Tag: ZBrushCore

Maya and Progress

I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently trying to get used to ZBrushCore and adapt to the way it works. I’ve become quite annoyed at myself; there are several things I didn’t know about it that would have been very useful if I’d known about them sooner. Like Dynamesh being able to preserve edges, or not, according to a slider. 3DCoat could make even topology using voxels, but was limited to the voxel grid, so it couldn’t preserve them. Having that feature has made it easier in ZBrushCore to do that. So I’ve been spending more time recently working in it and trying to adapt. I should have used it sooner, sigh. Although, from what I remember it was more expensive before, and didn’t have Sculptris Pro, its dynamic topology sculpting, when I looked before, but still.

In any case, I’ve been using it a lot. I’ve become quite accustomed to the controls now…I’m starting to see what proficient ZBrush users mean when they claim that it’s actually fine once you get used to it. When I went back into 3DCoat for some retopology, I had difficult navigating because I’d got used to way to do it in ZBrushCore.

So far, as far as workable model parts go, I’ve made a male and female base mesh. I made the male one for starters, mainly for practice. I want to make lots of character models…I’d rather they be bespoke, but sadly that’s just not practical. So, the next best thing is to make a base mesh to save time, then add unique heads and modify them into distinct models. That saves time, making it more workable, and is efficient.

I made the male one first, then retooled it into a female mesh. I was planning to make the female base mesh from scratch, but I really wanted to just have something. Looking at them now, the abs have kind of melted on the male one. I haven’t got the hang of smoothing just yet, entirely; I end up being a bit too aggressive with it. I want to make some proper models from these….Malik, Mariku, Ryou, Bakura, and lots of others. I didn’t give breasts to the female mesh; since those vary from woman to woman, it didn’t make sense to add them there. I don’t want to be one of those artists that gives all their female character models the same chest, or the same body type in general, at that.

I made hands and feet beforehand to practice and attach to the models. I didn’t get them quite right, though; the palm of the hand is bad, and the toes aren’t quite right. I sculpted them a bit differently to the way I saw in tutorials I got; I wanted them to be separate pieces, just in case that was ever a focus. It’s unlikely, since I don’t do anything focusing on feet, but I want the option.

Unfortunately, having put the effort in one details like the fingernails and toenails, they were erased by having to dynamesh them together onto the model. It seems ZBrushCore doesn’t have proper booleans. I have to resculpt them after. I also didn’t get them quite right, the way the feet are on the models. Legs in general, I’m very weak at.

I started making a model of Maya from Persona 2, to see if I could get a decent character model. I found that even ZBrushCore was slow if I subdivided the whole model high enough to get high details on the face like sharp creases, but I could mask an area and subdivide that, and, unlike 3DCoat, it was still smoothable within that area because they were quads. Although, it meant any smoothing at the edge of the subdivided area was problematic. I could sort of correct it with the decimation smoothing of Sculptris Pro, but not so well. Next time, I’ll have to leave the sharp details for very last and not get ahead of myself.

I think I managed to make a decent face. I still haven’t worked out mouth interiors, though, and the ears were terrible so I drastically simplified them. Right now, I’m relatively happy with the overall state of it, at least. I think I’ve confirmed that sculpting that way can get reasonable results, as far as mesh quality is concerned.

I retopologised it in 3DCoat, but didn’t end up baking there; the 2048×2048 limit is too low, and upgrading to the pro version is too expensive. I baked the normals from the high poly in Blender at 4096*4096, with one UV map for the whole body, for the sake of speed. It seems to give decent results, though for long term stuff, I should make proper UVs; I went with a mangled automatic one for testing.

I also, while I was there, tried a Fake SSGI shader I came across, by 0451 on the Blender Artists forum. It’s clever; it gives more realistic looking results, and responds to lights better than a standard Principled Shader does. I’m planning to experiment on my pseudowatercolour shader and see if I can apply any of this into it. I’m not satisfied with how responsive it is, especially due to the use of colour ramps. I know of a way I might be able to make it respond to colour, too, which I need to experiment with.

Using a very simple version on the normal mapped, low poly model, it seems to soften the shadows a bit, when using a sun lamp and a point lamp, whereas the standard diffuse doesn’t really do anything. I’m sure someone more savvy regarding lighting setups could highlight it better, but what matters is, it’s useful. I’ll experiment with it.

It was inconvenient getting the model this far, though. I’d rather have baked it in 3DCoat, but other than the inconvenient texture size limit, and shoddy implementation of UDIMs I’d have to work around, it triangulated the model on import, which messed it up a bit, so I had to avoid it by baking in Blender, which is quite an inconvenient program to bake in. I need to find a more elegant solution.

Still, I feel I’ve made progress. There are anatomical errors with these models, no doubt, but I feel like I can fix it technically. That I’m not being held down by some stupid problem in the software. That’s refreshing.

As for personally, it’s been a mixed bag recently. I haven’t been feeling very good, and had a relapse of self-harm. I haven’t been sleeping well, either….I couldn’t sleep for most of the night the other day, feeling horrible, and when I have been sleeping, it’s mostly been nightmares. Perhaps it’s my brain’s way of telling me to wake up and make myself useful, haha. I get hunted a lot in my sleep. I often die. The other night, I dreamt me and some others were running away from a monster. We got to an arena, with a sign claiming the only way to stop the monster was for two people to fight in the arena and one to kill the other. I didn’t have the heart to kill my opponent, and woke up muttering a volunteer for death, not for the first time.

