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Voiceover: Hey everyone, and thanks for watching 3Dmotive.com.
My name is Cordell Felix
and on this video I will show you how to do a quick concrete
or stone beat up in ZBrush.
This technique is great for damaging any type of stone
or concrete structure in a realistic way.
I'll be using ZBrush 4R4 for this video.
In this video it seems like you have a basic knowledge of sculpting in ZBrush.
I'm going to be using this set of concrete stairs that are in some sort of slab.
This is the finished product of what the stairs turn into.
Now let's start from the beginning
and I will show you how to get them to this point.
Now I'm back at when I imported the mesh,
you can see here that it is subdivided almost complete even.
I have some of the edge control going on.
This is so I can keep some of this hard edges in the stairs here
like in this bevels.
Now I'm going to subdivide it,
and before I do I'm going to turn off the smooth button right here
because if I smooth it now, if I hit control D to subdivide it,
you can see that it kind of turns into a big pillow.
So I don't really want that.
Let's turn that smooth button off and now I can subdivide it.
So when I subdivide it, it won't really show in the poly frames
but I know that it's going to subdivide the mesh without actually smoothing it
so I get to keep some of those hard edges.
Now that I have subdivided it twice, I know that it's very quaded up in there
and the quads are very close.
If I turn smooth back on and then now I divide it again with the control D.
I'll do it once or twice, so now it's than one mil [polish].
Now the edges are kind of hard so they're not very pillowy
and I can work with this.
Now we can get into the fun part and sculpt it up.
I'm going to use about two brushes, one brush is to do the stone beat up
and another brush is to add some cracks.
The main brush I use to add damage is the clay toothbrush.
I can get to this brush by hitting B, C, and T
or I can just press B and go right here to play tubes.
I like to use this brush, you can also use the mallet fast brush
or the clay build up or some other type that gives off the same effect.
The other brush I use is called the dam standard
and this is what we are using for cracks.
Let's add in some demos now, so with the clay toothbrush on
I'm going to be holding down Alt when I sculpt.
I can also go into sub but I like to hold down Alt when I sculpt,
so let's do that and I'm going to subdivide this one more time
so I get a little more detail when I do sculpt.
When I sculpt I hold down Alt and then I just kind of just use the brush
and I beat into it like this.
I'm just holding Alt the whole time and just going at it.
I like this because I can kind of force some of this ledges
like into the mesh like this, it doesn't really matter but that happens.
Because in the final result when I bake this in it's going to look nice
I'm not going to have any weird errors or anything.
I'm just getting a basic idea of how I want this to be.
I'm sculpting in perspective mode,
I've already like to sculpt in orthographic view it's kind of weird to me.
I know that I want one of these ledges to be kind of broken up
just to break up some symmetry, in the side maybe just has some random damage,
and maybe some of these ledges just have some general damage.
I'll be going to the stairs too and to some of those crevases
and add some cracks and what not.
I'm going to keep going at this ledger here
and I'm going to make this kind of really beat up.
I have a bigger brush so it's easier to put in some of these detail.
I just want a nice silhouette for this broken edge.
Let's keep breaking this.
Gets a little tricky sometimes because you'll get some pinched edges
if you try to force some geometry in but usually it works out.
So just keep going.
This maybe won't be completely perfect but I'll get it to where I want.
Smooth this out just a bit, break into it again.
I don't want to do that actually, get the control Z out of that.
Okay, that's fine.
That's a good rough shape right there.
I'll probably go have a smaller brush and I'll go in there do that more detail.
Some stuff like this.
Sometimes you could get like a general square like that.
I try not to leave those in, I'll try to just beat it up nice and fine
so I don't get any of those shapes like that.
Or go in here like this,
and I don't really have any reference up or anything.
I just have a good idea of what this is going to look like
and just spamming the brush button it makes it look like concrete enough
to where, maybe just get away with it.
I'm pressing the brush a lot, I'm not like holding down and dragging.
I'm basically hammering at it with my pen in my stylus.
Maybe that little part will come out still.
Maybe this goes all the way down like this, breaks in here.
It's very easy to get carried away with the cracks.
I'm trying to leave some of those ledgers like that
so that way it kind of caves in a little bit and it looks kind of more natural.
I'll leave that edge and I'll kind of sculpt next to it,
that way that ledge kind of pops.
Like that.
It looks pretty decent, looks kind of like it is a broken piece of concrete.
Let's go over to this side now and I won't probably break it off like that one.
I'll just add some general corner damage, maybe it will break down, down here.
And come up like that.
It's really difficult ... I mean it's not, you won't really mess up to easy.
If I make a random thing like that it's easy to make this
into something believable.
