Adventures in 3D using Zbrush

I must say i’m not a big fan of 3D, what I mean by that is I’m not a fan of doing it, or I haven’t been.

I had some classes at university but I found it a bit dry and didn’t enjoy them much. Probably because it didn’t match up to anything I was doing at the time or wanted to do. Namely drawing.

As I’m sure you know I like to draw.

Zbrush was always intriguing to me since it seemed to be like drawing and sculpting it also looked easy (rather than building virtual lego, using maths and playing around with different confusing tabs and sliders in Maya or 3DS Max). I was intimidated by the deceptively complex interface.

Last week I started doing some Z brush tutorials on Lynda.com from the beginning. I was pleasantly suprised with the results.

Here is my first attempt:

Is it just me or does the first one look a bit like Michael Winner?

And my second, the following day:

This is an as of yet unfininshed 3D bust of a character I created in early 2007: The Frankenstein Vampire Cowboy©. I’m going to be working on him a bit more in the coming months.

It’s amazing what you can do once you get the hang of an interface.

I think the problem with learning a new program is getting it to do the things you want it to do. Skill is transferable, which I guess is reassuring. I don’t feel 100% comfortable with the interface yet, given a little time, not as much as one might think. I reckon a week or two of tutorials and playing around would leave one feeling pretty confident.

There are some great things made in Zbrush on CGhub ch-check it.

Josh

Flash to Photoshop – Importing Flash Animations Into Photoshop

I have made a really basic no frills guide to getting animation work from Adobe Flash into Photoshop.

Why?

Here’s why…

Both programs have their strengths and weaknesses: Flash is easy to use, quick to animate in and it’s simple to change the timings or order of images around. It only has two ‘brushes’ the pencil tool and the brush, giving only a few options in terms of the lines you can get if you include the four or so style options the pencil tool has. In Photoshop you can use brushes and create your own if you want, there are unlimited possibilities. However animating in photoshop is a clunky and doesn’t flow well.

Here is a way of combining the best of both worlds.

One can use Flash for the basic animation; whether this is just simple shapes or really rough drawings, like in the 1st or 2nd stages of the character development in image below.

When one is satisfied with the animation exporting a png sequence and importing it into Photoshop is simple. Once in photoshop there are any number of options from brushes, colour or textures…and more! (I can stress that enough) For instance a just going over the rough work with a brush tool (taking the character to the 3rd stage as seen in the image above) makes a hell of a difference, just experiment.

The guide I have made HERE simply shows you one way of transferring work from Flash to Photoshop.

Josh