My sister has been more aggressive recently, too. We’ve been arguing more. The other night I got told to drink bleach because I yelled at her for yelling about some stupid crap in a video game she was playing. I was quite tempted to swallow some just to spite her.

Things will probably get better. I’m making progress, I think. I need to make more.

On this blog, I’ve mostly written about my NPR work so far. But the other reason I started it was to write about how things are going for me in general, too. It’s good to vent about things, or just process, so that’s what this post is for.

I’ve been quite annoyed at work recently. I work in a shop. Obviously, with the coronavirus pandemic, that’s made it more stressful than usual. During March and April, we probably had double or more our usual amount of customers coming in. That wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but since this lockdown, I’ve noticed more….Inconsiderate people. People who think the rules don’t apply to them, like signs saying not to enter and aisle because we’re working it – especially the bloody alcohol section – quite a few customers have blatantly ignored.

I get very frustrated with people like that; it’s like they think they and their…Petty wants are the only things that matter. They aren’t even buying anything important. I could understand at least, if they were bypassing the no entry barrier to get some toilet roll or basic food, but it’s not. It’s always the ones after their alcohol that think they’re more important. It’s making me quite cynical, unfortunately, as if I wasn’t enough already; I’ve really come to think that most people who live near the shop I work in are just alcoholics, and/or gambling addicts. Hell, according to the rumour mill, even one of the supervisors is an alcoholic.

Despite the pandemic, the lockdown, people have continued to come in several times a day to get their fix, buying multiple bottles of booze, or cans, or sets of scratchcards, cigarettes….Those people really make me dislike my job. I don’t want to help people continue their addictions. And I just really dislike having to serve people that think they’re more important than everyone else. Because of that, I’ve been developing more of an attitude recently; when a customer got angry at me for telling him to stand behind the line that marks a 2 metre distance, I just said “Whatever”. Not exactly great customer service, but I’ve really exhausted my patience for that kind of person.

We’ve also had a significant increase in threats towards staff members, and general shitty attitudes. I haven’t experienced much of that, though, at least directly to my face. I think it’s because they don’t see as a woman though, sigh; it’s the female members of staff who’ve been getting the most of it. Probably because they’re most likely cowardly men who feel more confident picking on them.

So work has been quite tiring recently because of all that. I have some time off soon, which I’m looking forward to. I hope I can use it well, as well as relax a bit. My colleagues are mostly good, at least; recently, I’ve been getting on well with one who I talk to about films and other media when we’re on shift together. He writes films and wants to work in that industry, so I can relate a lot with discussions about different things we look for in media, thoughts about generically popular stuff, etc.

On another note, I’ve recently been trying ZBrushCore. I got very frustrated with 3DCoat. I’ve been trying really hard, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a good enough surface quality. I upgraded my RAM, which helped get better performance, but it couldn’t let me get high enough to use voxel meshes at a high enough resolution to hide the jaggedness, so they’d never stand up to a close up. I realised, when it came down to it, the problem was the mesh type. It uses triangles, which are very hard to get a smooth surface with, and don’t crease well. So I thought I’d try Core; last time I checked it, it didn’t have Sculptris Pro, its version of dynamic topology, so I didn’t get it. I find ZBrush’s dynamesh-focused way of making a mesh very awkward…It feels unnatural to me to have to do the whole model at one fixed resolution, limiting how much you can detail it, having to do it all at once. I find it much more natural and convenient to just do what I want to whatever detail, without having to worry about resolution while I’m sculpting. Obviously, the final mesh needs to be even, but it’s so awkward having to think about topology while sculpting. It’s said to be easier because it forces you to focus on forms, primary, secondary, tertiary details in order, but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.

Core is a lot cheaper than full ZBrush, which is sitting at like £900, basically. I’m quite enjoying it so far; it’s a lot easier to get a good, smooth mesh, though I’m having difficulty adapting my sculpting style. I’m used to using a flatten tool that levels area to block out a lot of shape, like slapping on a bit of clay and scraping off the excess to make a plane. Core doesn’t have that kind of brush, though it does have a somewhat similar brush, except it doesn’t level it.

I’ve been doing some sketching. Recently, I’ve been trying a more traditional style of sketching; just sculpting everything without thinking of it as something that needs to be ready to use on a retopologised model, like sculpting the eyes onto the mesh rather than giving it hollow eye sockets with separate eye objects.

They’re very bad, but to be fair, they’re sketches and I’ve been trying to get used to a new program. I found the navigation very difficult at first; I wasn’t used to the way ZBrush does it at all. Looking at them all now, though, I really need to vary my faces up. They all have the same cheekbone shape, and the way it makes that sort of 7 shape from the corner of the eye to the chin. And reference more, of course. The ears are only good on these because they’re a ZBrush asset, haha.

I’ve still got to totally get to grips with it, but I am finding it a bit easier now. When I have the money, I think I’ll buy it. I feel like I can make the mesh quality I need with this, since it generates quad meshes instead of forcing triangles on me. Although, I’ll still use 3DCoat for retopology, UVs, texture painting and normal mapping, since it’s good at those and Core has no such functionality.

Anyway, I’m trying to improve and get back on track with my sculpting. I want to get better and make more, and my watercolour shader is just waiting to be used.

I think I should make more posts like this, though. It’s good to just ramble about things sometimes, and talk about WIPs without feeling like I have to talk about some milestone.