Customer Reviews

ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is an excellent follow up to all previous zbrush books. Why?, two reasons...One, it refers to zbrush version 3.5 which has some major changes from previous zbrush versions. But the greatest joy is in following the tutorial of a "realistic hero" character. My lady friend always asks me about all other zbrush books..."why do all the characters look ugly?" the answer is simple. It's far easier to create an alien or an ogre. But now Scott Spencer enables us non academically educated artists to create a somewhat life-like character. This is no easy task, but Mr. Spencer enables even a non artist like myself to do so. I no longer have to create aliens and ogres and can actually create a character that is aesthetic to the layperson's eye! BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF ZBRUSH IS A MUST! So keep that in mind. But once you understand the zbrush interface and you are comfortable with the basic standard, clay, inflate, and flatten brushes, you will love this book. Hopefully, the next version will be of a "life-like" female superhero.

THIS BOOK IS A MUST HAVE along with "The Essential" by an author who now advocates mudbox. ZSpheres have come a long way with v.3.5 zspheres2 so he might regret leaving zbrush. BTW...There is no info on zsketching in this new Scott Spencer book, but nevertheless, your skills will grow leaps and bounds as an artist (digital sculpturist) as he does a great job explaining gesture and form as well as detail.

Whether you are sculpting human or alien characters with ZBrush, your ability to create convincing results with an efficient workflow is extremely dependent on your knowledge of sculpting anatomy. As any established character artist will tell you, the education you get through sculpting your first human body following anatomically correct guidelines is one of the most important learning processes you will go through. Scott's book is an indispensible companion for you on this journey.

The book thoroughly covers the head, torso, arms and legs, all the way from the skeletal regions and muscle groups to fatty tissue and skin. It also covers how to sculpt them with top level ZBrush expertise. If that's not enough, the book's companion DVD has videos of Scott going through and showing you how to do the steps in the book, base models from you to start your human sculpture, and the results of his work that you can study.

If you are struggling with the gap between your creations and the ones you see on ZBrush Central or CG blockbuster movies, the content of this book will get you closer to making top shelf characters. It is extremely well written with excellent step by step instructions you can follow. I wish I had it during my journey of sculpting my first anatomy figure; however, I am thankful to have it now because it is extremely useful as reference when I am struggling with a certain area in my character work.

An absolute must have for any character digital sculptors library.

This is my second Scott Spencer Book. the first - ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting,set the standard, and this one exceeded it. The first book really impressed me, this second has blown me away. With both books, the accompanying DVD is worth the price of purchase. it is full of example files, sculpting demos and tutorials.

The book is big, thick and heavy. The reason for this is not its text content, It's the very large number of illustrations, all of which are printed in full color.

I own both The Atlas of human anatomy, as well as Bridgemans Drawing from life, and this book compares very well with those books. In fact i would recommended this book to any artist studying human anatomy, the instruction and illistration is that good.

The real wow factor for me on this book, is it is different from any other computer application text i have ever read. The book is far less about click hear and click there, or dated by just the current version of the software. In fact the vast majority of this book cover the timeless study of the human body. not only that, but its sculptural construction. This helps any artist, where they are using ZBrush, Mudbox, Modo, Blender or even traditional Clay to create characters. This is the first and only book Ive seen address the issue of more classical education for modern technical artists.

The only drawback to this book is also its strength. The model created in the book is of a Heroic Male. This model serves well for a good number of applications, but I would have really enjoyed a section on anatomical differences. For example, female, older, obese , and youth.

Overall i strongly recommend this book to any artist that wants to learn the figure, no matter what the application. It is one of the few books out there that helps not only with familiarizing yourself with a program, but will help you improve your art as well.

Mr. Spencer has certainly done his leg work, although this book is targeted to computer graphics modelers, it should find a place next to Gray's Anatomy for anyone in any field who needs anatomical information.

