Making of Le Rabbit by Jose Alves da Silva

ZAppLink

All Pixologic's plugins are worth checking but my favorite is definitely ZappLink (you can download it at www.pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/zplugins). This plugin projects the image in Zbrush's document screen into Photoshop, where you can use all your favorite tools to paint your model and then project the result back to the model texture in ZBrush!

I have started by picking a white image with 4096x4096 pixels as my model texture. Then I have activated ZappLink (under the Document Tab) with Photoshop already open in the background. Choose “Drop Now” and Photoshop will pop up with the Zbrush image.  The document has a layer order and naming convention that you will have to keep in order for everything to work as expected.



Add as many layers and blending modes as you want as long as in the end you collapse all your painting to a layer with the name “Layer1” with the original mask. Then save the image and go back to ZBrush, choose “re-enter ZBrush”, choose “Pick up now” and the painting will be applied to your texture. Do not forget to save the changes to your texture by going to the Texture tab and choosing “export”.

To continue painting the model you just have to change your point of view and project the image again through ZappLink and keep repeating the process until you're done. You can even hide parts of the model before making the projection in order to paint inaccessible areas. This is how I have painted the diffuse texture of my character.



The remaining textures (specular, bump, SSS, etc) were fully painted in Photoshop using the diffuse texture as a base.

The Fur

I have exported the hipoly model in OBJ format and imported it into 3DSMax.

The model had about 320 000 polygons and my new task was to cover it with fur. As you know, when using the “Hair and Fur (WSM)” modfier, a hair guide spline will be created for each vertex. By manipulating these guides you will define how the hair will grow, as the software will make an interpolation between the vertex splines in order to create the hair strands in the area between the guides.


However, growing the hair on a 300K poly mesh is not an option. No one wants to deal with 300 000 guides, not to mention that the software will not allow it. The only option is to use a lowpoly mesh to grow the hair. So, I have exported the mesh from Zbrush at a lower subdivision level with about 5000 polygons.

Using a lower subdivision mesh brings another issue: the polygons of the high and lowpoly models are not coincident, some vertices are below the surface of the high resolution mesh and other are above. Having hair growing in the air at a distance from the hipoly mesh is a problem, but having the hair grow below the surface is actually desirable. As such, I have applied a “Push” modifier with a negative value to the lowpoly mesh in order to shrink it below the hipoly surface. Then I have turned off the “Renderable” option under the “Object Properties”, so that the lowpoly mesh didn't render (the hair will render indepent from the fact that the mesh will not). Then I applied the “Hair and Fur (WSM)” modfier and the titanic fight for hair control started...



In this project I have found that the best way to control hair is to shorten it drastically and get rid of all the randomizing parameters at the beginning. Here are the steps to do it:

-Go to “Frizz Parameters” and reduce the “Frizz Root” and “Frizz Tip” values to zero. Then choose “Style Hair”, increase the brush size so that it covers the whole model, remove the “Distance Fade” option, pick the “Scale” option and drag-click to the left over your model until the hair guides are really short. Then, in the “Utilities” box click on the “Recomb” button so that the hair falls along the surface. After, you can choose the “Stand” option inside the “Styling” box, drag-click to the right slightly over your model to raise the hair guides a little. This should give you a good starting point. After that, grow and comb the guides in small areas at a time, hiding the rest of the guides. It is a work of patience, lots of...

Another thing I have learned in this project is the obvious fact that fur adds volume to the character (duh!). All of a sudden, the nice sculpting details were covered by a thich layer of hair... I had to invest a lot of time in combing the guides to make the fur flow along the skin surface and keep a sharp silhouette. This image shows the evolution of the combing and also the lighting.