ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

102 chapter 3 ■ Designing a Character Bust

A benefit of using Insert Mesh to combine subtools is that you can now seamlessly

blend the two subtools together. Once the two meshes are blended, you can remesh across

them and make a new unified ZTool. See Chapter 7 for more information on retopology.

Now using the Clay brush, you’ll blend the horns into the character head.

1. Select the Clay brush from the Brush menu. Be sure the brush is set to ZAdd and the
   BrushMod value is set to 10 or more.


2. Stroke along the edge where the horn intersects the head and the seam will blend away
   (Figure 3.49). While these two objects are not merged geometrically, simply using the
   ZBrush remeshing tools allows you to make a single ZTool from multiple inserted
   meshes.

Figure 3.49 The Clay brush can blend away seams between inserted meshes.

Using the Smooth brush across a Mesh Insert seam can cause the two parts to separate.

Instead of using the Smooth brush, use the Claytubes brush with no alpha. This will have

a smoothing effect on the surface while maintaining the blend. Once the seam is smooth,

you can switch back to the Smooth brush.

That completes the first character you’ll design in this chapter. We have looked at poly-

grouping, creating a sense of gravity in our sculpture, introducing interactive light, and using

Mesh Insert. If you would like to see the entire process involved in creating this character,

check the accompanying DVD. In the next section, you’ll create the character from the cover

of this book. You’ll use many similar techniques, but you’ll add new geometry in a totally

different way.

Advanced Techniques:

Sculpting the Demon Beast

In this section, we’ll explore the steps used to sculpt

the Horned character in Figure 3.50. I designed this

character from the same generic head mesh used

earlier in this chapter. When adding the long horns on

the top of the head, I didn’t use Insert Mesh but chose

a different technique: I added these parts by export-

ing the model to Maya to add new geometry and then

reimporting the model into ZBrush, retaining all the Figure 3.50 The final Demon character