You can get some happy accidents.
Turn that into a nice damage, and maybe I'll add some cracks
and later around here to make it a little bit more believable.
Since that was chunked off maybe a big metal thing hit this
and took off its corner, so maybe it should be a little deeper.
That's okay.
One of my favorite things to do which is very, very quick and easy
is to basically go to this edge or any edge and just hold Alt
and scoop some parts up along.
Because if you did that around the whole mesh
it looks, you can get some good results.
Every so often you could just go like this, just scoop out some areas.
Maybe some parts will break out, like that.
It's very easy to get carried away sometimes.
Let's do that to some parts in this corner.
Probably go around now to most of this top edges and just rough them out a bit.
So I'm just going to go around and do this.
Let's take out a chunk out of the back here, maybe this will be a nice chunk.
Bring it up there.
Usually when a big concrete is taken out, more of it comes along with it.
A lot will follow.
[Cover] that too and over point.
Okay.
Something big must have hit this corner.
Okay.
I don't want any of this corners to be too sharp so I'll rough most of them out.
Go back a bit.
Should have keep this one a bit intact compared to the others.
You don't want everything being completely damaged.
Kind of sculpting upside down now, it doesn't matter.
Just trying to get these edges.
Maybe some of it will eat up here
to the main surface.
I'm just trying to be really quick about this.
I don't know if it's going to look to great in the end but it will be good.
It will be fine.
Okay that's cool.
So it's a lot more pleasing to look at than just a flat corner.
Yeah I think on this edge, yeah.
All this will bake into that normals very nicely.
I've done this to a couple props already.
Might be going a bit overboard on all this corners
or all these edges being beat up but it's just to show you.
Oop.
Okay so that top layer is pretty, pretty damaged.
Let's try to go to some more corners.
Maybe this guy right here.
Try to sculpt very quickly.
You try to put too much attention to what you're sculpting
you're just going to get carried away and it's not going to look realistic.
I just kind of mindlessly knock at this things until it looks something decent
or somewhat decent.
If it doesn't look decent, I will just smooth it out
or just control Z and start over.
Looks kind of cool.
Some one was gnawing at the edge of this, monster.
Let's take out this corner a bit more, pushing in.
Sometimes zoom out to look at the silhouette of everything.
Make sure nothing's too wonky.
This guy he doesn't look very believable, so let's turn him into something.
Okay.
I usually end up not liking corners, so I'll just break them off.
I don't know, it's just fun.
I'll be going overboard again.
That's a bit too straight to look natural so got to beat that up now just a bit.
Leave some of the concrete back.
So let's go into these steps here and just do some more edge damage
and I could run along this bevel with just like a couple strokes
and it will give me is like a nice layered effect.
If I can zoom in kind of looks like those edges are chipped a bit.
that's just if I zoomed out a little bit so the brush can get it
and just run down the crack.
Maybe I'll just speed this up now a bit
because I'm going to be going to the stairs
and just doing the general damage I've been doing.
Let me go ahead and do that.
I'm pretty happy with how the demo looks so far
[start] when I added some cracks, so I'm going to press B to go into the brushes
and look for dam standard.
Think if you hit D it will isolate everything out and then right here.
So if you hit BDS it will give you dam standard.
Now I want this brush to be fairly small.
Let me test it out, let me go to one of the steps here.
Maybe this guy right here
and I want to on Z sub, let's do the intensity to about 40 something.
So my cracks will be nice and deep.
Using the dam standard, the brush should be small
and the intensity should be kind of high and it should be on sub
so I don't have to hold Alt.
If I hold Alt it will move everything up, it will extrude.
When I add the cracks, I'll just try to do whatever I think looks best.
Maybe a crack will go from here, all the way to here.
Maybe a little split right here.
I can do some like scrambling stuff like I can kind of just draw over here,
kind of scramble it, like I'll draw in circles like that
but maybe in some areas over here, smooth that out
because it's kind of digging in there.
I'll just do some random splits, do some scrambles.
These cracks they kind of have a mind on their own
and I don't really know the anatomy of the crack but I can fake it.
Maybe this chunk went down to here so this guy will go there.
Maybe it split two ways right there.
It split again.
I don't have the best resolution
but I don't really need too much resolution to do this.
Maybe this crack will get a bit larger,
so I'll just do some scrambles up here.
Kind of make that cut deeper.
From far away it looks pretty cool
up close the resolution isn't so great
so you can't get away with too much.
Maybe this will break up here again.
Get to that crack.
Usually cracks tend to do this where they fork away.
Doing to many forks won't look too great.
This looks a good opportunity to make a crack.
