Studio to Zbrush tutorials?
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Studio to Zbrush tutorials?
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,681
in The Commons
I'm thinking about trying the Zbrush trial in the near future and was going to begin looking for tutorials regarding the use of it with DAZ products...and now search doesn't work. If you happen to know of any good tutorials that show things like clothing and figure adjustments, texture application and creation, and exporting of detailed meshes back to Studio, would you kindly consider sharing them? Thank you very much in advance.
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Zbrush, a mythical beast. apparently there are tutorials out there...somewhere. Quite possibly the best collection of free tutorials I've run across are on YouTube. But they are all out there for the people who have a better grasp of the UI than the newbie does and I thought that was the point of beginner tuts? There are other free tutorial locations like Digital being one but after they tease you with a fragment of a tutorial then you have to pay for them. I feel like some of the tuts out there you start off with a sphere and then whamo next few seconds we have a torso! I'm like wait, what happened? Did the video skip? Internet lag? Zbrush is like a secret society...I can't decide if people are not forth coming with tips/help because they don't know it themselves or it's right in front of us the whole time or most likely it's one of those, you will either sink or swim when you're thrown in kind of things [hence the secret society thing...once you've figured out where your keys are...you're in!]. I stumbled on importing a G2F figure into Zbrush when that was not my intention...how I did it...I can't remember...but I remember I had imported the figure and hair, minus selected morphs of my character [I might have unchecked morphs]...so plain G2F with the hair on her head...It is one of my goals with zbrush, to import the figure in, and do some changes...but I've got to figure out where the hell are all my keys and what does what! So Zbrush is interesting, has lots of potential, and mesmerizing when you see what you can do with it...if you ever find your keys and shortcuts LOL! There needs to be a Zbrush Newbieville area! Maybe there is one, I just don't know the right head nod, wink and handshake yet.
i would mimic lots of what Nosiferret said actually. The UI is a chore IMO, and lots of tutorials assume you have already mastered that part. I've also seen videos that start with sphere, tell you "20 mins later" and boom a complete figure is done. seen some speed runs as well, but not found free, good here is how to use this proggie stuff. have avoided it because I hate what I see in the UI, and other programs seem to have better newbie tutorials. i guess it's good they have a trial, not sure that was always the case. at least a few years ago I don't recall there being one.
might have to look into that and fumble around.
i think one of the issues is there are billions of different workflows people have...so different tools may be used while the whole Daz/Zbrush for morphs and what not is very specific. Seen lots of Max/Maya + Zbrush worlflow tutorials but thats not my focus so not very useful.
Huh...I'm certainly did not expect these kinds of responses. Every serious 3D user I come across seems to have had the $800 for Zbrush and swears it's the most amazing program ever, and yet I can't find any tutorials that explain DAZ-to-Zbrush-and back techniques all that well. I figured there would be a ton of them...maybe Nosiferret is right and they're all part of a secret society after all. ;)
I've watched a lot of the ZClassroom tutorials and the UI is amazingly customizable. The only thing stopping me from trying the demo right now is that because I want to continue to use DAZ content, I want to learn as much as possible about how nicely they play together. DAZ redesigned Genesis 3's UVs to be more compatible with Zbrush and yet it's still hard to find out how to actually take advantage of this?
Maybe a PA can pop in and give a few suggestions. Thanks for replying so far. :)
I'm not a PA, but I'm someone who just started using Z-Brush this year, and now uses it every day. Here's my suggestion:
It's not free, but if you're starting out in Z-Brush, this Gnomon Workshop tutorial is worth every penny and then some:
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/1119/Introduction-to-ZBrush-4R7#.VaCbSvlVhBc
It's over 12 hours long, and its stated goal is to take someone who is an absolute beginner and make them into a mid-level Z-Brush user. I found Z-Brush to be utterly confounding when I bought it, and this tutorial got me to the level where I knew my way around the UI, the tools, features, and various techniques, and could actually make things. It doesn't cover anything specifically related to DAZ, but it teaches you the nuts and bolts of Z-Brush which is the foundation that allows you to do whatever you want.
