2D Drawing to 3D Model using ZBRUSH and BLENDER

in this video i'm going to show you how i use zbrush blender in photoshop to turn this awesome 2d drawing by raquel trev who you'll find linked in the description into this 3d model which you'll notice isn't a direct translation because this was a draw this in your style challenge but before we get into it i want a word with you the most common question i get asked about sculpting is what software do you use and the second most common question that i get is why don't you use blender or 3d core instead i see these questions everywhere and as any sculptor that's worth their salt will tell you if you're at the level where you're asking these questions then it's not the software you want to be giving your attention to it's the uh the shapes the proportions the fundamentals now think about it if you've got a good understanding of the shape you're trying to recreate then you're going to be able to do it in either zbrush or blender because they're both capable in their own ways and if you don't have a good understanding of the shape you're trying to recreate then you're gonna fail either way this is why i've created next level base meshes a series of shapes designed to get your scopes to the next level regardless of the software you decide to use the idea is to try and recreate these increasingly difficult shapes in sequence checking your progress as you go doing so will help train your brain to see the shapes and shift your attention away from the tools which you can worry about later alternatively you can just grab the final mesh which is re-topologize and use it for your project it's up to you the blender and zbrush files are ready to go out the box and all the obj files are available for alternative sculpting packages along with 26 reference images for each level totaling 234 reference images you'll find details on where to buy the next level base meshes in the description below and you can expect to see some tutorials on how to use them on my youtube channel soon but for now good luck on getting to the next level i start the head by finding our first shape using the move brush to pull the mesh and trim dynamic to play on the sides of the head now this key shape is level one completed already and represents the cranial mask with a wedge attach i use ctrl to mask out an array for the neck and pull it out with my gizmo tool i use my insert mesh brush for this basic ear shape and you'll find a tutorial on how to make your own link below and if you're observant you might have realized that the ears aren't present in the final image so why bother well without them the head looks very strange and it becomes difficult to judge proportions properly so it's a good idea to at least create some basic shapes i took this as an opportunity to sculpt some semi-realistic ears since i don't practice them enough happy with my second shape i begin looking for the next by roughing out the chin cheekbones and sides of the head i then move on to the eye sockets using clear build up holding alt to carve away i also make space for the other facial features too i like to take things nice and slow here since this is the foundation of our face and while zbrush is very good at making big changes even during the final stages of the sculpt if you take your time to make these early shapes look good the scope will go a whole lot smoother for the upper torso i add a sphere which i immediately convert to dynamesh at a very low resolution for the lower torso i duplicate the sphere and rotate it in position i then use the move brush to mold the spheres into a simplified shape of the torso then i merge the objects and dynamesh them together to create a single solid shape using curve i cut away the areas where the arms and legs insert into the torso and make improvements to the shape let's get back to the head at this stage i start to establish some playing changes and like i said i'm progressing really slowly here referencing human anatomy on another screen i'm not actually referencing the concept for proportions on this occasion because this is a draw this in your style piece and for these i try to assimilate ideas from some of my favorite artists such as giselle yukari or cyrin notice that i occasionally push the model away so that it's quite small on the screen this is a bit like stepping away from the model and is good for checking the overall proportions and silhouette i start pushing the anatomy a little more but again i'm progressing really slowly and jumping around the model to avoid getting bogged down in any one area i tried to get a feel for the skull shape underneath the skin before pushing the features too much jumping back to the torso i checked the proportions and silhouette then i rough it some features such as the rib cage pelvis and clavicles and some softer forms too on the nose i began roughing out some secondary planes and making room for the nostrils i don't specifically aim for a nose type at this point i'm just thinking about getting the planes in the right place i can worry about the more nuanced characteristics later i begin the mouth by using dam standard to make the center line and underneath the bottom lip then i use clear build up to begin finding the forms of the lips when you're making lips try to avoid making them too flat check there's a curvature to them from underneath because lips wrap around the teeth again i begin making marks on the head to avoid losing the skull underneath before making space for some eyeballs for the eyeballs themselves i just add in