Sea Beast - Making Of A Character VisDev Model - ZBrush Summit 2022

foreign [Music] [Music] live for one of the last times at this year's 2022 zebra Summit I am your host Louis Tucci with my friend and compatriot and fellow zbrusher Ian Robinson to my left I'm Louis Tucci once again we are here live the moment is upon us Ian yeah it is we've come to the last official presentation we've got Sea Beast Netflix hit film what a joy oh yeah I feel terrible for those creatures they're hunting them down but today we're going to get behind the veil it's for our entertainment so we're the last presentation wow we had what do you think dude amazing I mean come on seriously like the level of detail that Raph was able to bring to his statue and really talk about that process and how he was able to push those elements and also too just push through and have some perseverance about how he wanted to approach it because there's not always an easy solution to create the assets that you need and so he made everything by hand yeah and he had a lot of really cool techniques and tips for it so it was a lot of fun to go through and just kind of watch his mind work and explain everything that um well artists every day struggle with you know we all have that same I think the vein where it's like how do I get this done and he was able to kind of break that down I'm sure so many people like myself just love to watch other artists come in and explain that because it helps us get through that process so you know I told him on the way out I said most importantly was the idea of overcoming this concept that things need to look good from the beginning as we were alluding to but the real the real issue there was that he started part of the demonstration of a hand with just some cubes and that's the message across these days we hope that this has been a clear message for you all watching at home and around the globe we're happy to do this to to be able to inspire and introduce actually introduce and Inspire and help to integrate zebrush into your pipeline or into your life if you're a newcomer what you've seen a moment ago was the use of just a simple Cube to make something really cool and I think we can all get behind that we are going to do up next like I said we're going to have Sea Beast the team from Netflix is going to be Charles Ellison and Leticia Gillett who is a fellow Noman friend of mine so yeah we'll run the credits and we'll come back after this wave to the people at home Ian for the last time here we'll be back in a minute with ourselves [Applause] well well well from remote locations around the globe they gather for the zebra Summit Ian Robinson to my left Louis Tucci here live with Charles Ellison and Leticia Gillett good to see you all waving hello emphatically good to see you too how are you two doing today a bit crazy not gonna lie uh we this almost didn't happen for us uh we had a situation where Mother Nature threw a curveball I was all set up at home ready to go Leticia and I have been communicating getting excited and my power goes out no um luckily luckily we have high winds here in Los Angeles right now but luckily uh leticia's husband Chris amazing 3D artist has a really great setup here that I was able to just kind of pack up my tower bring it over scrambling down to the wire got it set up um you should have saw us you would have been proud of us but we're ready to go you said it we are very proud thank you so much for helping to make this segment a reality put her there absolutely yeah a t-shirt in the mail for you old sport maybe even a hat it wouldn't be possible without it Leticia what's going on there [Laughter] we're in the same studio so it looks great you've got some she got some Disney characters a nice fun fun bit of Collectibles back there I love that the inspiration is amazing I want to break out into the song but I won't because we'll we'll get uh we'll get in trouble [Laughter] hi everyone in the world well we're glad that you're here with us today yeah it has been crazy winds here in Los Angeles so we're we're happy to have you we're safe and sound inside the mobian green screen hanger here uh very safe thank goodness and the feed is continuing to be broadcast around the world but uh let me just introduce you properly Charles Ellison started career as a young boy it says and originally you were from Venezuela growing up with movies and cartoons at the epicenter of your being and uh around I'm gonna age you now and maybe age us all a little bit but uh in in 93 you and Paul gabri have this in common Jurassic Park Moment of Truth where you say is it real that's right that's right are they real and then somebody says no it's a film and that is basically how you got started and um and then Toy Story pushed you one step over the edge as Paul mentioned yesterday so you have that very same parallel trajectory you've worked for DreamWorks and now you're with Netflix and Aspire Studios as well so tell us a little bit about uh about you know what you've been up to and what you've been doing yeah absolutely uh I I don't know if it's a good time to maybe share a screen I just have a a few things of you may if you wish yeah you're in charge and then we'll move over to Leticia okay and do I just go ahead and share a screen from the zoom or is it already set to go let me see here uh I think it should be should be good there hey there we go yeah oh yes okay okay awesome um well I mean let me uh just you know elaborate on that a little bit and thank you Louie that's a great intro um I've I've really benefited from having just uh tremendous opportunities you know uh like I mentioned there influenced by movies since I was a boy um movies for me you know just uh kept me company man you know in so many different ways when you're an only child and you need to find things to do and you're done playing outside like cartoons and movies that's where you kind of get lost and um so so really for me it's uh uh a very nice journey to discover that I ended up working within the entertainment industry and and creating characters uh Jurassic Park and Toy Story were so Pinnacle for me in terms of like even understanding this as a as a goal you know as something attainable so um went to traditional Art School uh like so many you know that that are in this industry and uh fast forward a little bit you know my I got my big break joining DreamWorks I started at DreamWorks as a as a 3D modeler um tremendous group there uh I mean just immense talent and uh a lot of lifelong friends that I've garnered over there and and it's uh the kind of place that uh really inspired you know you're surrounded by so many great talented people um had an opportunity to you know work on so many different films you know the dragons franchise uh uh Kung Fu Panda many others um as I developed there as an artist you know I I you know got an opportunity to join you know the ranks as in leadership and I was one of the heads of modeling there for for a few years uh trolls and and trolls uh two trolls World Tour uh were kind of my uh first two projects that I supervised I had the pleasure of you know having Leticia on my team and you know she when you have rock stars like that it's uh everything comes really easy um and yesterday seeing Kayla Bryce you know making his presentation for Pixar it's uh just for me it's such a small industry and you know he's another artist that I uh tremendously respect and and had the opportunity to work with as well um after I left DreamWorks and uh ventured out over to Netflix uh you know uh judge Langer producer for the Sea Beast uh someone I've worked with before DreamWorks you know he uh him and I first talked about Seabees and what they're doing and it was so exciting Netflix was at at that time you know really growing and and doing so much in terms of all the projects they had going on um I learned a little bit about more about it and you know when I uh had the opportunity to join um it was really tremendous for me because it was my first foray really living more on the vis-dev side of things more in art even if at DreamWorks you get that opportunity as well in the modeling side of things it's uh uh to meet us was a departure of making sure I'm thinking just about art not not being too precious about things and to help and develop the creative and uh uh yeah and so you know that was a tremendous project that we'll I'm excited to talk about and you know currently I am now at a Aspire Animation Studios where where kind of the New Kids on the Block we're small But Mighty uh but a tremendous group that we are uh continuously growing um and right now I'm serving as a kind of like a global character art director so I uh work on various features and but right now it's all hands on deck on on our first feature uh what makes us you know really unique right now is we're uh partnered with epic and really embracing Unreal Engine uh for final pixel and and all that because you really quickly we we've embraced Unreal Engine as well if you take a look at our set here we've got none other than our own uh zbrush friend and compatriot Anna Carolina and her team out in Florida we get a wider view here you'll get to see the unreal environment that Ian and I have been located in all day long and ourselves and Paul so it's it's all uh it's all coming together it's good to hear you say that yeah we're getting more and more familiar with these bigger projects awesome man I mean you know that uh kind of sums it up for me in a nutshell you know and um and like I said you know just a tough act to follow with all the amazing presenters that you guys have had um it's very interesting you know Latisse and I were talking a little bit earlier about uh things that that other artists are sharing and I just love to see like there's a lot of common thread and a lot of principles that you know hopefully will elaborate and share as well today you know what you said something very important I wanted to give an additional nod to Caleb rice who left me a drawing yesterday I was so I'm so happy uh to have that so Caleb if you're watching man thank you so much again uh really sweet swell guy it's good to have you kill it hello a a fellow nomen graduate