ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting

This is a great book, hands down. I am a huge Zbrush fan and I am in the process of learning the Maya pipeline. I was looking for a professional level book that covered the use of Zbrush in creating characters destined for games or production film work as opposed to sculpts destined to be art in and of themselves. While "antimatable" topology is not covered (other than mentioning ideals), this book is about Zbrush and it's use as a sculpting tool, so i would not expect advanced topology concepts to be covered here but rather in an animation/rigging book. Like others have mentioned, the chapter on displacement/normal map generation and use in other programs (specifically covers Maya, which was wonderful for me) is worth the price of this book alone. It even goes in depth about the Maya shading network setup, from scratch, needed to display the maps properly. The internet contains a lot of conflicting and dated information on these topics - primarily because Pixologic has been pumping out updates and revisions every few months that change the game again and again and a lot of the tools that people used to use have been replaced once or twice with new tools from Pixologic. This is the only thing i have read that has all of this information in one place. That being said, with Zbrush being up to Z4r4 now, i would love to see a new edition of this book from Scott Spencer or a new book altogether including the massive updates to Zbrush since this book's publish date. It might be wise to wait for Z5 since that seems to be the next thing for Pixologic. Heed my only warning about this book, which is that it was written based on Z4 original release, and does not include any more recent topics such as dynamesh, insert brushes, fibers, noisemaker, qremesher from Z4r2 through Z4r4. Author is great, examples are great, additional resources are great - If you like Zbrush, you should own this book, especially if you also use Maya. As usual, the concepts are not application specific, but it helps to have the actual menus and examples in Maya since I am currently learning. Thanks Scott, this book is great.

This book is the perfect tool if you want to get an idea about the whole process of working with a mesh for games or for movies. It basically takes you from the most basic sculpting tools and walks you through each process in order to get a final product ready for game or movie rigging. It explains you major things like Sculpting, Texturing, PolyPaint, and Zbrush Animation Tools as well as not so common stuff like Displacement Maps and Normal Maps (Scott Spencer is the first one who managed to explain me what these are and how you make them and how you use them), Considerations you should have when sculpting certain areas and many more. On top of this, Scott Spencer backs everything you read with video tutorials which are great! There you will find much much more than you find in the book (which is a lot) since you can hear his reflections while sculpting... you can see how he sees things when he designs and what his approach towards sculpting is. Before I end this, I want to recommand the other two books and I STRONGLY advice you to start with his first book, which is Zbrush - Human Figure. The book was made back in the 3.5 days but nevertheless is such an amazing tool to learn the basics of sculpting and the basics of Anatomy. He is a master of Human Anatomy in Sculpture and here is the chance to see him in action.. to go and take a Maya box man with about 100 polys and transform him into what you can see on the book cover. Basically, the three books work together... You get the basics of Anatomy and Sculpting in the first one, than you get all the additional processes explained in Character Creation (texturing, mapping etc) and than in the last one you go through several types of creatures and characters and you are concerned with more advanced stuff like rendering and lighting, composition etc. Take this book, take the other two as well, remove all your distractions and get on with them. You will fly through what used to be walls of questions.

I’ve learned so much from this book and although it refers to a much older version of Zbrush (this book was published in 2011) it still has a lot of valuable information to be found and applied to the current Zbrush version. The DVD has a few, albeit a bit grainy, videos on a few steps along with additional project files and meshes to start you off with. Great book overall and it came in on time and in great condition.

It's a good reference to "how to" many things within ZBrush. I have several of Scott Spencer's training and they are all good.

This is an excellent book Scott Spencer covers a lot of great techniques and tutorials i have used several versions of zbrush books out there and i can tell you this is one of the better ones. although it may be a little much for those who never used Zbrush before i think that they would still benefit from it quickly. And the steps are clearly told to you in a precise manner for the tutorials as well as techniques that apply to sculpting. The dvd that accompanies the book is great to. Overall if you are a new to moderate user of zbrush this is a must have book if you are hesitant to buy this book dont be just buy it Scott Spencer is one of the best charter Creation artist out there BOOK WELL WORTH PRICE.

To cut a long story short, this book is amazing and i can honestly say that its one of the best books that i have bought. I'm studying for a degree in animation, and needed a book that would get me up to speed quickly. I work mainly in Maya and Modo, as well as having used an older version of Z Brush in the past which means that i had a good understanding of 3D terminology and how software like Z Brush works. Someone new to 3D modelling may find some parts of the book a bit hard going, but its worth hanging in their, because the rewards are excellent. One thing i would say is think twice before you by the Kindle version of the book. I bought this because it was realised sometime before the paperback version to use on my laptop, and although its ok, its no substitute for having a hard copy of the book. The layout is a lot better in the book and the images follow the text without having to keep changing pages.Also i was unable to find and down load the disc content from the publishers website, which i was under the impression i could. I ended up buying the hard copy of the book as well, which i don't regret, even if it has caused me to waste extra money. To sum up i would say buy this book now, you won't regret it, but say clear of the Kindle version, as i will do with any future book purchases.

È probabilmente il miglior libro in circolazione per inziare la scultura digitale con zbrush. Mi sono trovato benissimo, l'autore è chiarissimo e mescola nozioni artistiche e uso tecnico del software, il tutto con una metodologia chiara ed efficace. Consigliato per chi ha gia una minima dimestichezza del software, ma anche per chi inizia (magari con un tutorial introdutttivo abbinato). Il libro affronta praticamente (molto bene) un po' tutti gli argomenti di base.

Amazing quality received this From Germany in a week very impressed. Book from Phil is yet another amazing addition to my library.’

Wonderfull! Scott Spencer is a great teacher...... Good price and delivery.... Buono lo consiglio a tutti gli amanti di Zbrush! Libro per un livello intermedio di conoscenza del programma.

To be brief, this is a very detailed book, well written and comprehensive in scope. The included CD with its' resources is pure bonus. While it's not exactly written for the beginner in mind, it's easy to follow and comprehensible nonetheless. Highly recommended.