002 Primitives And Polymesh3D Video Lecture | Zbrush: Create Realistic Modelling - Professional Skills

And already I've kind of gone deeper than
I really wanted to while we're discussing
the basics.
So what I'm going to do is go to preferences,
initialize ZBrush, and now I'm going to have
you guys follow along, just to kind of get
used to not only the interface, but also navigating,
and manipulating objects in ZBrush.
So what I'm going to do is turn on my Wacom
tablet here, and I would suggest getting a
Wacom tablet because ZBrush is a very sculptural
program, and it's nice to kinda get in here
and move around with your Wacom.
And I went ahead and restarted ZBrush just
to make sure we're starting fresh.
So the first thing I'm going to do is, we're
not going to mess with lightbox anymore, we've
kind of gone over the basics of lightbox,
so I'm going to hit the comma key, or you
can hit hide up here, to kind of get rid of
the lightbox.
And you can of course toggle it back on if
you want to by just hitting comma.
And, so now we've got a document.
The first thing you're going to want to do
is probably do this in ZBRush.
And you're going to be like "well this...this
is ok, I guess, I don't really know what I'm
doing though."
Basically what you have selected in your tool
menu is a simple brush.
Now we're not going to get into a whole bunch
of 2.5D stuff yet, in the document window,
but there's a lot of cool stuff you can do
there.
We're going to start with modeling.
So in order to model in ZBrush, you're probably
going to want to start, at least at the very
beginning, with a primitive.
So this is actually a brush, a 2.5D brush.
If you click on that icon, you're actually
going to open up a huge menu of, here's your
quick picks, here's the stuff you've probably
used recently, here's 3D meshes, which these
are just basic "initialize"meshes, which we're
going to get into in a second, and ZSpheres,
which is really important.
And these are your 2.5Dbrushes, and a couple
of 2.5D tools like the MRGBZ Grabber.
So we're going to start with 3D meshes.
Just like in your quickpick over here, you've
also got a cylinder and a polymesh, but I'm
going to go ahead and click this tool menu.
Now, this tool menu isn't the simple brush,
see how this is the big square tool menu?
That doesn't mean that's the simple brush
tool, that just means in the big tool palette,
you have the simple brush selected.
And by default in ZBrush you will have that
selelcted.
Your simple brush is actually down here.
And that'll make more sense once we get into
the differences between like this big brush
PALETTE, or I'm sorry the material palette,
and different materials that you've chosen
recently.
Same thing as the big brush palette and brushes
that you've used recently.
So we've made a mess on our document.
And again, our document is just our viewport.
So I'm going to hit Ctl+N, and that's going
to clear our canvas for us.
And now we're going to start with a primitive,
so I'm going to click on this tool palette
right here, and I'm going to click on that,
and now I'm going to get a whole array of
things I can choose.
Lets start simple, lets start with a sphere.
So I'm going to take this sphere, and I'm
going to click it.
Now I have a sphere selected in my tool palette,
so I know in my document, if I click and drag,
I'm going to click and drag a sphere, which
I selected out of my tool palette.
And if I keep clicking and dragging, I'm going
to keep clicking and dragging more spheres.
Which again, is kind of cool, but not really
all that useful.
So there's one more thing we need to do before
we can start having a little bit more fun
in 3D with ZBrush, and that is going into
edit mode.
So now if I hit Ctl+N again, clear my canvas,
and, you know, if you can get over this initial
hump, these things I'm showing you, documents,
tools, projects, if you can understand that,
you know, the stuff I show you in the first
ten minutes in ZBrush, you've got about fifty
percent of zbrush figured out.
The rest of it is...it's all downhill from
here.
So, stick with me, we've got a tool, we've
got a tool selected, it's a primitive, it's
a sphere, and I'm going to drag it out on
my document, and now I want to edit this thing.
You're going to see that by default I have
draw selected, now there's going to be draw,
move, scale, and rotate, but right now I'm
interested in edit.