and byproduct of the MIT of the CG World we've been giving away those workshops it's uh it's been a while tell us what you've been up to and uh and what's going on with you yeah if you don't mind sharing my screen um by all means of course I can I can kind of talk a little bit about it hi everyone at home and um I think that's Charles screen oh yep there you go Charles we'll get back to you don't worry buddy all right so uh like Louie said you know I I'm from Brazil and I came to the us about 11 years ago to a school that is my home forever called Norman and I came to Norman because you know since I was five my dream was to work at Disney or in animation and after doing many research I was like okay this is cool for me so I came to Noma and I did the two-year program and and then my career started here um I started working at lizard on the OverWatch team shout out to everyone that worked with me there it was an amazing amazing experience and I learned so much um and then I got a a contact from Dreamworks asking me and and Charles was actually the one who put my name to get higher so I got my break on the animation because of Charles so um I came to DreamWorks and then Charles put me on his team I work on a trolls World Tour and then I went to crude's New Age after that uh Charles left to Netflix and then he brought me to Netflix as well and uh I I was working on a different project at a time and then uh CBS like uh was taking off and they needed a bit more help as well so Charles was like all right let's bring Leticia in so I got to work on the Sea Beast at Netflix and then I got the call from Mickey and you know when Mickey calls you gotta go so make your call like and I was like let's go and then um I got to Disney and I worked on Encanto and I was a character modeling supervisor on a strange role that's coming out now November 23rd Like A Boss look at you you hey hold on a second let's pause yeah did anyone hear that she dreamed a dream and it was Grant's fair to say that it's happened yeah it has happened that's right it's like took me out 30 years to get here but I'm here well if they're listening out there in TV Land dreams take time this is a testament to that we're so happy it does it doesn't mean that I was having the best time throughout all this time right it's just like whatever you go you make it work and you make your dream in there as well right absolutely so um I had my the best time my dream works most of my friends that I see at all the time there are some people I've made friendships at DreamWorks like Caleb Caleb is like a brother from a different mother and uh well the Caleb as I call him brother Caleb yeah so here you can see Caleb this was the trolls uh party that we had so you can see Caleb here and this was our trolls team uh for a long time and Charles was uh the supervisor on that so yeah that was kind of my journey here in the US so far and Norman I I study at Norman and I also uh taught annulment and I did live streaming phenomenon and events for Norman so No One's Gonna Be in my life probably until the end of times so that's why I put it here that's a good one same same here always at the Cornerstone and the foundational yeah I just yeah he's just a family you know so absolutely so shout out to everybody uh over there Max Darren Brian and Alex Alex and the rest of nobody if I forget to say someone's name I'm thinking Eric Heller actually was my my zbrush teacher before him I didn't know zbrush funny thing me too huh well now we're really Asian so absolutely big hugs to him yeah explain it we hope he's watching well we'll hand it over to you guys for your formal presentation here and let you talk more about things and uh we'll bow out of the way and let you take it away for a few minutes yeah awesome right and as always too we might get a couple questions in chat but you know we'll let you go through your presentation a little bit and then you know if you if you want I can fire them off as they come up or we can wait a little bit more towards the end up to you let me know how it works for you okay okay thanks so much and nobody got all right take it over yeah we could um I guess we can switch over to my screen for a second um you know it's it's interesting because uh the notion of 3D modelers uh working in art I think is uh uh a really fascinating thing to talk about because you know when you think about what the end product is and it's you know uh you're making 3D animated movies uh you want to see things in that Medium as quickly as you can um and I think a lot of different Productions you know embraced that earlier on uh these days than perhaps they did in in the past um and and that's something where I think you know artists such as Leticia and you know uh myself really really want to live in that space and and we we Thrive there because uh uh it's it's something that we have a passion for and um what I wanted to first kind of open up the conversation with is like how do we start this process like what normally is the way that things go you know do we start with a concept do is is do we just start from scratch and um it's truly a a collaboration you know for sure uh that that we get to kind of uh enjoy so on Seabees uh and by the way uh I I think I speak for both uh Leticia and myself when you know we say just thanks to Chris Williams director judge schlanger Steven Schweikert uh Matthias uh production designer Matthias lechner and uh our art director Woon Yang Jung just amazing art team so I mean it's it's really incredible but um I'm going to just kind of show a little bit of how we kind of start this process and we'll talk through uh not only a lot of tangible examples but just more or less how the conversation gets going uh typically it's it's something like this you know we we get a very uh loose sketch sometimes a more thorough you know uh illustration of a character but that really captures the design um both Leticia and I had the opportunity to work with Tony facility who's you know the name precedes him you know he's a legend in the game and uh knowing that you're going to work with someone like that you want to bring forth your you know your big best effort you can um and he couldn't be more humble and modest and easy to work with yeah man but but such such a kind uh kind soul um but this was the first drawing that I had saw that I had seen uh you know for Jacob who was uh uh kind of the main hero you know we have two main character leads on on the show and this was the the uh the male hero and we knew we wanted to capture something that had some kind of stylization to it uh we didn't want to go as stylized perhaps as what you see here and this is where seeing things in the round you know you can start to establish those rules break down uh the things that you know we want to kind of pursue so uh this was literally on on the very first day I was so anxious to jump in um I just went and just kind of blocked out a bust and uh we're gonna talk a little bit about how we approach it you know on the different ways that uh uh to me at least are are really strong ways to kind of get started um before you even think about any context or color or details or anything like that um so I'm going to jump over to zbrush real quick and uh you know this this right here represents more of a this is definitely the final final result this is this is what all the hardware kind of brings you to um and this is um a great effort of collaboration iterations defining rules finding what works fine and what doesn't um and you know at the end of the day we try to live uh within zbrush as much as we can at at this juncture simply because it offers us so much fluidity flexibility to to Really explore um so I'm going to jump over here I tried to kind of piece together something that would kind of convey this I I wanted to find the original blockouts for these characters and I failed to do so uh you know when you have things buried in your hard drive I probably just blew them away at some point but uh I'm going to replicate a little bit of just the thought process around this stuff um and some of the other talks you guys have seen a lot of folks conveyed the notion of working with primitive forms just being very basic with how they approach a blockout I pretty much almost exclusively always start with a simple sphere in fact this is just this fear that you get uh you know from your Z Tool library and what I what I like to do is reconstruct the subdivisions down to like Bare Bones um you know I've been teaching for many years as well uh with the online school called anim school and um I feel like that has allowed me time to almost hear myself talk and wrap my head around even my own process and and also being inspired and learning from others you know Leticia being one I one of the first artists that actually gave me some great insight to what I'm going to get into here is uh Danny Williams um yeah Point pusher man I mean you can't go wrong with that guy in so many ways you know fire with that guy if he's watching Danny I hope he's watching I hope he's watching but um I you know I want to give him a nod here because uh he really exposed me to what zbrush was capable of before I really embraced it and you know you take what you learn from people like that and you're able to just kind of massage your process a little bit so uh very basic form right and what I like to do you know as I'm blocking this stuff in is quite literally just work with these planar low poly representations I established what I like to refer to as upper hemisphere for the head lower hemisphere you know just kind of isolating jaw up to up to the cheekbone and I'll even take these edges and you know more or less kind of start orienting them in a way that they might represent certain landmarks you know a cheekbone on this one here you know maybe just a brow Ridge keep it very basic very simple the other thing I do at this stage before I really dive in is I typically set my canvas to be a lighter color in the background and the reason I like to do that is because over here on the color swatches you have the opportunity to kind of switch back and forth between two colors if you don't have any textures assigned or anything