ZBrush Geometry Creation:

Zbrush’s strength lies in it’s sculpting ability. However it has some innovative ways for creating geometry to sculpt on.

ZSpheres

This tool allows you to produce an armature and then convert it to a base mesh that you may sculpt on. It makes it very fast to rough out a model.

Dynamesh

When you turn on dynamesh you may regenerate a surface by simply ctrl + clicking in the negative space. This will create an evenly space surface that you can continue to sculpt.

Sculptris Pro

In this mode Zbrush will dynamically create tesselated geometry while you sculpt. You may end up with areas with dense polycount and others that are sparse.

Shadow Box

ZBrush produces a three sided box (side, back, bottom) on which you draw a mask. These masks will result with a mesh based on where they intersect. This is a nice way to quickly produce a simple object.

Retopology

Often when you are creating a model the form may look correct but the topology may be off. There could be geometrical errors, overly dense or sparse polys, non-contour or congruent edges, poor gridflow, or lack of support for proper deformation. This is almost always the case when you sculpt. For this reason you may want retopologize the model. If done manually this means recreating the geometry using the original to build off of.

AutoRetopology

Manually recreating a model through retoplogy is very time intensive. Luckily the software and algorythms have improved enough to allow the computer to autogenerate a more clean correct mesh from one with poor geometry. This is quick and easy but manual will always be better since a human can make more informed descisions. In Zbrush, Zremesher is the primary function to retopologize with optimal results.

Did you remember to?

• Read through this webpage
• Submit Human Details Lab on Blackboard