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

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Artist CataRackta shared the work behind the Chimera character, taking us from early sketches to revised versions of the girl with animal parts and discussing the rigging process.

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Stanislav Petrushin talked about creating the Abandoned Dacha Environment for Into the Radius 2, explaining how he approached the texturing process in three layers and sharing the challenges of creating environment art for a VR game.

Modeling and Texturing a Funny Sculpt of a Man and a Cute Anglerfish

Kevin Beckers talked about his project, Ol' Jenkins and Martha, explaining how the idea started, how he sculpted the man as a skinny yet strong-looking character, and how he achieved the transition between the man's white skin and the fish's purple fins.

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Sheila Alessandrini discussed the workflow behind the Rusty Gate project, explaining how she used anchor points and projection-based decals for rust and created foliage.

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We talked to Alex K. Arabi to learn how he created his Alley of Peace in 3D, what shaders he used to add variety and mood, and how lighting helped him make this nostalgic atmosphere.

How to Model and Texture a Realistic AK-74 Using 3ds Max, ZBrush and Substance 3D

Oriol Salom discussed the workflow behind the AK-74 project, detailing how he modeled the prop using a mid-poly mesh that allowed him to add more details, and explaining how he textured the different materials of the weapon to make it look realistic.

Realistic Willem Dafoe Portrait Done in 3D

Thomas Schreiter captured the actor's likeness extremely well.

This 3D Take on a Mermaid Looks Scary But Weirdly Fascinating

Juan Hernández is back with another incredible creature.