like that and so what I'll what I'll tend to do at this stage is just jump back and forth between silhouette and just a regular shaded you know kind of representation I don't get too fancy with materials I typically just use Skin shade um I do yeah I do have a version of skin Shade that's a little bit less with spec very similar to what Caleb was was actually talking about yesterday so the I know I'm doing something right um but then as I kind of get going and understand a little bit of the shapes here we start adding more context right I'll get into subdivisions but I don't I try not to rush uh too quickly into the details and I think this is something that I notice um a lot of a lot of students will tend to be really anxious to get into high res just jump right into the sculpting they they want to do what they see so many of the uh the Masters doing you know there's so many amazing artists out there that you know when they showcase their work it's so detailed so rich in Fidelity and I I really uh forced myself before I even think of getting to that step to understand the basic forms so you know here I'll you know kind of take something flush it out just a little bit more and then slowly start adding context and what's really fascinating about this is you know as I start evaluating Silhouettes we can start to just make uh broader assumptions of what what the field the character is like and of course I'm looking at art looking at reference being as honest to uh the artwork as I can um from this stage it'll start to typically turn a corner where we get into something that now I'm introducing smaller shapes to me these are still primary shapes for the character because they impact the silhouette so strongly so in the case of Jacob and you know many of the characters actually the and you know Latisse is going to show some amazing examples uh of just how striking a lot of these Silhouettes were but I get into this and again just massage and deform little by little you know these independent polygroups I can you know mask them off you know I just try to work you know really easy with this stuff it's so manageable to just push and pull um one of the things that that often I get asked is you know what brushes do you use and and all that good stuff I'll be the first to tell you man I I am uh I probably used 10 if that of what zbrush is capable of and that's a shameful admission it's really just to Showcase like how vast of a tool it is but for even uh someone like me that I just maximize a small portion of it for for what I need it for um you know it's it's just it's amazing in that sense so as I start adding a little bit more context we get into more granularity here you know so additional forms and uh whether it's a naturalistic character stylized character uh creature um it's all very much the same approach I I'm looking for what are the identifiable forms um I can take this same setup right here of granularity and you can see at this stage I've basically broken up the upper lip lower lip I've introduced you know just some half spheres basically for for the eyelids um all this stuff I can really massage and start to start to find you know the right proper forms um I'll then start introducing subdivisions at this stage you know and I and when I add the subdivisions I typically do it one at a time um I don't want to rush into anything too smooth too quick um mainly just out of you know uh old dog old tricks kind of things but you know um just trying to keep it really controlled so I don't ever lose control one of the Notions I like to always kind of echo is you should always be in control of the geometry not the other way around and so for me this this allows me to kind of just stay really safe in that space and so as I start adding subdivisions again I can go in here and refine now at this particular stage um you can see you know my points start to start to tick up I start to have a little bit more information you know maybe maybe at this point I'm enlisting something like uh Damien standard and just kind of tightening up some suggestions in here you know but again not doing any any heavy lifting I can start exploring things in terms of uh you know how planar want to go with things or how soft but really controlling the degrees of that tightness you know that's really important for me at this stage and then of course as I get you know a little bit more polished with uh with more subdivisions I'll spend a lot of time at this stage uh just to make sure that my choices feel well enough and probably the next question that is is uh commonly thrown you know uh is well when do you know when to kind of commit and I think that's uh unique to every artist and I think in invisdev what makes this different from let's say what I would approach on a more like production modeling level is production modeling you know typically you're going to have a a pretty firm Target you know I'd say it's pretty firm where it's like okay just there you go man run for it that's your that's your lane um Jacob was such a moving Target on this show and it was the first human we were trying to understand um so I try to have a process that keeps me flexible and uh you know not be too precious about anything not uh not be afraid to you know totally pivot you know at the drop of a dime if you need to um so the next step really after this is to kind of go into something that now I'm utilizing you know other aspects of zbrush that take me away from just the move brush you know literally all the previous steps it's more or less move brush a little bit of Damian standard maybe some H polish thrown in there but not even playing with any clay brush or or anything uh like that at this point but here you know I usually if I've done my my job well on the previous steps I can start considering uh dynamesh and pieces together here so for example if I go in here you know I still have my independent polygroups I would go in here and basically say okay you know maybe I'm safe to take these right here and go ahead and dynamesh this and and the way I usually go about this is I kind of try to be a little bit strategic where I'll dynamesh with uh polygroups on so that I can kind of control what pieces are getting welded in so you know if I just kind of execute this here you know now you can see that I've now welded that together and if if I spend a lot of time you know really really uh you know creating these shapes and forms in a way that hold the forms I want um much of what I'm doing at this stage is simply just smoothing out those little imperfections within uh the pieces that are intersected so a lot of what I'm looking at is literally these lines right here just understanding what those intersections are doing and then I would continue this process so like if I go a little bit further here maybe the next step here is to take all of this again I'm going to make my poly group I'm going to go ahead and just dynamesh this together again keeping it really strategic if things start to break down this is where I you know have no choice I'm going to go ahead and just up this but again even when I'm up in the resolution I'm trying to be very controlled with it I don't want to go too crazy too quickly even here this is definitely too much I would bring this down let's see it is somewhere right about here probably it's going to be a sweet spot and that gives me just enough Fidelity to start working with some sculpting at this stage it's not only you know smoothing out little imperfections but it's maybe tightening up some suggestions I'll go in and use Damien standard here you can see that I can just really quickly just kind of you know refine certain areas to a to the degree that I need maybe here I start considering where some other details are going to basically get introduced and then slowly start really compiling all the stuff together another thing I've been using more of lately is Clay polish which man why didn't no one ever tell me about this magical button that tightens up your geometry I I wish I would have known about this but uh much sooner but I go in here I you know if I just hit that it'll oftentimes just tighten up certain areas and I don't want to lose softness so I try to be careful with it you know maybe I would just like mask off a specific area that I want to Clay polish which is uh something that masking really gives you so much control over you can you can be very precise with where you want to isolate those things um so at this step the next logical thing is is more context this is where I'll typically Block in uh some forms and you know for things like browse uh lashes uh maybe even representation of hair uh you know so this allows me to have more context to evaluate things and even more so I can start getting into color so as we move forward here and I'm just going to turn on a little bit of this stuff here this is where I'll get into something that now I've taken all of those polygroups that that existed and I know this is kind of uh mind you it's skipping a few steps here you know just to get to something that has just a little more clarity but it really is a method of just going from this trying to meshing things together introducing the little bits of complexity you want and then you know slowly I'll start working in a little bit of poly paint um I don't think it should be understated how valuable color is uh you know as a tool to really see proper representation when you're using your eye to evaluate distance between different landmarks I know you're hitting something that has been presented here before Ian and myself have been watching from afar and uh and it is definitely something that has been mentioned before across the side yeah the colors yeah absolutely absolutely so so I would the designer so absolutely I would always Advocate you know introduce color as soon as you can in your process it's it's only going to enhance your ability to to make educated guesses on where you want to go potentially agreeing with you emphatically agreeing with you and smiling together smiling and saying what do you think you agree with him 100 yeah I mean especially for stylized stuff like sometimes the color says so much because we're working