■ ZBrush and Working with Imported Meshes 81easily as well as subdivided up to millions of polygons for fine detailing. Once the sculpture is
completed, these meshes can easily be retopologized to any mesh resolution you desire. This
helps keep the sculpting process separate from polygon modeling and allows you to focus on
topology and technical concerns after the design phase is completed. The leg in Figure 3.2 illus-
trates how much form can be pulled from a simple block model. Figure 3.3 illustrates just how
little underlying topology is required to create a detailed character sculpt. This demon head
was sculpted entirely from a polysphere in ZBrush. The benefit of this technique is that you
have total freedom to move shapes around, but the possible drawback is that it can be harder
to detail areas like ears, horns, and noses—any part that is stretched too far from the original
sphere shape.
Organized meshes are models that have been specially built for animation. They have
edge loops containing major muscle forms and areas of deformation (Figure 3.4). When reto-
pologizing a design sculpt, you will strive to create an organized mesh. It is often the case
that organized meshes are built before the sculpting phase. This is a valid approach, but I
find that it limits the sculpture and can limit the subdivision levels in some cases. Organized
meshes work best for animation, whereas sculpting can benefit from a much simpler mesh.
Figure 3.4 A mesh organized for animation
Figure 3.2 A leg sculpted from a box model Figure 3.3 This demon is sculpted entirely from a single
polysphere.
Model by Ricardo Ariza