If your main concern is the ability to make custom morphs for DAZ characters in Z-Brush (my main use for Z-Brush), I think I learned everything I know from the Gnomon tutorial, and this walkthrough by Richard Haseltine:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/23430/
I'm sure there are other great ways to learn Z-Brush out there too, but I really liked that the Gnomon course had everything put together by one expert in one all-encompasing organized course, rather than me having to hodge-podge knowledge from various different mini-tutorials scattered all over the web. It's also nice that it's a very new tutorial, so it covers the latest version of Z-Brush which introduced a lot of new features.
thanks for sharing. :)
Anyone got free stuff though? Cause I would only be trying it out and not investing $80 bucks for tutorials myself.
45 day trial is pretty nice. Better than 14 days some folks give...most give 30 so 45 is a good amount.
Dazstudio really need it's own set of Zbrush tutorials at the shop here, strange that no one of the PA's would like to create one or don't know how to create vid tutorials, could be.
anyway there are a few good one's from DarkSeal over at content paradise, but they are done with old poser.
So come on daz, show community here some good Zbrush tutorial works at daz the shop!
Thank you Pearbear, that second tutorial is the kind of thing I'm looking for. I learn software pretty quickly on my own from manuals, random tutorials, and experimentation, but I will keep those Gnomon tutorials in mind.
I'm actually not quite as interested in making character morphs as I am in adding details and folds to clothing, creating small props, texturing in Zbrush, and - something that I have found VERY little information on so far - actually rendering scenes in Zbrush. It doesn't appear to have a lot of complex material options from what I can tell, as it's not exactly designed for rendering finished work. However, I'm tired of the unpredictability and never-ending adjustments of shader settings, and would rather just apply a texture, position lights, and then take it to Photoshop for the real work.
I don't want to sound like a Gnomon Workshop salesman, but if you want to learn a lot quickly you might consider using their subscription service. It costs $59 a month and you have access to all of the training videos they offer while you are subscribed. They have tutorials specifically for the things you are interested in, such as separate tutorials on sculpting wrinkles, on making hard surface props, on rendering etc. Take a look around their website to see what they have (search for "zbrush"). I tried posting links to some specific items, but was having trouble with it.
Though I'd still recommend that if you are new to zbrush, the 12 hour course should come first, followed by the more specific detailed courses on your particular area of interest. Building a solid foundation of the ZBrush fundamentals makes subsequent tutorials a lot more easy to digest. You can subscribe for the $59, watch an insane amount of tutorials in one month and then cancel subscription before the next billing period.
The main differences between Gnomon tutorials and the ones I find on YouTube are that the Gnomon ones are generally 45 min to several hours long (so they are very comprehensive) and all of the instructors are professionals in the video game and film industries, and some are professional trainers. Having a subscription feels a bit like going to art school. They have a lot of great training on making art using other software too, such as Photoshop painting/illustration. And general art, color theory, and anatomy courses etc. which you'd have access to with a subscription. But Gnomon's main focus is 3D techniques for the entertainment industry.
There is still plenty to learn by searching for free tutorials on the Internet, just keep googling for tuts on what you want and playing/experimenting in zbrush. Subscribing to Gnomon is just my suggestion as by far the fastest way to learn if you like tutorials and are willing to spend some money on your learnin'. Well worth the subscription price, in my opinion.
There are (were) several threads on DAZ Studio/ZBrush use (some of which I started asking some of these same questions, and others where I posted) which in the new Forum I can't seem to find via Search. These were really good threads here in the Forums on using ZBrush with Studio, but I don't know where they went.
