ZBrush Character Creation Advanced Digital Sculpting

The Brush Menu (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 3

Saving Custom Brushes The Brush Manager makes saving your own custom brushes simple. In this section, you will create a custom version of the Smooth brush. This brush will be saved in the default ZBrush brushes folder, where it will be loaded each time ZBrush starts. In Figure 2.12, notice how the Smooth brush can […]

The Écorché Approach to Sculpting (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation)

The approach used to sculpt the head and body in Figure 2.21 is called écorché. Écorché is derived from the French word for “skinned” and generally refers to a sculpture of a human or animal with the skin and subcutaneous fat removed so the muscle and skeletal systems are visible. As a method of anatomical […]

Sculpting the Skull (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 1

To begin, you will sculpt a generalized human skull from a ZBrush primitive sphere. This exercise describes a high-resolution sculpting method. The sculpting process begins at a higher subdivision level, and the form will be built using the Clay tubes and Rake brushes. The initial shape you want to strive for is shown in Figure […]

Sculpting the Skull (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 2

Sculpting the Forms of the Facial Mass Now let’s move on to sculpting the facial mass: 1.    Carve away the shape of the nasal cavity from the front. Now move to a side view and tug the area between the nose and eyes back to create the ridge of the nasal bone. This is an […]

Sculpting the Skull (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 3

Sculpting the Muscles In this section we will add the muscles to the skull. We’ll take a simplified look at the muscles of the face, focusing on those major muscle groups directly influencing the surface forms. The muscles we’ll add are shown in Figure 2.46. Figure 2.46 The major muscles of the face For the […]

Sculpting the Skull (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 4

Adding the Eyes We’ll now create a sphere for the eyeball and add it as a subtool to the current model. The typical human eyeball is about 28 mm. It’s best to make sure the sphere fills out the socket with a slight give on each corner. The depth of the eye can be determined […]

Sculpting the Skull (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 5

Sculpting Skin and Fat on the Face In this section we’ll finish sculpting the face by adding the skin and fatty tissue over the bone and muscle sculpted so far. Having the structural elements of the skull and muscles in place makes this is a much simpler process. Begin by filling the head with the […]

Sculpting the Skull (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 6

Adding the Neck I left the neck for last to show how it is possible to pull large forms directly out of a highly subdivided mesh. When adding the neck to the head, you can pull the geometry directly from the faces at the base of the head. We will add new forms directly to […]

Sculpting the Skull (Sculpting in ZBrush) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 7

Sculpting Ears We’ll now sculpt the ear directly from the side of the head. Since we began with a low-poly sphere, we can easily divide the geometry up to millions of polygons. In the case of this mesh, it is currently 2 million polys. The secret to pulling protruding shapes such as ears and noses […]

ZBrush and Working with Imported Meshes (Designing a Character Bust) (ZBrush Character Creation) Part 1

While sculptures started from ZBrush primitives can be rebuilt into animation-ready meshes using the ZBrush Topology tools, in some cases you will want to start from an imported mesh instead. You may have a generic head or body model, or perhaps a generic animation-ready base mesh is used for all the characters in your pipeline. […]

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