I created this model as part of the Pixologic ZBrush 2021 Beta Program. This is an Ebony Jewelwing damselfly (Calopteryx maculata). I am always working on improving my approach to the veins on dragonflies and damselflies. The new extrude edge and dynamic subdivision thickness features in ZBrush 2021 made this much easier. The renders were created in Redshift for Maya and I’ve included some screenshots and ZBrush stylish BPR renders. for the plant I used the nanomesh feature to instance the pods to the surface (in Maya I used Yeti to do a similar approach). This lady will be appearing in a future animation…
For the wing I took macroshots of a damsel fly I have in my collection and traced in photoshop. Striving towards accuracy…
ZBrush 2021 has two improved ways to create instances: nanomesh and micromesh. they are both easy to use and very powerful. Just scratching the surface of what the new version can do. Also did the retopo in ZBrush using the ZModeller brush which now works a lot like Quad Draw in Maya (thus I no longer need to export/import blah blah blah… saves a ton of time).
