Digital Sculpting - Creating Virtual Models and Bringing Them to Life

Looking through the Internet for some appealing motion graphics program and techniques, I came across ZBrush. ZBrush is a digital sculpting tool that, simply, allows users to shape a digital ball of clay into anything and everything using tools. The program combines 3D and 2.5D modeling, texturing, and painting to create high-resolution models for use in movies, games, and animation.

ZBrush was developed by Pixologic in 2015.

The basic component that allows this program to operate is the 'pixol' technology. Similar to a pixel, pixol uses information on depth in addition to the X and Y position information. Pixol-created images can lose their property (Z position or depth) if converted in to JPEG or PNG file formats.

ZBrush is famous for allowing users to go into detail with creating and sculpting their models. An example of this is that ZBrush allows medium to high frequency details to be applied on the models; something that was previously done using bump maps.

This is something really fun and creative but also very complex. Digital sculpting is still very new but it has become very popular in the few years of its existence. This new technology uses geometry in various ways to enable the manipulation of clay-like digital objects.

Grimm Morphing Effects

One of current television shows that I enjoy is NBC's fairy tale retelling known as Grimm. While the rival fairy tale show Once Upon a Time from Disney focuses on a retelling of its trademark characters, NBC's version focuses mostly on a retelling of The Brother's Grimm tales in a detective format. The main aspect of this show that I have come to enjoy are the morph effects the various characters go through into their various wessen (fairy-tale creature) forms. In each episode there is is always a guest star brought on for the episode that is usually a new type of wessen we haven't seen before. The part that I have always found fascinating is analyzing types of creatures these actors play, and seeing how well their wessen forms blended with the human forms.

According to HIVE FX the process for creating these character forms is usually some thing like this: "Most creatures begin as photos of the actors taken from every angle. Next, the photos are used to create 3D replicas of their heads using tracking points as a reference. Pixologic's ZBrush is used for 3D sculpting, and models are rigged and animated in Maya. Cinema 4D is used for hair, surfacing, lighting, and rendering"(Maxon). "Most creatures begin as photos of the actors taken from every angle. Next, the photos are used to create 3D replicas of their heads using tracking points as a reference. Pixologic's ZBrush is used for 3D sculpting, and models are rigged and animated in Maya. Cinema 4D is used for hair, surfacing, lighting, and rendering"One innovative thing that this show has done as far as visual fx, has been the way the artists blend their human and wessen morphs by moving the various shapes that make up both versions of the character's face and adjusting the individual layers with each difference in between forms to match the displacement between forms.

As of this point, if the session this week is any indication I am light years from even being ready to touch this level of animation and graphics. But this is an aspect that I would like to touch on given the chance. The things that appeals to me the most the idea of designing a various species for this world. While my drawing skills are currently need improvement, I could see myself working the concept design of some of these characters. (after several how to lessons of course)