■ Sculpting the Skull 75element that has no underlying topology to support it. Instead of letting the topology
dictate your design, these shapes can be pulled from the existing surface. Later in this
book we’ll use ZBrush’s topology tools to create an organized mesh from this head.
Once the topology is optimized, you can make even more specific edits if you wish to
refine the surface further.
As a final touch, we will use the Clip brushes
to trim the base of the bust so that it has a classi-
cal look. The Clip brushes allow you to cut planes
through your sculpture defined by a line you drag
across the surface. Select the Clip Curve brush
and drag a line across the shoulder, as shown in
Figure 2.98. Notice one side of the line has shading;
this is the side that will be trimmed. You can change
the direction of the cut by dragging the line from the
opposite side of the model. If you want to move the
line, keep holding Shift and press the spacebar to
move and reposition the line. Release Shift to execute
the cut. Figure 2.99 shows the final trimmed bust.
Congratulations! You have now completed
a human head sculpt from nothing more than a
ZBrush primitive sphere. Although this mesh is
not animation ready, ZBrush comes with a suite of
remeshing tools that will allow you to take all your sculpted details and transfer them to a
completely new level 1 mesh that is suitable for animating and rendering in a third-party
application. See Chapter 10, where we’ll remesh this head into an animation-ready model.
In the next chapter, we’ll move away from ZBrush primitives and explore sculpting on poly-
gon models.
Figure 2.99 The final head with trimmed shoulders
Figure 2.98 The ClipCurve brush in action