One of the many great plugins provided by the good people over at Pixologic is the Zapplink. With its’ efficient and intuitive interface, and its’ “pick up and produce” functionality, it can be used to quickly achieve results in texturing that would otherwise be very difficult and time consuming to accomplish. In this tutorial, we will follow professional character artist, Eric Moreno, as he uses Zapplink in ZBrush 3.5 to quickly and easily texture a human head.
Final Effect Preview
Before you Begin
First, you will want to download the project files folder so you can follow along. You can find it here: Project Files. You may also need to get the plugin. You can download it here: http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/zplugins/. Unzip Zapplink in your: \Pixologic\ZBrush 3.5 R3\ZStartup\ZPlugs folder.
Step 1
Launch ZBrush. The plugin can be found in the document palette. You will only need to use the button “Zapplink” during this tutorial.
Step 2
Load the tool “humanhead.ZTL” provided in the project file folder. In the tool palette, turn polypaint on, and set the uv map to 2048. Press new texture, in the texture map rollout (this will set the texture size according to the uv map size). Finally, apply a basic material to the model.
Step 3
Subdivide the head 4 times (this will take the level of subdivision up to 5), and make sure that perspective is turned off.
Step 4
Go to the document palette and press Zapplink.
Step 5
In the ZApplink Projection dialog box, you can decide what 2d software you are going to use with the “Set Target App” button. Keep double sided, fade, and enable perspective off. Press “Drop now”.
Step 6
This will open your 2d software (in my case Photoshop) with a temp file of your ZBrush canvas and a layer mask. Open the file “face.jpg” provided in the Project File folder.
Step 7
These are images I got from http://free-textures.got3d.com/index.html. Make a selection of the face part and paste it into your temp document. Use the transform tools to match the selection with the ZBrush face. You can refine your work by selecting details of the pictures and copying them to the temp document (the eyes for example).
Step 8
When you are done, press ctrl+E to merge down your layer, and then press “apply” when prompted. Save the document.
Step 9
Switch back to ZBrush via the windows task bar (the alt+tab doesn’t work for me but you may be more lucky ^^) and press re-enter ZBrush.
Step 10
Press “Drop now”.
Step 11
Repeat the same process for the right side. Snap the face on the side, press Zapplink, and “drop now”.
Step 12
In Photoshop, make a selection of the image “side1.jpg” and use the tools to match it with the temp document. Note: You have to avoid overlapping the face part that you’ve just done! I usually erase with a wide falloff.
Step 13
Repeat the same steps for the left side using the image “side2.jpg”.
Step 14
Apply another material onto the model in order to get a better render. You can load the matcap I’ve put in the project file folder if you wish. To do so, click on the material, and press the load button. Then load “MatCap SkinCGtut.ZMT”. Here it is with perspective on at 25. Note: If you turn perspective on, don’t forget to turn it off again when you’re done.
Step 15
Now time to texture the back of the head.
Step 16
You can stamp some skin texture to go on the back of the ears and bottom of the neck. Again, re-enter ZBrush and press “pickup now”.
Step 17
For the top of the head you’ll have to be careful not to spoil the work you’ve done so far. Use the image “top.jpg” and repeat the process.
Step 18
Now to “clean” the model. Using the 3/4 view from the ref images, remove the lighting from the sides. I used the same picture for both sides, and just flipped the selection for the opposite side.
Step 19
Make a selection for the ear (on both sides) and erase the border, using a falloff to blend it with the rest of the head.
Step 20
For the 3/4 back of the head, use the image ref “3quarterBack.jpg”, and make some selections to patch the areas that still need some texture.
Step 21
Repeat the same process for the opposite side of the head, but using the same reference image and flipping the selection.
Step 22
Now you need to save your texture and export it to Photoshop. This will allow you to give the final polish to the texture. In ZBrush click “clone texture” in the texture map rollout (1). This will copy the texture int0 the texture palette (2).
Step 23
You can now export the texture for final polishing in Photoshop.
