The Digital Eye: To Z or not to Z? It’s No Longer the Question

This is part one of Peters new series on exceptional tools of the trade. The next look will be devoted to Massive and Face Robot, the new facial animation technology by Softimage.

You cant really tell when youve seen ZBrush 2 output in movies. It tends to be invisible. For example, the CG cave walls in Bruce Hunts The Cave were mostly created with ZBrush 2, so were parts of the awful cave creatures. ZBrush 2 was used extensively in Lord of the Rings and is now being used to create characters in King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and many more. Not only that, but many of the special makeup effects that actors get wrapped in every morning were designed using ZBrush 2 by people like six-time Academy Award winner Rick Baker. Many of the digitally enhanced characters you see come from the folks at Stan Winston Digital, where ZBrush 2 is a favorite tool. ZBrush 2 has become a hot topic in Hollywood, especially amid creature and vfx groups, so lets take a look at it.

I remember the first time I tried ZBrush. It was back in the old first beta days and the program was a bit intimidating. It had a very different user interface, and I didnt really know what the damn thing was supposed to do. At first, I thought it was just a cool paint program. I fooled around with it and painted some pretty abstract pictures and that was that. But then I saw some awesome art done in ZBrush by its inventor, Ofer Alon. During a phone call to the folks at Pixologic, I apparently revealed the depth of my ignorance about how it could be used. A few days later, I got a call from Ofer. After several hours on the phone, my opinion of ZBrush was transformed. I learned from Ofer that ZBrush is way more than I had guessed. In fact, its depth (no pun intended) was more than I could have imagined on a good brain day. He had me creating 3D objects to use as brushes to paint awesome textures with lighting and reflection, and Im thinking: This is not only fun, the results are beautiful. Ofer says, I remember you struggling with the basic concept of ZBrush, but you did eventually catch on to the idea. I am an artist and I had to develop this tool from scratch to meet my own artistic needs. I didnt like the way most tools are organized in standard ways because they dont fit the logical artistic flow of ZBrush. It may be a bit unorthodox, but that is its strength. This is the most powerful tool for creating highly detailed and textured scenes and models. I also made it so it works synergistically with other 3D applications. People are really now using it to make beautiful work.

There has been confusion about ZBrush 2 because it is so unique. Its a paint program, yes, but instead of using 2D pixels as in Photoshop, it uses 2.5D pixols. A pixol is a pixel that contains depth, texture and lighting information. Think of it as a bridge between pixels and polygons. But thats not all: ZBrush 2 also works with actual polygon geometry as well. You can slide smoothly between the two with realtime stunning previews of everything you do. Thats why its catching on like wildfire in the industry. Dont just take it from me. Cliff Plumer, Lucasfilm cto, reveals:

Integrating ZBrush into [ILMs] modeling creature pipeline has allowed us to take our modeling to that next level of believability and close the gap between concept and production. ZBrush is rapidly becoming a key component in our modeling pipeline and art departments. Its ability to handle millions of polygons has enabled us to move more of our sculpting to digital maquettes and collapse the pipeline between our physical sculptors and our digital modelers.

Thus, ZBrush 2 is the digital equivalent of a big pink wad of Super Sculpey surrounded by a grand array of carving, texturing and painting tools. It is so beautifully designed that clay sculptors are adopting it for creating character maquettes, skin textures and makeup designs. Ill give you an example of how its like clay. Brian Wade, a creature and makeup fx designer living in Prague, is one of the finest clay sculptors around. I asked Brian how he got the amazing skin detail on one of his dragons. I mean it was breathtakingly real looking in clay. I pictured him carefully hand modeling each scale over months of tedium. But thats not how he did it. Brian went to the zoo and got some shed reptile skins of the proper scale. On the inside of the skins, the margin between scales protrudes, so by pressing the skin into the soft clay he was able to leave a perfect impression of real scales.

OK, in ZBrush 2, you can do the very same thing using whats called an alpha mask. Visualize this: You take a digital picture (or download one) of some snake-skin. In Photoshop, you desaturate it and increase the contrast so that the lines between the scales are dark and the scales are lighter in color. Load it as an alpha pattern for your brush. You can then do the equivalent of rubber-stamping that alpha image onto your virtual sculpture on the canvas. The dark portions dig into the surface leaving exactly the same kind of surface impression on your virtual dragon, as pressing real snake-skin into Roma Plastilina.

