ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

358 chapter 10 ■ ZSketch and Hard-Surface Brushes

The following exercise illustrates how to use

ZSketch to create an ornate tracery design and proj-

ect it onto a shield.

From the accompanying DVD open the

shield.ztl file. This is a shield shape with a ZSphere

loaded as a subtool (Figure 10.29). We will use the

ZSphere as a base to create ornate ZSketch strokes on

the surface of the sphere.

1. Make sure the ZSphere is selected as the active
   ZTool. Choose Tool → ZSketch and enable Edit
   Sketch. You can now create ZSketch strokes
   directly on the surface of the shield (Figure 10.30).


2. Use the ZSketch brushes to create an ornate pat-
   tern for the shield. Notice that the strokes con-
   form perfectly to the surface as you draw them
   (Figure 10.31).


3. When you are done creating your design, create a unified skin mesh by choosing Tool →
   Unified Skin. Click the Preview button to make sure your settings will capture the detail
   of the sketch. Figure 10.32 shows a sketch that is too fine for the resolution setting. In
   Figure 10.33, I raised the Resolution slider value to 264, allowing the detail to come
   across intact.


4. Create a mesh by choosing Tool → Unified Skin → Make Unified Skin. Remember
   to append the new ZTool as a subtool and hide or delete the original sketch subtool
   (Figure 10.34).

Figure 10.30 With Edit Sketch enabled, you can draw strokes directly on the shield.

Figure 10.28 The Figure 10.29 Open the Shield ZTool.
SoftBind slider
controls the fall-
off assigned for
each joint to the
ZSketch.