The Extra Mile

So what does going ‘The Extra Mile’ means?

Module 1 - Fundamentals
Essential Concepts and busting myths

The lessons in this module are all about setting a strong foundation and understand important concepts that will be put into practice through the following modules of the course.

These videos are not boring lectures of pure theory, instead, we are going to smash through some myths that can damage our confidence as artists, I’m going to give you practical tips to create powerful and expressive characters, I’ll show you how to leverage the principles and elements of design, we’ll talk about the value of composition and we’ll breakdown portrait lighting to a simple but effective set of tools.

Module 2 - Sculpting
Setting up your ZBrush Sculpt

This module is all about materializing your idea in ZBrush, not just about what buttons to press to get it done, but how to treat ZBrush as a powerful creative tool to explore your designs. We are going to talk about the different 3D sketching techniques and I’ll walk you through what I believe is the best approach to go from a ‘blocky’ arrangements of polygons to a refined and highly detailed sculpture. We are going to cover everything from Dynamesh, to retopology and geometry HD for high-frequency details.

Module 3 - Intro to Rendering
Improving presentation - it’s all in the details

The third module in the course is focusing on rendering for presentation or work in progress.

Following module two, you should have a good looking sculpture from ZBrush so the logical next step to present the sculpture, is to render it. In this module will cover BPR in ZBrush and all the other aspects like materials, lights and document to produce a high-res BPR render. We’ll also introduce a more sophisticated render with Keyshot and learn how to set up your scene in this powerful renderer.

Module 4 - Texturing 
Polypaint, prototyping and render passes

Module four, is a fun one as we get to play with different processes and techniques.

Through the lessons of this module, I’ll explain what Polypaint is and how to use it to create a high-quality texture within ZBrush. I'm also going to show you how to create your own painting brushes set. We’ll also go over a quick posing technique to make the character look more interesting and I’ll show you how to set up render passes in ZBrush, Keyshot and prototype the look of your scene with Marmoset Toolbag 3.

Module 5 - UVs and Maps
UV mapping and creating useful maps

This module is reserved for everything that is part of the process of creating UVs for your model. This process is sometimes viewed as a boring and quite technical. Following the steps and learning certain tools, will prove that it’s actually very simple and not so tedious ;)

I’m going to give you a brief and practical introduction to UV mapping and we’ll look at different ways to create UVs without diving too deep into the technicalities that go behind the process. With the basics out of the way, we are going to create UVs for our sculpture and I’ll show a simple process to create various maps from ZBrush like Normal, Displacement, Ambient Oclussion, etc.

Module 6 - Advanced texturing
Creating intricate textures maps in Substance painter

Substance Painter is a favorite software of mine as it’s an incredibly powerful tool for texturing. In this module, I’m going to demystify the texturing process and I’ll show you how to easily go between ZBrush and Substance Painter to texture your character.

In substance Painter, I’ll walk you, step by step, through the process of creating complex materials, setting up intricate masks, building reusable smart materials, adding further details to the sculpture with height maps, using procedural maps to create patterns and refine the general look/design of your character.

Module 7 - Advanced Rendering
Producing high-quality renders

In this module, we are going to have lots of fun producing a variety of renders. We’ll take the textures we created in module six with Substance Painter and set them up in Marmoset Toolbag 3, to create a striking real-time scene.

We’ll dive a little bit deeper into lighting and how to create an atmospheric scene. I’m also going to show you the way I set up a Keyshot scene to render a high-quality image using the same texture maps produced in substance painter.

Module 8 - Compositing
Compositing, the ultimate renderer!

The last module of the course! Here is where all the hard work that we put in during the previous seven modules, is going to finally pay off! We are going to fire up Photoshop and create the final images out of all the renders and passes we’ve been creating along the course.

In this module, I’m going to give you an introduction to compositing using the BPR passes and Keyshot render from the module three, and then we’ll get into more advanced techniques with the BPR passes with polypaint, as well as the Keyshot passes from the advanced rendering module. I’m also going to show you a series of steps I follow to further improve my compositions. I’ll use the Marmoset real-time render as an example, to illustrate the point that even a great looking render can be improved in compositing.