with primary secondary shapes only we don't have like the extra tertiary stuff yet right so I think like color helps a lot with that yeah okay Carry On sorry didn't mean to interject but I really wanted no no no sweat I'm Hammer that we're under the board yeah yeah I'm getting there I'm getting it smiling at me no no you just interject real fast it's also really cool to see the process because you know uh like you touched on something earlier Charles about when you should actually be trying to commit to something it seems that even though you know this is a process you've worked out quite a while keeping those poly groups and then dynameshing with groups on does definitely help you kind of Safeguard so you're not welding too much too quickly and I really dig that approach and so I just wanted to touch back on that and say that I I really advocate for that as well I think it's a solid approach so to hear you say that is just solidifying the process that I've used oh man thanks for thumbs up I'll take it I'll take what I can get uh the little victories man so uh so you know again just in the in the spirit of of context I'll start you know uh coloring as much as I can then this is where it's it becomes a really interesting uh uh point you know for for me because if I know that I'm in the ballpark let's say you know Leticia myself are working on something where we we you almost sense it you know you know you're close um it's that's where you got to make a kind of a technical Choice as to uh how you want to proceed because the likelihood of having to make multiple poses or expression tests things like that things that you saw uh demonstrated from some of the other artists Caleb Caleb included yesterday um that that for me is where I typically just go all in on giving myself something that has as much flexibility uh flexibility as possible now zero measure will typically give me something in a pinch relatively quick but I if I'm being perfectly honest you know what I typically do is I'll just take this raw mesh if it's really heavy I'll decimate it uh and and take something into Maya where I can you know typically just uh use a tool like quad draw and and re-topple the head relatively quick not not for production's sake but just with the intent of having something that I know is going to supply me with the Fidelity I need for for different exploration um and and also uh notice that I've only been blocking in the head here uh the there is a reason for that a lot of times when you want to work quick and Nimble uh in this kind of space um you know if you have a base mesh to supply you with a good head start to be something you can push and pull and and work on top of uh that clearly is a is a way to expedite what you need um but pretty much always exclusively I I don't resort to base mesh onto heads because I don't want to fall Mercy to any technical limitations with what the topology is dictating so for me it's important to stay very uh uh organic at this at this stage like keep it flexible right so um so after I've done a little bit of that let's let's fast forward a little bit let's say I took this to Maya did my re-toppel pass and and what I typically do is weld it into uh whatever body I've already kind of sorted out at that stage I bring it over here and here you can see that this is basically quite literally what I used on Jacob in terms of uh just the topology I drafted for him um could I have done this with zero measure absolutely absolutely you could have but it's again it's uh you decide where you want to kind of emphasize your commitment to in terms of like that technical prep sometimes we treat it way looser and other times we have to be a little bit more stringent on it but at this point you know I can go in and then you know I probably have some added context um where I would just sculpt in just kind of a blob of a shape for hair just to represent some uh some suggestions now um mind you this is an example on what ended up being you know more or less my final pass of Jacob but uh uh this is not uh representing all the other iterations that you know I know Leticia and I are very familiar with um here's some final shaping on his body and you can see just how we you know kind of go about introducing some clarity onto forms I'm still relying on high subdivision levels to kind of go in and sculpt on top of um the poly groups that you see established here are quite literally just from uh UVS and it's it's really nice to be able to create polygroups from U Visa but you know we have so much to share so I don't want to take up too much of this but when all is well and good and and we have a scenario where we you know have the the kind of look we want you know we're also considering clothing how we bringing clothing into the mix and then that eventually gets us to a place where um you know all the context comes together and we'll we'll run through some iterations and and how what that looks like too but um I just wanted to kind of showcase that and really place an emphasis on the importance of right man just start simple always start simple um anytime you start to uh over complicate it I always find that that's when things kind of lose control a little bit it looks fantastic are you kidding me is any chance we see that in action in a little clip action perhaps oh bad you know what uh I don't have any Clips oh no I have Netflix Open here I can show here we go oh here we go three feet of the night there we go Leticia is always prepared I open Netflix like just now that's what we're talking about it here we go yeah we can watch some Netflix um I can show some of uh yeah this is like the amazing work that uh Charles did and that's him I did this one I'll show a little bit later but uh let me find him doing some very actiony actions here we go oh actually yeah when it's pause we're not really seeing the overlay I don't really seeing it have you seen a little preview oh that's right because Netflix doesn't oh Netflix might be blockaded yeah Leticia before you uh continue to go on because I know you guys have a lot to share but we had a couple questions um when the because you kind of skipped ahead on the head a little bit uh were you using poly paint for the eyebrows or did you have extra Geo you brought in extra Geo I actually used a topology brush uh right on top so you know uh when I am over at this stage I guess probably this one right here when I'm here you know this is just dynamesh there's no subdivisions I'll just take uh uh you know my topology brush right here and you know quite literally just just draw whatever I need right so if I if I want browse I'll just kind of you know make my shape and then I'll just kind of close it off so this this allows me to keep it really simple um and you know then once I execute that as long as it's the right type of thing I I just kind of turn on Dynamic on that on that form and it holds the shape really easy it's easy to maintain and manage um but uh but later on these sculpts right here that or this one that you saw um I kind of z-re-meshed that uh that model at some point subdivided and you know did a little bit of sculpting a little bit of poly paint so just to give it a little bit more Fidelity and stuff all right so it looks fantastic you say that again Ian yeah thank you oh I mean you could say that again yeah we'll do it I will say it all day long it looks amazing seriously same with the closing which we did have a closing question but if you're going to be covering cloth at some point too I'll let you go ahead and continue on because you guys have a lot to share and it's already fantastic I'd love to pass it over to Leticia because she has some amazing stuff to share with blue as well so the Leticia man go for it yeah um thank you Charlie that was great um very much like what Charles said like you know I'll get a concept something like this and then uh just so you guys can see here this was my first pass on it you know and again like you put colors you do whatever you need to get the feeling of a character the thing I love about colors is that it's easier for you to keep looking for that feeling of the character instead of just seeing everything on Gray shade or whatever so and then you can see here that there was a few pieces added but if I jump into zbrush um you can see this is blue right and and this is the blackout I found my my first blackout which is this one and basically just like what Charles said like I'm really just focusing like I love this window here uh the zbrush has now where if you click just click and drag you can make it bigger if you want to focus on some things but you can really see what's going on with the very basic simple silhouette a lot of cartoon stuff it's all about how shapes connect and and how sharp to soft translations right we have a sharp transition here obviously this is the blockout but when I show the final model you know since he's a blob you're not gonna find a lot of heart shapes right so you gotta one thing I like to say is about soft uh versus hard which is get the feeling of who the character is and imagine the contrast is a very important word contrast it's a very important word of like how do I play with soft and hard on this character to give the feeling of the character so this one is obviously a very soft character so if I would say contrast I'm gonna have much more towards soft and a little less worth heart shaped and if I go here to the final model you show it you can see that like that that hard Edge I was having from my block out right it was like a hard place no no again you gotta really feel who the character is and in this case he's supposed to be very non-threatening you're not gonna find very much sharp edges on it which doesn't mean you cannot have sharp edge again like it's a game of like he's 70 soft 30 uh sharp so you can see that since he's so simple like very simple blob what could I do to bring more life to it you know so I start adding this folds very sharp folds going on you can see here on the arms and all of that again I I'm always like to say the word contrast you know like try to find ways to bring contrast don't just make oh he's a blob I'm gonna make everything soft that doesn't