Zbrush Has Gained an Enormous Amount of Ground Among Professional Concept Designers As a Fast Way to Develop Organic Ideas for Character Design
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ZBrush® Creature Design ZBrush ® Creature Design Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games Scott Spencer iv ■ TITLE Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo Development Editor: Amy Breguet Technical Editor: Eric Keller Production Editor: Dassi Zeidel Copy Editor: Adept Content Solutions Editorial Manager: Pete Gaughan Production Manager: Tim Tate Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde Media Associate Project Manager: Jenny Swisher Media Associate Producer: Josh Frank Media Quality Assurance: Shawn Patrick Book Designer: Mark Ong, Side By Side Studios Compositor: James D. Kramer, Happenstance Type-O-Rama Proofreader: Sara Wilson Indexer: Ted Laux Project Coordinator, Cover: Katherine Crocker Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed Cover Image: Scott Spencer Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN: 978-1-118-02433-1 ISBN: 978-1-118-22206-5 (ebk.) ISBN: 978-1-118-23626-0 (ebk.) ISBN: 978-1-118-26067-8 (ebk.) No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748- 6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. 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This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching. Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to pro- ducing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available. I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your com- ments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex. Best regards, Neil Edde Vice President and Publisher Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley To my partner Meredith Yayanos, whose love, friendship, and inspiration I cherish. vi Acknowledgments There are so many people who bring a book like this to life. I would like to try to thank each of them here. This includes those with a direct hand in the editing and layout as well as those whose support makes this kind of endeavor possible. First, I’d like to thank my partner Meredith Yayanos for her loving support, and Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger for their friendship and support. I must thank Richard for giving me such a unique opportunity to travel across the globe and work every day with so many amazingly talented people. I also want to thank Karl Meyer, Brian Sunderlin, and Gentle Giant Studios for giving me a place to start my journey and remaining close and valued friends and mentors to this day. Thanks also to all the talented artists I have the good fortune to work with at Weta. Thanks to Eric Keller for serving as technical editor and for sharing his expertise by writing on the ZBrush Materials system. Were it not for his experience and knowledge in this area, we would be missing out on a whole range of techniques. Thank you to Ofer Alon, Jaime Labelle, and Paul Gaboury at Pixologic; and to Alex Alvarez, Eric Miller, and everyone else at Gnomon. A huge thanks to Desmoda and the team at Ownage for the exceptional, quick, and high-quality 3-D printing they did for this book. I encourage anyone with an interest in printing 3-D models from their ZBrush designs to seek out ownage.com and send Desmoda an email. There is nothing quite like holding a physical copy of your maquette in hand in the real world. Thanks go as well to 3d.sk for allowing me to use their reference images in this book. I have used 3d.sk as a reference site for the past six years and they are an invaluable resource. I cannot express how important it has been to have constant access to an almost unlimited number of royalty-free, high-res, reference images of all kinds of humans, animals, props, and costumes. Please check them out if you haven’t already at www.3d.sk. I’d also like to thank some of the artists whose tools and techniques have inspired and informed my own process: Neville Page, Zack Petroc, Bryan Wynia, Tristan Schane, Alterton, Paul Tobin, Jerad Marantz, Aaron Simms, Scott Patton, Cesar Dacol, Ian Joyner, and JP Targete. Thank you to Tristan Crane for use of his exceptional photography to illustrate depth of field. I cannot possibly list everyone by name and I apologize to anyone who I have left out. I would also like to thank those incredibly talented artists I am fortunate to work with every day and whose work never ceases to inspire and inform me: David Meng, Greg Tozer, Will Furneaux, Paul Tobin, Gary Hunt, Jamie Beswarick, Mike Asquith, Daniel Falconer, Greg Broadmore, Christian Pierce, Daniel Cockersell, Kim Beaton, Warren Beaton, Steve Lambert, and the many other Weta artists who surround me. I also must thank the wonderful team at Wiley who helped me through the process and were always professional, patient, attentive, and helpful. Thanks to Mariann Barsolo for man- aging the process and helping it along. Thanks to Amy Breguet for her expert developmental editing and to Pete Gaughan for guiding the direction of the book and helping to keep it on track and clear. Thanks to Dassi Zeidel and her production team for their masterful copyedit- ing and layout, bringing the final product to light. Thank you all for your exceptional patience with this book and with me. vii About the Author Scott Spencer is a digital sculptor and concept designer at Weta Workshop in Wellington, New Zealand. He uses ZBrush every day as a tool for creating creature and character concept art. His most recent and exciting project is Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. His back- ground is originally physical sculpture for the makeup effects world. Over the years he has worked in various media, creating digital characters for film, broadcast, and games as well as physical sculptures for concept design, promotion, and other applications. Over the past few years Scott has worked on various film projects in the Weta Workshop design depart- ment.