Daily Sculpt to learn and get better at zBrush
polycounter lvl 10
Hey all, this is just warm welcome to what will become the space that i put up my progress and attempts in zBrush. I havent used zbrush for a couple years and even when it was a brief month or so. I look forward to learning and having you guys' critique to help me on my way.
Note - On weekdays ill only have about 15 minutes so theyll be like speedsculpts that are quite rough but hopfully ill get to a point where its not bad
Note - On weekdays ill only have about 15 minutes so theyll be like speedsculpts that are quite rough but hopfully ill get to a point where its not bad
Replies
okay so this is my sculpt at work , i had some orthographs to better help me with proportions didnt have too much time today to work on it but definitely better than where i started
/lips
I see it over and over again with those new to sculpting/anatomy: trying to find form at much too high a res. This is fine when you have experience, and have comfortable control of the brushes but usually ends in frustration when you don't. Starting with and low-low res mesh will allow you to find the forms much easier. The tried and true ZB method of using your sub-div levels as one of your most valuable tools when sculpting should not be overlooked. Most of those new to ZB just jump straight to Dynamesh and don't seem to know of the traditional sub-div method. It has so many advantages. Personally, I would use the move brush for 80% of the work when finding the forms/proportions/etc. So having a 3000 or so point base level is vital to this workflow.
I would also advise loading some front/side proportion or skull refs into spotlight or the floor grid to check things as you go. Distances/silhoutte/proportion /bony landmarks are the key at the early stages of learning anatomy. That is why starting with a skull sculpt is usually advised.
Another important factor I would always recommend is to sculpt using the basic material and continually move the interactive light around. Matcaps will often give a poor representation of your true forms. Sculpting is all about increasing/reducing light and shadow to achieve forms. The Matcaps have baked light and your sculpt will look very different under lighting in a physical environment render. To add to this, if you have Keyshot then continually checking your forms in there under different lighting is a really great workflow that I use all the time when sculpting. It is unforgiving and will show up all lumps/bumps/poorly sculpted forms/etc that Matcaps generally will not.
Best of luck with your journey. And please.....make it your business to find more than 15mins per sitting....
@final_fight ill get it and have a look through that as well, thanks.
As an example, here's a sculpt that I did this weekend. The workflow I used is the one I spoke about above: utilising subdiv levels throughout the sculpt. I often use DM when just sketching or for elements of a character, but for the main sculpt of a head I always like to have edgeloops in place that follow the natural flow of the anatomy. But the main reason I like to use an established basemesh is because there are so many advantages further along in the workflow: transposing, adjusting/refining forms VERY easily(note that I still adjust things like this till the very end of a sculpt, using layers when doing tertiary details, UV unwrapping, and just all round ease of use. Zremesher can at any time be introduced into a DM workflow to get your levels back and project.
I used a modified version of the NickZ base mesh that ships in lightbox. I just delete all the extraneous, drop it to the lowest level, and smooth it all over to melt the features and give me a blank canvas to work from. I have sculpted many heads from scratch so at this stage I don't feel the need to reinvent it every time. But as you are learning it is a good idea to get a feel for the forms/proportions by building from a sphere(which you can later ZRM to get those levels back)
The res on the right is 1 level up from the base and I will work on that level until I am happy with the forms(as mentioned this will always continually be changed/refined throughout the sculpt) I will never needlessly jump up in res unless I am moving on to the nest stage and can't get the forms at the current res. Also of note is that about 80% of the sculpt is using only the Move brush. This is a brush that a lot of beginners overlook.
And here's the final sculpt - just finished the eyelashes/eyebrows about an hour ago
Mid Post Edit: I had a more up to date version at work so i cant open it, and too lazy to find and download the newer version so it looks like ill be making a new one again oh joy
Just keep at it and eventually it will come If you look beyond the obvious features to the planes, silhouette, and proportions.
http://www.anatomy360.info/skull-sketcher/