It took a while for the vfx world to discover ZBrush. Yet I even found it on a recent trip to Germany; it was being used to sculpt 3D characters for an animated feature. So I asked around town to see what the story is. I caught up with busy, multiple Emmy winner and sculptor/makeup designer Richard Snell on the set of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and asked him if he uses ZBrush 2 to create his impressive makeup effects. He doesnt. Why? Because hes been working steady long hours with no time to learn it. Richard adds, But Ive definitely heard about it. In fact, I have a copy on the way as we speak. Im taking some time off to become a new dad and will use some of that time to learn ZBrush 2.

Clearly the word about ZBrush 2 is circulating. Earlier this year, Id selected a wonderful animated short called People for my annual presentation at fmx/05 in Stuttgart. It was created by a German character/vfx animator, who goes by the name of Taron. I caught up with him in late August. I had noticed that he used ZBrush 2 to create the striking characters in his thought provoking animation.

Taron currently lives and works in California, having recently finished vfx work on Syriana, starring George Clooney. Hes now fully involved with a long-time project on the team developing messiah:Studio, a sophisticated character animation application you should check out. He created People by importing his ZBrush 2 characters (output as .obj files) into messaiah:Studio for animation.

I honestly wanted to know why he chooses ZBrush 2 instead of, say, Maya to create his characters. What I discovered was an articulate love affair:

Through its brilliantly designed access to geometry, up into very high resolutions, now even [with] millions of points and polygons, ZBrush 2 provides artists with the ability to sculpt fluently at any level of detail. It is also convenient to use; and the design allows it to exclude hindering procedures that automatically slow down other 3D applications.

ZBrush is an island of freedom for digital sculptors where they can focus on their creativity and execute their skills; even expand them with these tools. Another thing that makes it so unique is that ZBrush will be a companion for the 3D artist. It is not competing software, but supporting software, and therefore doesnt threaten any of those big 3D packages. So a question as to how ZBrush stands out from others is maybe less appropriate than the question: What puts ZBrush together so well with other packages!

But it does stand alone; starting with its interface, which is unusual to begin with, and requires a moment to understand the powerful and unique system. ZBrush takes great leaps into an intuitive workspace for sculptors coming from either the digital world or from the real analog world of art. The mindset that created this tool seems to be way ahead of others. Therefore, Im also sure that ZBrush will maintain its uniqueness and advanced intuitive access with tremendous speed and flexibility before any other tool.

Heres a sculpture that Tarons created with it:

Tibor Madjar is a lead character sculptor for Weta down in New Zeeland. He did a lot of work on The Lord of the Rings. Most of those nasty armies in LOTR were created in ZBrush and animated with Massive. As I understand it, hes currently designing characters for King Kong and Chronicles of Narnia in ZBrush 2. His characters are generally animated using Massives virtual actor software, which Ill be writing about in detail shortly. Heres what Tibor had to say about ZBrush 2:

Previously, surface detail was mostly created by using scanned clay models or painted textures. The first option can be very expensive, the second would be much cheaper but it could sacrifice the fine control needed over the surface. ZBrush is a good alternative to create scan quality surface detail fast with great control. Since I am modifying the mesh directly, I get instant feedback on how the model looks. The most important new feature in ZBrush 2 is the ability to handle up to eight million polygons very smoothly.

Many of the artists I talked to find the ability to effortlessly and precisely sculpt massive clouds of quad polys extremely useful. In fact, many find it fun and a lot more convenient than working with clay. Oh, sure, most still love getting their hands in mushy media, but for rapid character prototyping on a tight schedule, ZBrush 2 is the way to go. The fact that you dont need to scan the model to port it to Maya, Max or LightWave is a big plus.

Talking with Snell, meanwhile, I realized what a perfect fit ZBrush 2 is with effects makeup and character designers. Stan Winston Studios is world renown for character and makeup design work. Aaron Sims, a designer at Stan Winston Digital, offers:

I use many different 3D programs to help serve my digital designing process. XSI has been the main 3D package of our digital pipeline at Stan Winstons. Only recently did I start using ZBrush. This is truly the most unique digital modeling package Ive seen or used. It has made a big impact at Stan Winston, especially with many of the traditional artists like the sculptors. Being a sculptor, I found it to be the closest thing to working with clay in digital modeling software. I have started to use this as one of my main design tools.

I start off by using ZBrush to design a concept. Once this concept is approved, I commit it to the production pipeline, using the work done in ZBrush, and exporting it as a medium resolution model into XSI. I then export the details like textures and displacement maps from ZBrush 2 into XSI, ready to be rigged, animated and rendered.

