■ Hard-Surface Sculpting 361Hard-Surface Sculpting
We will now move on to creating hard-surface models
in ZBrush. For this exercise we will build a sci-fi ray
gun using ZSketch to build our base form. We will then
move on to the Clip, Planar, and Trim brushes to cre-
ate complex machined shapes that have, until recently,
been impossible to create in ZBrush. Figure 10.35
shows the final gun we will create in this exercise. It
is also possible to combine mechanical and organic
shapes to create interesting characters. Figure 10.36
shows a character created by combining organic and
industrial forms.
When I refer to the hard-surface brushes, I am really talking about a variety of brush
tools that have been introduced to ZBrush since version 3.5. While some of them, like the
Polish brushes, are not intended solely for mechanical modeling, others are designed purely
for creating machined shapes.
Hard-Surface Brushes
Hard-surface brushes fall into four categories (Figure 10.37):
• Clip
• Planar
• Polish
• Trim
Together these brushes are generally referred to as the hard-surface brush set. You’ll
need a level of understanding of how these brushes behave to fully appreciate the effects you
can achieve with them. I highly recommend that you explore using a variety of the brushes
Figure 10.35 The final gun from this exercise Figure 10.36 This character was created by combining
organic and hard-surface sculpting techniques.