The Total Beginner to Zbrush

For all of you out there

who have heard of,

but are unfamiliar with,

ZBrush then this new

7 part tutorial series

by Wayne Robon is

for you. The Total

Beginners Guide to

ZBrush is an excellent

starting point to get

you into the world of

ZBrushing

“ZBrush’s brush set is arguably one of its most powerful features, along with its ability to handle truly staggering polygon counts”

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 030 February �008

Zbrush The Total Beginners Guide to

Created In:ZBrush

Section TitleIn this series of 7 articles, I was asked to

produce a beginner’s guide to Zbrush which

assumed that the user does not know a whole

lot about the program or how to use it. These

articles aren’t meant to take the place of either

the help files, or proper training, but should give

you an excellent starting point to get you into the

world of ZBrushing.

In this series we will be working our way through

the basic process of creating a creature bust,

taking it to completion by the last article (Fig01).

We will be starting with a basic Zsphere base

mesh that we will create ourselves and we’ll

use this as our starting point for sculpturing and

finally adding texture to. The reason I’m splitting

the full project into 7 parts is that we can take it

at a beginner’s pace and cover as much ground

as possible for people totally new to Zbrush.

(Plus you’ll end up with a finished digital sculpt

that will give you the confidence to approach

you own projects in a similar manner.)

I will be assuming that, at the very least, you

have read the basics of navigating in ZBrush

from the Zbrush help files. This will help us cut

down the length of the series a little and will

also make sure that as a new user you get the

most out of these lessons. I would like you to

practice what you learn in each lesson, either on

the model we are doing, or on one of your own.

It is important that you do this because the more

that you use Zbrush, the more confident and

at home with it you will become. Assuming you

know how to navigate, we’ll start by covering the

http://www.3dcreativemag.com


The Total Beginners Guide to Zbrush

basic concepts of some of the brushes etc that

we will be using, before creating our Zsphere

base mesh. In the next article we will start the

sculpting ‘proper’.

Basic techniquesShowing and hiding polygons

There are many reasons why you might want to

hide part of your geometry while working on it.

These range from simply wanting to concentrate

on a particular area you are working on, to

wanting to improve the performance of your

image at high polygon counts. To hide some

polygons, first take one of the default models

provided with Zbrush (a selection of them are

available on the splash screen) to test with.

Hold down Shift + Ctrl and drag over the area

you wish to keep. This will then hide everything

else on this tool. To remove more polygons

from this area simply do the same as before, but

before releasing your left mouse stop pressing

the control key. The previously green selection

box will now turn red to let you know that this

area will be hidden.

You can also have your selection changed from

the default box dragging type to a lasso type.

You can find this in some of the interface layouts

and also in the Transform Palette. This then lets

you select much more complex shapes than are

available with the default box drag type (Fig02

and Fig03).

Masking off areas

A mask can be described using a favourite

analogy of mine: just think of them like the

force fields on the star ship enterprise. When



page 89www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 030 February �008


you have an area masked off (or to continue

the analogy, ‘shields up’), that area will remain

unaffected by anything you do to the unmasked

area. There are literally tons of ways to make

masks in Zbrush, but the easiest is to simply

hold down you control key and use your brush to

draw the area you wish to be masked off. Masks

are an essential modelling tool, as it can often

be much easier to sculpt an area if other areas

you do not want to be affected are masked

off. For example, if you wished to close the top

eyelids on a head model, you would simply draw

a mask over the bottom eyelid so that when

you used the move brush, the bottom lid would

remain unaffected (Fig04).

Brushes

ZBrush’s brush set is arguably one of its most

powerful features, along with its ability to handle

truly staggering polygon counts. There is a

different brush for literally any job you might

think of and many of them have more uses

than they first seem to. Brushes are controlled

by the ZIntensity slider - with 0 being no effect

on the model and 100 being a massive effect

on the model - and are used along with Zadd

(this makes the geometry be pulled outwards)

and Zsub (which pushes the geometry into the

model). You can also change the way a brush

reacts with your fall off, which is controlled by

your focal shift.

Which stroke you chose from the Stroke menu

can vastly change what a brush will do when

you use it; as well as more standard stokes,




there are also a selection of scatter strokes and

a drag rectangle one. When used in conjunction

with ZBrush’s different alphas, you can do just

about anything. You can make and import your

own brushes if you want to, but to be honest

the ones that come with Zbrush are pretty damn

good for 95% of the sculpting jobs you will do,

if used correctly. I would recommend simply

messing round with the brushes on a subdivided

Polysphere for a while to get used to the feel.

There are so many options that it is impossible

to cover them all here, but as with everything in

Zbrush, if you are not sure what something does

just hover over it, press the Control key and a

nice box will come up outlining what it is and

what it does.

There are some brushes that it is really

important to know about from the get go.

The smooth brush is one you will use a lot; it

smoothes out areas you are working on to help

you get the surface to your digital sculpture

that you want without any nasty bobbling on

it. It smoothes the transition between adjacent

polygons, but really that’s just a complex way of

saying ‘it does what the name implies’. We will

be covering the difference between some of the

brushes as we progress through this series.

Move Brush Vs Move tool

This confuses new users quite a lot, so I thought

it best to cover it in this article. There are two

sorts of ‘move’ in Zbrush: a move brush, which

when selected will move areas of your model

according to what stroke type, alpha ad falloff

you have and a transform move, which uses

action lines. There are also scale and rotate

transforms as well, but we will go into those

later in the series. For most sculpting jobs you

will probably use the move brush found in the

brush menu, so experiment with it (like the other

brushes) for next time and we’ll take things

further (Fig05 and Fig06).

The Birdman ProjectPart 1 the sphere base mesh

First we’re going to create a base mesh in

Zbrush, using Zspheres to quickly rough out a

basic base mesh that will give us somewhere

to start. Although you could obviously import

a base mesh polygon modelled in a separate

package, it is important to get to grips with the

very basics of Zspheres early on if you are to

gain total confidence in using Zbrush in the

long term. Zspheres are a special type of tool in

Zbrush that enable you to quickly and effectively

block out your base mesh. They are also

used for Zsphere rigs and are part of the core

concepts of Zbrush. A Zsphere is a two-tone

sphere that is used in a few different workflows

in Zbrush such as retopology and Zsphere rig

posing. Making a base mesh will save a lot of

time (as well as space in this series), so as such

we’ll be using them (Fig07).



page 91www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 030 February �008


To create our base mesh, pick the two-tone

sphere from your tool menu and press ‘X’ to

activate X symmetry (Y & Z can also be used

to switch those types of symmetry on and off

as well). Symmetry means that everything

we do on one side of the model automatically

happens on the other side as well, saving us

time. As a symmetrical sculpture can often

look characterless, we will be adding some

asymmetrical detailing later to help to give the

digital sculpture a sense of ‘life’ and ‘being’.

However, at the early stages of this article we

will be keeping it symmetrical to make our job of

sculpting it a bit easier (Fig08).

Draw a Zsphere onto the canvas as shown.

Then, by lining up the two brush icons at the

top of it, draw another. You will notice that when

they are totally aligned they turn green (you

can also use the move tool at this point to move

things into position so it matches what you see

in the image). Set your draw size very low when

dealing with Zspheres as this makes things a

whole lot easier. A larger size brush will mean

when you move a Zsphere you will be affecting

more than the one you may want to, so it makes

things less confusing to have a very small brush

size (Fig09).

Now we want to draw another Zsphere on each

side, but we only need to draw one because the

X symmetry will mirror our actions on the other

side. Next, draw in your neck sphere and use

your move brush to pull it up a bit. By holding

down the Shift key you will now be able to click

on this neck sphere and add another that is the

same size. After doing this, pull it up a little as

shown before finally drawing one for the head

(Fig10 and Fig11).

Save this, as later in the series we will need this

rig to demonstrate one of the ways of posing

our models using Zspheres (Fig12). If you now

scroll down you tool palette, you can go down

to the adaptive skin and you can preview the

base mesh by pressing either ‘A’ or the ‘preview’

button. We can change the way that ZBrush

generates mesh by using the settings below.

