152 chapter 4 ■ ZBrush for Detailing
You may notice that you can only see your HD details when in Sculpting mode and
then only in small areas. To view the entire character’s HD details at once, you need to ren-
der with HD turned on. To render your entire character in HD mode, use the Render menu.
This will allow ZBrush to create a high-quality render of all the fine sculpted detail at one
time, but the surface will not be active for sculpting. HD Render is simply a rendering and
display tool. To render your HD geometry, follow these steps:- Load the forestspirit.ztl file from the accompanying DVD. This is a character with
full HD detail levels. Rotate and place the character on the canvas. - When you have the ZTool oriented in a composition you like, open the Render menu and
click the HD Geometry button. This enables HD details to be rendered in the image. Also
make sure the Shadows option is selected. Adjust your light positions with the Light menu. - Click the BPR button under the Render menu or on the right sidebar to create a best
preview render of the document. When the render is complete, export the image by
clicking Document → Export (Figure 4.70).
Figure 4.70 The forest spirit ZTool rendered in HDCreating Bump Maps with HD Geometry
Depending on your system resources, you may not be able to divide as high as you would like
to achieve a fine skin texture. In this case, you can use a ZBrush material to paint a bump
map instead. Bump maps give the illusion of fine detail by perturbing the surface normal at
render time. This does not affect the geometry but does create the impression of fine details.
This is an ideal solution when you’re faced with diminished system resources and an inability
to divide high enough to create a fine detail pass. Often bump maps are used in a production
pipeline to carry fine details when putting them directly into the displacement map would be
expensive in terms of render time and little if any actual gain in quality would be visible.