There was a tutorial on making a ZBrush sculpt of a weld seam on here a while back... I remember it used the clay brush to build up the form at the seam, then you rub back and forth along the built up seam with the Elastic brush to give it the 'beaded weld seam' look.
2nd shape If you look at the stack i started with a spline for the outline. I extruded that to give it thickness. Then i went in and cut the actual topology. It sure can be optimized some but i like it quite even in case you wanna sculpt and its just a good habit to get into IMO.
calen: look up creasing or panel loops for zbrush. What you can do is take out those supporting edges and just do the creasing in zbrush. With sculpting you generally want even faces. There is a alternative method which is you bring the original mesh in to zbrush and then use dynamesh.
Thats not really even topology. If it was to be sculpted, should just leave the control edges off and space the quads out as even as possible and then just smooth it 1x with continuity off so it just adds geometry. You'll get your control edges that way and it'll help fill it in. "continuity" is an option you can turn off…
@solidshark91493 This is something I modeled a few years ago and the spline modeling/jokermartini weld script method above is used all over the place. You can also dynamesh the highpoly, sculpt the welds and bake. Or just use Sub Painter to add the welds directly to the normal map. All methods are good.
For those affraind of sculpting the ornaments. The Pandicarus Tutorials by Mike 'Squirrely Jones' Voeller More specific, this part: http://www.squirrelyjones.com/public/model.pdf I think there was a thread about this unwraping -> flatening -> attaching ornaments/chainmail -> morphing back inot shape subject somewhere too.…
I come from a history of modeling really low poly so high poly topology hurts my head. Anyway, im kinda anal about getting things right. I modeling a shield which i intend to take into zbrush to sculpt. Does the bottom topology look okay> or is it bad practice?
sometimes when modelling i try to think of it as 'well this is made from two peieces in real life, so i should model it with two pieces' and sometimes (like in this instance) it pays off. or you could try get creative with the cut tool. or even if your even more adventurous, sculpt or use a floater.
there was a good tutorial on welds a while back. basically you make a line and give it width, then convert it to a mesh and scale verts and throw a smooth on it. it will look blobby. it works well enough but if the welds are going to be an important part, they wont look real enough so you would probably want to sculpt them…
I use Zbrush and I would like to know how to sculpt these two textures, my main issue is when trim dynamic and hard polish decide to dig while trying my make a nice curved (Gradient?) formations like in the first image, This second image I can't even begin to explain.