Continuing his Tethered Islands series, Aaron Sims shares his techniques for building a creature in ZBrush. Using ZSpheres to design the initial body structure, Aaron develops the character from scratch. He then demonstrates how to skin the ZSpheres   and add details, color and lighting. In XSI, Aaron discusses the basics of rigging, weighting, and animating the imported creature from ZBrush. Finally he covers how to pose, light, and render the creature in an XSI scene.

About 6 hours of lecture

Topics Covered
ZSpheres
Building a Creature Using ZSpheres
Skinning ZSpheres and Adding Details
Adding Alpha Textures and Color
Basic Materials and Rendering
Making Displacement Maps for XSI
Basic Rigging, Weighting and Animating in XSI
Rendering a Scene Using XSI

Chapters
01. ZSpheres Basics
02. Modeling a Creature Using ZSpheres
03. Skinning  ZSpheres and Blocking out Large Forms
04. Adding Smaller Forms
05. Adding Details
06. Adding Texture
07. Adding Color Materials and Rendering
08. Making Displacement Maps for XSI
09. Basic Rigging, Weighting and Animating in XSI
10. Posing, Lighting and Rendering the Creature in XSI

Instructor Bio
Aaron Sims began designing, sculpting and painting creatures for the movie makeup effects industry in the mid 1980s. In 1988, he joined Rick Baker's Academy Award® winning Cinovation Studios Inc. where he worked on many projects including: The Nuttty Professor, Men in Black and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In the late 1990s, Aaron began exploring the medium of computer animation, joining Stan Winston Studio in 2000 where he began building SW-Digital, a CG department within the Academy Award winning effects house. As that company's Art Director, Aaron designed for such films as A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Terminator 3, Constantine and Doom and Fantastic 4.

For more of Aaron's work, visit:
www.aaron-sims.com