While in school taking 3d animation classes, I was taught a modeling process that was based on nurbs curves. I remember building a human head by creating a series of curves and then lofting them to form a human head like shape. This process was pretty tedious and results were often hard to predict and even harder to animate. Through my experiences I soon figured out that nurbs where not the way to go when dealing with organic modeling, or any modeling for that matter. You man disagree I know, but come on people, we all know polygons are where its at. Switching my methods to the use of polygons to model, afforded me with more control over my geometry, and made my life much easier as a 3d animator.

So yes, polygons are the basic building block that nearly all animators, that I know, use to build their characters, props, environments, etc. building (characters) with polygons is kind of like putting together a puzzle that has no definitive result. You can create a model with a low poly count (for gaming purposes) or you can subdivide your geometry until you have reached into the millions of polygons, adding more and more detail as you go. Now somewhere along the line if you decide to really push the amount of detail on a particular model, you reach and presumably pass a point of no return in regards to what this puzzle is going to look like. For example, if I am modeling a cartoon-like woman, and have reached a considerable polygon count, I’m probably going to find it tedious and downright annoying to try and mold her into a realistic male figure. Makes sense right? This isn’t to say that it can’t be done, its probably done everyday. It’s just that in our traditional modeling packages tasks such as this one take some time and patience on the part of the modeler. If only there was a program that could make issues like this one, and other modeling issues seem less of an obstacle to a final construct. Oh wait, ta-da! There is, its called Zbrush!

Now I don’t know if you have heard of Zbrush, or even know what it is, but if you haven’t, do yourself a favor and go find it and learn it. If you are a 3d modeler you are about to be blown away. I’m not one to get too excited about new software packages, but this one has literally changed the way I think and work as a 3d modeler. Its insane people! Of course it’s a little strange at first. The interface is pretty alien to the traditional 3d animator, but once you get into a few layers of the program you soon realize the vast amounts of potential the program holds for modelers, and texture artists as well. I’ll try not to go into too much about it, I’ll let you go and discover it yourself. My main deal here is the way it has changed the way I think about modeling.

Remember that point of no return situation I talked about earlier? You know, mesh too high, can’t change the overall form with ease? Alright well Zbrush is the program we need in a situation like this, or lets just say all of your modeling situations from here on out. If you build a model in Zbrush, using its weird yet effective Zsphere system you will have control of the overall form of the model while still having the power to add incredible amounts of detail. While modeling you step up the level of subdivision to add more detail. In traditional packages if you need to step back down subdivision levels to change basic form and shape, you often lose the higher levels of detail, and might have to start over. Not with Zbrush. I may be working with millions of polygons (which Zbrush is great at doing by the way) on my way to modeling an intricately detailed demon guy, but if I wish I can step back down the levels of subdivision and change this form into nearly anything with ease. A great example of this is shown in the work by Kris Kosta (antropus.com). Kris modeled a woman character, which looked great. Took that model and morphed it into an older man character, all with the use of Zbrush. He then went on to texture this character directly in Zbrush. This may not sound like a big deal to some, but the drastic transformation that he brought this model through shows the power of a great program like Zbrush. If you don’t believe me, I’d say go check out his stuff and you will be convinced.

We are also now able to start a mesh in a traditional program like Maya, and import the model to Zbrush and run wild with detail and texture. You can literally create a very basic shape of a head, for example, and bring it into Zbrush and add detail, until you have something that is light-years away from what you started with, all the while maintaining the options to revert back to your original model. When I say this program changed the way I thought about modeling I wasn’t kidding. Before the creation of a human figure took a great deal of planning and time to execute. Now I can just lay down the most basic of forms and use Zbrush to sculpt and detail that form into something that looks incredible detailed. It’s kind of like digital clay. And results are so quick that it’s much easier to direct the puzzle of a mesh toward something definitive simply based on how quickly we are able to model. I could go on and on about these processes, but I think I’ll let you decide for yourself. If you haven’t checked it out I’d say hit up the pixologic site (pixologic.com) and dive in, you won’t be disappointed. This quirky and kind of weird program has changed the face of 3d modeling literally.

Filed under Software, Character.