I'm no expert ZBrush user and have only a basic understanding of the program and how to use it with Studio. I used this ten-part tutorial series from You Tube when I got started with ZBrush and found it to be very helpful: Z Brush Basics - Lesson 1 of 10 - Introduction To Zbrush (
). It's also free and the guy who did it is a good teacher as well. That being said, ZBrush is not an intuitive program and the user interface (and it's quirky set up) will seem alien when you start. It takes some getting used to and some practice to come up with decent results, but sculpting on DAZ figures is relatively easy except that you will trip over the technical resolution limits that DAZ has artificially imposed on non-vendors (as a user they wont let you import HD morphs out of ZBrush back into Studio because they don't want non-vendors making HD products). You can cheat and use displacement maps, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Watch the You Tube videos as a start so you can learn the basics of ZBrush and it's interface and then look around here on the forums for specific tutorials on using Studio with ZBrush.
If you want to do full blown sculpting from nothing, then you should probably invest in a full course. If all you want to do is use the GoZ bridge between Studio and ZBrush to sculpt your own morphs like I do, then a full-blown sculpting course may be overkill.
I use ZBrush all the time... you are needing to know how to use the GoZ bridge I take it? From the stand point of DAZ Studio what ever you have fitted to the figure will go with it to ZBrush so say you have Victoria 7 and a dress and shoes and hair on her... all that will transfer to ZBrush. So make sure you don't have anything conformed to the figure, first off..
You don't have to set the base to from Hi to Base any more since the box that pops up has that option set up already. Just leave that alone. Once in ZBrush "DRAW" the figure onto the screen. Up in the upper left you will see an "Edit" button, click that, if you don't then you will continue to draw the figure onto the screen and the Edit button will then become unselectable. On your right skinny column there are some icons, you will want to click on the PolyF icon to turn on the PolyFrame then on your right side there is the Tools, scroll down till you find "Polygroups" click that and it will expand out, select the Autogroups with UV, then click the Merge Similar Groups. If you doing just a face morph you will using your Ctrl Shift combo and click on the face once, this turns off the rest of the body (and the interior of the face to keep it safe from being distorted). Once done with the morph Ctrl Click on a blank space in the viewport and all the rest of the bits will be back... hit the GoZ button and once back in DAZ Studio you'll get a pop up asking you to name the morph.
It's a bit more complicated if you want but that's really the basics...
Zbrush for Beginners Tutorial - Essentials to get Started with Sculpting HD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO--0h8XHiw&index=1&list=PLh9UGrY9rl-hQ4jrvnmThBj3v5KLvje7v
I'm in the middle of this tut now.
dbb
BTW thanks for all the links!
is there any point in sculpting in HD if you purpose is using the assets in DS?
Thanks to those for posting answers to this and thanks to Snow for starting the thread! I guess we should start our own secret society zbrush newbie clan thing :)
With me, I want to get into some tutorials that will help me get my feet wet, give me a little confidence in the program where I can produce something that makes me want to continue on. I am hesitant in spending the cash on a tutorial and I'm shown a sphere now and 20 seconds later I'm looking at the god Apollo in his chariot. Or it's a video full of time lapsed production and not much helpful instruction. I want tutorials where I can learn how to make little things, and Little things can then grow into bigger and better things. I have a sneaky feeling that the complex UI is the major intimidating hurdle in this program, everything else is gravy and everyone out there learned the 'oh, what does this do when I click it?' method of learning. Which is probably going to be my method. I've gone to my local library and I've got 2 books coming at me to look over. But I do better diving in and messing stuff up.
Thank you for the new links, I've bookmarked this thread and will likely be coming back to it in the future. :) I did watch a tutorial on GoZ and it is very efficient. Definitely one of the easiest ways to morph a figure.
I'm really just looking for tutorials that specifically address using DAZ content in Zbrush. There are many good tutorials available for Zbrush itself, but apparently not all that many show how we can modify, improve, and manipulate something like Genesis 3 inside Zbrush. Those are the kinds of tutorials that would obviously most benefit users here.
Thanks again for the suggestions thus far!
That would depend on what you are trying to do. Basically the mesh figure resolution you send from Studio to ZBrush has to be the same when you send back from ZBrush to Studio, otherwise Studio will not accept it as a morph and you'll end up with a solid object (as opposed to a rigged model). So if you just want to move the model mesh around in ZB (change nose shape, even more extreme stuff like alien heads) this can be done at a lower resolution with relatively few issues (if the morph is too extreme you'll have issues with eyeballs, teeth, etc.). The basic rule is that you should not use any brush in ZB that adds/substracts from the mesh if you want to send your results back to Studio as a morph.