Step 24
Voilâ! I hope this tutorial will help some of you out there ^^. I really enjoyed sharing bits of this super fantastic software with you. Here are some other heads textured using this method.
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Wow! Great tutorial, Thank you for sharing!
Very nice :)
well thats nice…but in 3d terms, its called cheating texturing….lol nyway thanks for this..
cheating texturing??? what? it’s being used on the industry, so on every game you’ve played recently, they’re cheating?
Cheating… I agree, but in real life when the customer doesnt want to pay for a Hi-Res fully modeled mesh then this is what they get.
One hell of a time saver and you have to admit its pretty amazing like Zbrush itself.
I’m afraid I must disagree with you here….I would hardly consider this cheating (provided you do not just leave it at this, and only used this technique as a starting point for you final product).
In fact, it is very rare that you will see a texture that is completely hand painted in any CG industry (even in very cartoony films like Pixar). For the most part, CG textures are heavily photo sourced, with orchestrated details that are hand placed by the texture artist. And, although it would be nice to have the time to re-invent the wheel for every piece that you create, in a production environment time is money, and every trick and tool that you can use to get the same final result in less time is absolutely vital and necessary to stay competitive and stay on schedule.
Judging from Abojung’s age, he probably isn’t working in the industry and probably not even out of high school. I also think that he was referring to the cheating being that you don’t have to deal with tedious UV unwrapping, etc… (or not). Either way, this isn’t cheating at all it’s called evolution of inferior methods.
PS…I would love to see Abojung’s portfolio! Get a glimpse of what not cheating is all about.
We used to call it “projection mapping”.The same technique can be applied also in maya with plane projection mapping and you combine all in photoshop, or in blender where you take a UV plane mapping and you match the front/side etc uv with the corresponding sides and combine all with 3d texture paint in blender,for 3ds max you use some custom scripts etc. In some studios it’s a standard,nothing new or called “cheating”. The tutorial is verry good specialy for begginers and does a verry good job at ilustrating how easy this technique realy is.
Note: this is only for base color,for a full pro work you need to bring some “artistic license” to the final texture to separate it from the rest :P.
No such thing as cheating in 3d, doing more work that would give the same effect is just stupid. why should everyone know how to flatten and skin a face in photoshop when much better tools are at our disposal.
If you think this is cheating wait till Zbrush 4…you wont even need photoshop anymore.
I*t’s like saying driving over a bridge is cheating cause boats came first. This is the new age of CG! We don’t always need to manually unwrap textures anymore!
I think this is a good technique for make a color map of the entire skin, so, you can export the map to photoshop again, and work a lot to make a good skin. only copy someone skin not make a good color map. But this is a great tutorial, and you can use the zapplink to make a lot of other effects.
this is realy help full thanks if you need me just mail me.
Sure man. I need my house painted.
Where is the project folder?
great tut!
thanks!
It’s at the top of the post under “Before you Begin”.
Ahh…missed that.
Thank you!
if you have a short deathline and you have to deliver some characters, i think that this is really helpful, or what do you think that all that you see in the cg industry is made it from scratch?
nice tutorial
Thank you all for your comments. My goal was indeed to make an easy tutorial. I have to say that unfortunately at that time I was pretty busy at work. In the game industry, there s no cheating. what count is the final look with the little amount of time you ve spent on it… People working on video games will know what I’m talking about ^^
for realistic texture this tuts very good.
Thank you.
Wow! Great tutorial
I agree with Caleb Aylsworth, Zandorian, and others. To say it’s cheating sounds a little elitist. And…since time is money (yet some responders here sound like they have so much time on their hands to do this “the real way”, as they say) it suggests the jobs they get are far and few between.
Artists who get back to back jobs need to be fast without reducing quality, so they can move on to their next assignments without missing a beat.
Agreed?
Okay, you are all going to laugh so hard at me because I am totally new to all this, but here is my $64,000 question: Eric, how do we get the head onto a body?
P.S. Thank you for taking the time to post this very helpful and impressive tutorial.