(Be sure to experiment with this yourself to get

comfortable with how they work). This will create

an Adaptive skin base mesh that is no longer

linked to our initial Zsphere rig. It is now a set

of polygons and each set of Zspheres has been


give its own polygroup that you can see using

the ‘frame’ button (Shift + F also turns this on

and off by the way) (Fig13).

In the next article we will start to sculpt on our

base mesh and begin the process of making

it look more like a digital sculpt and less like a

group of polygons. Your ‘homework’ before the

next article is to mess around with your new

base mesh and subdivide it a few times (found

in the geometry part of the tools panel). Try

out some of the brushes and hopefully you will

start to feel a bit more at home in preparation

for next time. But make sure that you keep your

adaptive skin tool (by saving in the Tool palette)

and also your Zsphere rig for later use later in

the series.

See you all in Part �!

Wayne RobsonFor more from this artist visit:

http://www.dashdotslash.net

Or contact:

[email protected]


mailto:[email protected]

“When moving areas such as limbs and other body parts, it’s always best to use long flowing movements with your mouse”


who have heard of,




by Wayne Robon is

for you. The Total

Beginner’s Guide to




ZBrushing

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 031 March �008

The Total Beginner’s Guide to Zbrush

Created In:ZBrush

IntroductionIn the last article, after giving a very basic

overview of some of the main features of

ZBrush, we made our basic Zsphere base

mesh. So in this section we will continue with

the project by taking this base mesh and starting

to sculpt it. This part of the series will introduce

you to some of the common brushes used in

ZBrush for low and medium resolution detailing

(Fig01).

ModellingFirst of all we need to make sure that we move

some of the vertexes around on our base mesh.

This will allow us to make sure that we have

resolution where we need it, as opposed to

where we don’t. As the polygon count increases

by a multiple of 4 each time we subdivide

our model, we need to bear in mind that it is

important not to waste polygons where they

aren’t going to be needed. So we start off by moving some around the

eventual eye area, using the move brush set to a size of ‘1’. It’s important

to make sure that we do in fact have X symmetry enabled by hitting the ‘X’

key. This allows us to move the exact vertex we want, without having to

worry about interfering with others that we don’t want to touch.

Next we move some vertexes around the shoulder, neck and

sternocladomastoid area so that we have the geometry flowing in the

direction that we need it to be as we continue with the digital sculpture.

This is an important step as it stops us having to go into very high polygon

counts where it’s not needed and allows us to save some of those

polygons for the final detailing. We can also do some very basic changes

to the shape of the head, and get things so that it looks at least vaguely

human-esque (Fig02).



page 8�www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 031 March �008

Zbrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to

At this stage I wanted to shorten the neck a

bit, so I selected the Move tool (not the Move

brush, the Move tool which can be found on

your toolbar or in the transform menu), and

with X symmetry still enabled, hold down the

Shift key and draw in an upwards direction to

just a bit above the collarbone. This will draw a

mask for us on the area that we do not wish to

affect. It will also automatically blur this mask

to help smooth the transition of our moves.

When moving areas such as limbs and other

body parts, it’s always best to use long flowing

movements with your mouse (where possible).

The reason for this is that if you use a series

of short strokes, you can end up with both an

irregular looking posed area and loss of rhythm

in the pose itself (Fig03).

Now we need our action lines to be in place

before making any moves on our geometry at

all. An action line has a line with 3 circles drawn

upon it; if you drag by the edge of a circle it will

move the circle itself into a new position (moving

the centre circle will move the whole action line).

If you drag from the centre of any circle it will

affect your geometry using whatever transform

tool you have active at the time. As such

you can use either the Move, Scale or Rotate

transform tools with an action line.

So start by drawing your action line from just

above your masked area (making sure the line

starts in the centre of the neck if looking from

the side) and hold Shift as you draw slightly

above the top of the head. Press ‘X’ to turn off

your symmetry for a moment and, by clicking

and dragging on the centre circle, move it so

that it is now in the very centre of the geometry

when looking from the front. You can now

gently move the neck down a bit and press ‘X’

again to turn symmetry back on. After making

sure that you are satisfied, press the Edit button

on your toolbar to exit the transform tool.

We are now ready to subdivide our model

3 times by using either the Divide button in

the geometry section of the Tool palette, or

by hitting Ctrl+D. Make sure that you have

the Standard brush selected and the default

‘Dots’ stroke type. Hold down Shift and draw

in the basic shape of the eye holes in a human

skull as shown in the image. As this isn’t a

human bust, we do have a certain amount of

room for interpretation. However, I would say

that it’s always a good idea to have a number

of human references for both the skull and

muscles handy, as this helps to make your

sculpt more believable. Just because we’re

creating something from fantasy doesn’t mean

that we should ignore the rules of anatomical

construction! (Fig04)


page �0www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 031 March �008


Now click once on an empty part of the canvas

to invert the mask, switch to the Move brush and

pull the eye areas into the head a little. Once

done, hold down Ctrl and drag on an empty part

of the canvas to remove the mask completely.

We can temporarily change to the Smooth brush

when we have most brushes active by holding

down the Shift key - do that and lightly smooth

out the transitions around the eye areas a

little. For those of you that find that the revised

Smooth brush in ZBrush 3.1 feels a bit different

to the older one in V3 and V �, I’ll provide a link

to my own version, which works the same as

the old Smooth brush. To set it as your default,

simply open it up (or put it into your Start-up

folder in the Brushes folder, and hold down the

Shift key and click on it from the brush palette

in ZBrush). It will now be your default Smooth

brush whenever you hold down the Shift key.

Should you need to, you can add any number of

custom, alternative brushes this way (Fig05).

Hold down the Ctrl key again and draw in a

circle that will eventually become our eye holes.

Don’t make them too big at this stage as we will

be doing a lot of work on them in the following

articles. Switch to your Standard brush, press

the Alt key and draw to push the geometry

inwards as shown (Fig06).

Now remove the mask you did before and gently

move the eyes so that they are a little bigger.

Again don’t worry too much about them at this

stage as we will be working on them more as we

progress (Fig07).

Having said that, you will want to move the

centres of each eye now, so that they have a

curve to them and the eyeball will be a better

fit once we once we add it. You can do this

best by holding down the Shift + Ctrl keys and

dragging over the area you wish to keep around

the eyes. It’s much easier to add a curve to the

eyes by looking from the inside behind them and

above. (Do make sure that you have ‘Double’

on in your Tools >> Display section by the way.)

(Fig08)

Shift + Ctrl and click on a blank area of canvas

to show everything again. Quickly mask off the

eye area and pull the eyes further back into the

head (if need be). Be sure to clear the mask

when you are done. If you find at any point that

a mask has a little too hard a transition you

can further blur it by holding down Ctrl and left

clicking somewhere on the mask itself (Fig09).



page �1www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 031 March �008

Zbrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to

Now taking the Clay Tubes brush, start to beef

up some areas such as the jaw bone, cheek

bones and eyebrows by running it in smooth

strokes over these areas. A ZIntensity setting

of between 10-13 should do nicely; adjust your

brush size as needed. Smooth these areas

out using the Smooth brush before continuing

- you aim is to keep the forms that you have

just created, but lessen any sharp transitions

between different areas of the face. For those

of you with traditional sculpting experience, this

stage can be thought of as similar to setting up

the planes of the face, although in this case we

are only adding flatter areas of digital clay where

we need them to define our main forms.

Holding down the Alt key, use the same brush to

hollow out the cheeks area slightly and smooth

this out a little again. We now want to beef up

the nose and mouth area, as we will be adding

a beak at a later point. As you will have no

doubt noticed by now, at this stage we are only

concerned with getting our large shapes and

forms blocked out in a fairly rough way. This

enables us to go back over these areas and

refine them later (Fig10).

Using the Move brush, make sure that the

mouth isn’t flat from the side and he doesn’t

look like he has been hit in the face with a

shovel. One of the main issues that people new

to ZBrush have when doing a human-esque

head, is that they make the front of the face too

flat. The human face is not flat! The mouth

area is like a flattened horse shoe shape. While

it’s outside of the remit of this series to go into

human anatomy in detail, I would urge those

new to ZBrush to (at the very least) have plenty

of references handy. This is also a good time to

do some last major form changes, if need be.