bring contrast doesn't bring a visual interest you know so you can see on some things there's like even though this is a soft shape there are sharp angles going on here in the transition of shapes which again bring that idea of like 70 30 or 80 20 kind of thing one thing that you've got to be careful though is when you get 50 50. when you get 50 50 again 50 50 is not contrast right it's equal amounts and when you do that on your decisions it might bring you to the uncanny valley kind of feeling so again remember the word contrast remember the 7 30 or 80 20 because that's going to make a your Design's more appealing at least in my my experience so far so with blue again you can see here this is kind of like the block out that I started from I like to start just like Charles if you look at here these are all um very low-res dynamesh stuff some of it I zero mesh but again it's just very basic to really get those shapes in and then um the the way I normally like to start is just again only thinking about primary shapes I'm only thinking about what's going on with my Silhouette in every angle and I had a teacher his name's um Mike defale and we're working 3D so you gotta rotate I see sometimes people just like focusing front side from the side you gotta rotate you gotta look from underneath you gotta look from the top but everything needs to be in a certain Rhythm the certain certain flow going on right so I have here uh this is a the simple block up I did so I normally after I do this I dynamesh and just start sculpting I like to call it sculpting with intention which again is not necessarily I go over um like if I go to this shape and I'm like oh okay I'm gonna carve his mouth and then I'm gonna start doing this on the eyes that's not sculpting my detention right so I like to go slow almost like you're petting your cat you know kind of things like oh let me see how it's gonna feel here and you know like giving a lot of love to the shapes and again at all the time if you sculpt with intention and love you're gonna feel like you have some level of control you don't lose control of your mass basically you know so I have this here I'm just going to show a few things so this is like the version of blue with open mouth so we could figure it out what the hell is going on inside his mouth here you know what what kind of gum what kind of piece so it's very very soft and cutie like this um the way I did my iterations again just like Charles said like I get to a point where the design is good and I feel like I'm pretty much there and then I start going to poses and and like testing out different things like when he's swimming what's going on here and then we have him just being cute kind of like sitting there cute um here I have the first iteration that I did so I did this version and then um we start feeling like oh he's feeling a bit a bit uh Bare Bones and you know but again you can see that a lot of his features it's it's very soft right very little Sharps going on so again that's why I made so intense those folds to kind of again bring that visual contrast that uh to the model um one thing also that I did just like Charles is like I dynameshed this and then I got to a point where I was like okay this is very good so I just did a quick um um quadrome Maya and then if I go low res here you can kind of see you know that's not animation topology it's just for me to have some poly groups some flow of if at any point I'm like okay I want to pose this right because I have this flawed topology I can just like mask by uh by topology or I can even just like hide the parts that I want and uh let's say mask this one and then I can just um bring it here turn off my symmetry smooth my mask I love having also the the low res right so I can just go here and just like rotate him and do whatever kind of pose I need so I could do something like this you know so I love having the low rest so I can go back to it and do posing or test um animations anything that is needed um yeah so in this model it's a very simple model as you can see but that's kind of how the process I went through I really like to paint things as much as I can here obviously he in the movie he doesn't have much going on if I show my prf here um you can see that's him in the movie so he was just like you know a blob he's super cute though I have to say if you're gonna interject real quick and just say how adorable he is and those poses and the and just just to see it come to life a little bit you know because it's like it's just so adorable and it is cute yeah and the way you're pushing like you said that contrast element the chat's going nuts as like that's that's such a well way uh well put uh turn yeah and you can use contrast with everything right like especially on stylized like you can think about a Char uh straight versus curves right so this is something that's really very nice to play with right when when you're thinking about it like you can see there there's no angles here but everything kind of sort of feels like it flows and connects in a way you know very flowy model where if I open another model which is um Sarah she is way more angular you know so on her case it was 70 angular and then 30 soft which on Blue was kind of like 80 90 soft and then 10 angular you know yeah so if we look at Sarah here um you can see that um if I isolate amazing model by the way Sarah's amazing okay thank you what I mean like uh it was like a female version of Keith Richards popped onto the street you're like a rolling stone you know you're not amused and not have it here's a Knife by the way just one thing to interject real quick on go ahead Charles just what Leticia just showed um I gotta say like simple characters are the hardest for in my personal opinion there's there's nowhere to hide you know every line has is very intentional um so seeing what Leticia did to bring that to life is is uh really fantastic I I have to say I learned that the hard way because one of my favorite shows is Gravity Falls and I was like when I was early on I was like okay yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna sculpt one of those characters they're easy right that was that was a lesson taught and when I was teaching at Norman I used to on my first day I would open zbrush and I'll say to and I was very late in the program like my classes one of the last ones in the program so I'll get people very good in zbrush already but what I would do is I would get those very 2D Cartoon Network characters and I would say all right let me see how you guys are doing and then I'll give them the concepts and say go sculpt this [ __ ] and uh everyone would be struggling because they're so used to be doing things with anatomy and a lot a lot of shapes changes right and that was my way to bring everyone to kind of like a humble level is like all right now we all know and we have more to learn let's go for it you know what I mean yeah that is awesome great approach I like that that's great there you go yeah sculpt this triangle shape thing that's not really a triangle go for it I I gotta say coming back to this again I mean when I see these pirates on their ship I see this one character pop up I said this has gotta be they gotta have you did you look at Keith Richards give me that at least come on oh God yeah so if I go here to Sarah um you guys can see that you know she she's she's nice like she has this very angular shapes right we have obviously much more Anatomy she has this very angular shapes but again she's not she is complex character She's Not Just angles you know so if you notice we have the angles but they're not completely sharp like very hard sharp they have some curvature going on if you look from far they feel very much like angles but when you get closer to her you start feeling the curves instead of just like book straight lines you know that's what I love about Sarah because she is a character that is very badass and strong Etc but in in when you go seeing the movie you start getting close to her you start seeing her softness you know her soft side and and that was what I was trying to put it in here you can see also the um I did a like Charles did I did a little uh topology on it and I love topology mainly to kind of like you know be able to like mask certain parts of the model when I need to pose it and also go to the lowest resolution and be able to change anything um one thing I like to do since I was using zbrush to present my models a lot you can see that I don't know if you guys can see but there is a certain level of noise in the model like just to break the highlights and I'm going to zoom in a bit more just so you all can see it's like it's not a smooth model right so when the Highlight hits you don't have the very plasticky soft highlights you kind of have a little more complexity and the way I go about doing that is using um surface noise so I don't know even for cartoon stuff like this um I like to put it even for a little bit again because I don't want that very harsh highlights you know I want a bit of complexity on the highlight so what I like to do is I go to noise on the surface noise and then I'm gonna say edit and in this case because I already have it the noise in it um let me try to zoom in um I can just edit now but if I didn't have it this is the basic noise in zbrush that that plugs in by default so if I want to like for example make my noise Stronger Just so you all can see you can kind of see what's going on with the noise there you see now it's very strong it's breaking the Highlight a lot it's like a much rougher surface where but in this case for cartoons I don't want too much aggressiveness on my noise so I like to put just a smidge to kind of like break that highlight and give some life to the model you know so you can see I made it a bit stronger you can see what's going on with the noise here and that I love doing that for many things and and one of the things I did this as well let me just tone it down lyrics it was too much too much okay one thing I used this as well as was on her hair as you can see you know it's just tubes that go lower resolution here um it's just tubes that I made but then I added surface noise to it to again