Append a Zsphere to your subtools. Then, when you enter Zsketch, you will be able to sketch on either the Zsphere, or the other visible subtools. Tou can scale the Zsphere down and move it so that it is hidden by the body (or whatever), that way it doesn’t get in the way while Zsketching.
Hope that helped.
excellent work, top row !
How did you manage to get these hair printed out ?
Thanks a lot mate!
The details are amazing;) 
small_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond
Floored. I am absolutely floored.
Followed Alterton’s link to here and am flat out amazed.
Incredible, incredible work!!!
Thanks for sharing this stuff!!!
This is humbling and inspiring work…first time I have ever subscribed to a thread here.
Keep it coming 
Wow! Thanks, Joseph! I’ve been an admirer of your sculpting for many years, so your comments mean a great deal to me. Your work is not only outstanding, but so diverse! I loved the Love Bug you did. I got a chance to see the output in person when my wife, Kat, painted it, and I remember thinking to myself… How the heck did he DO that?
Anyway, thanks for the kind remarks.
Cheers,
Will
[Moderator’s Note: Images removed by studio request.]
Noice! Oi! (that is my Australian accent)
Will, fantastic work! I am in awe of your work. I am currently sculpting for Jerry M. I recently found out you used to be one of his main sculptors. I was wondering, can you share how you go about making the articulation digitally? Does hasbro supply you with digital articulation or do you make it yourself in Maya or 3dmax? I did some traditional action fig sculpts for Hasbro years ago and would love to learn the process of making them digitally. Do you sculpt them piece by piece digitally? How do you get the artic to fit so precisely, Is this done in something like max or maya?
Thanks so much and keep up the incredible work!
This is so good . Where’s the top row? 
Beautiful work on the sculpt!! I love it!
mega super cool
wow… spectacular. and the toy has the old gi-joe joints. smart choice. excelent work.
Your Cap came out really well! Excellent detailing.
Awesome sculpts -craftsmanship-! Thanks for sharing, would love to hear a bit more on the workflow for going from sculpt to toy (requirements, limitations, etc) Top Row thread .
Hi folks! Thanks for all the kind words! And a special thanks to Paul at Pixologic for going above and beyond to help us out!! You guys are great!
I’ve gotten alot of questions, and I’ll try to answer them as best I can. In my opinion, there are two important considerations when it comes to building something for output: closed meshes, and scale. First off, for those of you who aren’t familiar with outputting, every mesh you build needs to be “watertight”. You can visualize this with the example of a water baloon. Each mesh needs to be completely closed, like a tied-off water baloon. You cannot close one mesh by simply intersecting it with another (like putting a cork in the baloon neck). This takes a bit of getting used to, but quickly becomes routine. That being said, you CAN intersect any number of closed meshes to create a single object for output. This is fairly straightforward. Something like Ofer’s motorcycle can all be printed as a single piece, so long as each mesh is closed (which it is), and all of the pieces intersect with something else.
This, brings us to a more important consideration: scale. Many poeple get unnecessarily worried about the scale of thier sculptures INSIDE ZBrush. You don’t actually need to worry about how many units tall your sculpture is in ZBrush or Maya or any other digital program. These units usually aren’t preserved between programs anyway, and are just used for internal consistancy. In other words, a figure that is 6 feet tall in Maya may be 4 feet tall in another program. You just need to make sure that whatever program the PRINTER is using for sizing adjusts it to the correct height before printing. There is, however, a more essential use of scale that IS important. You need to keep in mind while sculpting how big the thing will be AFTER printing. You can see what I mean from some of the sculptures in this thread. We knew from the start that Sweet Pea would be printed at 18 inches, and Extremis Iron Man ws going to be 4 inches, and they were sculpted very differently as a result. As I’ve said, in the digital world, scale is basically irrelevant. I can zoom in and put in as much detail as I want. But the most important thing (and the thing that takes the longest to get used to) is understanding what the details will look like at the size they are AFTER output. Iron Man is a good example. If you look at the grooves between the metal plates, you’ll notice that they are actually very wide. They are not accurate at all if you were to output him at life size. But at 4 inches, they are much thinner than an X-acto blade. In fact, we printed his head before the rest of him, and realized that the grooves had basically closed up. I had to go in and widen them on his whole body before we could print him again. The same is true for ALL details on every sculpture. I was able to put four times the detail into Sweet Pea as I could in most of the other things I’ve shown. Very often the details on a small sculpture will need to be exaggerated to the point that they look crazy on the screen. Only experience will give you the confidence that, while it may look “wrong” on the screen, it will look right when it is printed. My process is to zoom out on the model until it is the size on the screen that it will be after it is output (I check it with a ruler). If I can’t make out the details when it is actual size on the screen, then I figure I won’t be able to see them when it is printed, and I adjust accordingly. For the most part, unless you are dealing with very large outputs, you can forget about textures. They will usually not survive the printing process, and are much more easily applied by hand afterword. And it’s not just details. You need to be very aware of thin pieces as well. I can’t tell you how many times we get a piece in from the outside where either the details are washed out, or there are parts that are paper thin.
When it comes to joints, there are many ways to do them. The important thing is results. The client will always want finished, working joints with good range of motion. What program you use to create them doesn’t matter as long as they work! We use Maya and Freeform, but I have a friend who has achieved great results working entirely in ZBrush. To each his own.
Good Luck!
Will
Great model! fantastic figure. I’m glad to see “suckerpunch” sculpting in zbrush forum. Hope the other creature is coming out soon!!
thanks for the tips …and congratz on the well deserved toprow… love your work
Really nice work. Its good to see where zbrush is being used for real work. Love your stuff.