Line between 3D modelling and Digital Sculpting

Remmers

Dear Polycounters

I'm currently busy graduating for my Game Design master and i'm working on a Low End 3D pipeline with Zbrush integrated. At the moment i'm doing some research into "digital sculpting" in general but I was wondering:

Where is the line between 3D (poly) modelling and Digital Sculpting for you. What does digital sculpting mean to you? Is adding a turbosmooth modifier in max and use soft selection to shape your mesh digital sculpting too?

Just curious about your ideas!

Thanks

mdeforge

I've always thought of it as using a brush of some sort to push and pull vertices in some capacity. I think of an artist using a tablet most of the time for this sort of work, but you can do it with a regular mouse as well.

chrisradsby

Well, when I create terrain in Maya and use soft selection I usually call it sculpting the terrain. Generally it'd say it's when you push and pull things to get the result you want.

I don't really get where you're going with this though?

ceebee

Are you high? Sculpting is just another tool in your arsenal. It doesn't matter when or where you use it and "where the line is", it matters on how efficient you can make yourself work and how much time you can save while retaining quality. For some people it's faster to tweak verts or edge loops one by one (or with soft selection) in Max or Maya, for other's it's easier to tweak things in ZBrush.

3D modeling is 3D modeling. Digital sculpting is just another tool for modeling.

Remmers

haha xD I'm not high sorry, you did give me a nice answer though. Thanks

I'm just thinking what exactly digital sculpting is. Because sculpting is not only about pushing and pulling clay, (real) sculpting is also slamming into a huge rock with a hammer in an artistic way . So I think "sculpting" in zbrush is actually just high poly 3D modelling. You see what my point is? Just some wild and maybe useless but probably interesting thoughts.