like it's not like the very soft highlight going on it has some complexity on the on the looks you know um so that is something I do a lot um what else can I show on her oh do you guys have any questions no I have I I want to be her when I grow up yes she me too yeah I'm trying my best but my hair you know well I I just wanna I just kind of actually want to call back to the surface noise bit because I take it away I think that right there uh the whole chat was like Wow awesome learned a lot just on that alone because you you know you're using it in a way that's still keeping the stylization of the character alive and well because it does have a cartoony feel but then when you get in it feels more lifelike with all those textures and getting those pores coming through so even on Colossus I like to to use some on it you know again like the Highlight okay sculpture is perceived by light any 3D sculpture you perceive shape by light right right so if your objects are all soft with the same highlight that's fine it's a look but in this case for our movie we wanted a more dirty kind of like wear it up look look so what I did is I just put a bunch of surface noise on things to kind of again break that and create that visual complexity it's almost like that tertiary detail that I don't want to sculpt because it's it's not going to stay on the models just for presentation you know yeah of course I remember when we were developing that I thought oh this is going to change a lot of workflows and I'm proud to see this today like I can remember it being such a Monumental thing at the time when it was just not released and I think I used on everything you can see here on his pet her Peg Leg like easy like this model here this shape you can see that if I go low rest this this is you know this is apologies I but you can see the noise going around and like again creating that perception of a bit more complexity than actually is in the model yeah no it's great we have we do have a couple questions take care um so uh the first one is how how do your models get approved do you put them in a post T pose do you do a test pose to show the Mark what's the best approach that you do for approval thing um going to show very quick my pose but Charles has a bunch of cool stuff for facial expressions and things like that so I'm going to throw the ball back to him um so for this character here you see like um I just gave a little bit of like straight kind of feeling pose on her I did um a few um let me zoom in so I did a few facial expressions so this is kind of her like you know hey but then I did a little more like she's angry like what the hell you know and then she's like hmm yeah so and a little smirk because she's very you know contained so I couldn't go too crazy on her with the Expressions it needed to be something a bit more elegant and and strong for her so you can see that I didn't go crazy with the Expressions because it's not who she is right um yeah but I'm gonna throw the ball back to Charles because I um I know he has some cool stuff to show and then I can show Macy after go ahead Charlie okay no it's all good I mean just fantastic stuff right guys I mean it's it's crazy the phenomenal before you go any further just phenomenal everyone is kind of Smashing the like button subscribe or whatever they do it's all it's all off smash the like subscribe share follow comments you were trying to like um uh like yeah we're trying to figure out like how how do we break down like what what it feels like what's the lineage of the Journey of these characters and so like to get to get to that presentational component that uh uh one of the questions was right now there is a a whole factor of iterations and communication and uh exploration right and um so I'm going to kind of just go through uh a little bit of that process here I'm going to scrub through just a few of the passes that uh we'll typically do you know for these characters so like you know as far as to answer the how do you show it for approval I I I would say that the best scenarios always show something that conveys personality whether it's uh one pose or a series of expressions or just one expression whatever it is um I never show anything in a in a t pose or a pose or anything like that the about as as default as I'll get is arms down and this is something that for me arms down is really relevant because you know our characters on screen are gonna have their arms down they're never going to be walking around like this uh so that's a really easy way to kind of convey you know so and also I don't have to think too much about uh rigging in a sense so um one thing just one thing sure uh one thing important I feel like in all Animation Studios that I worked um you never present t-post directors you know especially for main characters you always gonna have to add some life to your character to be able to get stuff approved so yeah but go ahead turn no no I mean that's absolutely the case I mean the same was true at DreamWorks um say same is true for anything I developed now uh you know at Spire um and so as we kind of go through iterations I I wanted to show something here um this is this is what it looks like uh this is a funny image that I wanted to pull up uh this is uh me and Tony kind of working together and figuring stuff out you know just literally just throwing a bunch of stuff on the wall and trying things and I would take a stab at Expressions he would go in and you know he just has this magical quality with lines that he can just kind of identify what he thinks might be a better suggestion or a way for us to you know kind of kind of lean towards the scribbles of notes I uh I wanted to show this because this is often what it looks like and you're in the the thick of it there's deadlines there's uh so much to be done uh that it really just is kind of everyone collaborating and and finding things and um so in the spirit of Expressions you know I I I will spend a lot of time um just playing at in this space to try to convey as much personality as I can sometimes it's a failure uh sometimes it's pushes things forward but that in itself those those failures I think are really valuable you know to understand like okay that didn't quite work let's go this way um some of the added components you're seeing here are things like groom I know that's not specific to what I may use zbrush for but to me any kind of fidelity uh is important to convey the characters and you know this is something Latisse and I really feel passionate about like any anytime you can give a bit of richness like that tip with noise is fantastic that's something I don't do and you better believe I will start doing that but but it's it's that kind of stuff that I think is uh really valuable uh you know so for me here again just experimenting with not only Expressions but how to groom uh reacts you know in in that regard and we'll get into crazy crazy stuff you know again like we were talking about that question about presentations and poses this is an exercise that Tony and I did and we were like okay let's let's try to see how everything holds up and this might have been over the top but we were feeling ambitious and wanted to go for as much as we could so we went through and tried to flush out his you know phonems and you know okay what is a stretch for Jacob what's a squash um you know really trying to hone in on what those specific shapes were um and all of this was meant to be informative for as part of like a model packet that we can deliver to uh the amazing team at Sony you know we haven't even mentioned that Sony images that's right it's who brought this to life um we're serving so early Downstream that we're not executing anything that's finished on on the you know final pixel and they really just uh brought all this you know together in such a great way there's even refinements down to to you know okay maybe different looks on hair Silhouettes uh different suggestions on costuming and then we get into Nitty Gritty at this stage um she Yoon came in uh and you know she and Kim uh amazing he's amazing you know just that simple and he would can go with just a fine line on on a draw over and just indicate what he wants to see you know leticia's job my job is to make sure we're holding on to that properly you know one of the things I I like to think about with when I look at Silhouettes and stuff is like the I often refer to it as the weight of the curve and what I re what I mean by that is never trying to make anything feel too weighted centered you know where it's just too normalized you know if if you're gonna have a pushed curve let the weight be High Let It Be Low never in the middle unless it really calls for it um and then you know as as we kind of push forward um then we have someone like Woon young is uh what the art director on Seabees but just an incredibly talented painter you know and so he can come in and take a render that will provide and and really do like an exceptional job at indicating the kind of you know weathering and things that he wants to see and then that brings in the other aspect of why Leticia and I would try and to convey things in zbrush with poly paint um that give a certain dexterity of you know weathering and all this stuff and uh Michelle Clapton had joined the show uh and if you're not familiar with the name she's responsible for all the costume designs behind Game of Thrones so I mean she she really came in with such a uh grandiose understanding of of all of this the nature of these kinds of garments and um what you're seeing here are her drawings in the sense of like okay try it let's try is you know for uh or costumes and you know you can see some of the stuff for Jacob and Crow and then so we'll go and we'll try that stuff you know here you can see that I am fooling around with different ideas in regards to you know these these uh these outfits and at all the while trying to hold on to as simple a silhouette as we can and when I I'm going to jump back to zbrush for a moment here just to kind of uh In The Same Spirit of of what uh was asked of Leticia with the posing and stuff like this is something for sure that we uh get into you know once I have