In the next article in this series, we are going to

start making this model look a bit more pleasing

to the eye and continue to block out the torso.

Don’t worry if you find it takes you a long time to

complete this section, getting your initial forms

correct is the most important part of a digital

sculpture because without it, no matter how

hard you try later it will still not look ‘right’. Your

homework for next time is to practise what you

have learned so far in the first two articles of

this series and try and find plenty of reference

photos on Google of human heads and torsos.

If you have access to an anatomy book, that is

even better. See you all next time.



Or contact:

[email protected]





“if it’s to look believable then it’s vital to get the forms correct before going anywhere near the detailing stage.”


who have heard of,




by Wayne Robon is

for you. The Total





ZBrushing

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 032 April 2008

The Total Beginner’s Guide to Zbrush Zbrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to

Created In:ZBrush

IntroductionUp until now in this series, we have been

creating what amounts to a fairly generic

medium-resolution sculpture that could be

turned into a whole host of different creatures.

The advantage of knowing h+ow to block out

common forms such as these is that each time

you sculpt something in ZBrush that is human

or ‘human-esque’, you will be refining what you

learned the last time you did something vaguely

similar. It is in this way that we improve as

digital sculptors. Making mistakes is a positive

thing, because without them we would never

learn and improve. So an artist who never

makes mistakes is an artist who never grows

artistically (Fig01).

Adding the Eyeballs…Making Eyeballs from a Sphere PrimitiveAs we have taken this model about as far as we

can in the eye area without the eyeballs being

there, it is time that we added some (Fig02).

These will help us when it comes to making sure

that the proportions of the eye area correct, and

they’ll also help us to sculpt the upper and lower

eyelids correctly later in the series. To add our

eyeballs we are going to use the default ZBrush



The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZbrushThe Total Beginner’s Guide to Zbrush

sphere primitive that is available in your tools

menu by left clicking on your current tool. This

will bring up a pane that contains many other

primitives and tools (along with any others that

you have currently loaded into ZBrush at the

time). Select the sphere primitive and it should

appear loaded into the viewport on its own. At

this time we can’t use this sphere because it is

still a ‘primitive’ and not a polymesh that we can

sculpt (Fig03).

To make this primitive into a polymesh, simply

look at the very top of the tool menu and press

the ‘Make polymesh3D’ button. This will then

generate your polymesh from the primitive

sphere and load it into the viewport in exactly

the same position as the primitive was. So

it looks for the entire world as if nothing has

happened! So now we have a sphere that we

are going to make into not one, but two eyes.

You may have noticed that the main model that

we were working on is also visible in the tools

menu near the top. If you click on this now then

it will once again become active in the viewport

and we can start putting the sphere into the right

place as one of the eyes.

Adding Them to the Main SculptFirst of all, go to your Tool menu and open up

the section marked ‘SubTool’; this is where

we will add the eyes, with each one being a

separate SubTool. So look at the bottom of

the ‘SubTool’ section and click on the ‘Append’

button. Once again, this brings up your pane

with the other ZBrush tools in it. You should

see your sphere polymesh on the very top line,

so select that and it will then be added to your

current model as a SubTool. You will notice that

the size and position is all wrong at the moment,

but don’t worry as we’ll be sorting that out next!

Our next big job is to resize and position this

eye in the correct place. Before we continue,

let us recap again on how the transpose lines

work for our transformation tools, such as Move,

Scale and Rotate. At the end of each line you

will see a circle with another in the centre of the

line. By left-clicking and holding down we can

drag the transform line into position by doing

so on the edges of any of the circles. If you

drag by the ones on either end then that end

will move, with the other end acting as a pivot

point. By dragging by the edge of the centre

circle you will be able to drag the whole action

line itself into place. Clicking in the centre of

each circle works in a similar way. Clicking and

dragging in the centre of either of the two circles

on the ends of the action line transforms the tool

in a uniform way (depending on the whether

the Move, Scale or Rotate is currently active).

Clicking and dragging on the centre of the

centre circle will transform in certain directions.

So if, for example, you had the Scale transform

active with the action line vertically on the centre

line of your model, and you dragged on the

centre of the circle at either end, it would scale

up or down the entire model in a uniform way.

While dragging, using the centre circle would

scale the model horizontally, but not vertically

(Fig04).



page 77www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 032 April 2008


Make sure you have the sphere polymesh as

the active SubTool by checking that you have

it highlighted in the SubTool section of the Tool

menu. First of all, select the scale transform

tool and then left-click and drag an action line

outwards from the centre of the Sphere. (If you

hold down the Shift key at the same time you

can constrain it to the nearest surface and stop

it whizzing off backwards in the Z direction in

the viewport). Now, using the outer-most action

line circle, left-click and drag in the centre of

this circle and scale the sphere up or down, as

needed, to an approximate size that looks right

to you.

We now change to the Move transform tool.

You will notice that our action line stays in the

same place that we left it before we changed

from the Scale transform tool to the Move

transform tool – feel free to move your action

line into a place that feels good to you. Now it is

a simple matter of moving the sphere into place,

as our eye. Be aware that when you’ve just

started using action lines and transform tools,

it’s perfectly normal for it to take a little while for

you to get used to them. (It’s much the same as

switching from driving a right-hand car to drive a

left-handed one - it takes a little time to adjust!)

Once you have your sphere in the right place

you may need to resize it again to make sure it

fits comfortably into place.

Using your move brush, and with your main

model active in the SubTool palette, move the

eyelids into position over the eye. Use your

painted masks (made by holding down the

Ctrl key and painting where you wish it to be)

and get everything into the right place. Give

yourself plenty of time; getting the eyelids into

the correct position can take a little time when

you’re first starting out. Once you’re happy

that they are in the right place, and the lids look

correct (as shown), make your eyeball the active

SubTool. At the top of the tools palette you

will see a button marked ‘Clone’; press this to

make a copy of the eyeball, which will now be

in your tools pane but not active. Add this as a

SubTool, again by hitting the ‘Append’ button.

It will appear as if nothing has happened yet

because both eyeballs now share exactly the

same space. So open up the ‘Deformation’

panel and hit the ‘Mirror’ button to correct this.

You should have two eyeballs in your sculpt

now, so change back to your main SubTool

again, ready to continue.

Continuing with SculptingHolding down the Ctrl key, paint a mask for the

clavicle (as shown), remembering that if you

hold down Ctrl + Alt you can paint to remove

an area from your mask (Fig05). Using your

Standard brush (with the default settings),

simply run it over the area to block this in.

Then smooth the bottom area of this where it

intersects with the chest area (Fig06).



The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZbrushThe Total Beginner’s Guide to Zbrush

We now paint another mask, this time to define

where the sternocleidomastoid muscle runs

from behind the ear (on a human) to the ends

of the clavicle beneath the bottom of the neck,

as shown. Depending on how well-built and

muscular your character is, you may also

want to add a mask for the tendon running

from the bottom part of the previous masked

area to the end part of the clavicle as well (the

sternocleidomastoid muscle splits into two parts

where it meets and joins the clavicle). Now

change to your Clay brush and select the first

round alpha (alpha number 01) and run it over

these areas with a ZIntensity of 50 and a size of

74 (Fig07 and Fig08).

Hold down your Shift key to take away any

sharp edges and lightly smooth the area you’ve

just done. Remember the idea is to soften these

areas, not to wash them out. Using the same

brush, lightly build up the back of the jaw area

(as shown) and remember to smooth things out

again a little afterwards. If you spot any other

areas that you feel could do with a very light

touch, feel free! Just don’t go mad; we’ll be

going back to the torso again later.

Blocking Out the TorsoAgain, I want you to mask off the areas

shown, as these will help us to define where

each muscle group will be and as such make

the job of blocking the torso out a bit easier.



page 79www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 032 April 2008


Remember that because this is a series for

beginners, I’ve somewhat simplified the forms.

