ZBrush

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ZBrush is a digital sculpting and painting program that has revolutionized the 3D industry with its powerful features and intuitive workflows. Built within an elegant interface, ZBrush offers the world’s most advanced tools for today’s digital artists. With an arsenal of features that have been developed with usability in mind, ZBrush creates a user experience that feels incredibly natural while simultaneously inspiring the artist within. With the ability to sculpt up to a billion polygons, ZBrush allows you to create limited only by your imagination.

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Features:

ZRemesher

ZRemesher is the next evolution in our automatic retopology solution. ZRemesher has been designed with an artist’s point of view in mind. With a single click, ZRemesher produces ideal new topology based on your original mesh. The new functions in ZRemesher are smarter, able to analyze the curvature of your model with the precision of a computer, but with the subtlety of the human eye. Add more polygons locally where needed, changing their shape to create perfect topology flow. As with most ZBrush tools, ZRemesher also lets you take control over the automatic process and give your own guidance to the core algorithms. It is easy to drive the flow of polygons with the help of curves. You can also define where you wish to have more or lower polygon density. You can perform local retopology to a specific part of your mesh while keeping a natural connection with the support model.

New Brushes

ZBrush’s powerful creative toolset is largely based on its brush system. With each release we add new brushes that can transform your way of working or simply make your daily sculpting easier. With ZBrush 4R6, we continue this long tradition. The new Trim Curve brushes cut your models in a way that is very similar to the Clip brushes, but deletes the affected polygons rather than pushing them to the stroke line. And as you can imagine, these new brushes will be DynaMesh’s new best friends!

Creating holes through a mesh has been possible since the introduction of DynaMesh and more recently enhanced with Mesh Fusion. Now ZBrush adds another option for this purpose with the Bridge Curve brush: select an opening, PolyGroup border or crease edge and connect it with another to generate a bridge of polygons. And because this new topology detection is so useful with the Frame Mesh feature, we went ahead and enabled it for all brushes that use curves. You will love it as much as we do!

Other additions

The new additions and improvements don’t stop there! Here is a brief summary of other noteworthy new functions:

DynaMesh now preserves PolyGroups. This makes it so easy to do Panel or Group Looping on a DynaMesh after having used Mesh Insert or Mesh Fusion!
The Slice brushes now only operate on the curve position and won’t propagate. What you see is now exactly what you get!
Group Front — a new PolyGroup creation function — detects all polygons which face the camera and assigns them to a single group.
This tool will let you create special effects by using your point of view, such as deformation of only the parts of your model that are visible to the camera.
The new Solo Dynamic mode keeps only the current active SubTool visible when manipulating it in front of the ZBrush camera, in order to improve 3D navigation.

ZBrushRecent articles

Turning a 2D Illustration into a Realistic Two-Character 3D Piece

Anna Smirnova spoke about the creation process behind the No Mercy project, explaining how she used base meshes for both the body and the head, and detailing how she built detail directly into the textures rather than relying on procedural shaders.

Making a Recreation of Dr. Doom Using Unreal Engine and ZBrush

Patrick van Rooijen discussed the workflow behind the Dr. Doom project, explaining how he modeled the face and head using MetaHuman, detailing how he created the costume with ZBrush and Marvelous Designer, and how he added believable wear and tear to the cape.

Recreating a 19th Century Magneto-Electric Shock Machine for a Prop Challenge

Kyle Michel explains how he kept the poly count in Blender low without sacrificing detail in the Magneto-Electric Shock Machine project, discusses the actual math behind setting up a realistic Control Rig system in Unreal Engine, and shares his experience with Unreal Engine 5's Substrate material system.

Breakdown: Modeling a 3D Fantasy Character Based on a 2D Concept

Artem Bieliakov spoke about the creation process behind The Widow of Feathers project, explaining how he built the layered costume starting with a silhouette, how he refined the folds, seams, and the ornaments, and discussing how he created the bird and its feathers.

Modeling and Texturing a Fan Art of Alice from RAID: Shadow Legends

Dahye Han discussed the workflow behind the RAID: Shadow Legends Fan Art of Alice project, explaining how they aimed to preserve the character's game artwork while adding more realistic traits, and how they textured the leather and the rabbit's fur.

Mastering Wrinkly Skin Texture by Making an Old Medieval Dwarf in 3D

Nikita Popp explains how he created the Dwarf project, talks about the challenges of texturing aged skin, and discusses using the Paragon material for hair and feathers.

This 3D Animation of a Stylized Vampire Was Inspired by Marvel Rivals & Arcane

Mehdi Bounedjar recreated the character from Edwin Vorng's Stone Decay project.

Bringing a Piece of Indian Cultural History to Life in 3D

PixelDhara discussed the creation process behind the Bioscope, explaining how they aimed to create a project with a strong tie to Indian heritage, detailing the research they did on how the object ages, and describing how they textured it based on realistic handling patterns.

Book Character to a 3D Piece: Sculpting Human-Tree Character in ZBrush and Maya

Andrea Buitrago explains how she translated the beautifully tragic story of Uri, a vulnerable human-tree character, into a 3D marble-like sculpture and how she made it look tangible and delicate while maintaining a strong silhouette.