Solid explanation why zspheres are not the best starting point for a figure but the blanket statement "STOP USING ZSPHERES!!11" feels like a clickbait overgeneralization. Zspheres have tons of other uses, like making knots, turning zspheres chains into precise curves, or even simpler things like making tree branches, and you want to be able to utilize them.
Making knots, curves and trees in with ZSpheres I wouldn't suggest to students interested in games art. Marvelous Desinger, Blender/autodesk curves or Speed Tree are better alternatives. I guage it from production, if you have to make more than 2, 3, 12 of those items, ZSpheres has dimishing time returns and functionality. It's too bespoke and requires manual sculpting for every inch of a surface. I tend not to teach them or allow them in pipelines. Rig posing is really good though.
@@3dmutiny Title and thumbnail of your video dont specify the context of "in game production", they just state "STOP USING X IN GENERAL!!", besides are you seriously suggesting to people learning sculpting in Zbrush that they should just learn 2 more software suites just to make knots or trees?
@@brandy1999 Correct, I would suggest students pick up additional software to complete more complex tasks. Especially those looking for jobs in the games industry
I just started using Zbrush for iPad. If I start a new Zsphere, I'm offered a bunch of samples, and lots of them have non-sphere elements. There is a platypus with a flat tail, and there are ears that are flat on one side. So I'm not sure your criticism about them being spheres is entirely justified, though it's also not clear to me how to actually use those non-spheres. The devs could definitely stand to make that process less arcane; it took a lot of searching to find an explanation about how it was done. OTOH, in the same way a modeler uses constructive, additive methods in building a model, I don't see why a skilled artist can't build a fast rig, skin it, then cut it into pieces and adjust those pieces. Or even just mask things. Mask out the arms and sculpt the chest. Your critique of how hard it is to fix the chest totally ignores masking. Also, yes, placing the individual piece like neck and torso etc allow you to move them separately. But it also requires you to move them separately. In Nomad (probably Zbrush, too, I'm guessing), you can put them in a hierarchy, so rotating the arm moves the hand, but it's unfair to talk about the inconvenience of one approach without talking about the inconvenience of the competing approach. Creating the hierarchy in Zspheres is much more natural. In Nomad it's drudgery (and Nomad does multiple object selection more easily than Zbrush on iPad). In a way, I'd be happy to find myself in your camp, since that would remove one of Zbrush's advantages over Nomad. For me, Zspheres have been fun because it allows me to play around with proportions and positions in a way I wasn't able to, before. I wonder if it's possible to create the rig then separate the limbs from the torso before skinning. That might end up with being a good way to get the aspects I like and avoid the aspects you don't like.
(I'll definitely agree, though, that Zspheres don't seem well suited as a substitute for sculpting. I see people layering rope upon rope across their armatures. I think to myself, "That's messing up your topology." I don't know that it matters so much with the quad remesher, but one of the things that seems attractive about starting with a crude zsphere armature is it has nice topology from the outset. I'll even rotate a sphere to get the right flow before turning it into a mesh. Am I wrong? That seems like a nice way to start)
Interesting! It's great for rigging and posing. Then take it from there :) I imagine it like the wires of a clay mesh in real life. Then you can use all of ZBrushs features to model and sculpt. Apart from that the spheres just don't work that well for sculpting or base meshing form.
Simple zSpheres suck alot yes, buuut, if we break down ZeeZoo - they use connector meshes, witch combines the easy relative movement of parts with clean constructive geometry of these shapes of connector meshes
i can attest to what you're saying! i'm doing a creature sculpting course and paying the price of using zspheres instead of the imm method 🤣 thanks for the video!
Really good video. As someone who has a decent bit of experience in 2D character art, yeah, blocking out the forms of the body in 3d primitives is more intuitive.
cool. i found this video looking for a solution for me not being able to move the second sphere in a chain. it was the brush size, which you mentioned in the video. perfect. also, after watching it i decided to do a mix of both workflows. i like to try the balls for the body and your method for neck and head
It's like saying metaballs do nothing for organic shape like plants tree or spider or other complexe shape Zsphere is highly valuable and are able to be convert as a low poly structure that you can pose .
Pretty much nothing is made up of spheres. Not even spiders. ZSphere could probably make a decent looking bubble bath. But even then.. they would all overlap and cause errors.
