ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

■ Building Accessories with Topology Tools and Mesh Extraction 253

3. Once you’ve drawn the shirt mesh, switch from
   Draw mode to Move mode and start to move
   points on the surface to even out their distribu-
   tion and make sure the armor looks as you want
   it. Continue a strip of polygons over the shoul-
   ders and the back of the neck (Figure 7.59).


4. Once the topology for the shirt is complete, you
   will notice the mesh generated has no thickness—
   it is a simple polygon plane. To correct this, turn
   on skin thickness under Tool → Topology. This
   will generate a mesh with an actual thickness to
   it instead of a flat plane (Figure 7.60). Raise this
   value to .02 and preview the mesh by pressing the
   A key. The thickness slider value will be different
   for most ZTools you work with as it is based on
   the scale of the model itself. The correct range
   will usually fall between .2 and .02. You will see
   the shirt now has a thickness to it (Figure 7.61).
   By pressing Shift+F to enter Frame mode, you will see that ZBrush automatically poly-
   groups the front, back, and thickness of the new part separately. You may find that cos-
   tume elements require a thickness when you are creating a figure for 3D print.


5. Make some final tweaks to the shape of the shirt. Use the Move tool to pull points away
   from the surface and change the shape of the armor. You can also cut in new edges where
   needed (Figure 7.62).


6. When you are ready to generate a ZTool from this topology, raise the adaptive skin
   Density slider to 4 and click the Make Adaptive Skin button. This will create a new
   ZTool in the menu for the shirt with four subdivision levels. Return to the original
   head character and append this part as a subtool. It should fit perfectly and be ready
   for further sculpting (Figure 7.63).
   When drawing topology for drapery, you can use the same methods as you would with
   polygon modeling to localize details and create drapery forms. In Figure 7.64, I have isolated
   the forms of two folds using localized detail in the mesh. By connecting two triangles with a
   line of edges, I can pull the line in and create the recess of a wrinkle.

Figure 7.61 The shirt with thickness. ZBrush polygroups each part by default.

Figure 7.59 Continuing the shirt around the back of the neck

Figure 7.60 The

skin thickness

slider