some simple spheres and position them in the eye sockets now since this isn't a realistic head i work from the size of the eye sockets to estimate how big the eyeballs ought to be but there's a certain amount of intuition involved here something that helps find the scale is adding an iris to the eyeball which generally takes up approximately half the diameter now i'll spend some time working on the shapes i have laid down and once i get to this stage where the sculpt is starting to get somewhere but it's looking a bit weird this is the point i usually decide to re-apologize because the low res mesh gives me a lot of control over the overall forms however this time i decided against doing it from scratch and instead used a plugin called z-wrap now i'll say right away that you do have to pay for this plug-in and i'm not being paid to say this but this is a super useful tool basically what you do is loading a head that's already re-topologized which is the blue one here then you specify points on each mesh that correspond with each other once you're done you hit the wrap button and the software does its best to wrap the good topology around the dynames apology and just like that we have a retopologized head as i did in the last video i create the eyelash shapes by duplicating the entire head and deleting everything but this strip of polygons then i use the z modeler tools to extrude it for thickness and add supporting edge loops i create the eyebrows in much the same way because we might as well put the topology we have to good use now usually i create her strands in blender but this was no usual hairstyle and took a lot of trial and error before i started to get somewhere i started with the cube and used the bend curve transformation to find the first hair shape then i used the move brush to start refining the shape to create the primary hair mass i masked an area on the head and extracted it it's probably worth mentioning that the concept i'm using was actually one of four and i was drawing more reference from this one at this point now because this hairstyle is so complicated you'll see me dipping in and out of it during the rest of the piece to avoid overwhelming my fragile brain for the choker once again i duplicated the head and made use of the topology that was already there and for the shoulders i initialized the cue cube and kept it really low poly to find the basic shape i need i then subdivide it and refine the shape a bit more for the arms i had a z sphere and positioned them with a slight bend like so now as with the ear the arms are mostly unseen but they do help to find proportions and i could do with the practice now i find it really hard to sculpt the forearm without a hand in place but i don't really want to make one from scratch especially when it won't be in the final piece so i import one from another model and for the breast i add two spheres and call it a day because it annoys people on twitter but then i grow up and create more of a teardrop shape like so it's worth remembering that the breasts sit over the pecs and the pecs insert underneath the shoulder creating the front of the ampere as with the head when i'm sculpting the body i like to over exaggerate the planes to better understand the forms and you'll notice that i gradually smooth these out as i work the sculpt to start the top i masked an area of the chest and extracted it i didn't start by duplicating the body this time because the chest topology isn't appropriate for the clothing i think i know is as good a time as any to poly paint some peroxy eyes but i avoid painting anything on the skin for a while and the reason is that poly paint can trick your eyes into thinking a shape is a certain way when it isn't so it's best to leave it until the end but you can always turn poly paint off in the sub tool menu too here i'm preparing the mesh for some very questionable z-remeshing now if you've followed me for a while you might know that i usually like to be very particular about topology but time constraints and laziness give me other ideas the character is basically imposed anywhere and by stroke of sheer luck the vert count matched up with the head for an easy bridge for the clock which isn't really a clock but i don't know what else to call it so we'll call it a clock i inserted a cylinder primitive and deleted the top and bottom along with the front polygons i then use the modeler to delete most of the edge loops to make it really low poly to start placing it about the model looking back there's definitely more efficient ways of doing this but it got the job done here i'm tentatively experimenting with the hair but i've still not idea how i'm going to fathom the final shape yet i decided to extract these shapes out as separate meshes to make them easier to control and eventually i'll merge them back into the main mesh for this hair strand at the front i first use a curving blender which allows a lot of control over this complex twisting shape before converting it to geometry and sending it back to zebra for editing eventually we start to get a shape like this and i realize that i'm really passing through the scope now because otherwise this video would be hours long but don't forget you can check out the real-time videos at twitch.tv forward slash dannymac 3d to create the ribbon i started with a ring 3d and set it to really low poly in the initialize settings i then shaped it to be one half of a ribbon before using mirror and weld to double it over i feel like i want to add some poly paint to the skin now so i first give the