Getting started with ZBrush: review-redux & guide

Last year I posted a somewhat sloppy ‘review’ of ZBrush after I had messed with it a bit on my girlfriends’ laptop. Unfortunately that post was more filled with anxiety than useful information (or so I think) and therefor I decided it needed a re-run because things changed: I have my own ZBrush license now and in the mean time I also gained a lot more experience with the software than I had back then.

I really wanted to write something more useful because ZBrush is a very specific and complex program and it can actually be tricky to get your fingers behind its rather unique workflow, not in the first place because it has a tendency to completely overwhelm because this critter can do a lot of different stuff. If you look up ZBrush you’ll soon learn that this is a ‘3D sculpting’ program. In other words: you don’t necessarily model your 3D objects but you can actually ‘mold’ them into shape as if you’re working with a piece of clay.

However… there is so much more to ZBrush than that, and it sometimes saddens me that many tutorials out there seem to completely gloss over all those extra details.

See, ZBrush doesn’t only support 3D editing; it also provides 2D editing features as if it were a regular image editor. “Sorta”, it does so with a twist: even the 2D edits aren’t fully flattened out; they still use the ZBrush render engine, which is why Pixologic (= ZBrush developers) refers to this mode as 2.5D editing. We’re not working with ordinary pixels here, nah, now you’re playing with power, err: pixols, these are pixels with extra information ‘attached’ to them.

But now I’m getting way ahead of the story…

So, what is ZBrush again?

As mentioned in the intro ZBrush is a program which allows you to edit and design 3D figures (these are usually referred to as meshes). ZBrush got first released around 2003 so it’s actually almost 20 years old, quite impressive if you ask me! This isn’t free software mind you, although there is a free version as well. Right now there are 3 different ZBrush versions available:

• ZBrush; this is the main program and it provides all available features such as HD documents (up to 8K), dynamics, ZModeler, 2.5D painting, GoZ and so on.
• ZBrushCore; this is a smaller version of ZBrush, it provides many of the available features but in a more simplified form. Here is a comparison chart between ZBrush and ZBrushCore.
• ZBrushCoreMini; finally we come to the free version of ZBrush. It provides near to no support for any advanced features (like polygroups, importing files, primitives, dynamesh, etc.) but can still be a nice tool for 3D sculpting. Here is a comparison chart between ZBrush ‘core’ and ‘core mini’.

Both my girlfriend and myself are working with ZBrush, so the full version. And although the software isn’t exactly cheap it will quickly become clear that you really get what you pay for, this thing is amazing for all the things it can do, especially in comparison to some of the other software that’s available. Best of all (in my opinion obviously): you get a perpetual license and none of that rental crap. Meaning that if I don’t use ZBrush for the upcoming month then I’m not wasting any of my money. Renting software? Ridiculous, especially for personal semi-professional usage.

Some specific things you can do with all this

ZBrush has some rather specific features which really makes it stand out. Here are some of my personal favorites. For the record: I’m using the demo material(s) which are available within ZBrush for my screenshots below. Although I’ve become quite familiar with the software I still have plenty to learn about sculpting.

Polypaint

Meshes (“3D models”) are just that: 3D shapes which represents something, for example a dog like in my screenshot above. But it’s only a shape and nothing more than that. In order to give it a more natural look you have to apply a texture to it. A texture is basically a regular image that gets placed “around” the mesh. Of course, in order to do that we’ll need a 2D representation of the mesh, this is referred to as a UV map. A commonly used workflow is to create the UV map using the 3D program (by extracting it from the mesh) after which you can then use said UV map as a template within a graphics program (like Photoshop, The Gimp, etc.) so that you can paint the actual texture. Needless to say that this can become tricky, depending on the shape of the UV map.

But as you can see in the screenshot above ZBrush does this “a little” different. By using the Polypaint feature you can actually paint directly onto your mesh after which you can then create a texture from your Polypaint efforts. So instead of extracting the UV map in order to have something to paint on you simply paint and extract the entire texture from that.