The more advanced readers can feel free

to change this area on their own sculpts to

something more complex if they want to (Fig09).

Once the masked areas for the deltoid are

drawn on your ZBrush sculpt, use your Inflate

brush with a ZIntensity of 10 and a size of 54

to increase the volume of them. For any areas

that require a lot of volume to be added, such

as the back where the shoulder blades are, use

the clay tubes brush and smooth the area out

afterwards. This will save considerable time

when blocking out (Fig10).

Next we need to add some volume to the

pectoral area of the chest, so for this we will use

a new brush: the ‘Magnify brush’. The magnify

brush will magnify an area under the cursor

to help us add volume. In this case, we want

a ZIntensity of 25 and a size of 84 and a very

light tough. If you have too heavy a hand he

will end up looking like he’s taken way too many

steroids, so be careful and remember to use the

undo button! Smooth this area out, as shown,

and make sure that there is a slight indentation

next to the upper part of the deltoid/clavicle

intersection area (Fig11).

If you now flip to the underside of your model

and use the Move brush, you can start to add

some shape to the pectoral area and correct

any mistakes before we continue onwards in the

next part of the series.

In Closing…Now we have our digital sculpt looking a bit

more interesting (Fig12), in the next part we can

start to refine him to some degree. Although it

can be tempting at this stage to go crazy with

alphas and add masses of detail, I would urge

restraint (using a straight jacket if need be!).

The main reason is that, as I’ve mentioned

before in this series, if it’s to look believeable

then it’s vital to get the forms correct before

going anywhere near the detailing stage. For

next time, practice all that you have learned so

far and make your first sculpt of your own design

using the things you have learned so far from

this series. Catch you next time!



Or contact:

[email protected]





who have heard of

but are unfamiliar with

ZBrush, then this new

7-part tutorial series

by Wayne Robson is

perfect for you!

This complete




you stuck into the

world of ZBrush-ing.

This month Wayne

brings us Part Four –

enjoy!!

“The head is not a beach ball! This may seem an odd thing to say, but beginners usually treat the head as a large rounded shape with the face put on the front, looking far too flat!”

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 033 May 2008

The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrushThe Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush

Created In:ZBrush

IntroductionBy this point we’ve got to the stage where we

have the more important things, such as the

head shape, eyes and part of the chest, blocked

in. So now it’s time to start the process of pulling

everything together. Hopefully you have been

practicing the steps that we’ve done so far

and have created your own characters, so you

should start to be feeling a lot more at home

with ZBrush by now. There is literally hundreds

of direction this model could take from this point,

from a design point of view alone. The beauty

of using such low resolution bases, such as

the one we made using Zspheres, is that we

aren’t walled into any decisions made during the

polygon stage of modelling.

We need to start moving on towards the back

area of the sculpture and start to roughly block

in the forms we need, before adding some

details to make him look a little more like our

final character. You will notice I don’t go into

fine detail at this stage as I’m basically only

concerned with the main forms, masses and

medium resolution forms. Any corrections I

leave towards the end, once the main design

and character has been nailed down. If any

areas are hard for you to get right then don’t

worry, as at the end of this series 3DCreative

will be making a free video of the modelling

sessions I did on this character available!!

Back to ModellingPick up your clay brush with no alpha active and

Zadd set to 50. We’ll be using the ‘Dots’ stroke

type and I’ll be stepping the brush size up and

down as I need to. Let’s start this session by

adding some mass to the shoulder blades. As

this sculpt doesn’t have the benefit of arms to

tell us where they should be or orientated, we’ll

start by making them fairly neutral and we can

change the latter once he’s posed near the end.

Once you’ve beefed this area up, as shown, it’s

time to beef up the area between the shoulder

blades running up the neck and round to the

front. The Trapezius can be tricky to get right for

those without some anatomical understanding,

as it inserts into the top of the shoulder blade

and runs in a diamond-like shape up to the base

of the skull, and also wraps around to the front

of the Clavicle. I would strongly advise having

some sort of anatomical reference handy when

doing anything human- or animal-based. You


The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush

page 87www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 033 May 2008

The Total Beginner’s Guide to ZBrush ZBrush The Total Beginner’s Guide to

cannot make up anatomy without some basis

in reality; if you do, it’s going to look bad! Every

monster or creature, no matter how fantastic or

ugly-looking, must have some basis in real-life

anatomy!

Beef up the Trapezius in the diamond shape

leaving a notch just below the neck for the 9th

vertebrae. Run your clay brush around the

shape of the Trapezius and make it attach to

the front of the clavicle. Add some mass to the

very base of the skull, just above where it meets

the neck, and follow this around to the sides of

the skull before smoothing the areas out a little

(Fig.01).

Back to the FrontThe head is not a beach ball! This may seem

an odd thing to say, but beginners usually treat

the head as a large rounded shape with the face

put on the front, looking far too flat! The sides of

a human skull are pretty flat indeed, so as our

creature has a basis in human anatomy we must

make sure that those areas are flattened. In

this case I also hollowed them out with the clay

brush, as shown, to add a less human feel to

him. Also add more mass to the arches, running

the length of his skull from the area where they

intersect the brow part of the skull. As a result

of changes to the head, pay attention that the

Sternocleidomastoid muscle doesn’t start to look

out of shape. This should run from behind the

ear (if he has any ears, that is!) to the end of

the clavicle in the centre, below the neck. These

basic landmarks help to keep your ‘human-

esque’ digital sculptures looking a little more

realistic, although no one expects you to make a

masterpiece first time out (Fig.02)!

Facing Up Add more weight to the cheekbones, lower chin

area and the fold of skin between the chin and

base of the neck. You ideally want him to look

almost as if he has a larger lower jaw than upper

one, as shown. Let’s isolate the head area to

make it easier for us to work on it undisturbed.

So, turn on the frame mode (a shortcut of Shift +

F toggles it on and off, by the way!), press down

Control + Shift and left-click on the head area of




the mesh. This will hide every other part of the

mesh (although it doesn’t affect other subtools,

such as the eyes). If you do the same shortcut

again, only this time outside your model, it will

reveal the previously hidden areas (Fig.03).

Using your Standard brush with its default

settings, carve a line into the face that will make

our mouth area and then start to build up the

lips. Add some mass to the upper and lower

eyelids and, to help make them look less like

‘holes in the mesh’ (although we’ll address that

a bit later), paint a mask by holding down your

control key near the outer edge of the bottom

lid and then adding some mass to the top lid

over this, to give us a nice demarcation line. Do

the same with the inside of the lower lid, near

the nasal, until it looks as shown in the image

(Fig.04).

Let’s use our move brush now to change the

shape of the head a little, especially in the

mouth area. Step down a few subdivision levels

and pull the edges of the mouth outwards a bit.

Then, from a side on view (remembering you

can hold down the Shift key to snap it into a

proper side on view), pull the mouth edges back

a touch (Fig.05).

Step back up your subdivision levels again and

paint a mask over the eye socket areas, then

blur this mask by holding down the Shift key

and left-clicking on part of the masked area.

(You can also blur the mask from the masking

section of the tools palette.) Using the move

brush again, pull the brows into an angry-looking

position, as shown before unmasking the area.

If you find the transition of the brow to the upper

eye area a bit too harsh, use your smooth brush

on a lower subdivision level before stepping

up again and smoothing out any areas that still

need it (Fig.06).

Again, paint a mask over the eye socket area

and then invert it by either going into the

masking section of the Tool palette or by holding

down the control key and left-clicking outside

your model. Then, using a smaller move brush,

start to pull the eyelids into a more pleasing



page 89www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 033 May 2008


shape. We are looking for realism but also

something that helps the model to have some

personality. Smooth the transition from the lower

lid to the cheekbone out a bit, as skin stretches

over this area and the fat there. We want some

definition in his anatomy, but we don’t want him

to look anorexic (Fig.07)!

Mask off the lower jaw and make sure you are

totally masking the lower lip, and then pull the

upper lip down to meet it. As we are closing

the mouth he’s not going to need any teeth.

