046 Render Setup Video Lecture | Zbrush: Create Realistic Modelling - Professional Skills

okay so I'm gonna set up a key shop
freyal like I did for my promo pictures
where it's got a little stand of wood
and a little piece of metal and we're
gonna throw it in the key shot the back
plate so the first thing you need to do
is go ahead and grab your pieces here so
I go into solo mode and toggle through
these you're going to see I got my three
people here and they're all decimated
down to about half a million polygons
you can go lower you can go higher
depending on the fidelity that you want
and so now that we have that we have to
go ahead and make them a stand and a
stick so probably easiest way to do that
is just to go ahead and just do an
append a cylinder and I'm gonna make one
to start with and one of the things I
like to do when I do this is go to
geometry modify topology and I'm in the
habit of just doing a weld points just
because sometimes when you smooth these
things you hit D to do a preview you'll
get a little hole in there so it's kind
of a good idea another thing I'm gonna
do is just use transpose go ahead and
thin this out well
lengthen it first and by linking it they
get the profile that I like and I want
to bring it back it's like well that's
way too big so I'm gonna go over here to
deformation size and just scoot that to
the left like three times or so you know
I've got my stick I'm gonna hit
transparent make sure it's inside my
characters where I want it to be here
just using transpose good enough and if
I need to shorten it and go into solo
mode just tap this top part and then
hold that shift and grab this top one
here and just do a non-uniform scale
using the move basically and okay let's
say that's good and the next thing I'm
gonna do is go ahead and append a cube
and alt tap that to select that sub tool
hold down shift and use transpose to go
ahead and just make you a little
platform here and we'll go ahead and
center it I guess and it's kind of small
so I'm gonna do is hit using W and a
hold down shift and just move it out
this way and then same thing from here
from the middle move it out this way and
I don't have X turned on or anything I'm
not being that specific but just to
basically get this shape so now to I'm
gonna make sure the stick isn't going
all the way through which is good and
then what I want to do is go ahead and
turn this into a dynamesh I can kind of
rough up the edges a little bit so I
know that because I had I did you know
which is under deformation a lot of our
deformation unify and if you remember
when we did that what that does is
basically put this into the area of a of
a ZBrush primitive cube so I know that
when I dynamesh this thing at a
resolution of 128 projected off blur off
and hit dynamesh which for you of course
will be under geometry I know I know
it's gonna give me enough resolution to
kind of play with so now I'm going to do
is go into control shift actually you
know what I'm gonna go into trim dynamic
and I'm just gonna kind of deaiing up
these edges here a little bit if you I
mean if you want you can go to the side
and do a clip curve and oops there you
go just kind of knock these edges back
basically what I'm looking for is just
something that's not too perfect
so when we go in and render it's not
like obvious that it's like a perfect
piece of wood down here and another
thing we need to do is give a hole
around that cylinder here so an easy way
to do that would be number one I need to
make sure it's smooth so what I'm
actually gonna do is I'm gonna go into
my crease settings here and I'm gonna do
crease tolerance gonna drop that down to
like 29 hit crease and what that's gonna
do is vein based on the angle threshold
it's gonna go ahead and crease any angle
that's more than that which of course
these are so now I have a hit D you're
gonna get a smooth preview and then
Shifty's gonna take you out and when I
hit Dec out it's perfectly smooth it's
because we've got two fake subdivisions
preview subdivisions in our dynamic sub
div I'm gonna go ahead and hit apply to
go ahead and bake those to that one so
now we've got cylinder with subdivision
history make it nice and smooth and I'm
going to duplicate that cylinder off I'm
gonna move it using those bent arrow
underneath my box here and I'm gonna hit
this little second icon which is to cut
out of this box here so since this one's
a dynamesh and if I merge these together
and then I control swipe it's going to
cut that out so I'm going to go ahead
and do merge down so I've merged my
square onto my duplicate of my cylinder
I control swipe and then I go ahead and
cut that out and now what I'm gonna do
is just go to and here the deformations
again and do a quick polish just kind of
tap polish maybe there we go that's good
enough and then I can go back in here if
I want to with my trim and kind of rough
these edges up or if I want to kind of
sharpen it up now I can maybe do a clay
polish good enough so let's say that's
my board and this is my stick here and
I'm gonna share that board and that
stick with all four of these characters
