ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

44 chapter 2 ■ Sculpting in ZBrush

On the book’s DVD you’ll find a selection of custom brushes, including this one, called

softSmooth. Experiment with these brushes and make your own. After getting some experi-

ence with the ZBrush toolset and customizing some brushes, you can build a personal library

of brushes. Follow these steps to create and save your own custom brush:

1. Select the Smooth brush from the Brush palette. Set BrushMod to 0 and click the Clone
   button. This creates a copy of the Smooth brush that we can alter rather than replacing
   the brush.


2. At the top of the Brush menu is the Curve submenu. Open this and while holding the
   Shift key alter the curve to look like Figure 2.13. When you press Shift, the Brush
   Curve will convert itself to the Smooth Curve.
   This ensures the brush will be weaker at its center of influence than the default
   Smooth. The far-left point represents the strength of the brush at the outermost ring;
   the right point represents the strength at the center of the brush. Try this brush on a
   surface. Notice how the effect is much softer and less destructive.


3. To save this brush, click Save As and name the new brush softSmooth. If you save
   in Zbrush4/Zstartup/brushPresets, the brush will be available each time you start
   ZBrush. The Brush Manager will also save any alpha and stroke settings when you
   save the brush.
   If you want this brush in the Lightbox instead, save it to Pixologic → ZBrush4 →
   ZBrushes. This causes ZBrush to load the brush into the program without cluttering
   the brush menu with it. You can easily access it in Lightbox whenever needed.

The Clay Brushes

ZBrush 3 includes several brushes designed to take advantage of the ability to interactively

sculpt millions of polygons. These brushes work on the highest subdivision levels of the

ZTool; I call them the Clay brushes. They include Clay, Claytubes, Snakehook, and Rake,

as well as several brushes that are variations, such as Mallet, Slash, and Gouge.

The Clay brushes are designed to take advantage of the capability to manipulate millions

of polygons in real time. Unlike the Standard, Inflate, and Layer brushes, the Clay brushes

function best when the mesh is at a higher subdivision level. These brushes add material in

a loose organic stroke, which feels like actual clay.

Figure 2.14 shows the difference in the same stroke on

a low poly sphere and a higher subdivided one. The

sphere on the left is 8,000 faces while the one on the

right is 2 million. ZBrush will allow you to subdivide

any mesh to a level that the current machine can handle

based on how much physical RAM is installed. In

Chapter 3, “Designing a Character Bust,” we’ll discuss

base meshes and optimizing for ZBrush in more detail.

The Rake tools in ZBrush are based on a type of

real-world sculpting tool. In clay sculpting, rakes are

small, serrated blades that are used to scrape down

clay at levels determined by how sharp and deep the

teeth are (Figure 2.15). Rakes allow the sculptor to

rough in forms in a loose manner, then refine them

Figure 2.13
Modify the
Smooth Curve
to look like
this to create
our custom
softSmooth
brush.

Figure 2.14 Claytubes and rakes on both a low-res and a
high-res mesh. Notice the increased fidelity of the brush
effect on the higher-resolution mesh.