I am a student at The Art Institutes of Las Vegas studying 3d Animation and Character Modeling. We primarily use Maya for our Character Modeling class and used ZBrush in that class to refine our polyMeshes(Add additional detail such as the Musculature and skeletal details) and to add other accesories (such as clothing and weapons). This book was not the required text for our class, but my instructor recommended that we should purchase this book as it has a clear and precise step by step process that walks you through how to model that character on the cover exactly as it is shown on the cover. I also had an Anatomy class that same quarter and my Anatomy instructor was amazed at this book as it is also a must have book as an Anatomy reference. The author is Scott Spencer and his other Zbrush book (listed below) has long been a fixture as the best Zbrush book out there period. A must have for your 3d Modeling library. Check out the Zbrush forum and I'm sure you'll see the same enthusiasm and love for this book. Keep up the great work Scott!

Product Details

ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting - Paperback (June 3, 2008) by Scott Spencer

Amazon has the best price on this book, plus shipping was free and the book arrived very fast. The DVD came loaded with all the material needed and a few bonuses. I have to mention though that this book is not for the total beginner with no or little experience to the software. The author has other books for that purpose and [..] offers a 30 day trial download of Zbrush and free video tutorials, so I suggest you start there first. If you don't have a Wacom, buy one. A Bamboo pen, (not pen and touch) will do if your on a budget in high school or something etc. Aside from that this book is written very well and easy to follow. Definitely worth the time and money because these are the kind of skills needed to succeed! Plus, if your from LA area like me you wouldn't want to dish out 800-1000 dollars for a 10 week/5 week course on this topic at Gnomon School! YIKES! Be smart, buy the book, and do this lesson. You'll be the one who benefits from it in the end.

I new before I purchased this book that Scott Spencer knows his stuff he has the rare combination of talent and the tutelage, his new book exceeded my expectations. Its really more then a book but a training kit. The book is well written and has high quality images along side the instruction. The DVD really went beyond my expectations each chapter of the book which cover different aspects of sculpting the human male has a complementary high quality video with Scott at the helm going over the entire process. The DVD also supplies all of the files needed to get started and use for reference throughout the process. This book does expect the end user to be familiar with ZBrush but he does go over the more high end aspects of the software like normal mapping, re-meshing, and UV mapping. Although sculpting is the main focus there is also a chapter on digital painting again Scott combines traditional techniques in concert with the digital medium. Ultimately this book/training kit ushers in a new age where artists can learn the human form sinew by sinew muscle by muscle completely within ZBrush.

This book does a great job of covering the many aspects of human anatomy and sculpting the figure. It's great for digital sculptors and traditional sculptors alike. The included video tutorials are a great compliment to the book and are filled with tons of helpful tips and techniques. I highly recommend it to any artist looking to gain more knowledge of anatomy and sculpting.

This book goes through the step-by-step creation of a human sculpt in Zbrush in an instructional way (such as what brushes he uses moment to moment, what he moves and adjusts as he builds forms, etc). If you are completely new to Zbrush and sculpting figures and want an instructional book that will read off exactly how to make an anatomy-based sculpt, step by step, then this book is for you. If you are looking for a thorough yet concise study of form and anatomy from a digital sculpting context that isn't instructional and is more of an educational resource, then this book is not for you.

While there is some great anatomy info here, the majority of the book is dedicated to being instructional. You will find yourself digging through the step-by-step material to find bits of anatomy information that is only lightly touched upon. If you already know Zbrush and already have a workflow for sculpting (in my case using a variety of other programs) then the majority of this content will not be helpful to you, and if anything, will make getting any information very tedious.

I should also mention that most of the pictures are Zbrush sculpts, and many of those are WIP sculpts. This is fine if you are looking for step by step sculpting reference, but is not enough if you primarily want to be thoroughly educated in anatomy information(there are some good references but there aren't enough, and they are scattered among WIPs). Pretty much this isn't the 'classical anatomy educational resource for the digital artist' that I was hoping it would be; it's much more of a tutorial book, which is fine if that's what you are looking for (and I don't hold this against it), but in my case it wasn't what I needed.

This book has an incredulous amount of information on the human anatomy and useful sculpting techniques. 400 pages written with great specificity and the DVD lets you watch Scott do the whole sculpt, allowing newer sculptors hours of video to watch Scott's workflow and fully understand what he's doing since he narrates every step. The DVD comes with countless invaluable ztools such as the skinned figure and the planed figure. Simply switch to these ztools for reference when you run into any discrepancy problems. In addition to the anatomy sculpt he also teaches professional texturing techniques for skin and creating clothing pieces for a character. To pass this book up would be doing yourself a disfavor.