Week One: Driving the industry forward - Utilizing new digital techniques to enhance the creative vision of a project.

Recently a new bridge between the art department and the production pipeline has developed. Utilizing 3D in the earliest stages of a project has become common place; offering artists compelling new ways to arrive at the best creative solutions. The ability to integrate those solutions directly into a production pipeline is an invaluable way to save time and money. Possessing the know-how to make it happen can make you a viable part of any team. The class begins with an overview of the various stages of production and a discussion on new trends.

• Defining key roles: director, production designer, art director, visual effects supervisor, CG supervisor
• Getting over misconceptions - real benefits, best uses, and what to avoid
• Understanding the starting point of the character
• Picking your poison - deciding on a design topic
• Gathering reference - what you can gain from it
• Key sculpting and work flow techniques in ZBrush: setting up your workspace, hotkeys, helpful brush and interface settings

Assignment: Understand the character you want to create, make sketches and gather references based on lecture notes.

Week Two: Creating a concept sculpt with a pipeline in mind (but not in charge)

• Starting from an unorganized mesh, how it can help
• Define three traits of your character
• The “half pose”- how it can help
• Chose an appropriate amount of work for your level of experience - full figure, torso, detailed head.
• Include an accessory: article of clothing, weapon, belt, etc.
• Organize your specific reference materials
• Beginning with a narrative

Assignment: Begin to flesh out your design and create an unorganized low poly mesh. You can use the poly modeling package of your choice, or ZSpheres.

Week Three: Design decisions

• The smaller is to the greater
• Posture, what it says about your character
• Importance of scale and model orientation in, and before, production
• Achieving proper scale
• Check your vertex point order, what can go wrong at this stage

Assignment: Refine your design decisions and continue sculpting. Make sure your model is in proper scale and practice taking your mesh from a poly modeling package into Zbrush and back.

Week Four: ZBrush to Maya work flow tips

• AUV tiles, creating selection groups
• Organization techniques in ZBrush to quicken the pace
• Using poly groups and masking
• Select edge loop in ZBrush, crease edges
• Subdivide cube in Zbrush/Maya - how does it impact production when the base level vertices change position
• Import export Transpose Master, moves multiple subtools simultaneously
• Finalizing your design sculpt
• Poly painting, brief overview
• Why you could be done at this point

Assignment: Finish off the details of your design sculpt and make sure you are still in proper scale.

Week Five: (The Second Half) Creating topology for production- retopology tools

• Importance of an edge loop
• Building meshes based on a subdivision pipeline
• Edge proximity during smoothing
• Defining major forms with edges
• Continuous edge loops around flex areas
• Leg to pelvis approaches
• Straight lines for cloth
• Bald for hair
• Analyzing different production meshes
• Use cleanup mesh in Maya (or equivalent) to check for potential problems

Assignment: Retopologize your mesh with proper edge loops, form development, and animation in mind.

Week Six: Projecting details, and texturing

• Project All approaches
• Project through Rigging and Topology Tools, benefits of the Projection Slider
• Understanding UVs
• AUV tiles and GUV tiles, understanding limitations
• Organized UVs
• Poly painting in ZBrush
• ZApp Link
• Using texture swatches
• Baking textures to UVs

Assignment: Project the details of your design sculpt onto your organized mesh. Texture your character and accessories.

Week Seven: Generating Displacement and Normal Maps

• Finalize animation mesh
• 32 bit float for displacement
• Creating Normal Maps
• Introduction to Zmapper
• Generating normal maps

Assignment: Create displacement maps for your character.

Week Eight: Lighting and rendering in ZBrush

• Transpose tool, creating a dynamic pose
• Shadows and fog
• Document size and exporting images for review
• Turntable options, now and at our previous half way point (the end of week four)

Assignment: Create your final image and turntable for critique.

Level of Ability
You will need a good understanding of 3D, Photoshop, and have basic painting skills. This workshop is not aimed at beginners. This is an intense workshop aimed at students who are able to commit at least ten hours a week to this class while being mentored by a master artist.

Hardware and Software Requirements
ZBrush 3.1, Photoshop, Corel Painter and a 3D package of your choosing.

A broadband connection will be needed for downloading the weekly video lessons.

Some of the sample scenes are hardware heavy, so its recommended to have a minimum of 2 GB of RAM.

Other Requirements
Students need to be familiar with web navigation and browsing, as well as email.

Students need to be familiar with using a bulletin board system (such as CGTalk.com) as well as how to upload attachments to postings for review.