Need help with Zbrush, Wood and hard edges

Zodd

Hello again, been all around the web and didn't find and adequate explanation or hint as to how to achieve this soooo.. here i am, hope I'm not asking something absurdly simple here but here's the problem i have.

How does one get those nice and sharp looking edges when sculpting wood ( be it plank or unprocessed raw ) I can't for the life of me get it to look non clay-ish, the soft edges are constantly present and if i try and mask/move i deform and stretch the mesh beyond usability, if i try snakehook... well it pretty much destroys the flow, also tried insert curve strip ( this looks nice but cant get it to flow into the base of the tree ) .... i fought the zbrush and the zbrush won... :poly114:

This is what i have, see the top part of the bark-less tree, its just not as crisp and looks like some soft material, not splintered wood.




And this is what i roughly want to achieve, not the pointy bits, for now i need only cracked wood ( the right over exposed side of the tree shows them best )

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Clark Coots

I like to use Trim Dynamic, Trim Smooth Border, Orb Crack brush (Google it you'll have to download it) or alternative you could use DemStandard, occationally Polish and Pinch.

It just looks like you need to start digging into your mesh more, deepen the cracks get aggressive with it and it will look more beat up/splintered wood instead of the soft clay.

Zodd

Hey Thanks for reply.
Ok, but this is the thing i don't really understand, all of those brushes are digging in the clay right? and they will always have some "dull angle" when i mask and "extrude" the splinter ( like first and last "tooth" in that image above ) and then if i try and dynamesh ( or any remesh ) that slope gets even more pronounced.
Should those extreme peaks be separate geometry or be defined prior to detailing ?
Ill try with polish/pinch and trim smooth border, also what exactly does Trim Smooth Border brush do ? I mean i know about trim standard and trim adaptive and their effect due to camera angle and first hit polygon angle, but smooth border. ?

Clark Coots

All of those brushes can Zadd or Zsub into the geometry. They won't necessarliy have a dull angle if you change the Alpha. I use the defaul square alpha for my Trim brushes 90% of the time. You will also get dull angles if you do not have high enough subdivisions with those brushes.

The reason Dynamesh is smoothing out your sculpt is because of the resolution setting it's on. You need to duplicate your subtool, then Dynamesh or Zremesh. Subdivide the Dynamesh, then reproject your bad topology mesh onto the better dynamesh topology. Typically you don't want to be doing this a lot because it's a bit of a hassle. So it's good to have a strong basemesh foundation, do your dynamesh so your topology is good to go, then subdivide and start sculpting details and tighting up things.

It's hard to explain what Trim Smooth Border does, you just gotta mess with it, it is one of my favorites when it comes to organic hardsurface like Rocks. There's a good video here by Anuxi that demonstrates the TSB brush:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auk3mKdKEwg"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auk3mKdKEwg[/ame]