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

How to Sculpt and Texture a 3D Fighter Character with ZBrush and Substance 3D

Josh Linao spoke about creating Iron Mitchell, a character inspired by fighting games like Mortal Kombat but with his own twist, and shared how he used Mike Tyson as a reference when sculpting the face.

Modeling and Texturing Assets and Foliage for a Detailed 3D Environment

Elie Paquiet discussed the workflow behind The Courtyard project, detailing how he made a modular building kit with 3m, 4.5m, and 6m scales, built his own multi-layer shader, and created the foliage using real plant photos as reference.

Sculpting a Dark Fantasy Character with Clockwork Elements & Religious Imagery

Kang Jeong discussed the workflow behind the CLOCK SAINT project, explaining how he sculpted the character by dividing it into four sections and detailing how he managed the Metallic and Roughness values in the materials to achieve the religious look.

Creating an Alien Shaman CG Character Using ZBrush, Mari & Maya

Ronja Stucken discussed the workflow behind the Nymera project, explaining how she used real-world skin and anatomy references, sculpted from large to small forms, and used an Arnold skin shader for texturing.

Recreating Almalexia from The Elder Scrolls as a Cinematic Character

Margarida Coelho spoke about the creation process behind the Almalexia fanart, discussing how she sculpted the face, anatomy, muscles, and skin using custom brushes and hand-sculpting techniques, and explaining how she created the armor and the mask.

Creating a Stylized 3D Character Based on a 64×64 Pixel Sprite from Pokémon

Paul Thureau spoke about the creation process behind the Pokémaniac project, explaining how he translated a tiny 2D pixel into a 3D character, modeled it in pose, and detailed how he textured the eyes and clothes.

Sculpting and Texturing a Fungal Creature Inspired by The Last of Us

Kamil Tondera spoke about the creation process behind the Fungal Creature project, explaining which tools he used to create the vines and bark elements, and detailing how he achieved the organic appearance with hand-painted materials.

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Breakdown: Sculpting and Animating a Detailed Evil Jester Character

Sia Melnychenko spoke about her workflow on the Evil Jester project, explaining how she sculpted the clothing, approached the makeup, and tackled the technical challenges involved in animating the character.