Of course, if you just want to stick to the more traditional workflow (= extract the UV map & paint in a graphics program) you can:

Here I used the ‘Morph UV’ option to physically change the mesh into a UV map representation for demonstration purposes. I then expanded the texture section, and used the ‘New from Polypaint’ option which resulted in the effect I highlighted. So… I simply painted on my mesh and then generated the texture from that. Well, a texture representation for now. In order to actually export this texture I first need to use the ‘Clone’ function (also shown in the screenshot above) after which this representation becomes an actual texture.

Why would I want to export the texture you ask? Well…

Recognize this?

3D and 2.5D support

ZBrush doesn’t only provide support for 3D editing, it can do 2D editing too, as shown above. However, there’s a bit more to this than just painting. In a regular graphics program like Adobe Photoshop you’d select a brush, the color which you want to paint with and sometimes you can also select a texture to apply a specific pattern. ZBrush provides for this as well but also adds material settings and of course uses an actual render engine. You could even combine 2.5D with 3D as shown above (the golden globe is a 3D mesh, and if you look closely you’ll see it even casts a shadow on the blue “cloud” below it). Yups: 2D edits with depth

The reason why this is referred to as 2.5D is because the 2D material still keeps track of things like lighting, material and the position within the 3D environment, despite it being 2D material. Hence the name “Pixols” vs. the usual pixels. Of course, you can still “link” ZBrush to a regular graphics editor and do your 2D editing somewhere else if you want to.

Masking & Polygroups

When working on meshes you may sometimes want to focus on a specific part. Or maybe the other way around: you’re done with an area and now want to prevent that section getting affected by your editing efforts elsewhere, something which can easily happen when you’re sculpting. Well, this couldn’t be easier: while keeping the control key pressed you’re immediately put in ‘masking mode’ which allows you to apply a mask to parts of your mesh by hovering the mouse over the area while keeping the left mouse button pressed. You can also remove an applied mask (parts of it) by hovering over the area while keeping both the control and alt key pressed. Easy, right?

Of course this only provides you with a temporary solution since working on meshes can be a rather difficult process, often requiring multiple changes in multiple areas. Take the above screenshot for example: I have applied a mask on the tail of the dog but… who knows, maybe my changes there will also affect the dogs’ legs requiring those parts to be edited as well. But having to apply a mask on those areas every single time is rather tedious. Surely there’s a better solution here?

Well, there is: Polygroups!

Polygroups allow you to ‘divide’ a mesh into specific parts, you can see an example above where I made a group from the legs, tail and the head of the dog. This gives you the advantage that you can now easily select one of these groups with a single mouse click which will then hide all the other parts. And you can reverse that too of course so that only the selected group gets hidden.

FiberMesh

Sometimes you may come across a mesh where you need things like fur, hair or maybe foliage. Instead of having to design all of that stuff yourself you can actually generate the effect using FiberMesh. The cool part is that the effect actually creates a new mesh which represents the whole thing. You can see an example in the screenshot above: notice the subtool? That’s the generated ‘fur’. And because it’s a mesh that gets generated you can also use the standard tools to further edit the whole thing as well.

ZBrush provides a large collection of ‘fibers’, some shown above, which you can use to generate the whole thing.

A good way to get started with ZBrush

If you start ZBrush for the very first time you’ll see the scene shown above. As you can see this is not your standard graphics program, not by far. For starters… as you may be aware the menu bar in Windows always has a ‘File’ menu on the most left side followed by an ‘Edit’ menu. And then you have a ‘Help’ menu at the far right. If you’re now wondering what I’m talking about then scroll back up and take another look at my screenshot of Daz Studio, pay close attention to the menu bar there. In ZBrush however things start with ‘Alpha’, followed by the ‘Brush’ and ‘Color’ menus and only later on do we have the ‘File’ and ‘Edit’ menus, but in reverse order! Yups: these menus are placed in alphabetic order. This may seem very weird at first but it will soon make more sense. See, these aren’t regular menus we’re working with. Within ZBrush these ‘menus’ are referred to as Palette’s. Try clicking on one (like the File palette for example) and you’ll quickly see what I mean. There aren’t just options here to click on, there are also buttons and sliders?

