More Zbrush shortcuts

There are a number of cheat sheets for ZBrush shortcuts. This one will give you some heads up.

The original PDF can be found here:

http://docs.pixologic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CheatSheet4R7.pdf

Using Zbrush brushes and shortcuts

This guy is a bit dry in his delivery but this is a brief run through a few brush types and potential uses.

Note his use of the hot keys.

You'll probably find five or six brushes which you'll get used to and then use regularly.

The brush short-cuts come in three letter combinations, always starting with a B (opening the brush palette) and bearing some relation to the name of the brush.

These are some common combinations:

Brush pop-up - B 
Brings up the brush palette.

STandard Brush - B - S - T
A soft fall-off build up for general use.

MoVe Brush - B - M - V
Useful for pushing your sculpt into shape.

MPolish - B - M - P
Flattens areas to a plane

Clay Buildup - B - C - B
General brush with a fairly hard edge by default. A good "go to" brush for building and cutting in.

Slash3 - B - S - 3
A fine cutting in brush with a large fall-off. Slices in fine lines.

INlflate - B - I - N
Useful for pumping the volume of your mesh. Can subtly add roundness or help to close a crease by adding volume to the "sides of the valley"

It's important to remember your modifier keys too. There are two basics:

Holding Alt (over the mesh while sculpting)
Inverts the brush. ZAdd brushes become ZSub(tract) and vice versa. Some brushes have specific alternate effects.

Holding Shift (over the mesh while sculpting)
Activate the selected smooth brush. Alternating between your current brush and the smooth brush while sculpting is a useful method.

Quad Draw retopology in Maya

Retop done the old fashioned way (with helpers).

The workflow on this is very nice. A walk through the quad draw on a "live surface" mesh with some good little tips on simplifying and speeding up the process.

Ways of rigging and posing in ZBrush

Two tutorials on posing and rigging in ZBrush

Bear in mind that you probably want to go through the remeshing process if you've been sculpting with Dynamesh. Firstly the dynamesh topology is a mess. Secondly, your dynamesh sculpt is likely to have ended up anywhere between hundreds of thousands and tens of million polys.

You want to get your mesh down to a level of organisation and number of polys that either of these techniques can manage comfortably.

Good luck!

A little ZBrush workflow number. Dynamesh to ZRemesher

What is ZRemesher? It sorts your mess of a sculpt into pretty quads.

And where do you use it?

ZBrush does 2D, 2.5D and 3D. Use it as you see fit

There exists a huge amount of tools and options in ZBrush and Maya.

Frankly, if you're not asking "How can I do that?" you probably don't need to know... yet.

Most of anything I've learnt in 3D modelling and animation (so far) has been through necessity. You find it out and you learn it because you need it.

The other thing to realise is that there's always more than one way to achieve anything.

Poly model a head in Maya?

Or go for a free sculpt in ZBrush?

Maya for beginners. Step by step

This is one of the first Maya tutorials I found useful. It covers the very basics from file creation, user interface, inserting poly models, basic texturing and rendering.

Zbrush needs a multi-part intro. Get used to it.

Zbrush is massively capable and therefore hugely complex. I've used loads of different vector drawing, painting, photo-editing and 3D software over the years and ZBrush has, by far, the most vertical learning curve I've ever encountered.

It is rewarding though.

This is the start of a series of tutorials from Michael Pavlovich just to get you going.

As with any piece of software, you have to use it and get used to it. Open it up and do something with it.

The trouble with ZBrush is that it doesn't inspire confidence. A wrong click here can make your work appear to disappear, a wrong click there and you're in for a long wait while it tries to work on the mess you've made... and it does crash.

Save and save often.

To begin at the beginning

In late September 2015 I enrolled on a 3D Computer Animation degree course. I began with a few years worth of self taught software experience. Pixologic's Sculptris and the excellent, open source Blender had served me well and lured me back into education.

Back into education after 23 years.

While our course is supposed to be about the creation, the final (moving) image, the product rather than the tools we use, the reality of it is an expectation to use Maya and Zbrush.

Thrown in at the deep end.

This blog is a record of some of the tips, tricks and tutorials that we've found useful. With posts on general operations, solutions to more specific points and practical work flow notes, I'm hoping to present a bunch of stuff that's just plain useful.