so I think my scenes already set up the
next I'm gonna do is actually go ahead
and launch key shot you can launch key
shut from within ZBrush but I've had a
little bit better luck
launching key shot first and then
sending stuff over so now that I've
launched key shot I'm gonna go back into
ZBrush we're gonna go into render and
under external render we need to turn on
key shot and I'm gonna turn off auto
merge by Auto merging something about
Max faces slider value Beauvoir I just
go ahead and turn that off so don't
worry about it and then when I hit BPR
is gonna send all this to key shot now
because these are all one subtool here
that means I can only apply one material
per sub tool so basically I'll put steel
on this one I'll put wood on this base
here and then I'll put different types
of clay on each one of these if I did
want to put like a different type of
material on his hat or something I'd
have to go ahead and separate that on it
to its own sub tool but for now this is
gonna work for what I want what I need
to do so once I have this all set up I'm
gonna hit B P R and it's gonna see
rendering in progress and it's sending
it to key shot so if I tab over to key
shot here it's gonna throw everything
into key shot so now if I go over here
to my scene settings and I open up the
ZBrush panel I've got this person this
person this person and then I've got my
stick and then I've got my base so just
by clicking those on and off and kind of
turn those on and off while we're tuning
I'm gonna go ahead and turn off these
first two people so I've got my little
cigar guy here with the stick and a base
here
so let's go ahead and first let's go
into our metals open this down and I'm
gonna go to old and I'm gonna go steal
ultra scratched and just drop that right
on to my stick here and then I'm gonna
go down here to wood and I'm just gonna
do it's an easy one like this light oak
just drag it right onto that wood base
there now you're gonna see it styled
quite a bit so under you have materials
here and you also under your scene I
like to use the materials in my scene
just because if you keep dragging if I
drag light oak onto this guy I'm gonna
have two instances of light oak which I
don't want so basically once you drag a
material into your scene if you only
want to update that one material you
want to drag it from this little area
here onto here so now the tiling is
applied to both of these objects so I'm
gonna double click this light oak
material that's gonna take me to the
settings for it and then I'm gonna go to
textures and where it says scale if you
crank this up they don't only let you go
up to 2 and in this case I need to go up
to like 12 so that type in 12 and hit
enter cuz it's a pretty small object
again you can do box may have different
type of maxing I don't have you bees on
this so I'm just gonna kind of have it
box map for me even though I know that's
technically probably not what a cut
piece of what it would look like I think
it's okay and of course you can play
with the properties here which we'll get
into in just a second speaking of if we
go to environment this is the start up
HDR image that's lighting our
environment here and so if we go in here
and rotate we can rotate the environment
around and it kind of updates updates
the lighting on our object but if I go
over here to environment I can choose
different environment objects or
settings so if I double click hiss we're
like in an urban setting he's been lit
by a you know some Reno neighborhood or
something like that another thing you
can do is give it a backplate image so
when I click on backplate image it's
gonna take me to in this case it goes my
users public documents Keesha five back
plates here and then there's a ZBrush
folder if you have the ZBrush link which
I do
so we scroll all the way down to the
bottom here you're gonna see some clay
set up once and I'm just going to grab a
blank one here
double-click the O 5 so that'll go ahead
and give me a backplate to go ahead and
render against so number one the
lighting really doesn't match so we'll
go back to our environment lighting over
here and we'll go to studio and I'll
just go ahead and regrab our startup so
I'll just double click that and I mean
that's probably not perfect but it's OK
for preview purposes now and under
materials I can go in here and I can do
like okay I can material I can make a
material almost anything's here so if I
go to soft rough material it's like this
color I can just drag it on to him and
it'll go ahead and render him out with
that material on him if I want to I can
go all the way to the bottom where it
says ZBrush and it's already got some
clay in the background here so I'm just
gonna try and match that I'm going to
drag this clay out from here and this
one maybe that's a little too saturated
yeah I think this is the right one so
this one kind of matches that one which
is what I like
I didn't kind of go ahead and position
this thing around here and you can play
with your environment settings so you
can shrink crank up the brightness a
little try like 1.25 and brighten it up