Hard disagree. I come from a traditional sculpting background where I’d build wire armatures and design characters using oil or monster clay, and using zspheres saves me a lot of time. It made transitioning to digital using the zspheres lot easier. Any primitives, if needed, I’ll do a quick shaping and incorporate it into the zspheres. Building every single piece of anatomy out of a primitive quite frankly was boring and time consuming and made me lose interest. Zspheres I’m able to jump right into sculpting, pose it to the way want and start the workflow. Now most of the time I don’t even about making anatomy from primitives since I’ve saved them as separate tools like rib cages, hands, etc. Build the rig, add your anatomy tools, done.
You can do both. Use the ZSpheres for the pose (trad wire) then form the shapes ontop. I usually skip the wire because digital offers more options for posing mid sculpt and In games we create first and pose after.
@@3dmutiny I think THAT is how the zpheres are supposed to be used, not for the Shapes, but for the pose and proportions of limbs. You just make a really simple skeleton with no intention to follow the final silhuete of the character, then use it as a guide to build the character with primitives. You define the shape of the character with the primitives, the zpheres are only there to guide where each primitive goes, for placement. If your character has a big torso, no need to make a big torso skeleton with the zphere, same for other body parts, just like a traditional simple wire armature
versis\versus? I couldn't make out the words... however, you are trying to explain the inconsistency of using z spheres where they do not need to be used... all that is needed from this tool is to gain the overall proportions and mass of the character and without the rig and its binding to the grid, be able to set the desired pose... to look at it, twist it, change it as many times as you want and start sculpting, gaining real weight and proportions of body parts ... it is very strange to hear this from someone who called himself a "lead"... 0:55 your words contradict what you show on the screen as "proof" ... the person was almost immediately able to set the desired proportions of the limbs in length relative to each other. in this context, it is also important to see the process itself - I am sure that it was faster and easier than taking shape with brushes...
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Solid explanation why zspheres are not the best starting point for a figure but the blanket statement "STOP USING ZSPHERES!!11" feels like a clickbait overgeneralization. Zspheres have tons of other uses, like making knots, turning zspheres chains into precise curves, or even simpler things like making tree branches, and you want to be able to utilize them.
Making knots, curves and trees in with ZSpheres I wouldn't suggest to students interested in games art. Marvelous Desinger, Blender/autodesk curves or Speed Tree are better alternatives. I guage it from production, if you have to make more than 2, 3, 12 of those items, ZSpheres has dimishing time returns and functionality. It's too bespoke and requires manual sculpting for every inch of a surface. I tend not to teach them or allow them in pipelines.
Rig posing is really good though.
@@3dmutiny Title and thumbnail of your video dont specify the context of "in game production", they just state "STOP USING X IN GENERAL!!", besides are you seriously suggesting to people learning sculpting in Zbrush that they should just learn 2 more software suites just to make knots or trees?
@@brandy1999 Correct, I would suggest students pick up additional software to complete more complex tasks. Especially those looking for jobs in the games industry
I just started using Zbrush for iPad. If I start a new Zsphere, I'm offered a bunch of samples, and lots of them have non-sphere elements. There is a platypus with a flat tail, and there are ears that are flat on one side. So I'm not sure your criticism about them being spheres is entirely justified, though it's also not clear to me how to actually use those non-spheres. The devs could definitely stand to make that process less arcane; it took a lot of searching to find an explanation about how it was done.
OTOH, in the same way a modeler uses constructive, additive methods in building a model, I don't see why a skilled artist can't build a fast rig, skin it, then cut it into pieces and adjust those pieces. Or even just mask things. Mask out the arms and sculpt the chest. Your critique of how hard it is to fix the chest totally ignores masking.
Also, yes, placing the individual piece like neck and torso etc allow you to move them separately. But it also requires you to move them separately. In Nomad (probably Zbrush, too, I'm guessing), you can put them in a hierarchy, so rotating the arm moves the hand, but it's unfair to talk about the inconvenience of one approach without talking about the inconvenience of the competing approach. Creating the hierarchy in Zspheres is much more natural. In Nomad it's drudgery (and Nomad does multiple object selection more easily than Zbrush on iPad).
In a way, I'd be happy to find myself in your camp, since that would remove one of Zbrush's advantages over Nomad.
For me, Zspheres have been fun because it allows me to play around with proportions and positions in a way I wasn't able to, before. I wonder if it's possible to create the rig then separate the limbs from the torso before skinning. That might end up with being a good way to get the aspects I like and avoid the aspects you don't like.