Now if I hover over this menu right here,
you're going to see edit object, and it's
got "t", that means the hotkey for that is
"t", and just like when we were over at the
quicksave, you hover over that, you're going
to see the hotkey for that is "9".
You're going to see hotkeys every once in
a while as you roll over things, so anything
you roll over in the interface it'll give
you a little bit more information about it,
like move is "w", scale is "e", these are
the hotkeys.
As well as, if you hold down control, it'll
give you even more information on that.
So, the entire ZBrush interface is actually
just a big help menu.
So as you go and you want to learn more about
these things that we're talking about, you
can always hover over it and get the name
of it at least, and they hotkey, and then
you can hold down control, and that'll give
you a lot more information about that specific
thing.
Not all the time, but a lot of the time, especially
for the basic stuff you'll see that's the
case.
So, we have a sphere on our document.
And like I said before, if we keep dragging
we're just going to keep dragging the same
sphere and that's not fun.
So Ctl+N, drag out your object.
Now I want to edit this object in 3D.
So one thing I need to do, is go over here
and click edit.
So the shortcut for edit is "t", so if you
drag out your object and then hit "t", you're
now in edit mode.
So now what does that mean?
That means if you click and drag in your document
again, you're not going to drag another version
of this sphere out, you're actually going
to rotate your object.
Now, because this is a sphere it's kind of
hard to see it's rotating, I don't know about
the resolution of the video on your screen
right now.
But, in order to see this being edited, I'm
going to go over here and turn on polyframe,
and now, so this is the polyframe button over
here, if you let go and kind of hover you're
going to see that shift+f is the hotkey, and
if you hold down control, there's some more
information about the polyframe.
Basically, these are the wireframes that make
up my object, and as we get into a little
bit more of the box modeling aspects of ZBrush,
we'll get more into what these components
mean, but for now you can kind of see what
this object is made of.
And basically it's two polarized ends, and
a bunch of polygons.
So, it's an ok object to start sculpting on.
Now, before we start sculpting, we have to
do a few more things, because this is an initialize
primitive object.
So when we were in here, all of these 3D meshes
in here are primitives, 3D primitives.
So we've got our 3D primitive sphere on here,
and because it's a primitive, we can actually
go, so here's our tool menu, and we can of
course scroll up and down.
One thing while it's a primitive, and I'm
going to explain what that means in just a
second, you can go down here to initialize,
and these are initialize options for this
primitive.
What this basically means is, for example,
the "x" size, along the x axis, you can like
squish that down to like 50 percent, or 25
percent, or keep it at 100, you can also do
coverage, so if you want to do a pacman face,
you know here's 360 degrees, so 360, you can
rotate that around to 180, 90, 35, whatever
you want to do.
H divide, these are horizontal divides, and
you can crank those up or down if you want
less resolution or more resolution, and of
course we'll get into resolution more as we
go.
And then vertical divides, these are your
vertical divides, so I'm going to kind of
just pick some settings, it doesn't really
matter right now.
And we're clicking, in the document, we're
kind of navigating.
So here's our sphere, and as we're clicking
and dragging in our document we're not making
new versions of our sphere, we're tumbling
around the sphere.
And that's pretty cool.
But lets say we want to start sculpting on
the sphere.
If we touch the sphere it's going to yell
at us, and it's going to tell us something.
So every once in a while, you're going to
try and do something in ZBrush, and its going
to say hey, you can't do that right now, here's
why.
So go ahead and read it: "To enable sculpting,
please convert this 3D primitive"...so, we
took it out of the tool palette as a 3D mesh
primitive, and if you actually look at the
name over here you're going to see it's Sphere3D_1--this
is a Sphere3D, the 1st one you've dragged
out.
But don't get caught up in that yet, it'll...you
know, as we go, these things will make more
sense I promise.
So you need to convert this 3D primitive to
a Polymesh3D by pressing the Make Polymesh3D
button in the tool palette.
Now, so we know what most of this is already.
These are our palettes, so we have a tool,
these are basically menus that we can dock,
and we'll get to that in a second, so we have
a material palette over here, and over here
by default is our tool palette.
