Week 6: Z-Brush

I mentioned last week that I wanted to get into Z-Brush, well, the last few days that is exactly what I have done and after a few stressful hours I have finally managed to create something that I am happy with.

The week had me start with finishing my base model from the week before and testing it in engine. I wanted to make sure it worked before I moved any further and thankfully it works fine with the skeleton. I will need to make adjustments though, like making it fire from both barrels. I have then spent the rest of the week fighting inside Z-Brush as I tried to get use to the unique way the program handles itself.

Final turret design

Turret base mesh - 5,000 tris

I found that many of the tutorials for Z-Brush like to focus on sculpting a super-awesome rock dinosaur robot and the process behind that, which is great for when I'm ready to tackle something like that but at the moment is pretty useless. Simpler, beginner tutorials appear to be pretty difficult to find. This just slowed me down, as I began smashing buttons and trying things out myself and eventually after a number of failed attempts I began to have positive results.

This might actually look like I know what I am doing in Z-Brush

There were plenty of tutorials videos on  the actual baking down process though, which was great. Below is the bump map of my various bakes. The massive gaps are because I didn't do high poly bakes for every part of my turret, these will be filled in with bumps from textures. Being new to Z-Brush I wanted to keep things a little simple.

Next week is when I plan on getting the turret working in engine properly and I will be making a bigger blog post about it, where I'll be noting down everything I pick up on to make it work. This will hopefully serve as a good resource for me if I ever need to reuse something from this project. Below I have linked the final look of the Viking room we created, as a group, during the first week back. I have been meaning to post it up but every time I have forgotten about it! I concepted the bench, modeled the hog's head, unwrapped the shield and textured the barrel! I also made the rug as an extra. For now that is me done, I need a break from this turret and more importantly Z-Brush!