Useful ZBrush Links

#1

Compilation of useful ZBrush links:

Tutorials

http://members.optusnet.com.au/phourmouzis/tutorial.htm Maya, Renderman, Mental Ray ZBrush Tutorial

http://www.3dlinks.com/links.cfm?categoryid=13&subcategoryid=122 Various ZBRush Tutorials

http://www.southerngfx.co.uk/information.htm A few tutorials

http://www.noir.org/3dTutorials.html#ZBrush ZBrush 1.55 Tutorials

http://www.pixol.com.au/zbrush_maya_tutorial.htm Maya-Zbrush information

http://www.digital-tutors.com/digital_tutors/display_video_category.php?vcat=zbas ZBrush Video Tutorials

http://www.3d-palace.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3312 Video Tutorial

http://www.stevewarner.com/Tutorial…/zBrushTut.html Lightwave/ZBrush tutorial

Informational Links

http://206.145.80.239/zbc/index.php ZBrush Central Forums

http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=3471 ZBrush 2 Practical Guide

http://www.3dartspace.com/z/zbrush2_intro.html Meats’ Website with some ZBrush 2 information.

Tools and Script Links

http://wargasm.fortawesome.com/tuto…AlphaBrush.html Alpha Brush Tutorial

http://www.warproductions.com/tools.htm ZBrush to Maya Displacement Script

http://www.fmotion.net/zbrush/ Materials and Alphas

#2

ZBrush Central forums. Has some good stuff in it. :smiley:

#3

Yea, I figured pretty much everyone knows about that one though :wink:

#4

Woops. Sorry about that then. :scream:

#5

No no no… it’s ok anyway. Not everyone here knows the site, so it would be an excellent complement to cgtalk…

It’s just the forum isn’t quite well arranged so it’s hard to search particular tuts … >.<

#6

http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=3471

Heres a link to the ZBrush Practical Guide, the best way to learn ZBrush. The Practical Guide comes with tutorials from Martin Krol, Jean-Sebastien Rolhion and many others - Everyone learning ZBrush should read it!

@Moderators: Could you make this thread sticky?

#7

http://www.southerngfx.co.uk/information.htm

Not really a lot of tutorials, but useful if you want to see the kinds of things a skilled artist can do with ZBrush.

#8

Good stuff guys, keep them coming. I know there isn’t a whole lot of ZBrush stuff out there, but feel free to post anything that you think is useful. I’ll start re-editing my original post as to try to keep all the links at the top for ease of use.

#9

here are some useful tutorials, they are for 1.55 but still very good. http://www.noir.org/3dTutorials.html#ZBrush

#10

http://www.designpicture.com/CG/index.htm

JS Rolhions Website. In the “New Images” section you’ll find the Dino Dragon Video Tutorial (very cool, you see how to use the deco brush efficiently!). Also, it’s very inspirational to just look at his work - Strike certainly knows how to use ZBrush! :slight_smile:

#11

A quick question since we are on links… is there a book about zbrush? I really dont know. If not why isnt anyone writting one!?

#12

I don’t see the point of having a book on zbrush (if there is one then thats good :D) since its not a very technical program. Everything is explained when you highlight things with the ctrl key. The zscripts tuts are nearly as good as video tuts and there is a pratical manual explaining everything so…why bother.:slight_smile:

oh and the bottom link for people who use max and don’t have obj import export plugins.:slight_smile:

www.habware.at

#13

can anyone post a link that could be useful for maya users… like the import export procedure for models and texture maps?

#14

Someone sent this to me a while ago, I don’t recall who it was, but it’s the basic workflow for Zbrush and Maya. Also the links I posted in the first post go over Maya and ZBrush information.

Create your low res mesh in Maya, lay out your UV’s as you normally would. The reason for this is that ZBrush will lay out your UV’s in a very automated way, face by face or facegroup by facegroup, but you don’t have the freedom to go in and paint on it in Photoshop; you actually can do this, but you would have a difficult time knowing what goes where. Make sure the .obj plugin is loaded in the Plugin Manager, and go to File - Export, and export the mesh in .obj format. Once this is done, start up ZBrush and import the .obj file. Once this is done save the mesh as a morph target, subdivide it however many times you need and paint/model away. Once you are finished detailing go back to the 1st level subdivision, hit the restore morph target button and then hit the create displacement map button in the same menu. Some settings that have good results are Adaptive, 2048 res or higher and SmoothUV’s off. When the displacement is calculated it will appear as a new alpha in the alpha menu, just export it as a tif and open it in Photoshop. If you are using mental ray to render then you’ll need to convert it to RGB mode or mental ray will abort. Flip it vertically and that should take care of the rotation/orientation of the texture once opened in a file/place2dtexture node inside of Maya (or you can just do the same in the node by rotating the frame by 180 and set a -1 value in the U repeat or V repeat).

Make your displacement shader as you normally would and render away. If you are using mental ray, then you should assign a subDivApproximation to the mesh. Settings that tend to work well are Spatial min 4 max 9 and a length of .1. You might be able to get more optimal settings with some testing I suppose, but that generally works good. Now go play with the alpha gain and alpha offset, you may have to use some extreme settings, for one test I did I used an alpha gain of 15 and an alpha offset of -7.8 but the end result was excellent.

#15

i dont know if you guys know it or not theres a plugin available for getting the displacement map . i havent checked the plugin yet but .hope its usefull .

check the link

http://www.warproductions.com/tools.htm

#16

http://www.pixol.com.au/zbrush_maya_tutorial.htm Maya-Zbrush information posted by Blue Magic in another thread.

#17

Updated the original post for easier browsing of links.

#18

Heya Bill…

One more :buttrock:

Zbrush Sculpting by Meats Meier
http://www.3dartspace.com/z/ztut_2.html

#19

Anyone have any other links to add? Hopefully we can get this stickied to provide a resource to the community.

#20

Added Alpha Brush Tutorial link.