So at the top of the tool palette we're going
to have a Make Polymesh3D button.
So in order to sculpt on this, we need to
press that button.
So I'm going to tap off that, just to get
rid of that menu, and I'm going to tap again,
so if it keeps yelling at you just tap until
it stops yelling at you.
So now we're in the tool menu, I'm going to
tap anywhere in this gray area and I'm going
to scroll up, just pull down, and you're going
to see a Make Polymesh3D button.
So all I need to do is click that, and that
converted it.
So here's where it was named Sphere3D_1, it
is now a PM3DSphere, 3D.
You're actually going to see it's changed
color, that means it has a polygroup assigned,
we'll get to that in a minute don't worry
too much about that.
So we have polyframe turned on, and now when
we click and drag on our object, we can sculpt
on that.
I know that seems like kind of a lot, just
to kind of get into ZBrush and start sculpting,
it's like "well, why do I need to know all
this stuff?"
It'll make more sense when you start dealing
with initializing primitives, versus bringing
in your own objects to sculpt on, those are
going to be two different things.
But for now, just keep in mind that when you
start over here in the tool palette, and you're
starting with a primitive, you're going to
need to tell ZBrush hey, these are the options
I want.
And if you want to, you can just grab a primitive,
hit Make Polymesh3D, and start sculpting.
You don't have to go down here to initialize.
If you do, here's where you can do that, and
it's important because as soon as you hit
this Make Polymesh3D button, you're going
to see those initialize options change.
This is no longer a primitive, this is a sculptable
mesh.
Those are two different things.
So you start with a primitive, you initialize
it with primitive options, h divides, v divides,
coverage, or a lot of other things once we
get into the other primitives.
And once you convert it, you can now sculpt
on it, and a lot more things are available
to you which we'll get into over time.
But, these initialize options are actually
for Zmodeler, so they've changed, because
this is a Polymesh3D primitive initialize,
not a primitive initialize.
So again, just the basics; you drag out a
primitive, if you want to sculpt on it you
hit make Polymesh3D, start sculpting.
So all these words I've said up to this point
is basically just to say that.
So lets do it again.
In order to do it again, so we're in edit
mode and we can rotate around and we can sculpt
on our object.
I'm going to go out of edit mode, we can hit
"t", I'm going to hit Ctl+N, clear my canvas,
and lets grab another primitive just for fun.
So, this is our tool palette, I know it has
a preview of the tool we were just sculpting
on, all that means is that tool is still selected,
if I want to I can drag that tool out again,
and because I'm not in edit mode I can keep
dragging out versions of it if I'd like, but
of course I don't want to do that I want to
choose another primitive.
So I'm going to click on this palette, and
so we did a sphere, lets just go down the
line.
Cube.
I'm going to drag out a cube primitive, and
I'm going to go into edit mode.
So now I can tumble around this cube.
So it's basically a polarized version of this
cube, with polygons on the side that are dictated
by, if I go over here to initialize, because
this is a cube3D, it's not a polymesh primitive
yet, I have these initialize options.
So again, we can do x size, z size, sides
count, you can crank it up, oh it's not a
cube anymore it's a actually a cylinder.
As well as (lets go ahead and change that
back to four)...and by the way, if you click
in here it'll turn the number red, you can
hit number and enter, and that'll update the
ZBrush count.
You can do h divides, you can crank those
h divides up, v divides, you can actually
even twist your object, which comes in handy
sometimes.
Once you're happy with your cube, and you
want to sculpt on it, again if you click on
it, it's going to yell at you, you have to
make Polymesh3D.
So you're a primitive, you've got initialize
primitive, go ahead and hit make Polymesh3D,
now it's a sculptable polymesh object.
Now you can go over here and because we have
standard brush by default selected, that means
we can now sculpt on our object.
So now this is a make polymesh, this is a
polymesh3D object.
Now, we still have polyframe turned on, if
you want to turn that off, you can go ahead
and turn that off.
And now it looks like we've got kind of a
waxy...matcap red wax actually, object that
we can use our standard brush, and kind of
sculpt on.