Creating a custom UI in ZBrush

After a bit of a delay in the posting schedule due to an injury, here we are back with another post. I decided to make today’s post about Zbrush, more notably about the UI in ZBrush and how to understand and customize it to your needs. As you can see right away this post is aimed at the beginners so if you are working with ZBrush and are proficient with it then you might find this post not engaging, but if you are just starting out or considering picking up ZBrush then carry on.

In the video below we will start from a totally “vanilla” clean UI and we will go over and explain how we can move buttons and menus around, how to change their size and color scheme. All in all there really isn’t too much to explain about this video as it is very straight forward, but at the same time it is a great place to start if you are getting into ZBrush. The idea here is that this will be the first in a series of posts for ZBrush that will have the task of slowly helping you get into the essence of ZBrush and show you that it’s an amazingly powerful software that can be of immense use to anyone in the CG industry regardless or the field that you are working in. But more about that later on, for now enjoy the video about the custom UI.

I hope you guys had fun watching the video and more importantly you managed to learned something new today. If that is the case then subscribe, like and share it around and don’t forget to come back for more next time. Take care everyone.

Creating Custom Floor Textures in 3ds Max and Photoshop

Today’s post comes as a direct result to a request i got about making a real world scale floor texture. It sounds pretty straight forward when you say it like that, i mean you get the project with the texture for the floor but then comes the realization that the image that the client sent you is something more in tune to a thumbnail, then an actual size for a high quality texture. On top of that he or she might want to have a different color in the pattern of the texture. This is where things can get a bit complicated as you are basically left with a task in which you need to deliver an end result but you don’t have the resources delivered to you, but rather you have to make them yourselves. Once you get to this point in the project, you might start thinking that you are in trouble if you don’t know how to make those high quality textures. Well this is where today’s post comes into play and will explain exactly how to go about dealing with this issue, and hopefully resolve it. Now when i had the initial idea about this video in my head it was a fast 20 min video, but as soon i started recording i actually came to a bit of a revelation as the theme was a tad bit bigger then i initially thought, so in the end i decided to split this into three logical parts opposed to having one huge hour and a half video. Since we do have a bit to cover lets get started with it.

In the first part of the video we will setup the image that we will create (you can choose any design that you might need for this part) and then we will start with the outlining process of the whole thing. After that we will see how we can get the outlined object scaled so we have a realistic scale model, and in the end we will render out a template which we will be able to use in the process. So this is where you would be advised to go and see the video for yourself.

In the second part ( and i do know this is a bit of a longer video ) we take the template that we made in 3ds Max and we bring it into Photoshop. Now i did my best to keep the video as newbie friendly (n00b fR13ndly) so that everyone can follow along even if you are not too proficient with Photoshop. We will cover a bit of layering management, some masking as well as some hand on paining and effects adding. All in all this ended up being a long but in depth video which will leave us with a fully customizable template that we can later use for any type of floor. Also you will hear me mention a few times that you can use this exact process to get Marble and stone floors which is totally true and applicable. But enough with the explanation, go ahead and check out the video.

In the last video we take what we made in Photoshop and we dive back into 3ds Max and see how we can use all those textures. Now the emphasis in the third video is put on using Real World Scale and to explain to you how you can get your textures to use real world scale referencing rather then the default tiling option. So go ahead and check out the video for yourself.

And with this we are coming to an end of our post for today. We covered quite a bit of different things and even though i didn’t expect the videos to be that long in the end i kinda enjoyed making them and i really hope you guys will enjoy watching them and even learn a few new things from them.

So like always subscribe, like and share and i’ll see you all in the next post.

Modeling the Jagdkommando knife in 3ds Max

In today’s post we have a topic that’s a bit different from the topics that i’ve covered so far, namely today we are going to have a post about modeling a great looking combat knife. The knife that i chose to make is a bit unique as it actually has three edges and a twist. The knife that i am talking about is called the Jadgkommando and as you can see from all the images from the google search i wasn’t wrong when i said it’s unique looking. Well looks aside this knife is a really fun geometrical model to make, so i decided to make the videos below that show you how i managed to model it in a easy to follow tutorial.

In the first video we will go over how to model the complex blade that the knife has. We will work on one side and then take all that we have done and transfer it to the other two remaining sides, then we’ll deal with a bit of edge control and after that use the twist modifier. All in all it should be a fun video to watch and you might even pick up a few tricks.

In the second video we will continue where we stopped in the first one but we will focus on modeling the hilt (handle) of the knife. This shouldn’t be too complex to tackle but i will go ahead and use a few tricks from the modeling ribbon so you might learn something from there as well. It would be pointless to explain further about this video as it is quite self explanatory so go ahead and check it out.

So if you watched these videos you’ve seen me create the knife from the start and i am pretty confident that if you choose to follow along you will be able to recreate my result. With that we are finishing our post and calling it done. I hope you guys enjoyed the video, had fun and most importantly learned something new down the line. So don’t forget to subscribe, like and share and come back for more.

P.S. As an added bonus here is the image that i made and used in the video to help me model the knife
Side_Blueprint

  • 2015 © Copyright DKCGI | All rights reserved.