anatomy a once over i'll revisit the anatomy a couple of times before the end but i'll always remember to turn the polypaint off when doing so i start by adding a slight red to the cheeks nose and chin an emphasis on the word slight start with your skin tone and push it a little towards red this usually looks better than diving straight in with a flat red colour now the same is usually true for lips but in this case the character has dirt red lipstick i'm actually quite happy with how the skin is looking already and i don't want to overwork it so i'll leave it as it is and we can experiment with the skin more in blender later for now i'll just use blender to create the tie coming from the ribbon i used the hair curve from earlier for this as it makes twisting the mesh really easy and again i convert it to geometry and send it over to zbrush for tweaking then i briefly jump back to the poly pen and give her a bit of eye makeup and now it's time for that fish i insert some geometry and initialize a q sphere using the gizmo and move brush i squash the sphere into shape i then duplicate the sphere to make the thin and tail shapes which are obviously very stylized and for the eye i just poly painted one on i could spend a lot longer making this look pretty but with my self-imposed headline looming i decide that this would have to be good enough a decision i've always been terrible at making eventually i dynamesh it all together and take it over to blender to re-topologize it i don't really need to re-topologize it but it will only take a minute and having edge loops around the parts that stick out will afford me a lot of control i notice from the reference that the chalker holds a little shell so to create this i inserted a plane and masked out the first ship and then extracted the shape and re-meshed it then i duplicated it and mirrored to create the complete shape like so i initialize a q sphere and create some splashes coming from the herb before progressing with the her shape a little bit more i think now is a good time to start creating now a scene in blender to see how this thing is looking in case you weren't aware i use an add-on called gore-b to automatically send models between zbrush and blender and i'll leave a link to where you can find the latest version in the description below just now you saw me adding a vertex color node into each material to bring our poly paint data from zbrush and now i'm adding a hdri for global lighting now by itself this makes the model look very flat so i added a temporary key light to fix that now while this fish is very basic i don't like how uniform the specular is so i add a nice texture node into the roughness next i had a camera and set the focal length to 85 millimeter which is what i use in zbrush eventually i dial this down though to around 50 for this model now at this point i went back into zbrush and started detailing at the her splashes but unfortunately i forgot to press record but again the whole thing was live streamed over at twitch if you want to see how it did it basically i ended up extracting lots of individual pieces of geometry and pushing them around for a very long time until they started to feel right there were no special tricks involved just a very long tedious process of trying to understand how it's supposed to look from all angles this is quite easily the most complicated hairstyle i've ever attempted and eventually these separate pieces will get dynamesh together to form one big piece well actually more like three or four big pieces in the meantime i think it's time we painted the clock that isn't a clock the cloud shapes were simply painted directly with poly paint to create the strokes i used lazy mouse and then came back in and manually added variation to the stroke weight for the stars i figured it would be easier to create an alpha so i opened up photoshop and gave the symmetry tools a try i created three different alphas two star shapes and a stair dust type thing when i say about the images and import them as alphas in zbrush i can set my stroke type to drag and stamp them at varying sizes across the cloak that is in the clock and then repeat this process for each alpha now back in blender i feel like the hair is missing something so i start experimenting by adding in hair strands the way i usually do the hair starts to feel like it has directionality to it and i'm really liking the effect next i pause the ribbon which almost looks like it's underwater in the concept now unfortunately there were two more live streams after this point and both of which the recordings failed and by which i mean i failed to press record and to be honest it was mostly just a couple of hours making very minor tweaks that probably weren't that noticeable in the final piece anyway but if you want to see it again it's all over at twitch.tv forward slash dannymac3d if you've made it this far then well done i hope you've managed to learn something new and i would love to hear any comments you have below if you want to help please like this video and subscribe and don't forget the next level base meshes are available for this piece at my gumroad store link below along with a bunch of other stuff that i sell which are all meant to help you level up your art have fun sculpting peace you

Channel: Danny Mac 3D

Views: 1,160,090

Keywords: pixologic, zbrush, blender, sculpt, disney, dreamworks, pixar, stylized, b3d, dtiys, speedsculpt, timelapse, time lapse, danny mac, raquel trave, 3d

Id: KTc7PTXXC9U

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020