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

Rendering in ZBrush

ZBrush has a feature called Best Preview Render (BPR). This function generates high-quality renders with shadows, anti-aliasing (AA), subsurface scattering (SSS), and ambient occlusion (AO) in a short amount of time. In this section, you’ll learn how to create these kinds of renders and export them for further editing in Photoshop or another image editing software.

Important note

While rendering times in ZBrush are fairly quick, ZBrush is not known for the high quality and realism of its renders. If high fidelity and photorealism are the goal, external render engines are recommended. Maya’s Arnold Renderer, V-Ray, and Cycles in Blender are all powerful render engines that allow you to get more out of your model. Here is the difference in realism and quality between a ZBrush BPR render, and an Arnold (Maya) render:

Figure 7.16 – ZBrush BPR render (left) versus Arnold render (right)

That being said, rendering...