ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

■ Moving and Posing Figures with Transpose 231

Skin and fat stretches on the

elongated side of the body

Passive leg is up on

balls of the toes

Raised shoulder on passive

side raises arm, counters

weight on opposite side Lower shoulder on side

carrying weight of club

Skin and fat compress

over the raised side of

the pelvis

Weight on this side

pulls shoulder down

Weight-bearing foot is firmly

planted, and hip is raised

Blue line represents

center of balance

Figure 7.9 Important points to note when posing a character

In this section you’ll use the information you have learned about Transpose and topol-
ogy masking to pose a character ZTool. You’ll store this pose in a ZTool layer much like
you stored detail passes in Chapter 4, “ZBrush for Detailing.” This allows you to always
return to the neutral posed version of the character.

1. Start by loading the demosoldier.ztl file from the
   Lightbox → Tool menu. This is one of the ZTools that
   comes installed with ZBrush. This particular mesh is
   well suited to topology masking because of the edge
   layout. Notice in Figure 7.10 how the arms and legs are
   all composed of repeated rings moving up the length of
   the limb.


2. With the DemoSoldier open, delete all the subtools except
   the main body. Select Always OK from the pop-up box as
   you delete the subtools.


3. Divide up to the highest possible subdivision level and cre-
   ate a new layer. Name this layer pose. Remember that lay-
   ers can only be created at one subdivision level, so always
   make them at the highest possible polygon count. Changes
   made at lower subdivision levels will still store in the active
   layer.
   Figure 7.10 Evenly spaced topology rings are
   best suited for the topology-based masking tool.