3 years ago I watched a tutorial from gnomonology where several images were loaded into ZB and then the geometry was extrapolated.
So in the end the sculpt looked like a real sculpt but without tthe sculpting.
Does anybody know the workflow for this?
Yep! There are several ways of doing this. The easiest way is to get the image in Photoshop cuz you’ll want to remove any alpha channels. To do that just convert it to a 16 bit grayscale image. Also, make sure the image is square and resize the image to at least 2048 x 2048.
In Zbrush load the Plane3D and convert to polymesh3D. Then subdivide it up to say a million or more polygons.
Go to the Alphas palette and load in your 16 bit grayscale image that you saved out from Photoshop.
Then go to Displacement Map under the tools palette and pick the image using the quick pick from there. Then set the intensity (2 to 3) and then click the Create DispMap button.
BAMB! INSTANT SCULPT! HAHAHA! =D
These steps are for 3.5r3, but the steps for older versions are similar. There are a few other ways to do this in zbrush, but this is the work flow I use.
Since you said several images, I’m hoping you’re not referring to creating an sculpt using image planes. Cuz that requires acutual hand sculpting and the images are merely used as background references as to the top, side and bottom views.
There is one other thing that is slightly related, and that is using the Make 3D command under the Alpha palette. That will take an alpha image and extract the elements of the image into a rudimentry closed manifold 3D object.