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

Creating an Optimized Mesh Using ZRemesher and ZProject

In this chapter, you will learn about ZBrush’s powerful retopology tool, ZRemesher, and how to use it to create clean and even topology for the demon bust that you have been sculpting so far. This will help prepare the model for further, more detail-oriented sculpting later on.

Then you will get familiar with subdivision levels, which allow meshes to be subdivided many times over, increasing resolution and ultimately allowing for higher levels of detail. Using the ZProject tool, we will project the detail from the demon concept sculpt onto the new, cleaner topology that we created using ZRemesher at the beginning of the chapter.

At this point, we will also look at increasing the mesh resolution, allowing you to add extremely fine detail. This will produce a sculpt that can be viewed from a close distance, without loss of resolution, which is often needed in VFX and sometimes games as well.

So, this chapter will...