If you want to sculp very fine details in your faces and such (as I do) you would have to subdivide the mesh in ZB (make it higher res to get the detail), do your fine sculpting and then create and export a displacement map that you can use on your model in Studio that will give the illusion of the detail you sculpted. Otherwise the minute you bring your model back down to it's base resolution in ZB so you can export back to Studio as a morph, you'll lose most of the fine detail. They could easily give us the ability to actually send the HD mesh back into Studio by selling us the plug-in they give to vendors, but they purposely won't give it to us so we have to buy HD stuff versus make it ourselves (and that annoys me to no end).
Isn't a displacement map for details actually better than an HD morph because they can be shared and will also work on other figures (if they can use multiple UVs like Genesis 2)? I've never really understood why we haven't seen any extremely detailed veins, pores, or clothing details when displacement maps can give so much detail (the tutorial Pearbear linked to by Richard shows it off well).
thx im familiar with making morphs for DS, and the whole base resolution deal.
displacement maps can be useful but they are tied to UVs, where HD morphs are not. (so i can use my hd morphs on different characters with different UV)
also for me displacement maps add to the render time noticeably, and they only follow the normals, where HD morphs work in 3d space. there other chalkenges and limitations with displacement, we had a thread going on this before the forum update.
I'm painfully aware of the decision on HD morphs and would not have brought it up had someone not linked to a tutorial about it. ill leave it be and return to the tutorial subject
thanks for clarifying.
Yes it is , you don't have to subdivide Genesis anymore, as you have new Dynamic subdivision tool , subdividing is only good for HD morphs
but with dynamic subdivision you see exactly what you will get in DS and move only the polygons cage that matter , other way make not sense and it will looks always different when sculpting on subdivided model .
Do that only for normal , displacement or HD morphs , the new G3 UVs do not improved anything for me and I use Zbrush before it was even released to public and all my creations are done in Zbrush, I export my maps exactly the same way as before as Zbrush have only one texture channel all maps need to be loaded on each polygroup individually.However I am texturing seamless stuff in PS using GoZ ..much easy
bellow is a shot how to activate the dynamic subd .. don't use it together with subdivision or the system will slow down while sculpting , just export genesis via GoZ change to Dynamic sub and pull the (points ) after done use GoZ back and save as morph and if you want more details go back to Zbrush, set off Dynamic sub , subdivide 5 times work on derails, and after set back to lower resolution click CAGE and you ready for extracting the maps , if you don't click the cage your model teeth get smoother look after you apply the maps and so fort and so fort .. a lot of stuff folk , starting soon my commercial Zbrush video classes for beginners via Youtube , I needed 1000 subscribers to do so.. got them.. and soon starting
thanks @MEC4D. and good luck with the videos, just dont fast forward to a finished mermaid in 10seconds
(obvious joke is obvious right?)
+1 I have HD plugin but never used it as my customers can't export it from DS to other programs so a big limitation here , HD morphs are more like internal vector displacement than morphs , by import DS extract it from the sculpted cage models , I wish we had a true vector displacement instate that would be game changer but as usually stuff are clumpy for no reason . Using Normal for skin is better as it does not poke the clothing and vice verse for clothing ..
No no time lapse , slow step by steps with information about functions and what it will do and why , I did classes via skype share screen for a quiet a while, students could create own clothing after 2 hour sessions already , I have my own techniques and workflows developed in years , when I started there was nobody to help so you need to learn by own mistakes .. Youtube did not excised yet
btw Zbrush changed so fast so all old tutorials are no more accurate and all books .. the functions changed a lot
truth be told only so much can be done with normals and displacement, i know for alot of things people mention those solutions are fine. but displacement causes issues because it doesnt deform geometry..so it will have issues poking through stuff
makes sense the daz hd stuff doesnt work elsewhere. never thought of that cause i do my rendering in DS
cool about the vids, im sure people will be happy to leverage your knowledge.
