ZBrush Movies and
Photoshop Composites
In this chapter, we’ll be looking at methods of
getting your work out of ZBrush in both movie and image form. We
begin by looking at the ZMovie function, which allows you to create
videos directly in ZBrush. These videos can be captured work sessions or
turntable animations of your work. In the second portion of this chapter,
we’ll look at exporting images from ZBrush and compositing them in
Photoshop to create dynamic “renders” of our characters.
ZMovie
ZBrush lets you record your actions on screen as a movie. This recording can encompass just
the document window or the entire screen, including menus. This capability is useful for train-
ing purposes or to showcase a technique. Recordings are stored in memory as a sequence of
screenshots that may be saved as a ZBrush native format called a ZMV file (short for ZMovie)
or exported as a QuickTime video with any number of compression formats.
Recording the Screen
To record yourself in action, open the Movie menu from the top of the screen. Click the
radial button to dock this menu to the side tray. Here you will find four recording options:
Record, Turntable, Snapshot, and Time-Lapse. Record will record a sequence of frames
based on the movie settings below. They can be recorded from the entire screen or just
the document window. Turntable will record just the document window while rotating the
ZTool around a user-specified axis. Snapshot will record a single screen capture. Time-Lapse