(I'll definitely agree, though, that Zspheres don't seem well suited as a substitute for sculpting. I see people layering rope upon rope across their armatures. I think to myself, "That's messing up your topology." I don't know that it matters so much with the quad remesher, but one of the things that seems attractive about starting with a crude zsphere armature is it has nice topology from the outset. I'll even rotate a sphere to get the right flow before turning it into a mesh. Am I wrong? That seems like a nice way to start)
Interesting! It's great for rigging and posing. Then take it from there :)
I imagine it like the wires of a clay mesh in real life.
Then you can use all of ZBrushs features to model and sculpt.
Apart from that the spheres just don't work that well for sculpting or base meshing form.
Simple zSpheres suck alot yes, buuut, if we break down ZeeZoo - they use connector meshes, witch combines the easy relative movement of parts with clean constructive geometry of these shapes of connector meshes
i can attest to what you're saying! i'm doing a creature sculpting course and paying the price of using zspheres instead of the imm method 🤣 thanks for the video!
It can be OK to concept a pose. But that's about it 😁 Which course out of interest?
Really good video. As someone who has a decent bit of experience in 2D character art, yeah, blocking out the forms of the body in 3d primitives is more intuitive.
Interesting perspective. How long have you been doing 2D?
thank you so much for your vids, i was initially shown to create a basic structure using zspheres and it was really not a fun process
My pleasure. Ye, not great for bodies
cool. i found this video looking for a solution for me not being able to move the second sphere in a chain. it was the brush size, which you mentioned in the video. perfect. also, after watching it i decided to do a mix of both workflows. i like to try the balls for the body and your method for neck and head
Excellent! glad it helped
according to you which is the best way to do the blocking for a character other than what you have spoke in the video?
Using a single sphere and sculpting with guides. But that's for more advanced users. Similar to traditional.
you can use shapes other than the sphere.
It's like saying metaballs do nothing for organic shape like plants tree or spider or other complexe shape Zsphere is highly valuable and are able to be convert as a low poly structure that you can pose .
Pretty much nothing is made up of spheres. Not even spiders. ZSphere could probably make a decent looking bubble bath. But even then.. they would all overlap and cause errors.
Hard disagree. I come from a traditional sculpting background where I’d build wire armatures and design characters using oil or monster clay, and using zspheres saves me a lot of time. It made transitioning to digital using the zspheres lot easier. Any primitives, if needed, I’ll do a quick shaping and incorporate it into the zspheres. Building every single piece of anatomy out of a primitive quite frankly was boring and time consuming and made me lose interest. Zspheres I’m able to jump right into sculpting, pose it to the way want and start the workflow. Now most of the time I don’t even about making anatomy from primitives since I’ve saved them as separate tools like rib cages, hands, etc. Build the rig, add your anatomy tools, done.
You can do both. Use the ZSpheres for the pose (trad wire) then form the shapes ontop. I usually skip the wire because digital offers more options for posing mid sculpt and In games we create first and pose after.
@@3dmutiny I think THAT is how the zpheres are supposed to be used, not for the Shapes, but for the pose and proportions of limbs. You just make a really simple skeleton with no intention to follow the final silhuete of the character, then use it as a guide to build the character with primitives. You define the shape of the character with the primitives, the zpheres are only there to guide where each primitive goes, for placement. If your character has a big torso, no need to make a big torso skeleton with the zphere, same for other body parts, just like a traditional simple wire armature
So cool I learn so much here !
versis\versus? I couldn't make out the words... however, you are trying to explain the inconsistency of using z spheres where they do not need to be used... all that is needed from this tool is to gain the overall proportions and mass of the character and without the rig and its binding to the grid, be able to set the desired pose... to look at it, twist it, change it as many times as you want and start sculpting, gaining real weight and proportions of body parts ...
it is very strange to hear this from someone who called himself a "lead"...
0:55
your words contradict what you show on the screen as "proof" ... the person was almost immediately able to set the desired proportions of the limbs in length relative to each other. in this context, it is also important to see the process itself - I am sure that it was faster and easier than taking shape with brushes...
It's pretty good for getting a pose and initial structure. Similar to a wireframe in traditional sculpting.
Thompson Brenda Hernandez Jose Lewis Carol
what? :D
i do agree on that. simple primitives way better than Zballs
Shapes > Balls :D