What you probably also noticed in the screen above is the (somewhat highlighted) section which shows you several folders and other graphics stuff (the faces, the dog which I used as an example earlier and all the spheres). This is the ‘Lightbox’; you could consider this the “ZBrush browser”. It can be used to find projects to load and work on, brushes, textures, the lot. You can click on the ‘LightBox’ button in the upper left area or press the ‘,’ key to make it go away. Now we’re getting somewhere!

Changing the default settings

By default the Lightbox will be shown every time you start ZBrush. While this could be useful for some people who always want to start with looking up a project or tool to work on, for me it’s merely a hassle. See, if I wanted to load something I’d double click on the file within Windows which will then open ZBrush. And then there’s the screensaver… leave ZBrush running unattended for a minute and you’ll see what I mean. I don’t need nor want that either.

Trust me: when you’re just getting started you’ll probably find many things which you may want to change and/or customize.

Fortunately it’s very easy to customize things, you’ll find all the options you need within the ‘Preferences’ palette. And here’s a cool thing to know about palette’s: you can dock them at the side(s) of the screen to make them easier to access. See the empty space at the right side below the big orange ‘S’? That’s one of the two trays (the one on the left side is collapsed by default); these are areas meant for docking palettes. In fact… if you look closer you’ll notice that it says ‘Tool’ at the top of the right section, looking further you’ll also notice that there’s a palette named ‘Tool’ in the menu bar. Try clicking on the Tool menu and see what happens next… Don’t worry: as soon as you click again (or move your mouse away) the palette will move back into its place on the tray.

So, start by docking the Preferences palette into the right tray:

• Open the Preference palette by clicking on the menu name.
• Hover your mouse over the marked area until it changes into a ‘drag icon’ (a mouse with four arrows, you can see an example on the right side of the screenshot).
• Then drag the palette over to the bottom side of the right tray (as shown above).

Once you release your mouse the palette will be docked in the tray which will make it a lot easier to find all the options you may need to customize ZBrush. It is important to know that this will not have any effects on ZBrush’s default behavior; so if you restart ZBrush then the palette will be gone again as long as you didn’t save the changes. The next thing you may notice is that the scroll wheel on your mouse may or may not do anything when you want to navigate through the palette. The standard way to navigate through a list within ZBrush is to move the mouse towards the side of the palette until you see a double arrow (an arrow pointing both up and down), then press the left mouse button and while keeping it pressed drag the list up and down. This will be something you may need to get used to, but trust me: once you do you’ll find that this is much quicker and way more reliable than having to scroll all the time.

Let’s start by dragging the palette up a bit until we can see both the ‘LightBox’ and ‘ScreenSaver’ sections. Click on the LightBox entry and you’ll see that the section expands and it will show you several options which you can use:

As you can see ‘Open at launch’ is selected so click on the option to turn this off. Then go down a bit (drag if you have to) and do the same thing for the screensaver: turn it off by expanding the ‘screensaver’ section and find the option you need.

Some things to know here… as you can see above ZBrush will give you a brief description when you hover over an item. If you want to know more about it then keep the control key pressed, this will display a (little) more detailed description of what the option does as well as the “Button path” explaining where you can find it within the palettes. This may seem a bit odd for now since we’re using a palette anyway but… if you take another look at the interface you’ll notice several buttons and options around the edges of your screen. Each and every one of those items is a button or option from a palette which has its own ‘button path’. Knowing that path can (and will) help you to find the palette you may want to use.

Another important thing here is that ZBrush will never change its default behavior “just like that”. So don’t worry if you’re making a mess of things: in the worst case scenario you simply close ZBrush, start it again and you’re back to normal. However, this applies to everything, including those options we just changed. So… drag the Preference palette up again and expand the “Config” section. Then click on “Store Config” if you feel confident that you don’t want to see the lightbox every time you fire up ZBrush. Keep in mind though that this saves everything, including the changes to the UI we just made. So, from now on the Preferences palette will also be shown in its current location: docked in the right tray.

You can always go back!

