ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

262 chapter 7 ■ Transpose, ZSphere Rigging, Retopology, and Mesh Extraction

Transpose Measuring

When sculpting, you need to be able to take comparative measurements. This can be as

simple as checking the length of the face to the length of the hand or seeing how many head

lengths long a figure is. These types of measurements are integral to sculpting and drawing

the figure in proportion. In clay sculpting, these measurements are taken with a caliper. You

take a measurement with the caliper and then compare it to other areas of the head or body.

In ZBrush we will use the transpose line to accomplish the same goal (Figure 7.83).

1. Open demosoldier.ztl and hide all subtools but the body.


2. Under Preferences → Transpose Units, set Units Scale to 1, Minor Ticks to 0, and major
   Ticks to 1. This makes a single hash mark on the length of the line for each unit mea-
   surement. Now you must specify what one unit is. This can be a hand length, a body
   length, or any measurement. For this exercise, set the unit to be one head length.
   3. Draw a transpose line that runs straight from the
   top of the head to the chin (Figure 7.84). Under
   the Preferences → Transpose Units menu, set the
   Calibration Distance slider to 1. This defines the
   current transpose line length as one unit measure-
   ment. You can rename the “units” to “heads” by
   clicking the SetUnits button and entering the new
   text (Figure 7.85).


3. Now when you drag the transpose line, a mea-
   surement readout will tell you how many head
   lengths you are currently measuring. Here you can
   see we have two heads from the top of the head to
   the chest (Figure 7.86). Figure 7.87 shows a full
   figure measured using the transpose line.

Figure 7.85 Name the units

under the Preferences menu.

Now that we’ve introduced you to Transpose as a measuring tool, be sure to experi-

ment with this technique to help maintain realistic proportions in your figures. This tech-

nique is especially useful when you are trying to take measurements between limbs of a

figure in pose.

That completes this chapter on Transpose, ZSphere rigging, retopology, and mesh

extraction. We have looked at several methods of creating new geometry inside ZBrush with

retopology as well as mesh extraction. You have seen how to create a new base mesh for

your figures using retopology and projection. You have also seen how to put your characters

into dynamic poses using Transpose and ZSphere rigging. In the next chapter, we’ll move

on to exporting images and movies from ZBrush as well as using the timeline tools to fur-

ther expand what you can do inside ZBrush.

Figure 7.83
Transpose
units under the
Preferences menu

Figure 7.84 A transpose line measurement for one
head length