Then start to pull the almost-beak shape of the

front of his mouth area out, as shown. Do this

in a combination of a side view and a ¾ view

(Fig.08).

Back to the ChestSelect your clay tubes brush but change the

alpha from its default to Alpha 01, which is the

1st round alpha. I save this out and have it set

as a custom brush on my set up as I find I use it

a lot at this stage in the modelling process. It’s

not as harsh as the square-shaped clay tubes

and less washed out than no alpha set at all,

as in the clay brush (when its set to its default)

(Fig.09).

Use this to beef up the front of the Deltoid and

carve some indentations into the Pectoral area.

These striations aren’t technically “correct”

but they do help the chest area to look slightly

more interesting until later on. Start by carving

the area in and then add mass between these

carved in areas, as shown, and smooth things

out as they travel towards the deltoid. Taking

the Slash1 brush, carve in some lines, as

shown, beneath the deltoid where the Pectorals

intersect under the deltoid (again, as shown).

The Pectoral muscles are in 5 strip-like sections,

and I often pull a line in near the armpit on

the Pectoral area to help add a bit of interest.

Smooth these out a fair bit once done (Fig.10).

The nest bit is hard to describe but it will make

total sense in the video when you see it… On

the front of the chest and shoulders, carve some

light lines in using the Slash1 brush and then

smooth them out about 90% until they are barely

visible. These help the process of detailing later

on to look a little more real, and are done “by

feel” to a large degree. Go to the face and do

a similar thing, only this time you are carving in




stress wrinkles where the skin is stretching or

regularly moves. Only smooth them out 50% this

time. Use the images shown as reference to see

where I’ve added them and try to work out why

each set is in the place that it is (Fig.11).

The wrinkles and stress lines on the brow area

are worth special attention as they will change

from person to person, creature to creature and

from expression to expression. In some ways

they are a bit like a fingerprint. If, for example,

you put the wrinkles from Yoda’s forehead

and put them onto another creature, it not only

would look strange but it would also be obvious

they were Yoda’s wrinkles. Such character

defining areas as these are best to sculpt to fit

the character or creature that you are doing and

not a “one size fits all” approach. If you do then

it will only end up with a string of fairly identical

looking models with very little variety (Fig.12)!

Slashing Away…Change to your Slash2 brush; this brush is

rather special in that it not only slashes like the

Slash1 brush but also makes one side of the

slash protrude while the other stays level. So,

as such, it’s a very versatile brush that many

overlook – I use it on just about every model

and never cease finding new ways to use it from

hair to clothing folds to adding some harsher

fine detail (as we are about to do) (Fig.13)!

Take it down in size till it’s fairly small (there’s a

certain amount of trial and error to this part so

have your Control + Z undo keys ready till you

have it set the way you want!) and start to gently

carve in fine lines over the top of the ones you

previously carved in, using the Slash1 brush.

After carving in each ‘group’, smooth them out

towards the ends until they fit in with the forms

of the model correctly. The effect is subtle but

will help our end result a great deal.

We’ve done quite a lot this session and he’s

starting to resemble our final sculpt quite a bit

more closely than he did at the start. As ever,

practice what you learned this session and the

previous ones on models of your own design to

get as comfortable with them as you can. We’re

going to do a lot of work next time so make sure

you are comfortable with the tools we’ve used

so far before next month (Fig.14). Catch you all

in part 5!



Or contact:

[email protected]





“…the better you know your anatomy the more you can use it to bend and shape it to your will and create believable-looking models!”


who have heard of

but are unfamiliar with


7-part tutorial series

by Wayne Robson is

perfect for you!

This complete




you stuck into the


This month Wayne

brings us Part Five –

enjoy!!

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 000 Month 2007


Created In:ZBrush

IntroductionNow that we have our forms blocked out from

the previous articles, we can now move onto

adding some finer details to help bring this bust

to life! Load up the model that we’ve been

working on so far and set the Slash2 brush as

your active brush, with the dots stroke selected.

A Short Anatomical Diversion It’s time to start taking into account human

anatomy now, especially now that we are in the

detailing stage. While you can use a selection

of alphas on your model to give it some skin

detail, the problem I personally have with this

is that anyone with the same set of alphas as

yourself will have a similar look to their models.

So I prefer to detail by hand and use only default

alphas available in ZBrush itself, for a couple of

jobs here and there. The plus points of this are

that you end up with a unique look to your skin

texture, and it’s also very good practice (Fig.01)!

One area of anatomy that I do want to cover,

at least in passing for those of you unaware

of it, is the pectoral muscles that fan out in 5

sections from the clavicle (collar bone), all the

way down the sternum. In our model we will be

exaggerating these quite a bit to give a more

interesting look to the chest area. As mentioned

before in this series, the better you know your

anatomy the more you can use it to bend and

shape it to your will and create believable-

looking models (Fig.02)!

Abreast of the SituationWith your Slash2 brush active, start to make

some very light lines where these 5 sections

join to the sternum. Once done, wash them

out again about 70% by smoothing out, holding

down the Shift key. We need to start taking into

account where the skin will fold and be under

stress so that we can add folds in these areas.

This isn’t a simple concept to grab at first and

comes with practice and observation. There’s

no “short cut” to be totally honest and it’s

something every organic artist is always striving

to improve (Fig.03)!

So start to hunt out areas where the skin will

stretch from one area to another, or be under

stress, and use your Slash2 brush to add some

stress wrinkles to denote stretching skin. Areas

that I added these wrinkles to include the area

where the 2 sections of the clavicle come

together, where the skin stretches near the

sternocladomastoid, and the centre of the neck.

Now make some deeper slashes to show the

different sections of the deltoid muscle. In most

humans this isn’t very visible, unless they’ve

done some quite heavy training. But in this

case, as it’s a creature we’re making up, we

are allowed to go as nuts as we like! After

essentially ‘dividing up’ the deltoid, smooth

things out again a little to help the forms to work

together (Fig.04).

Add now some slashes on the back of the neck

to help us give the impression of folding skin

under compression. We can work on these

further, although in the case of this model, as

it’s meant to be seen front on, we’d be doing

this only for practice. Add more light slashes to

denote the stretching and movement of the skin

down the spine area and around the shoulder




blades. Try to imagine where the skin will be compressed or stretched.

Feel free to stand in front of a mirror and see how your own skin moves

as your body is in different poses. You may feel strange doing it at first,

but it’s surprising how often your own body can give you more information

than any anatomy book. You are your own ‘life model’ that’s available 24

hours a day, 7 days a week (Fig.05)!

Continue to work your way around the entire torso and neck area adding

these stress wrinkles until you’re happy that they look ‘right’. Take special

care in the area where the pectoral feeds under the deltoid, as you can

add some nice wrinkles and folds in this area.

Heads Up!Now we’ve started to add some early details to the torso (and are by no

means finished with it yet!), we can also make sure that the head area is

just as detailed to keep things in balance. I personally prefer many times

to “nail” the head area – personality and looks-wise – as it gives me lots

of ideas and information as to what sort of look the body area needs. But

keep in mind that every artist works their own way to achieve the look that

they personally want as part of their style (Fig.06).

The first area I want to address to give the

character… well, more character, is the eyes.

At the moment they are a bit too wide open and

surprised, so use masks (as detailed earlier in

the series) close the eyes a bit to give him more

of a mean look.

One of my “secret tips” is to not only take

inspiration for eyes and ‘eye poses’ from

humans, but to also be sure to look at animals...

You’ll be surprised how much more ‘human’

an animalistic eye pose can make a character!

Hold down Shift + Ctrl and left-click on the head

area to isolate it (thus making things easier

for us to work with). Right now the face is still

effectively just a number of sections that do not

meld into one another at all and needs a fair bit

of work to tighten it up. So take your clay brush

with alpha 01 and start to melt the lower eyelid

into the cheekbones area a little more. Far too

often, sculpts (including my own) can end up

looking as a collection of facial parts taken from

a shelf, and not like a living breathing being.

This is often due to them not working in unison

and no effort being made to working out how

one part would affect the skin in another part.

