a battle wound, I honestly didn't know what to expect here. I was hoping for lots of theory, and workflow techniques (these are here, thankfully) i figured I would never do any of the exercises and just try and read the theory (I took a zbrush class before, but when someone as talented as Scott Spencer comes out with a book, you best read it).
Thankfully, it seems Scott Spencer and the publishers thought the tutorials would be weird to show here too (especially since zbrush by nature is very organic, and fun, most of the time your just playing around and having fun).
Almost every exercise show here in the book is also available on dvd. The bad part is, most of the videos on the dvd have no audio, but this is still a big improvement, and I thank Scott deeply for this.
The dvd also has some really good lectures on the disc, specifically on topology and zspheres, that alone are worth the cost of the book.
In the end, after reading the book over the course of 2 weeks, and referencing it heavily since I bought it (same week it came out) my work has improved, and I have a more thorough understanding of zbrush.
When you only watch videos, you never get theory, you just view step by step. When you follow tutorials online, again, no theory, your just playing a game of monkey see monkey do. This book gives you everything, step by step tutorials, lectures, theory, and videos. This is a course in zbrush in and of itself. The most valuable aspects, are when Scott talks about how he approaches something (or many of the other talented artists that are inside this book) and helps give me a better understanding of the material.
Thanks for writing this book, and creating those wonderful videos. If I had to criticize this book at all, I would say next time give us a few more videos with audio (like the class videos, wow are those good!), but really, I'm more than happy with what I got. This is a very low price, and as such, a very high knowledge to price ratio. I don't see how you can buy this book and not improve.
Great read!
Customer Rating:
If your looking for a good well rounded book on ZBrush, this is it! This book covers nearly everything you need to know in order to work effectively with ZBrush and create create characters...or nearly anything else. This book is well written by an industry expert, informative and certainly one of the better titles available on the subject. I would recommend this book highly to anyone interested in working with ZBrush.
Great
Customer Rating:
The DVD alone is worth the price of the book. I love the video on painting. Meats Meiers DVD on Zbrush is fabulous but I really like Scott Spencer as well. This book will get you up and running with the big boys in no time.
An awesome book!
Customer Rating:
In a world flooded with basic introductory books on major 3D packages (cough*Maya*cough), Scott Spencer's 'ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Sculpting Techniques', while quite a mouthful is a breath of fresh air. This is not a book that focuses on a pure beginner. Understanding the concepts of a 3D environment and mild experience with ZBrush are huge advantages in getting the most out of this book. That is not to say this book is not accessible to those who are not proficient in ZBrush. It covers many of the basic concepts, but covers them in such depth, that it would be easily overwhelming to a beginner. The book begins by explaining the relationship to traditional sculpting techniques, to those applied while digital sculpting in ZBrush. This is one of the great strengths of the book. It covers not only the technical aspects of ZBrush, but also the artistic, the true driving force and advantage of ZBrush. From this initial chapter, you will then be lectured on such topics as; Sculpting Techniques, Detailing, PolyPainting, ZSpheres, and Displacement mapping, among many, many other topics I will let you discover for yourself. Another great strength of this book is the mini-tutorials from various other artists that are added into the already information-packed pages. Contributing artists include; Cesar Dacol, Ian Joyner, Jim McPherson, Zach Petroc, Alex Alvarez, Ryan Kingslien, and Fabian Loing. Having all of these different techniques and perspectives on the art of digital sculpting, adds a lot of knowledge and expertise to this book. I cannot say enough towards the value of this book. It is hands down the best ZBrush resource available in print as of this time. I hope that Scott and company with continue to share their extensive knowledge of the arts and of technology with the digital art community.
Recommended!
Customer Rating:
I would recommened this book to anyone looking to advance their digital sculpting skills further, regardless if youre a beginner, intermediate or expert. This is a very thick and heavy book with some great tips, tons of which I had no idea you could do. The included cd has a bunch of lessons and video clips to help illustrate processes, along with the great pictures in the book. Finally Zsphere hands were explained and demonstrated easily!
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