So how do we remove the palette again? Well, I’d recommend to leave it here for the time being, but as soon as you’re done then just click on the “drag icon” behind the palette’s name. So hover your mouse over the ‘dock icon’ at the right side of the palette name, click once and the palette will be removed (“undocked”). If you take another look at the Config section you’ll come across some other interesting options:

• ‘Restore Standard UI’: if you really made a mess of things then this option will do just what it says: it restores the default interface. This is how I made my example screenshots above, even though I work with a rather customized interface myself.
• ‘Restore Custom UI’: should be obvious enough. If you set up a custom UI (and saved it) then this option will restore that. This is ideal if you have set up a working UI, changed several things only to find out that those changes weren’t as great as you thought. No need to restart the whole program: just use this option instead.
• ‘Save UI’: this allows you to save your current (custom) UI with a specific name so that it doesn’t actually affect the program. Once you saved your UI you can then use “Load UI” to, well, load it again

Now why would you want to save your custom UI without actually using it you may wonder? Well, first for backup purposes. But the second reason is much cooler: move your mouse to the upper right corner of the screen. First you’ll see the standard Window icons to close, maximize (or restore) and minimize (“Hide”) your screen. At the left side of these 3 options you’ll notice 2 icons which allow you to cycle through user interface layouts. Try it and see!

You can actually change between UI layouts “just like that”. ZBrush provides 6 examples (besides the default layout) for us to use, but if you want to then you can easily replace everything with your own settings. Who knows… maybe you prefer a minimalistic interface for some projects while you want to have most options available for casual use. Don’t know where to look? Tried keeping control pressed while hoovering your mouse over these options yet? Basically you’ll find these settings in the “ZStartup\UserInterfaceLayouts” sub-folder which you’ll find in your ZBrush program folder.

But always remember that nothing is definite. If you need to then you can always reset things back to ‘normal’; either your own custom interface or the default settings. And you don’t even have to restart the program for it!

Customizing the interface yourself

Moving and docking palette’s is one thing, but what about all the options you see on the screen? For example… one of the first things I removed from my interface were the “Home Page” and “LightBox” buttons because I had 0 use for them. It couldn’t be easier!

Open the ‘Preferences’ palette if you haven’t already, expand the ‘Config’ section and then click “Enable Customize”:

You will immediately notice the screen changing (it ‘moves down’ a bit). Now you can pretty much move and remove everything around. You cannot change palettes nor the default menu items (like the buttons to change the layouts which we used earlier) but everything else is fair game. And although you cannot customize palette’s you could always make your own if needed. If you want to (re)move something from the screen then hover your mouse over the item, keep the control + alt keys pressed and then just drag the option in place using the left mouse button. If you want to remove something (like I do above) then you need to drag the item onto the document (so ‘away’ from the interface) as shown here. Once I release my left mouse button in the example above then the LightBox button will be gone. But: only gone from the interface. The button itself can still be found in the ‘LightBox’ section within the Preference palette.

Once you’re done customizing the interface you can click the “Customize” option again to disable it after which the screen will change back to normal. Don’t forget to save any changes if you want to keep them!

Hotkeys

Another extremely useful feature are hotkeys. Basically you can assign a key or key combination to pretty much every option available within ZBrush. And like so many things in ZBrush it couldn’t be easier!

Although I don’t mess around with the preferences all that much anymore I do prefer having them easily accessible. So… whenever I press Alt + P then the Preference palette shows up. But, and this is where it gets cool: at the current location of my mouse cursor. So you’re not ‘just’ opening a menu, nah, you’re opening it in a way where it’s also directly accessible.

Setting up a hotkey is easy: press control + alt and while keeping these pressed just click on something you want to assign a hotkey to. In my example this will be the Preference palette. As soon as you clicked on the name (either in the menu bar or on the docked palette) a brief instruction will be shown in the upper left corner. Release the control + alt buttons and press the key (or the key combination) you want to use. In my example that’s Alt + P. You can also press the ‘delete’ key to remove any hotkeys you assigned yourself or you can press escape (or click the mouse button again) to cancel the action.