So in this case the cheek bones have rather



page 127www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 000 Month 2007


taught skin, so this will naturally pull the skin a

little tighter over the bottom lids. This way we

won’t have as big a chance of large, droopy eye

bags (Fig.07)!

Switch to your elastic brush with alpha 27

selected and switch on “lazy mouse” by hitting

your ‘L’ key. Start to draw a line (while holding

down the Alt key) around the insides of the

upper and lower eyelid. We do this as a sort of

an illusion, to add some shadows and highlights

to simulate the look that you get by the many

complex forms in the eyelids. As this is a

beginners guide to ZBrush (added to which an

in-depth study of the eyes and eyelids would

take a long time and a lot more space!), on this

occasion we’ll use a number of optical illusions

and shortcuts. As you learn more about ZBrush

and digital sculpting, you’ll use these less often,

unless you are speed sculpting (Fig.08).

Drag some lines out from each corner of the eye

as this is always an area where skin is under

stress. We blink and move our eyes a lot in a

single day, so as a result the area is one of the

first to form wrinkles. Add a few lines above the

eye to let us make them into skin folds later on

in the sculpting process.

This time we’re going to use an alpha to help

us – it’s one we’ll be using a lot in the rest of

these tutorials and one I find very useful for skin

detailing! Alpha 58 is simply a number of wavy

vertical lines, but combined with the Freehand

stroke type and any of a number of the brushes,

and you have some instant fine wrinkles! So set

your ZSub to about 54 on your elastic brush and

start to drag out some fine wrinkles. Start with the eyes before moving on

to the area where the brow meets the nasal area (Fig.09).

Please make sure that you follow the direction of the skin. Skin, like a

tree, has a “grain” – go against it and it will give you nothing but badness!

However, work with the flow of the skin and the anatomy and you’ll get

mush better results each time. Work between the brow on the fine folds

there, as well as the main folds on the brow itself.




The details we’ll be adding from now onwards

can be hard to see in a screen capture, so I’ve

again changed to my favourite ‘B+W’ matcap

I made an age back. (I’ll make this available

along with the video once the series is complete.

One word of warning is that all Matcaps can

exaggerate the forms, so take care not to rely

on them too much for your sculpt to look good!)

When using Alpha 58 and a freehand stroke, try

to very slightly change angles and go over the

same stroke again. This gives a wonderful cell-

like, almost cross-hatching effect to the skin that

is easy to do and looks much more impressive

than it actually is to do. Later, we’ll go over the

entire sculpt’s head using this same technique,

so bare that in mind for a later article (Fig.10).

Mask off the nasal and mouth area and slightly

inflate around it to add more of a feeling of skin

folding over the edges of it. As he is a sort of a

‘birdman’, my idea was that this area would still

be somewhat hard, like the beak on a bird, and

so skin would fold around it. Using the Standard

brush, carve out some very wide and very

shallow curving lines to help with the main form

of the ‘beak’ area. These will not be very visible

in the images as I am talking about a very subtle

(but very important) look.

Unhide the rest of the body of the model and,

using the smooth brush, start to smooth out any

areas that you feel need either to be merged in

better with the surrounding anatomy, or that do

not work. Be ruthless: sometimes you have to

give up some part you like for the good of the

model (Fig.11)!

Now that we are getting towards the end of

this section of The Beginners Guide to ZBrush,

let’s make those spheres we’re using for our

eyes look a little better, eh? Take one of

the eyes and subdivide it to level 4 to give

us enough polygons. Then select alpha 12,

which is a sharp-edged round alpha, and the



page 129www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 000 Month 2007


Drag rectangle stroke with the Standard brush

selected (you can also use the layer brush for

this turned very low down). Using a ZIntensity

of 14 and in ZAdd mode, drag this circle out in

the centre of the eye. I should warn you that the

chances of you getting this bang on the money

first time are slim, so have your Ctrl + Z undo

shortcut keys handy! This gives us a nice effect

on the shape of the eye itself and provides us

with some nice highlights. Like a lot of things

in digital sculpting (and traditional sculpting),

subtle things can really help with the look of a

sculpture.

You are now free to either mirror it across using

either the method we used in one of the earlier

articles or even the subtool master plug-in that

is available free from Pixologic. But if you are

more confident you can simply ‘eyeball it’ (pun

intended!), and do it by hand on the other eye

(Fig.12)

Now that it’s time to wind up another section

of this beginners guide, I’ll point out that in the

next (and last) two sections, this model will

suddenly get a lot more detailed. So far I’ve

outlined what amounts to (for me) 38 minutes

work. Although the parts we are to do in the last

two articles take up the same timeframe, they

are much more repetitive and hence a lot easier.

So practice what we’ve done so far and keep

experimenting!



Or contact:

[email protected]





who have heard of,



seven-part tutorial series

by Wayne Robson is

perfect for you!

This total Beginner’s

Guide to ZBrush is an

excellent starting point

to get you stuck into the


This month Wayne brings

us Part Six – enjoy!!

“Pay particular attention to areas with a lot of detail, such as the eyelids; if you feel that a fold, crease or wrinkle needs to be added then go ahead and do it, using the same techniques that we’ve used up to this point in the series. ”

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 035 July 2008


Created In:ZBrush

IntroductionIn the previous articles in this series we have

gone from a very simple base mesh generated

from ZSpheres, to the stage where we now

need to start adding some fine detail. Although

this takes the most time by far, for the most

part it is very repetitive. I’m not a big believer in

simply dragging out alpha with detail already in it

all over the model, as this does not give you the

required amount of control. It can also end up

giving us a very “samey” look. So to help further

your ZBrush skill set, we are going to add the

skin detailing by hand in this article. This is by

far the most rewarding way to do it, and gives

the added benefit of letting us add the detail that

we want (rather than the detailing that we may

be “stuck with” from a set of alphas) (Fig.01).

Tidying UpBefore we start the skin detailing in earnest, I’d

like you to go over all of your medium resolution

forms and make sure that they are tightened.

Be sure to sharpen them up and make sure

that they look correct to your eye before

continuing with this tutorial. It’s a lot easier to

do this now than to come back later (although

not impossible). So please make sure that you

are happy with the direction that your model is

taking, and that you feel you have gone as far

as you can in the time that you have allowed so

far. Pay particular attention to areas with a lot

of detail, such as the eyelids; if you feel that a

fold, crease or wrinkle needs to be added then

go ahead and do it, using the same techniques

that we’ve used up to this point in the series.

(Fig.02)

Using the Displace brush, with the freehand

stroke type selected, add in some finer wrinkles

between the eyebrow in the forehead area and

under the eye bags, as shown. This is your final

chance to get things as you want them before

moving onto the final stages of detailing. (In

the last article in the series we’ll then pose our

model and set it up for rendering!)

Detail Pass 1Select your Inflate brush with ZAdd set to

a ZIntensity of 10, alpha 58 active and the

freehand stroke type. We are going to use this



page 95www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 035 July 2008


random lines out and hope for the best, as 99% of the time this isn’t going

to look right. To detail skin of any type right, it’s worth putting the effort in

to make it believable.

Now add your cross hatching at a slight angle (between 5 and 15 degrees

or so seems to look best for me). Once you’ve done this, the skin in that

area shouldn’t look as shiny and boring as it did a moment ago. But,

rather importantly, the detail is still flat. There’s no life to it at all because

real skin isn’t uniform in nature, nor does it have all wrinkles of the same

depth. It varies and it’s that randomness that helps to give it a sense of

realism. It’s that random nature of raised and recessed areas of varying

depths that we need to capture in any high frequency skin detailing.

So to do this, change the alpha on your Inflate brush to alpha 35 and turn

brush to add our first pass at the skin detail. I

find it best to add high frequency skin detailing

in a number of passes, as this allows me to

create highly complex skin effects easily by

mixing simple default ZBrush alphas together

(it also shows that custom alphas aren’t a

requirement to add this sort of detailing as it can

be done using ZBrush “out of the box”) (Fig.03).

