Hello,
I am about to send my first model to a foundry to create a bronze sculpture in physical scale and I realized that probably 99% of zbrush’s use is for multimedia. I could not find any subjects about the process of creating a real sculpture.
I don’t have any specific question, but since it’s my first time, I was trying to find any information that would help me anticipate any troubles.
Does anyone know of any forum / discussion about that?
I’ve not done this myself but have considered bronze casting and looked into it a little. I’d suggest you talk with the foundary experts as to what they need for a successful casting. You may have to split the object into multiple pieces or maybe make slight modifications to cast in a single pour. You may also need adjustments for successful pouring without air bubbles. Material, melt feed system, wall thickness and a host of other factors probably need to be considered too. Maybe you can hollow out your Zbrush mesh yourself, maybe the foundary can. I’d suggest watching a few videos of the process performed by hobbyists. For example, VOG casts figurines, minis and jewellery. He sculpts, 3D prints in casting wax, then adds melt channels, prepares a mold, burns out the wax, casts in metal, finishes and polishes.
It would be cool to see a post of the digital and bronze sculpt on ZBC in the future if you’re so inclined.
Good luck.
Still I wonder, nobody uses it for (real world) sculptures?
I’ve found that many foundries have entire teams of zbrush artists but I don’t see it reflected in the forums.
I know it is just a niche portion of zbrush’s use but still, how come nobody is talking about this? Is it secrecy because of the competition or something else? In the 3d industry there is always competition but at the same time people share information so that everybody benefits. (maybe this part of the industry has not hit the critical mass that could lead to open cooperation)
My suspicion is that because most of the foundries are located in china, the demographic would not appear in zbrush’s forums. I’ve tried Cnc forums but most of them focus on the clearly technical part.
Anyway, My main worry is how heavy the model should be. I have a male of 1.85 height and it is worked up to 45m polygons (HD geometry) which I’m almost sure that is an overkill since the statue will be cnc drilled on foam. I try to estimate what level of detail I should include, but I’ve found no videos on that. From the foundry they are cooperative but even they are not so experienced in that. I live in Greece and due to the costs most people (when they use milling for the mold) just stay in the very crude form and do the finishing by hand with clay due to economic limitations.
So I’m in the difficult position of neither me nor the foundry having much experience on the process.
I would like to find videos describing how much detail each milling configuration can capture.