a a working default model right like some I refer to this as just the default arms down um posable topology things things of that nature then uh we do want to spin off what would be like kind of our our hero poses um and so you know what I typically do at this stage is I'll just copy and paste the tool and I've tried this two different ways and I've failed and succeeded in different ways with this um but I used to uh just stay within one tool and duplicate a lot of geometry make folders and all that stuff and it it works it serves its purpose but it when I wanted to see like the transition between uh default and oppose it I had to go in and you know deal with turning off visibility turning on other things so uh copying the tool just you know ultimately was the most sensible approach and I'll take all the existing stuff and I'll just start going in and identifying uh these poses and and the way we arrive at these poses would be uh literally Tony and I just standing in the hallway um and kind of acting it out um and it's it's a comedic thing to see these two you know grown-ups trying to like imply how they want to see these characters conveyed but we also benefited from this unique scenario at Netflix where we we kind of sat right amongst the story department and you can see how they were boarding the characters and you can see kind of key moments that that made sense to maybe try to convey or you know what kind of personality to convey so here I can go in you know with Jacob and you know you can see like the stool it's just cubes I just kind of plucked out to make something but it is and then I put like a real simple platform just to make sure he's planted and my my objective with Eddie pose is to understand the weight understand a through line like what what's a what's a strong line of action we can get through here and I very much utilize um silhouette at this point where I can just kind of go through and just see how things feel from few angles and you'll see that you know even here I'm like really trying to just convey this one curve here as as just a simple C I just wanted this all to just kind of go through in a very simple way and it's uh it's fine in these opportunities to do that kind of stuff that uh it's really fantastic you know I really enjoyed the posing probably more so than any other part of the process because you see the character come to life we'll spin off other examples um here's a version that was relevant um because you know if you've seen Sea Beast uh Macy which is the hero character Leticia did so beautifully and and Jacob really they developed their relationship over the course of that movie and uh Tony thought it would be great to just show Jacob maybe down at her level she's a kid and how would he look at her with admiration and and that's really what I was trying to convey here like just take take what I had of him and find that softness on an otherwise very brute of a man type of you know uh figure and and this really informs us as far as like the range we can get with with the characters and um and also hopefully Inspire Downstream to really try to find and push you know the character that he can be um we'll do some some other things here that are you know this one wasn't my favorite pose uh but at the very least it's conveying a different side of him you know something a little bit more light um how do we arrive at the poses uh so I use t-pose mesh uh pretty exclusively for posing and uh for me it's a really valuable tool because I can rely on you know a good topology that I have so for example you know all of these garments here you know everything was pretty much built uh oops let me see what's happening here I select this one well we do have another question coming in before we get too far ahead with the posing you were talking about a lot of expression testing and a lot of uh trying to find the character and as we all know at some point in time actors come on and and help bring the character to life finally do you ever get a chance to work with any actors during the early phases if they know they're coming on to get the Expressions maybe a little bit closer to what they would bring to the character or is this something you explore on your own first and then let the actor kind of come in and finalize I agree that that would be really cool but I I would say at least in my experience that's that's usually reserved for like the the animators that are bringing the character to life they might have more of a dialogue with the uh with the voice talent and stuff like that is and obviously the director you know and that stuff but um sometimes if we know the casting of the character we might hunt down reference you know uh and and let that kind of uh impact some of our choices and Inspire absolutely um so so if we have that knowledge at that time um it's definitely uh useful but but uh as much as I wish I could say I I chatted with Justin Timberlake on you know trolls I I didn't get that chance um yeah another mayor that's that's totally fair um and then and then uh the the the last question I have for you too is everybody's so interested in the cloth expression did you do the cloth and zbrushes and then just kind of like you did with the character work it out or was there another Direction so the there's a typically a different approach at least that I kind of go on with this um it's where I wish I had a little bit more know-how and zbrush you know I've seen people do some amazing stuff with Z modeler in terms of creating and drafting you know um you know good cages for things I mean if it's a skin tight garment uh I'm you know can mask off you know a component from the skin extract that like remesh it like I can do stuff but no one that we needed to I I needed to remain fairly controlled with what I was doing and um so I always resort to the tools I'm familiar with what I did for this stuff is just block out very simple cages um in in Maya bring that stuff in but then from that moment on I'm relying on zbrush to kind of do all the heavy lifting at that point in the sense of now I you know again I'm not at the mercy of needing to create a production garment that is going to be simulated I can go in and really play with uh the kind of expression I want the fabric to have in this case um you know we had a lot of you know interesting Fidelity we were trying to introduce um and the coloration was probably the the biggest component of you know just having this kind of weathered feel um my poly patent technique kind of simple um you know I literally would just use standard brush and I would typically just utilize an alpha I had a library of just different Alphas that were kind of interesting just offered a certain breakup and then my my brush mode my stroke mode I would just you know switch it to drag select and I could then go on and then with with just varied Hues of coloration just add just imply you know just some some breakup of of color that's how I got a lot of like this kind of weathered feel through here um and it was trial and error uh I think a lot of that stuff uh you you had to just kind of try something if it was giving you what you needed then you kind of stuck with that and at one point I found a good formula and just kind of kept on going with it but um wow it's a whole it's a home run if I may say I think um unanimously people love it especially my kid she loves it oh yeah Grand Slam and the way that you've handled all this is just uh Exquisite is the only thing thank you man thank you I appreciate it I I want to I'm gonna punt the ball back to Leticia we're just going to kind of go back and forth if yeah why the heck shot by all means anything like that okay um I have here I think it's gonna share um I have here sort of like the um if you don't mind sharing my screen yep okay so you can see here this sort of like for presentation what I was doing which is um again what Charles said like even if you don't have time to do anything put the arms down it's gonna feel more natural you know like you can see on this one this is a t-pose I just put the arms out and it already feels a little better than having a pose a t-pose character so here you can see a little bit of a the Posey and then some of the facial expressions that I did for her and this is her at the end in the movie um I can show here also what I was talking about earlier you can see that like this is Gwen the witch so you can see that the witch she is she has sharp angles like really increased Sharps and then you can see Sarah is sort of like more of this with a little bit more nuances nuances on the soft and then you can see Macy which is way more soft but don't get me wrong Macy just like blue has some good Sharps that are very keen like if we notice here she she has this sharp angle here she has this sharp V on the nose she has this very sharp mouth shape and and this ages her we in the movie Macy she is an orphaned so that line on her eyes is just a very simple line but that line gave her that that wisdom that some kids needs to have if you don't grow up with your parents or something you know so all of those decisions needs to be done with a lot of love um I can show here in zbrush like Macy um the zbrush model uh what I'm talking about you see like she has this very like I like to call this the zygomatic poll but it's this line here going in you can see the separation of planes going on you know even though it's soft it's there it's not just one soft ball it's you you can feel those planes going around you know giving her that wisdom um that she needed you know that courage um a lot of things also is when you talk about soft it doesn't this is soft and then this is soft right but you have a little more like best curve which you can see here like you can see a little fast curve and then you go to an angle here and again this brings that that edginess to back to her instead of her being all soft little girl kind of thing so those things is what you learn from someone like Charles being a supervisor and from Tony fukile you know it's those things that you like if you if you have the chance to work on Productions really pay attention how the designers talk so you can really capture those those elements