I'll smooth some areas,
if I dig into here I'm going to smooth that out
because I don't want the crack to go into there.
Add some cracks around these areas too.
Let's see here.
Maybe a crack will wrap around this corner, like that.
Split down the middle.
Looks like it's digging in a lot, my intensity is pretty high for this part.
That's okay.
Turn my intensity down to about 30 something.
Let's crack this area too.
It's pretty fun doing cracks.
Kind of just mindlessly do it.
Let's do a chip here.
And maybe a chip there.
Going to scramble a little bit.
Cool.
ZBrush likes to do some fun perspective things sometimes.
I'm trying to zoom around.
Let's see here, maybe I'll do a crack all the way from here
to about up here, I'll just try and do like a sort of straight line.
And I'll fake the rest.
Just a crack about there.
It looks like too fat so I'll just go in
and kind of just scramble the insides like this,
maybe do a couple of extra brush strokes on the sides.
Kind of get rid of that pillow effect that's going on.
Because cracks do not do that.
This crack might be too straight in general but whatever.
I don't really like the way this crack is turning out but it's okay.
Maybe it just needs to break up more.
Let's break it up down here.
Get another one right there.
Maybe even another one.
Kind of looks a bit more interesting.
Cracks tend to be a little bit continuous so think I'm doing a bit too much.
Be very sloppy with these corners, break off some more edges.
Make it look like it's kind of crumbling.
Okay that's pretty cool.
Let's do one up here for good measure, from here to there.
Pick up extra strokes to get that layered effect.
Take [slides] and scratch that almost.
Kind of that break right here.
Give that edge some depth.
I want to bring out the clay toothbrush and kind of dig into here a little bit.
Because this crack got a little too large
so maybe it's large enough to actually hammer into.
That's really deep, okay BDS to get back to my dam standard brush.
I like to do that one area like this and then where I break off again like that.
Cracks love to do that kind of stuff plus it looks nice.
Kind of bring it back over here, maybe it will come down this bevel.
Let's do a crack across.
Kind of a bit curvy there.
Break one down.
Now if I wanted to, I could go a bit further
to make this look a bit more realistic.
I could add some noise.
I already have a curve here set and I can preview this.
I want my scale to be all the way up.
I want my strengths to be very minimal,
so now with that I can hit okay.
And you can see it preview on here right now.
When I hit apply to mesh it will kind of blow the mesh up,
and it won't look to good.
You can see that right around a lot of the corners
and just looks like bubblegum almost.
What I want to do is I want to hit mask by noise a couple of times
that way it will mess that thing in.
If I keep clicking it, it will make the mask a bit more harsh.
Then now I want to try and apply this noise.
I'm going to change this to positive strength actually
so positive .001, strength this a bit to the right.
Come on.
There you go, okay.
I'm going to hit apply to mesh, so that does and get rid of the mask.
Now it doesn't look as pillowy, will probably get some weird stuff like this.
Maybe I could smooth that out or something or even just hammer that back in.
BCT.
But that's what noise will do to your mesh, it will explode a lot of parts.
It does this stuff because the strength is too high.
So you don't want the strength high when you apply it.
If I don't want as much as that stuff,
I will just move this strength a bit lower.
But for the most part it's adding a bit more realism into the concrete
making it look more like stone or concrete something.
It's adding some random damage but I like
it's doing some more of the stuff here, I don't like that.
Probably smooth it out, hammer it down.
Now that I'm pretty much done beating up most of the edges and stuff
and looking at the overall feel of this thing, it looks pretty good
because it's all, it flows well.
All the corners are pretty beat up and you can tell this thing's very old.
I could have spent more time on this,
if I was in this for like a game or some project,
that way some of the more beat up parts will look a bit more realistic.
Maybe the cracks had spent more time on,
maybe get some actual crack reference and use that to add my cracks.
I just did this from my own head.
They're not perfect but yeah they work for now.
If you just take your time and practice this,
you'll get something that looks really good.
I have a couple examples that I want to show, that I've used this technique on
and I've gotten some really great results
like on pillars and bridges and stuff like that.
Let me show you those and that will conclude this tutorial.
Here are a couple assets that I used this technique on.
You can see here that I used the damaging, the corner,
and the cracks, and everything.
I spent a bit more time on it just try to make things look as best as they could
and that which is more time on cracks and everything.
Here's some more cracks that I did.
You can see that you can get a very nice result
if you just spend more time on it.
Here's a modular bridge that I worked on
and the surface noise really came into effect here.
This was for a modular piece that eventually turned into this.
Yeah, i hope you've enjoyed watching this technique.
My name is Cordell Felix
and thank you for watching 3Dmotive.com.