Zbrush itself has grown over the past few years; where it used to be used mainly as a tool to aid the detailing of models, it is now used in most all game and film effects studios to not only add detail, but to sculpt and prototype, paint and even render complete images. The feature set is so large that few users do more than scratch the surface, which is why such a training DVD is invaluable. The disc contains around 9 hours of video tutorials from Glen Southern, an artist who has made quite a name for himself in the fields of 2D and 3D art. Glen has worked with Pixologic for years, beta testing their software and is a UK teaching consultant for ZBrush, so is more than qualified to be presenting this material.

I've been using Zbrush for around a year now at work, but solely for creating high polygon versions of my low polygon work. 95% of the time spent in the package is painting in creases in clothing, using 1 brush. Then I export it and that's me done. My knowledge of the package is therefore limited - I use it to get my job done, but know that there is a beast of a package with a wealth of useful features that I don't have time to play with, or perhaps I'm just too scared to look at. So when the chance came along to gain some knowledge about a program I knew, but was unfamiliar with, I jumped at the chance.

So after getting back to work after the holidays, a package arrived from Glen with the DVD. I popped it into my PC, and an autostart feature brought me up a web browser based list of all the content (this is not on the Mac version, you will have to navigate to this yourself). Each tutorial is a separate Quicktime .mov (16 in total) file, rather than one insanely long one.

The 3D portion of the DVD covers importing and exporting existing models, as well as creating models from scratch. The ZSpheres were presented in a way I hadn't seen before, and it got me genuinely interested in experimenting with them as a form of modeling. So many of the 3d effects and asset creation seem so natural in Zbrush, that I realized it would be easier to make many things in Zbrush rather my normal 3d package. By the time Glen gets to inflating alpha masks onto the back of a dinosaur to create spines, I'm imaging myself at Weta making a cave troll.

The amount of material covered in this DVD is phenomenal - over 9 hours - covering the whole gamut of the software. Although it has several tutorials and small projects in it, this is not what I would class as a tutorial DVD like Glens Silo Head Modeling DVD - it doesn't hold your hand and walk you through creation of assets. The projects are designed to show you how the tools work in a practical way.

The narrative was well paced, if a little quiet at times, explaining detail what you need to know, and letting you know when you will coming back to a feature to explore it in more detail. It is obvious that Glen knows Zbrush, and has an aptitude for passing on his knowledge.



The video quality is excellent throughout, however and times the audio is a little noisy with some noticeable pop - a few overdubs would have not gone amiss. There is a lot of content, sometimes so much it is overwhelming. A nice addition would be to pause every now and then and display a text overlay just to reinforce what the next section is to be about.

This is an invaluable guide to Zbrush, and every one who wants to learn more about the package should own it. I have it at work, and I watch parts of it every days. It is a fantastic reference guide, and even though I know there are many things on it that I will never use on a daily basis, I have picked up enough to easily double the speed at which I work in Zbrush - so the cost of the DVD was offset by my increased productivity in about half a day.

To sum up, I would say that this is an encyclopedia of Zbrush knowledge, something that combines examples with a thorough reference guide, something you will be coming back to time and time again.


reviewer: Rick Stirling January December 2005