Book Image

Sculpting in ZBrush Made Simple

By : Lukas Kutschera
Book Image

Sculpting in ZBrush Made Simple

By: Lukas Kutschera

Overview of this book

Embark on a creative journey with ZBrush, the leading software for creating characters, creatures, and props in films, games, and 3D printing. This guide will take you through its powerful yet user-friendly workflows, allowing you to explore its dynamic organic sculpting, painting, and hard-surface modeling tools. The first part of this book is dedicated to helping you become familiar with ZBrush’s user interface and learning the very basics, from sculpting brushes and painting the model with Polypaint to setting up lights and rendering images. You’ll also create a demon bust with the help of ZBrush’s concept sculpting tool, DynaMesh. In the second part, you’ll get to grips with the creation of a humanoid character that is optimized for 3D printing. Focusing on anatomy, poly-modeling, and preparing the model for 3D printing, you’ll acquire the skills essential for sculptors. The final part delves into portrait sculpting, where you’ll learn everything from basic facial anatomy to hair creation with FiberMesh. By the end of this book, you'll have developed the expertise necessary to succeed in the ever-evolving world of 3D character modeling, complemented by portfolio and social media tips for showcasing your standout work.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: The Adventure Begins: Sculpting in ZBrush
9
Part 2: Creating Characters from Scratch: A Comprehensive Guide
13
Part 3: Sculpting a Female Head: Tips and Techniques

Adding keys, scaling, and exporting your model

In this section, you will add keys that let you combine individual pieces to assemble the full character. Then, you will learn how to scale and export your model so that it can be properly interpreted and processed by the printing software. Let’s get started.

Creating a key model

There are many options for the shape of the key, but a simple tapered cube is a popular choice that gets the job done well:

Figure 10.24 – Male key as a tapered cube (on arm) and matching female key (on torso)

Figure 10.24 – Male key as a tapered cube (on arm) and matching female key (on torso)

To create this shape, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Tool | Subtool | Append and pick any shape (for example, Sphere3D).
  2. Navigate to Tool | Initialize. Set X Res, Y Res, and Z Res to 6, and select QCube:
Figure 10.25 – Turning a mesh into a primitive shape with the Initialize function

Figure 10.25 – Turning a mesh into a primitive shape with the Initialize function

  1. Now, open the Gizmo menu, click on the gear icon, and select Taper. Taper...