Our technique for this first pass at the skin detail

will be to drag across our model to create a sort

of “cross-hatching” effect. My approach is to

do a stroke from one angle and then, starting

from a similar place, drag out another stroke

with maybe a 5-15 degree difference. A light

hand is needed to do this; it gives a wonderfully

good effect very easily and provides us with a

fantastic base detail to work with (Fig.04).

So start with the mouth and cheek area and

drag some lines out as shown - although don’t

do the cross-hatching just yet. It is important to

make these lines go with the flow of the skin,

and remember that wrinkles most often go

against the grain of the muscle flow. A good

example of this are the horizontal lines on your

forehead; while the muscles flow up towards the

scalp, the wrinkles on your brow go horizontally.

Try to work out where the skin would be pulling

and stretching and in which direction it would be

travelling. This allows us to make sure that our

skin detail always goes with the flow of the skin

in a believable way. Do not simply drag some


www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 035 July 2008


Up until now we’ve kept the clavicle very visible

to act as a reference point, but now, using our

Clay brush and Inflate brush, we can get the

pectoral muscles to run into it a bit better. Keep

smoothing and stepping down the subdivision

levels if you need to. This will suddenly help to

pull the design together a whole lot more. Again,

go in and tighten the skin folds that run from

under the deltoid to keep all the detail in synch

with each other. We are aiming for the model

to have detail of the same density all over, with

a few spots having tighter detail. To add more

the ZIntensity of your ZAdd to 13 or so. To add

a little sense of life into the skin detail we’ve just

added, use your Inflate brush to add mass, of

varying depths, between the wrinkles that we’ve

carved in. Take you time with this and keep a

steady hand; concentrate on each stroke and

area on its own. This not only helps to stop

you from getting bored as you detail the whole

model, but also reminds you mentally of the

importance of this step. After doing this, select

your Slash1 brush and lightly carve in some

very, very fine wrinkles - again between these

inflated areas. This helps to tighten the detail up

a bit as we go. This technique is one that we’ll

continue to use over time to cover the entire

model for our first detail pass.

Use your Inflate brush now to add a sense

of stretching skin running from the back of

the cranium towards the top of the back and

shoulders. As you will have guessed by now,

digital sculpting isn’t just modelling something

and adding detail, but rather a process of

continual correction and refinement. If you feel

you can improve an area, do it! If you feel it

needs to be further tightened up, then again,

go and do it! That’s what digital sculpting (and

traditional sculpting) is all about – this search for

the elusive “perfection” (Fig.05).

detail to the neck, use your Displace brush and

draw out a few lines running towards the deltoid

and clavicle (Fig.06).

Now work over the entire model and tighten up

every line and medium resolution detail. This is

actually easier that it sounds; it’s just a matter

of taking areas that have become washed-out-

looking and sharpening them a little. Due to the

length of this article I can’t cover every single

line, although the free video released in the next

article in the series covering the whole workflow

will help you if you find you get stuck!

Using the cross-hatching technique again, start

covering the entire model, beginning with the

throat area and making sure that the detail you

are adding is in scale with the area you are

detailing. The biggest problem many newcomers

to digital sculpting have is that the fine detail

they add at this stage is all the same size. They

make the wrinkles, which should be finer in

areas such as the covers of the eyes, end up

the same size as larger areas, such as the neck.

So try to keep the scale of your detail consistent

with the size of the feature that you are working

on. This is another way to assure that you

produce believable-looking, high frequency skin

details (Fig.06).



page 97www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 035 July 2008


Now use your Slash1 brush to tighten areas up again, especially on the

front of the torso. I know this can get repetitive, but it’s important not to

leave the tightening stage out after each set of detailing, otherwise the

mode will end up looking washed out and the details and forms “muddy”.

Finish off the pectorals by going back over with your Inflate brush and the

“lines” alphas from before, and drawing some very fine (almost invisible)

details on them (Fig.09).

Once you’ve used these techniques all over the model and taken it to a

level with which you’re happy, we can call this part of the modelling done.

In the next article (and the last in this series) we’ll pose our model and

then correct the anatomy to better fit the pose before rendering it out.

Remember to keep practicing what you’ve learned and try to apply it to

your own models (Fig.10).

If you want to try another style of skin detailing for high frequency skin

details, take a look at my site (www.dashdotslash.net) and you’ll find

a two-part video on a different type of detailing that you can do. It’s

approached in the same two-layer way, but with a totally different skin

texture. See you all next time (Fig.11)!


www.dashdotslash.net

Or contact:

[email protected]

After you have covered the entire torso with this cross-hatching effect, it’s

time to go in with your Inflate brush again. Start to inflate and add mass

between these wrinkles - being careful not make each one identical. This

is going to take you a bit of time, but the final effect is worth it and it’s also

great practice to get used to the feel of the brushes in ZBrush. We will go

back over these again to add mass to the very small wrinkles once the

model has been posed in the next article, so for the moment don’t go into

too much fine detail with your Inflate brush (Fig.07).

Detail Pass 2This is where we add the important second layer of skin detail to really

help the model to look better. So take your Displace brush, with the

DragRect stroke type and alpha 22 selected, and start by dragging a

couple of areas out on the brows. The ZIntensity of our ZAdd is set to 11

for this. Now start to spread this detail back (making it smaller as you do

so) towards the back of the head (Fig.08).

Turn the ZIntensity down to 4 and drag some larger areas across each

deltoid, as shown. Then continue to add this detail all over the back of the

torso and back of the neck (if you find you lose some definition after this,

feel free to add it back in again).





“everything from humanesque monsters, to more warped and strange ideas, can be created using this

method ... there’s no limit to what you can make – the only limits

are the ones you impose on yourself!”


who have heard of,



seven-part tutorial series

by Wayne Robson is

perfect for you!

This total Beginner’s

Guide to ZBrush is an

excellent starting point

to get you stuck into the


This month Wayne brings

us Part Seven – enjoy!!

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 036 August 2008


Created In:ZBrush

IntroductionWell here it is: the final part in the ZBrush series

for beginners. It doesn’t seem too long ago that

we had part one, does it? In this series so far,

we’ve taken a very low polygon base mesh,

made with ZSpheres, and turned it into a digital

sculpt that is within the reach of most people

starting out (although I have made the model a

little bit of a challenge, too, so that it helps push

you to your limits as a new ZBrush user!).

In this last article we will be taking the sculpt

that we completed in the last article (Fig.01) and

posing it. After we’ve done that, we will need

to fix the anatomy a little to help it flow with the

pose. Once that’s done I’ll then give you a quick

outline on the theory behind the preview panel,

so that you can export out some nice renders

of it. The knowledge within the seven articles

in this series contains everything that you need

to know in order to create your first completed

digital sculpture. I hope that you’ve enjoyed

following this tutorial series as much as I have

writing them for you.

Posing the ModelWe are going to pose the model using the

“Transpose Master” plug-in, made available

for free by Pixologic. If you haven’t got it

already, just head over to Pixologic’s website

and download it (it comes with full installation

instructions). Transpose Master, by default,

steps each subtool in your model down to its

lowest subdivision level to enable you to pose

the entire model, including its subtools at the

same time (Fig.02).

With our model this would give us a problem; as

it stands at the moment, the lowest subdivision

level of the bust itself is too low to pose. If you

take a look at the image provided, you can see

that, although subdivision level two is better,

it still lacks some geometry around the neck

areas to enable it to deform correctly. So step

up to subdivision level three and then delete

the lower subdivision levels. We do this so

that we aren’t going to have any issues when

Transpose Master steps each subtool in our

model to its lowest level (we can always get

these subdivision levels back again by hitting

the Reconstruct Subdiv. button in the geometry

section of the Tool palette) (Fig.03 and Fig.04).

As a habit, I always step each subtool down to




its lowest subdivision level by hand anyway,

mainly because I’m a big believer in “helping”

a computer out by not making it work too hard.

Go to the ZPlugin palette and open up the

Transpose Master section, and then hit the

“TPoseMesh” button.

