Questions about my Sculpt [Zbrush]
vertex
So I've been trying to improve my stone sculpting on a stylized level similar to Fanny Vergne and orb and I was curious what it was that I could do to get the surface detail to more closely resemble Fanny's Surface detail on her stones.
Mine:
Fanny:
I like how she stays stylized but also implements some realism, I've found a tutorial on Cube brush that shows me sorta how to achieve some surface detail (pretty much just use standard brush on the surface then use Orb_flatten, keeping in mind to not get carried away).
I could probably add some surface noise but it just wont feel the same, any way that I could get a little closer to hers? any suggestions?
I've also read this forum post:
(http://polycount.com/discussion/162634/cant-get-my-stylized-stone-sculpts-to-look-the-way-i-want)
I feel like I'm having to do the opposite of the OP, where as he had to learn to plan less and be more flowing, I think I might be too loose, He did progress a lot, I've noticed he started using the Morph tool, but I'm not sure how that would help.
Once again any advice would be helpful, going to try to use the morph tool, I'll update if I make progress with it.
Mine:
Fanny:
I like how she stays stylized but also implements some realism, I've found a tutorial on Cube brush that shows me sorta how to achieve some surface detail (pretty much just use standard brush on the surface then use Orb_flatten, keeping in mind to not get carried away).
I could probably add some surface noise but it just wont feel the same, any way that I could get a little closer to hers? any suggestions?
I've also read this forum post:
(http://polycount.com/discussion/162634/cant-get-my-stylized-stone-sculpts-to-look-the-way-i-want)
I feel like I'm having to do the opposite of the OP, where as he had to learn to plan less and be more flowing, I think I might be too loose, He did progress a lot, I've noticed he started using the Morph tool, but I'm not sure how that would help.
Once again any advice would be helpful, going to try to use the morph tool, I'll update if I make progress with it.
Replies
Very little of the detail is actually sculpted on a per object basis, because that would take too much time! Look closely and you can probably spot the repeating patterns used.
What I would do (I'm no Orb, but) is to create a simple mesh in maya/max, throw it into zbrush, grab a morph target, make a new layer then pepper the thing in previously sculpted rocky alphas. You can employ some manual sculpting here to make the alphas flow together but with a brick you are probably fine. After that you do the edges with flatten, mallet or trim brushes and finally the tiny dots and wolverine cuts (cuts are also alphas). You can do these stages in different order, depends if you want the alphas to be visible on the broken off edges or if you want it clean.
I use morph if I find the alphas to be a little too strong in places.. kind of like a soft eraser for sculpting. I don't use it that often but you want to hit the store morph target button anyway just in case.
So the big question is how you go about making alphas? The process is explained online but it's basically sculpting some rocky shapes onto a flat surface and capturing it into a height map. The whole alpha creation process is pretty quick so I would encourage you to make some quick, but interesting shapes without detailing and just try it as a drag-alpha brush on a sphere or a cube. If it looks crappy just keep making them and you will get a hang of what produces good results. Most of the alphas I made learning this were not great.
Once you have these big interesting shapes you could create a separate alpha that adds more rocky detail, spores, chipping, etc. A lot of times I just take the "big shapes" brush, spam it on a surface, flatten it a bit and make an alpha out of that! Alphas man, love em.
You can get a lot of ideas for this part by watching tiling rock tutorials on youtube, everyone approaches it differently and it translates well into creating alphas.