Need advice for cliff sculpting

[sboerner]

I’ve been doing subdivision modeling for years but am new to sculpting. ZBrush user now for a few months. Looking for advice from more experienced hands about the best way to approach sculpting a cliff face based on the attached reference images.

I’ve viewed countless YouTube videos and have downloaded various brush sets. Still having difficulty reproducing the combination of eroded layers and sharp fractures, smooth shapes and square blocks. Not really happy with any of my efforts so far.

Any advice on tools, strategy, and process would be welcome. Thanks.

[Spyndel]

Hello @sboerner ,

I usually establish the form of the rocks before working on surface detail. Figure out how you want your rocks to be shaped, and establish the major forms. It may be useful to work on your rocks as many smaller pieces and fuse them together, rather than a single large mesh. You could just keep glopping new pieces of “clay” onto the surface youre working on with mesh extracts or the Mesh From Mask brushes.

You wont need special brushes for this. Clip, Trim, Flatten, Trim Dynamic, Clay Tubes might all be useful here. Clay Polish in the Tool> Geometry menu can be used to tighten the form up and give it a more rocky appearance. Experiment with those settings to produce different effects.

Once your major forms are in place, there are many ways to apply fine surface detail. Noisemaker, displacement with alpha brushes, painting with textures in Spotlight are all going to be effective. You could even apply smaller pieces of geometry to the surface with Nanomesh, then randomize them to give the surface a rocky appearance.

Good luck!

[sboerner]

Thank you, Spyndel. This is exactly the kind of guidance that I was looking for. It seems that I am doing a few things right already, which is encouraging. But I haven’t yet explored the Mesh From Mask brushes, so I’ll definitely follow up on that.

I may be back with more questions as I work on this. Hope that’s OK.