STEP-BY-STEP

CONCEPT SCULPT A CREATURE in ZBRUSH

01 THE Sculpt

In Zbrush, I start out very loosely. I figure out the idea I want to come up with and don’t commit to anything too soon. I also try to stay really low with Dynamesh, to ensure I keep a fluid workflow and ideas coming. Once I kind of see where I’m going, I zero in on the idea and start to flesh it out. When concept sculpting, I really try to minimise the amount of brushes I use in order to make the process even faster. In this case I use the Clay Tubes brush, Dam_standard and the Standard brushes as the primary brushes, and a few others just to get the job done. Most things can be achieved with these brushes.

03 KEYSHOT PASSES

Keyshot is where I will do my final lighting, and where I will set up all of the passes for the render/composite in Photoshop. I start with the lighting on a grey shaded version of the character, then I add an IBL to the scene and angle it to get good shadows. I add spheres to the scene and make them emit light – this is where I get my key light for the scene. Next, I duplicate the spheres and set them up on the sides for the fill lights. I set up my render camera in the position to make my passes. Finally, I render a handful of passes to take to Photoshop: light passes of the individual lights, SSS passes, and reflection passes.

02 ZBRUSH lighting

Still in Zbrush, I set up a basic lighting scenario in order to get a better feel for the mood that I want the character to have. It’s not going to be my final lighting but I want to establish the direction of the final piece with this preliminary lighting set-up. I’m using three lights: one from the top and two on the sides. The top light is the key light and is considerably brighter than the other two fill lights.

04 PHOTOSHOP composite

In Photoshop, I bring in all of the passes to one document and begin my composite. The lighting passes will be set to Screen, so they only show the light of the images. The SSS passes will be set to Soft Light and the reflections will be set to Screen as well. Then I make a colour pass layer, colour the character and set the blending mode to Overlay, so it overlays the colour onto the renders. Next, I add a background image to the composite and blur it a bit. Finally, I adjust the lighting passes to match up with the blurred background, so they are not so strong.