a bit you can also go to your
environments here and you can like
double click no shadow pass or overhead
panel soft light and just see one that
you know maybe kind of matches the
lighting that's in the back plate image
the best this one looks okay and you can
also do the rotation and see if you can
get so you can see how to light kind of
hits from the swain does a little cash
out on the side you can try and find
some lighting that does the exact same
thing but I'll go ahead and double click
the start up one and just kind of rotate
it around so the highlights from the
left side of the image and kind of
casting a shadow all those pretty
diffuse but it's good enough for preview
purposes here you can go in here and
play around with those and find a better
one maybe and once you get that set up
the way you like it you can kind of
match your focal angles up about a
camera here depending on the focal
length or the focal angle of their lens
they use will kind of determine how well
your object kind of sits in the image
and then this one seems like it works
okay
one of the things that's bothering me is
this is so saturated wood and it's kind
of shiny so what I'm gonna do is go into
my scene here let's go to my materials
tab double click light oak and I'm gonna
actually blend that diffuse with a gray
just to kind of knock it back a bit and
then I'm gonna make that great lighter
and I'll play with that kind of blend
just to kind of knock it back a little
bit and then roughness I'm gonna crank
that to the right to kind of make it a
little bit more or a little less shiny
it's a little bit better another thing
you're gonna notice is everything's
sharp and in focus right here and then
goes out of focus here so it does have
some depth of field so I'm gonna click
on camera scroll down turn on depth of
field and then I'm gonna do select a
point of focus I'm gonna click his nose
here so that'll be in focus and
everything else that kind of blur out
depending on your f-stop so if I make
this really small it should blur it out
more so it'll focus where his noses and
then kind of blur out along the back
that's again the foreground really is it
kind of gets out of focus if you crank
it up everything's gonna be sharp so
crank it down to as much as it kind of
matches the blur of the image maybe I
didn't click done on that message down
there now you can turn on effects and
play with this maybe do some been
getting if you want to kind of do that
or bloom intensity that kind of thing
and then once you're happy with this
render here you can just go to render
render and you can do yeah if you do a
PNG with alpha which will actually give
you a really nice off around your image
you can do presets pretty high or I can
just type in you know what I want like a
4k render there we go and then I can
just hit render and once that's all
rendered out it'll end up in your I mean
if you have a side of the same way I do
public public documents he shot five
renderings if you want to it's go ahead
and shut this down here and then if you
just want to swap these things out just
go to your scene turn off this dude
oops turn off
that guy and then turn on this lady and
then it we can go here to back to
materials and let's choose a gray let's
see if we can match this gray here close
enough so now I got render ready for her
to go if you want to render them all out
like a group shot or something all you
would need to do is go ahead and you
know merge these two objects together
make sure they're all you know hit ctrl
W and ctrl W to give them a poly group
each merge them down duplicate that sub
tool move these things around rotate
them around in fact I think I have a
version and go to there we go so in this
case what you can do is we've got a base
for each of them and a steel beam for
each of them now if you wanted to you
could merge all these beams into one if
using the same material but if you're
gonna use a different material for each
block make sure those are separate sub
tools and then each one of these gets
their own separate sub tool and then you
and you render those out see if I have a
render yes you know you can render them
out with different wood for each base
steel the same and then different
materials for each of these people here
and this is another 4k render and you
can get that kind of result you know if
I had time I would go in here and you V
the wood and stuff and make it look a
little bit more natural but you know
just for a quick little ZBrush bridge
render to ki shot really you can see how
fast that went I mean we could already
do iterations and do different lighting
setups and if you don't want that
environment in there just go to color
and you can just you know dump that down
to a gray or a black or whatever and
remember if you go into render here and
do AOS do it really small and 800 by
that and we'll do a PNG with alpha
transparency
and I open that up that'll go ahead and
give us an alpha and Photoshop I'm gonna
drag this in here there we go so now we
have an alpha in Photoshop here so I can
put anything behind here that I'd like
and it'll be a nice transparency with
that