Making of Say Cheeseby Vaibhav Shah, India


For better result in ZBrush; I had attention on topology according to area where actual details needed. Topology and flow is really matters when character is going to animate with support of all type of maps like displacement, normal, bump, cavity etc. Before starting sculpting I took UVs of exported ZBrush fish object in stand alone uv-layout application.



For upper, lower and tail fins; I used hair system with the help of nurbs shape. The process was little manual but, it gave me right soft rays or dorsal spines on perfect place and clump. I had hold shift and make numerous isoparms according to taste, then I’d duplicate curves and converted it to hair and follicles with “convert curves into hair-system” function. Again I had converted hair into polygon geometry for better optimization, Sent fish model for more detail sculpting in very cool software called ‘ZBrush’.



Sculpting - Well, that’s really ‘full of fun’ stage; just we need to be aware of some pre-requites steps before get into ZBrush package. Such as clean topology, clean UVs (if you want to use any map), equal space of quads, lesser tries.

I’d decided to put full details as much as possible on Fish in Maya only. I’d started sculpting with ‘Standard brush’ and ‘Inflate brush’ to catch up basic details on 1st level of subdivision. I was keep going towards more details, particularly on fins, gill cover, anal fin, soft dorsal fin and caudal fin area within 2nd and 3rd level of subdivision.



I’d used layers option for more details like skin pattern with help of alpha brush. I’d decided to use masking with cavity and enhanced details. Now time was for posing, so I took it to lowest level and exported to Maya and rigged (Last level, rigged one) then again imported back to ZBrush. I’d decided camera angle so, I didn’t need to concentrate on asymmetrical shape.