to to the character you know yes really good advice actually yeah and you can see here I can talk a little bit about uh facial expressions but one thing I learned about facial expressions and I'm not a master at it at all like I'm very bad at it but I learned one thing that I can share here which is two words it's called contract and expand okay a lot of facial expressions what happens is there is a primary motion of contract or primary motion of expansion this one you can see there is a contract feeling everything is pulling up you see to a contract contraction point I would say so when you know this you know that things don't don't not gonna flow like horizontal anything in nature to be quite honest like it always happens in diagonals and curves it's very rare you're gonna find or is horizontal parallel lines or vertical I mean parallel lines so the diagonals of contraction is like this right is what you do and then if I go to an expansion uh this one is nicely because it's a combo of contraction with expansion you see so it again like if you separate into parts the mouth can do an expansion and then the whole eyes area can have a contraction uh if I go to a different one this one is all expansion right she's all expending very very much so so if anything about that when you're looking at photo images of people doing Expressions to put on their own characters remember the word contraction and expansion um I can look here if there's a this one is very nice this one is um you know she's a bit a little bit of contraction here on the eyes and then we got some expansion like this um so uh one thing I saw some people asking stuff about clothes and I can show very fast um this is a very temp clothes I don't have the finished clothes for her unfortunately but uh here's her body right and one thing I like to do is um let's say I'm gonna do the dress right so like Charles said I use a lot of extract but I learned a thing when zbrush added the dynamic subdivision I'm gonna show it here like for example I want to get this this this to start making her dress from this but I'm gonna crop just the bottom part so you know I can pull it out to make a dress I'm gonna go to the lower subdivision levels so let's say this so I'm gonna mask it and um I'm gonna do extract so but instead of doing extract with thickness I don't want to have to control the thickness of things so I set thickness to zero and then I say extract accept so now we have this shape here right and with this I could um just start pushing and pulling to create the base for her dress you know and you can do the shift click uh to kind of smooth the topology right so you can do something like this let's say but what I love about Dynamic subdivision now is that this is a one-sided thing right oh if you all try to sculpt uh clothes before like if you give thickness and you start smoothing things you might lose that that precise thickness of cloth so what I like to do is I go to geometry and I go to Dynamic subdivision I turn on Dynamic and now there is this thickness slide which I love because again I'm always modeling with the model single-sided but if I add thickness you can see now you can have that thickness as a modifier but if I go here and start smoothing you can see I'm not smoothing my thickness because it's not applied to the model yet and that is so good everything I do these days I do it like this one thing also you can do the thickness if you feel like you don't want that hard surface kind of transition you can turn off this button called pus subdit and uh also I probably need to clean my creases so if it's looking hard surface like this because you probably need to increase up now it's you see it's a bit more softer clothes um and again like I I love this because it makes me work so clean and I know that the thickness of my things are always going to be the same and it's going to work it's gonna be amazing so uh for cartoon stuff you want to be so clean all the time you know you want to work smart and clean and intentional uh intentional meaning like every curve counts right so what I'm trying to do here again is just find ways for me to work clean and have control of my shapes so this is sort of like I don't know cancel like a sleeping gown or something uh but you can see that uh it's very easy for me to just work with the single poly I don't need to worry about thickness and it's gonna always look clean and nice the thickness of my model and if you want to export this to any other software later you can just bake this thickness so if I'm here right you can see the thickness going on if I let's say need to go to marmoset to render or whatever it is I can just go back to my Dynamic subdivision and say apply and now that I applied if I go here so smoothing you can see I'm losing my thickness because now this is real applied geometry on it so I never do I only applied at the moment really that I need to go render something that's when I apply and then I can get very clean stuff on my model cool yeah that's super super amazing and yeah I love Dynamic thickness I I do all my work too with the dynamic I have to I use Dynamic thickness so much that sometimes when I go to render I forget to apply and it's all single side I go damn it and I go back and so uh but I love it because again like I feel like I have so much control control on the thickness of things on my model now that comes out super amazing super great Louie what do you think I mean I just I love the story I love the film I really enjoyed I I said yesterday to Paul gabri it reminded me of I know you're going to appreciate this because you're a gamer also yeah it reminded me of that old game Shadow of the Colossus thing you don't have any reason to rhyme for hunting these large creatures but they do it anyway I think you guys really had a wonderful series of characters in there and this is just um showcasing all of the hard work that goes into bringing this to life uh oh yeah just zoom out a little bit so we can see a little more of these people yeah I think this is a good moment which I think Charles oh here's I didn't show this but this is kind of like um I was bringing Charles models to my scene to sort of like so we could feel if things were in sync if they're singing together you know like the amount of details there was in Jacob if I had similar things on Sarah and then the younger it was a bit softer so a lot of times I was doing that all the time bringing Charles model since he started on the show earlier Charles established the look of the movie when he did Jacob so I had to honor that going forward you know and trying to bring those informations I'll stop you right there the aesthetic of the film I think we all unanimously agree across the globe is par excellence and an enjoyed circumstance for all who get to see it and get to view it and uh you know we have only a couple of minutes left with the two of you yeah go ahead but I just wanted to say this has been an incredible incredible circumstance to have you here Ian any last words before we ride off into the sunset with our friends from seabeast Lily I think you know what I'm gonna say because I'm always Blown Away by all these presentations because they're always super amazing amen this just it delivered above and beyond so just thank you so much for being here and hanging out with us and sharing your tips and tricks with everyone because everyone in the audience was just blown away and just loves these types of interactions because it lets them pick your brains just for a moment so they too can improve with their process yeah it's just amazing I think that's to the point you know I would just Echo I would sound like I was repeating everything he said basically at this point it's it's a great great opportunity for the community at large across 190 countries to get a chance to go more intimately and I think we provided the public with a great intimate experience over the course of the last four days and to to have you as the final feather in the cap as they say has been a joy and a privilege for for myself and for Ian I can speak for you in that regard I'm sure uh that we're both elated to have been here to see some of your process and and the fact that you've been able to provide that for the public yeah thank you hey thank you so much yeah thank you for having us honestly this has been a a great pleasure and honor for us yeah it's been it's been a great experience and doing with Charles which is like you know a family at this point it was just a dream come true really well speaking of family I couldn't have asked for a better segue if I wrote one myself it's unscripted as we know but we want to say one last for well Ian wave goodbye because we're going to uh say goodbye but don't untune that signal because we next up the moment that the world has been waiting for the zbrush team is going to be coming back Ian Robinson uh Louis Tucci and Paul gabry doing the thing here that we typically do at the zebra Summit for 2022 we're going to be coming back with some under the hood type of look at some features we're working on and uh and for those who are watching at home you're going to get the same kind of treatment that some of our studio friends get to see some of our our works in progress as it were where where our software is concerned so sit tight and once again thanks to everybody we're going to do some prizes when we come back and then we'll go to the big presentation with zebras but until next time on behalf of Ian Robinson waiver by you thank you so much thank you so much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Maxon ZBrush

Views: 6,684

Keywords: zbrush, zbrush tutorial, zbrush beginner tutorial, zbrush 2019, zbrush 2020, pixologic, zbrush free, z brush, sculptris, zbrush live, zbrush download, zbrush core, zbrush trial, zbrush brushes, blender, 3d coat, 3d modeling, digital sculpting, zbrush student, etsy, zbrush character modeling, zbrush character, zbrush sculpting, zbrush realistic face, 3d printing software, 3d modeling software, zbrushcoremini, zbrushcore mini, zbrush mini, figurine, zbrush 2021

Id: 0ZpV4wnnHwk

Length: 88min 56sec (5336 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022