All of the subtools have now been temporarily

grouped together in one mesh for us to pose,

and this does have a particular quirk that I’ll

outline in a moment. Transpose Master makes

use of the transform functions (move, scale

and rotate); by using topological masking we

can mask off, along the polygon flow of the

model, different sections and then pose them.

You will notice that Transpose Master also puts

your model in orthographic mode, instead of

perspective. For some models this can be a

good thing (for example, when you need to line

up a full body pose), but for our model it’s no big

deal, so we can turn perspective back on again

by hitting the “P” key.

Action Lines As actions lines are the one thing we must

know how to use in order to pose our model, it

is worth covering them briefly in this tutorial. An

action line is a line with three circles on it and

two of these circles act as a sort of pivot point.

To move an action line itself (as opposed to the

geometry), left-click and drag it by the edge of

one of the circles. If you do this with either of

the end circles, then that end will be moved as

you drag; however, if you left-click and drag the

outside of the centre circle then the entire action

line can be moved (Fig.05).

Action lines are used with masks that mask off

areas we don’t want to be affected by whatever

transform we do on our mesh. These can either

be masks painted by hand (or from a texture

intensity either for that matter), or we can use

topological masking to help us move faster.

Topological MaskingSimply put, a topological mask is a type of

mask that we can create in ZBrush that will

follow the topology and edge flow of our model

as we create it. To create a topological mask,

simply hold down the Ctrl key while in one of

the transform modes (move, scale or rotate),

and drag along the geometry (Fig.06). You will



page 95www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 036 August 2008


see (and this is especially obvious if you turn

your PolyFrame on by pressing Shift + F) that it

follows along the topology of your model (hence

its name “topological masking”).

Posing the ModelWith all that theory out of the way, we can finally

start to pose the model. We will start off by

posing the head in a two-stage process. In my

experience, rather than simply “going for it” all

at once, breaking down a pose into two or more

parts makes it much easier to get something

dynamic. Drag your action line from the base of

the neck to up above the head, as shown. Now

drag a topological mask by holding down the

Ctrl key and dragging it until it’s at the base of

the neck (Fig.07).

We aren’t ready to roll just yet, as right now

we have two action lines and we’re only going

to need one of them. So go to your Transform

palette and turn off the X symmetry (or hit the

X key to toggle it off). The rest of our work will

all be asymmetrical, so we won’t need it again.

Now that we’ve got only one action line, we

need to line it up with where the vertebrate

would be in our model; this will create a realistic

pivot point. Hold down Shift and snap your

model to a back view. Press Shift + F to turn on

the PolyFrame and drag the centre circle by its

edge, moving it into the centre line of the model

(if you have trouble, the PolyFrame helps a lot

with lining this up) (Fig.08).

If we were to rotate our head right now, we’d

hit that “quirk” that I mentioned earlier. The

eyeballs are still masked and so are not affected

by the action lines. Why is this? Well, as they

are separate geometry (and by this I mean no

vertexes from them are attached to the other

subtools), the topological mask has masked

them off. To unmask them, simply hold down

Ctrl + Alt and drag over where the eyes are, as

shown.

We are now finally ready to pose the model.

Making sure that you are in rotate, left-click and

drag in the centre circle (not the edge, but inside

the circle this time). This will allow us to make

the head look to one side. This will also throw

the alignment of the action line out, so drag

each end into place again, ready for the next

part (Fig.09).

While the head looks OK in its current pose, to

my eye it doesn’t really say anything or convey

any emotion or feeling from within our model.

So hold down the shift key and drag your model




to get it into a front view, and then just rotate the

head to one side a little, as shown. This gives

a feeling of puzzlement/thought to the pose, as

anyone who has ever owned a dog can probably

confirm (Fig.10).

Press Ctrl and left-click outside the model in

order to invert the mask so that we can start to

pose the torso of our model. Rotate it to one

side from a front view a little, before aligning

the action line along the spine and left-clicking

and dragging in the centre circle to finish off our

pose. Go back to your plug-in palette and hit the

“TPose > SubT” button, and ZBrush will do all

the work for you and will put each subtool back

into its own place – posed and ready! Step each

model up to its highest subdivision level and

take a look at the pose (Fig.11 and Fig.12).

Correcting the PoseYou will notice that, as we modelled our digital

sculpture in a front facing pose, some parts

of the anatomy are now “off” after the posing

(Fig.13 and Fig.14). A good example of this is

the trapezium; at one side it is slightly bulged

out when it would actionably be extended. So go

to these areas and put things right to match the

pose itself. Work out if each muscle should be

extended or contracted, and correct accordingly

(Fig.15, Fig.16 and Fig.17).

Setting up a Nice Preview RenderThe model is finished now, but you can refine

it further if you wish to tighten up any areas

that you feel need it. Now there’s not a lot of

point making a nice digital sculpture if no one

can ever see it but you, so let’s set up a quick

preview render and explain how the settings for

them in the render palette work (Fig.18).

While this is covered in detail in the video that

is now available free to accompany this series

(more of that later!), I’ll cover the basics for you

now. Open the Preview Shadows section of

your render palette, as this is where we will set



page 97www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 036 August 2008


the look of the preview render (all Matcaps have

lighting basked in, and as such, although you

can use “best render” most times, it’s best to set

up a good preview as this makes best use of

them. However, beware of mixing Matcaps as

the lighting baked into each matcap can be very

different!) (Fig.19).

Length: A longer shadow is softer; a shorter one

is harsher and doesn’t have the same length. So

for outdoor-type lighting, set the length high; for

indoor lighting set it low.

Slope: This controls the angle at which the light

is perceived to be coming from. So a setting of

“0” is directly above and arches lower the higher

the number, as shown in the images.

Depth: How far away is it? Lower means closer;

higher means further away (and hence more in

shadow/dark).

Anti-AliasingTo get a good quality render, exit the edit

mode and clear the canvas by hitting Ctrl + N,

then double the size in your document panel

(assuming you want a render at the same size

that you’ve been working at) (Fig.20). If you

want one that’s bigger, adjust this accordingly.

Draw your model back on the canvas and

position it (after making sure you’ve pressed

the edit button!). Now for the important bit: hit

the AAHalf button and this will reduce the size

of your render by 50%, and the anti-aliasing

will make the whole thing a lot smoother and

of a higher quality. You may notice that it also

softens the details; this is one of the reasons

why I sculpted a bit deeper and harsher than

you may have expected at the time. It’s a simple

way of compensating for the anti-aliasing effect!

Once you are happy with your render, export it

by going to the document palette and hitting the

“Export” button.

The VideoAs I’ve mentioned a few times in this series of

articles, while working on this model I recorded

the process directly after the creation of the

ZSphere rig to the text that you see above. It

seemed a great shame for this to stay on my

computer, eating up space and gathering dust,

so the guys at 3DCreative have kindly agreed




to host the entire video for free. So if you’ve

had problems with any part of the workflow in

these articles, then there are no more excuses

(joke!). It’s one of the longest free videos there

have been in quite a while, so make sure that

you download it and I’d like to thank everyone

at 3DCreative for making it available for those

starting out in ZBrush!

InspirationSo is this technique any good for other models,

or is it simply a “one trick pony”? Well, to answer

any niggling doubts you may have, I’ll close

this series with a couple of speed models that

I’ve done using the exact same base mesh

and workflow. Neither of them took more than

two hours from beginning to end, and hopefully

they’ll show that everything from humanesque

monsters, to more warped and strange ideas,

can be created using this method (in fact,

there’s no limit to what you can make – the only

limits are the ones you impose on yourself!)

(Fig.21).

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and if so I’d

like to plug my book Essential ZBrush, which will

be available soon from Wordware Publishing,

and will be found in all good book shops (it’s

also available on pre-order from Amazon). It

covers the creation of an entire scene using

ZBrush, along with how to get your model,

normal and displacement maps etc. into Maya

and 3ds Max, as well as covering ZBrush from

the ground up. There’s everything from hard

surface sculpting to organic and environment

sculpting, so please support an artist today

and buy a copy for yourself (maybe even two!).

Many thanks! (Fig.22).


www.dashdotslash.net

Or contact:

[email protected]




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The Total Beginner to Zbrush

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