I'm pretty sure I'm subscribed to your channel Cath. I really look forward to your tutorials on this. Sounds like allot of fun!
It will works only if you creare full character , skin, clothing etc.. so you adjust the clothing distance ..it is good but not for what we want to do with so bump and normal maps are the best solution if you use it on skin or clothing , displacement maps are not as much detailied as normal so you need both of them for final result .
ah, the mythical zbrush... i ran into some tuttos 2 years ago, I think is much easier to finish Skyrim with DLC included than master Zbrush...
I look forward to your tutorials as well Cath, I'll wait to try the trial version until then. :)
LOL I am reading another forums site for Zbrush and someone had posted wanting to know if Zbrush was hard to learn and someone posted that it was "totally insane, no sense at all, until you figure it out. Once you go insane it gets easy" and when I read that I said "I knew it!" I knew there was a trick to this program!! :) Well at least I know there are others feeling the same way :)
Thanks for posting the links to the tutorials, Zilver. Thank you MEC4D for jumping in on Snows thread with info :) Thank you Snow for starting this thread :)
Richard, I'm pretty sure you know how to do this but I couldn't find any detailed explanation. When you have a moment, could you explain how to set up a Genesis 2 or 3 figure in Zbrush with textures correctly loaded on each surface? I've tried a lot of different ways, but I can only get one texture applied over the entire figure.
Thanks in advance.
I am not Richard lol but I am doing all my products using Zbrush so here is the workflow of How to load existing textures in Zbrush on Genesis for paint or edit , no matter G1,2,3 or any other model with overlapped textures
click AUTO GROUPS WITH UV'S and after that MERGE SIMILAR GROUPS
this way all your polygroups will reflect the texture templates of Genesis or any other model
Zbrush 32-bits use just 4GB of RAM so you can't get crazy with that, 4 is OK also
but to learn the process don;t do that after you learned how to apply the textures you can working on subdivided model what will give you better texture quality
since how higher the model subdivision how higher the texture quality . ( if you use 64-bit Zbrush this will get even smoother you can subdivide much higher even to 7 )
load your textures of the face , I use GOZ from DS so the textures will be not upside down , in case you load the model obj manually you will have to switch the position of the textures vertically under TEXTURES in the menu bar but I am assuming you know how to do that already ..
going back to our steps , after you load your face texture maps go to the POLYPAINT tab
the textures will be converted into seamless polypaint
now follow the same steps with all the polygroups on your model, the arms, the head-torso-, nails
until you have all the textures loaded and converted to polypaint
but for painting on the model the Zadd need to be unchecked under the brushes setting above the view port , use it checked in if you like to paint with color and bumps maps
also make sure the RGB is on and not the MRGB other way you paint with the materials color and displacement .. so just the RGB and unchecked Zadd .
Now you ready for edit or paint
you can export the textures back into own templates
to do that select the polygroup face and with schift+ctrl hide the rest then go under Textures tab and click the button Create new textures from Polypaint
it will generate new textures that you can export for each group like face, torso limbs, after that click the Clone texture and it will be cloned to the other side of your viewport where you can export it as JPG or sny other format , you can also use Zbrush plugin with Gen3 to export the maps automatic after you finish painting them
also to set the right resolution of the texture you can change it under UV's tab , set it to the size you like, usually I do 4096 for each group then after that create new textures from polypaint under Texture/Create
Edit: Please be aware that changing text background may make it difficult to read for those using the dark theme. http://prntscr.com/87k4gl ~Mod
P.S Zbrush have only one standard texture channel , that why you need to assing each textures individually to each poly groups ( material zone group) when I model clothing each polygroup has a separate materias zone with own UVs after I am done I weld and merge the subtools into one model and create new UVs based on the seams I created before but have 2 options 1. Overloaped UV's style ( if done nothing after merged ) or 2.Atlas UV's style when using Create UVs based on orgiginal seams )