ZBrushCentral

Modeling hard surface character accessories

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all,

I’m having some trouble modeling my hard surface accessories on my sculpt (i.e. belt buckle, harness straps).

I picked up the trial of ZBrush last weekend, and was following along with the starter tutorials to create Space Penguin from King of Tokyo. Everything has been going good, except when it came to hard surface modeling. I am not able to get the clean hard edges I’m looking for, as well as uniformity in size for the elements that match up.

I’ve looked up specifically to find hard surface modeling techniques to try when sculpting these parts. So I’ve masked the chest area where the cube is on his chest, and then extruded that off of his chest to create hard edges for the sides (I have also done this with the straps). Then for the inside I’m going in with the dam_standard to create the edges where the sides meet, and finishing by flattening the inside walls with the trim_dynamic. It gets the job done for the most part, but it also sets in the unevenness on the sides of the piece.

Is there a more efficient way to be modeling these accessory pieces on the character? I know I’ve only just started with ZBrush, but if you could point me in the direction I would be very appreciative.

Thanks,
Trevor

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#2

There are lots of ways to get clean edges, so you will get various opinions different to mine. I finid a great way to get clean edges for extracting is to duplictae the mesh I’m extracting from, then group the parts (belt buckle for instance) and then run the Smooth Groups Brush (in the Brushes>Smooth Folder) along the edges of the groups before extracting.
Another thing to try is playing with the Lazy Mouse settings to get the steadiness of stroke you need.

#3

Thanks for the reply Dillster! I’m going to give this a try. Would this be an approach you try, over appending a new subtool cube and then positioning it on the character as a separate piece?