Transforming Daz Dragon 3 with Zbrush

Authors:

This is over six hours of tutorials in taking an existing popular dragon model and learning how to re-engineer it. Discover how to add morphs and alter the detailing and colouring using ZBrush. It's a comprehensive project in how to create new morphs to alter a model, use secondary sculpting for detailing and then creating texture maps and colouring to give a brand new look and feel to the model. These tutorials were a live webinar class recorded in full HD and presented by master sculptor John Haverkamp.

Requirements

You'll need ZBrush (4R7 was used) to follow along with these tutorials and to have a basic to intermediate knowledge of this software. When showing how to prepare and edit the texture maps in this guide, we used Photoshop.

You'll Learn

1. A complete tour of the Daz Dragon 3.

2. An examination of dragon anatomy using geometrically simplified forms.

3. A comprehensive step-by-step guide for building morphs for iterative designs of Dragon

4. Learn the secrets of iterative design. How to generate "happy accidents" and variants of Daz Dragon 3 that can be sold in the Daz 3D store

5. Painting and texturing your dragon.

6. Getting it all working in an Iray shader in Daz

What's Included and Features

Session 1 - Dragon Tour:
- 1. A complete tour of the DAZ 3 dragon. The geometry is the form. How to use the base topology to your complete advantage.
- 2. An examination of the simplified form dragon. Considering the form and anatomy to build the skills for creating realistic fantasy anatomy with appealing design variations.
- 3. A comprehensive and step-by-step guide for building morphs for iterative designs of Dragon 3. This includes resizing limbs and wings, reshaping the head and adding horns.
- 4. We go through some of the secrets of iterative design. How to generate 'happy accidents' and variants of the Daz 3 Dragon by adding morphs. You'll learn how to make morphs created in ZBrush to work for you in Daz Studio.
Session 2 - Re-engineering with Morphs:
- 1. Using GoZ to transfer the changes to back to DAZ
- 2. Adjusting morph properties and ranges in DAZ
- 3. Iterating with multiple morphs to find a 'sweet' design
- 4. Consolidating many morphs into a single morph dial.
Session 3 - Secondary Sculpt Pass for Better Texturing:
- Since the primary forms are potentially changed dramatically from the base Dragon 3, a new texture set is recommended for each major Morph Variation! To start this process, the mesh is sub-divided in Zbrush and an overall secondary sculpt pass is applied BEFORE the alpha detailing. Think of this as the 3D under-painting that sets up the final detail. Without a good secondary pass, alphas details often look generic or even fake.
- 1. Skin wrinkles, muscle and fat anatomy details.:
  - a. Wrinkle theory, cutting in with the dam standard brush
  - b. Inflation, brush passes the influence of fat and gravity
  - c. Standard and clay brush, uses for reinforcing both wrinkles and fat details.
  - d. Starting to build scale details by hand.
  - e. Developing a flow or rhythm that introduces randomness for a natural 'feel'.
- 2. Original Alpha creation:
  - a. Getting legal photo reference and preparing it in Photoshop
  - b. Sculpting texture details from scratch on a plane in Zbrush
  - c. Making tilable textures in Photoshop and Zbrush
  - d. Making 'hero' detail patches
- 3. Using Alpha's with layers:
  - a. Morph targets and morph brush options
  - b. Layer mixing
  - c. Customizing brushes
- 4. Reinforcing the Alpha details pass with manual sculpting:
  - a. Rinse and repeat until finished!
Session 4 - Colouring your Dragon:
- 1. Painting the Diffuse layer:
  - a. color theory
  - b. using the mask menu to assist with color painting
  - c. spray and color spray brushes
- 2. Map Extraction:
  - a. Normal
  - d. Displacement
  - c. Diffuse
  - d. Ambient Occlusion
  - c. Cavity
  - e. Metal, Rough, or Spec and Glossy, the differences and how to use the mask menu in zbrush plus adjustments photoshop to build them
- 3. Getting it all working in an Iray shader in Daz
  - a. importing the maps to the right slots
  - b. playing with settings and options
Bonus Session:
- How to create luminous detailing/coloring.