FAQ: How u SCULPT dem shapes?

WarrenM

This will probably end in tragedy but I'm always wondering about how people approach certain shapes in ZBrush and I think a thread kind of like the sub-d thread that's running would be useful.

The best case scenario would be that you can post a picture of something that you don't understand how to approach in ZBrush and people with more experience could jump in and help out with suggestions or tutorial links or whatever!

For example ... I saw an awesome sculpt by slave_zero in the art jam thread and I don't see a clear path to how he achieved the chipped/shredded rock on his pillar. See here:



Now, I'm guessing that the vertical cracks were either done with Orbs crack brush or Dam standard, but it's the part below that confuses me. That stair stepped/chipped rock.

Alpha stamps w/ projection master? Clay brushes with specific alphas?

AtticusMars

You could probably just pound that out with a square alpha clay brush, but it looks like he probably just masked off each step (or maybe just the top step) and pushed the unmasked area back, either by deflating it or sculpting against it with the clay brush.

There's lots of ways you could acheive that effect it's hard to say for sure what he did.

WarrenM

Slave_zero got back to me with his exact method and I was surprised to learn this wasn't ZBrush at all, but 3D Coat! Here's his explanation:

Unfortunatly I'm not using ZBrush. The sculpt was done in 3DCoat. But I'm sure same effects can be achieved in zbrush.

Sculpting the area was quite easy: As a brush form I used a simple quad-form that doesn't align it's rotation with the paint-direction. The brush was applied to the standard extrude-tool which basicly just dents or raises the surface a certain amount. Brush-size was independent form pen presure.

The brush-size was set to be independent from pen presure to asure that the rectangular cracks have a minimum size and that the whole rectangled structure of the cracks can be easily maintained. For minor size variation I manually adjusted the brush-size when needed.

With the brush setting from above I then just stamped the brush onto the surface. From time to time I performed a stamp which finished into a slight stroke which helped to break up the rectangled forms a little.

The layered-crumbling was achieved by going over the the broken edge multiple times. As the rectangled brush then overlaped with already cracked parts and thus creating cracked layers beneath the main surface.

In a third pass I added the smaller cracks (those that run vertically and those that are cutting off parts of the rectangled crumble-edges.
The brush in this last step was also a standard brush with a wedge like depth profile. Brush-size and depth were depending on pen presure on this one.

Ace-Angel

Mallet, Flatten and Claytubes for the build up of the shape.

Polish to...well, polish the edges and such, or Trim, pending on which you need, but they're all weighted anyhow.

Alpha's to break and add detail.

Slash to create the dents and cracks.

Depth bias, etc, in your move or standard brush to separate and move edges based on angle.

WarrenM

Saw this in another thread. When I see stuff that's potentially useful to new sculpters, I'm going to drop it in this thread. Try to turn it into a reference of sorts ...

QUESTION:

Hi, I'm new to sculpting, and I was wondering how do people sculpt like this:


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...17&searchtext=

I mean the white outlines of the shoulder armor, especially the sharp edges near the bottom.

I tried something similar but always mess up and my mesh looked uneven and crooked. Anyone help?

ANSWER:

Build up the raised area and then use trim dynamic to cut into them.

Laku

I have a question as to the best way to sculpt armor edges that are curled in. Do most professionals extrude out then back in with sub-d modeling and two smoothing groups?

trebor777

The way I like to do those is on the base Mesh in 3dsMax, I select my border edges and use the make shape from selection. Then I edit the viewport rendering setting of the generated spline and voil

Eric Chadwick

Vertex has some really awesome Zbrush tutorials with some good workflows for those tough shapes. Worth another look!

bugo

You can use trim smooth border for those, also use slash 3 or orb brush and I'm sure you can get that really quick. Check out this tutorial I did a little while ago, this is version 2, but it shows you how to sculpt some corners and hard shapes like that.
http://vimeo.com/54689750

Laku

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated, interesting tut and magazine Eric and bugo! For Trebor - so you're saying that your edges and armor piece are two separate meshes until you retopo? You're making a spline from the edges and creating 3d geometry from it? Thanks for the replies!

Ace-Angel

For precise trims like those, you can use the latest ZB's masking options, I think one of them is called 'Outer', or 'Recess'? They basically allow you to mask the edges of your model which have a corner or steep edge. You can then extract that part, and continue sculpting.

Then if you want, export it to Max, Maya, etc and retopo in your package for tighter control if you want something that is perfect clean.

OR you can use the Retopo tools, and create a large piece of mesh and inflate, OR you can use the Trails tools, the one that overlays continues pieces like buckles and belts, but you can use a specific trim mesh instead.

Remember always one equation in your sculpt, which is sculpt and overlay your mesh like they would in real-life, I see waaaaaaay too many people try and be clever by keeping 1 mesh and sculpting all the details on it, and falling short due to limitation of the polygons, or the fact that it's unwieldy, not to mention your AO and Cavity Bakes are going to look washed out without the nice overlapped pieces.

Basically, don't complicate stuff for yourself

Single piece mesh are for games, for optimization reasons, especially if you're pulling every single trick in the book, but for high end modeling in general, try and put the pieces together as they would in real-life, extra effort will show in your maps.

Honestly, the same advice the guys in 'model dem shapes' gave out at some points.

WarrenM

OK, so love where this thing is headed but I wonder about the spiral bits on the shoulder pads. Would it better to model that in a modeling app or is that something best tackled inside of ZBrush? What's the preferred workflow there?

bnosam

This seems like a useful thread that I'll take advantage of when I have time to learn Mudbox or Zbrush.

I'd like to see it grow more so we can have a large list of answers too, so I guess a good bump like this would be good!