ZBrushCentral

Super High Resolution Details

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Greetings fellow Zbrushers!
I’ve been at this a while, and I tend to try to find answers in the large body of information Zbrush artists have already been generous enough to share, but I have never been able to find a satisfactory answer to one, particular question:

How do creature artists get super high res, super clean detail into all these amazing creature models we see here on Zbrush Central?

The levels of detail I see would take far more polygons than any machine I’ve ever seen could handle. If the creature is divided into subtools, how is that handled so it can be output as a unified mesh with the details across the separations? Is there some hidden feature or secret workflow that I have missed in all my years with this tool?

Any help would be appreciated :slight_smile:

l

#2

Some artists in professional production workflows benefit from extremely high end, dedicated machines that can handle extreme polygon counts with more stability than most users.

For everyone else, the answer is generally HD Geometry.

At some point, artists often transition to a more unified version of their mesh where the subtools have been fused into a single piece, and overlapping geometry has been removed. Efficient, clean, export quality topology is established based on on a low poly base mesh that delivers more polygons to high detail areas, and fewer to low detail areas, so when subdivided for the purpose of fine detail sculpting or texture export, the high detail areas can receive much higher resolution details, without blowing out the polycounts for the sake of low scrutiny areas. Detail from the high resolution meshes can be projected onto the new, optimized mesh.