■ Building a ZSphere Biped 221You’ll notice the topology for the face is a bit awkward. It will serve our needs, but you
may find you want a more organized base mesh for the face. Figure 6.40 shows the Classic
Skinning result for the same ZSphere layout. This is a situation where you’ll find that the geom-
etry created by Classic Skinning may be better than the new ZSpheres2 mesh. ZSpheres2 will
create a triangular group of faces between the eyes and above the nose, as shown in Figure 6.40.
The Classic Skinning method will create a cleaner topology but a less accurate volume to the
rest of the mesh. It is up to you to decide which method best suits your needs for the model.
That concludes the process of creating the
ZSphere armature. You have now a solid base mesh
you can sculpt on without ever leaving ZBrush. We’ll
sculpt in the major muscle forms and secondary forms
of the face using the standard ZBrush sculpting tools,
much as we did on the sphere in Chapter 2, “Sculpting
in ZBrush.” ZSpheres work best as a quick and efficient
mesh generation tool. Part of the strength of ZSpheres is
the ease with which you can re-pose and change propor-
tions by just moving and rotating the chain. Figure 6.41
shows the figure re-posed and reproportioned.
Extreme changes to scale and placement of these
spheres can yield a completely different type of character
(Figure 6.42). It is also a simple matter to add in various
parts. For instance, Figure 6.43 shows the same figure
with centaur legs and bat wings.
Remember to press Make Adaptive Skin and select the new ZTool when you are
finished editing the ZSpheres. A common error is to try to work on the Adaptive Skin
Preview mesh instead of saving a proper adaptive skin ZTool.
This concludes our look at building ZSphere bases for our characters. ZSpheres are a
quick and powerful mesh generation tool that can help speed up your sculpting workflow by
freeing you from many of the tedious base modeling tasks. The armatures built with ZSpheres
are perfectly suitable for any kind of character or prop creation. Figure 6.44 shows a female
figure sculpted from a ZSphere base by Ryan Kingslien. I encourage you to experiment with
ZSphere modeling. With just a little practice, using the tools will become second nature and you
will be generating base models in no time. For more information on ZSpheres and to see a full
Figure 6.39 Creating the mouth, nose, and ears Figure 6.40 Facial loops with Classic and ZSpheres2
skinning
Figure 6.41 The ZSphere base mesh reproportioned and
re-posed