It seemed like there were nice things about it, but my first impression was that this is too different from what I was used to, and I doubted my patience to learn a new software. After a short time, I heard much more about ZBrush and started really seeing great work coming from the software. So I looked into it again. Version 2.0 was released and I found myself intrigued by what was possible. I found the time to really understand the program and saw what everyone was talking about. Soon we started using ZBrush at Stans to design with. This is now one of the important parts of the pipeline at Stan Winston Studio.

Aaron actually learned the trade from six-time Academy Award winner, Rick Baker; working with him for 12 years honing his art. Interestingly, Rick, one of Hollywoods more famous makeup effects artists, who still thinks of himself as a monster maker, has taken up this magic tool as well. It turns out that there is a users forum at Pixologics website that is very supportive of ZBrush 2 users. From my POV, Rick is one of the most talented sculptors out there, so its fascinating to hear about his early experiences:

I only had ZBrush for two weeks or something when I sculpted Frankenstein. And then the first two weeks I didnt have the manual or anything and I was just trying to figure out the program like Id normally do; just kind of playing with it and seeing what it does. But it was so different from anything Id used before. I finally broke down and thought, I have to get the manual to this thing. You know, thats when I joined the (ZBrush Central) forum cause I had to do that to download the practical manual and it said come up with a screen name, or whatever, and I just did Monster Maker, just because its something I knew I could remember and I really had no intention of ever posting any work on the forum. I only joined it to get this manual. And what happened was it was like an instant love at first sight.

I thought, This is so cool! you know. But I still had a lot of questions and I got the practical manual. I wanted to learn quickly, so I thought: Ill post something. Cause I thought that the monster turned out half-way decent for a beginner, Ill post this, and maybe somebodyll like it and respond and Ill get some answers for some of my questions. And they did. Unfortunately after a while, people found out who the Monster Maker was and Rick admits its difficult for him to post now that he has to live up his famous name.

I really enjoyed being anonymous and the problem is, and its my own problem, but I put this really high standard for what Rick Bakers work is suppose to be. When I was just Monster Maker, I could post any old crap, you know But Rick Baker has a harder time doing that.

Bravo, Rick, your brilliance shows through even when you dont realize it. Keep posting, youre an inspiration to all of us.

You Have to Learn It

I see learning ZBrush 2 as a career investment for many of us. Although Ive been fooling around with ZBrush from the beginning, Ive never been able to create the amazing digital maquettes that these guys build. So to get better at it, I talked to Meats Meier, one of my favorite digital artists, and ordered two of his informative training video sets from Gnomon: Introduction to ZBrush and ZBrush Production Pipeline. Then I found out Aaron Sims has a set called Detailing Characters: ZBrush Alpha Library, which is also outstanding. Im becoming a DVD training junkie, so I got Head Sculpting and Texturing by Alex Alvarez (founder of Gnomon Workshop). It is an excellent complement to Aarons series and now Ive just started on Zac Petrocs Digital Sculpting: Human Anatomy. I say theyre worth the investment because theyre thorough and will save you months of fooling around.

Meats Introduction series is Gnomons all-time best-seller. He does a lot of freelance design work; in fact, he recently designed the new box cover for ZBrush 2 and teaches at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood. I asked again what attracted him to ZBrush: Its the hybrid nature of the beast. Its 2D and 3D with smooth transition back and forth actually its 2.5D because you have lighting and depth on the 2D paint surface, which actually exists on a 3D plane. Its unique. Also, it is absolutely second to none for digital sculpting where you need fine detail. It is destined to change the way 3D is done.

My experience with ZBrush 2 has been like Tarons: It requires a moment to understand. In my case, its taking a bit more, but I have to say the journey is both exciting and rewarding, particularly the investment of time and creativity in creating textures and bump maps.

Here is my first character in ZBrush 2. Hes a so-ugly-hes-interesting humanoid Alien in polymesh format. I just kept fooling around, designing and sculpting, using different tools for practice. Hes ended up having a rather stern, imperious look to him; perhaps hes a palace guard. Im still working on his skin material. I think its going to be a brownish-green, with subtle scale tracings. Seriously, if I can learn this stuff, anybody can.

The rise of ZBrush 2 in the vfx world is clearly well deserved. If you are serious about digital sculpting, whether personal or as part of your career, you really should investigate ZBrush 2 and give it the time any good investment deserves.

Tarons work can be viewed at http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=024206.

Peter Plantec is a best-selling author, animator and virtual human designer. He wrote The Caligari trueSpace2 Bible, the first 3D animation book specifically written for artists. He lives in the high country near Aspen, Colorado. Peters latest book, Virtual Humans, is a five star selection at Amazon after many reviews.