Once done you should now be able to press Alt + P after which the preference palette will be shown. Easy!

Don’t forget to save your hotkeys when you’re done! Just expand the “Hotkeys” section within the ‘Preferences’ palette an click “Store”.

Getting started with 3D

Now, you may be wondering why I spent so much time explaining how to change the settings and customizing the interface but trust me: this is very important to know. See, working on 3D models is a process that can easily take up hours if not whole days. During which you’re fully relying on the programs interface to get you the options or functions you need which makes it really important to know how this stuff works and to make sure that you’re fully comfortable with the current layout.

As I mentioned before ZBrush provides support for both 2D and 3D editing. So if you simply start drawing around after having just started the program you’ll be greeted by the effect shown in the upper left corner: a bunch of orange boxes which get drawn in a line and with many overlaps. This may seem strange for now but it will honestly make more sense once you know what is happening here.

The first important detail to look out for is the currently selected tool “SimpleBrush”, you can see it being active by the orange ‘S’ icon at the right side. Within ZBrush a tool refers to the 3D mesh you’re working with but because ZBrush supports both 3D and 2.5D it also provides a lot of tools which we can use for drawing or sketching.

Next are the drawing tools at the left side: the stroke (= the icon with the rounded dots); this defines the way you’ll be drawing, below that is the alpha (the scribbles on the white background); this defines the shape which you’ll use to draw, then the texture setting and finally the material setting. Because we’re in 2.D mode right now the brush which is normally used for 3D editing is currently disabled (the roundish icon at the top which is now greyed out). By changing and combining all these settings you can create some really interesting effects as shown above. For example, below the scribble in the upper right corner I made another scribble where I changed the stroke from ‘Dots’ (as shown above) to “Freehand” and used that. To the right side of those two scribbles I painted something from top to bottom while having the “Spray” stroke active.

Then I made the roundish stripes at the bottom by simply changing the alpha to a round figure. First I drew something using the red wax material setting, and below that I changed the material to chalk.

Now, the reason why it is good to know all this is because all of it can also apply to your 3D efforts as well, so I really suggest that you play around with the 2.5D options a bit to see what you can manage to scribble.

ZBrush provides both 3D and 2.5D tools for us to use…

From primitive to PolyMesh

In order to start working on a 3D mesh you first need to place some kind of 3D figure to work on. Click on the big ‘S’ icon (this opens the ‘Tool’ selection) and then select the “Sphere3D” (or any other of course, but in my example I’ll be using the sphere). You’ll notice that the active Stroke (shown on the left) changes into “DragRect”; this stroke allows you to place a figure by clicking and dragging. So… click and drag to place the sphere.

Now, at this point all we’ve basically done so far is place a figure in a 2D environment. So… click the ‘Edit’ button in the top toolbar (I highlighted it), this enables ZBrush’s 3D edit mode. Or you can press the default hotkey for this: ‘t’. You’ll notice some changes right away, the most obvious being the CamView shown in the upper right corner of the document window (the face and the x/y/z markers, shown in the next screenshot). We’re now also able to move the mesh around: press ALT and while keeping it pressed click somewhere in the document window and drag things around while keeping a mouse button pressed, you’ll see that the mesh is now moving. If you just click somewhere and drag your mouse around you’ll rotate the mesh (not easily visible with a sphere though ).

I suggest using your right mouse button for these actions above because it’ll be easier to remember the next one: zooming in and out. Press Ctrl and keep it pressed, then click with your right mouse button somewhere around the mesh (don’t click on the mesh itself just yet) and drag your mouse up/down or left/right. Notice how things zoom in and out? It gets better: now move your mouse on the mesh somewhere, press Ctrl and while keeping it pressed click the right mouse button as before and drag the mouse again. Notice something? It will now zoom in and out on the specific area of the mesh where your mouse is! The reason why this plain out excites me is because many 3D programs will only do something like this after you actually selected the mesh or the part of it you want to work on. ZBrush on the other hand? … fully dynamic!

So, the reason why I suggest to use the right mouse button is because you can only use the right mouse button to zoom in and out while using the Ctrl key, for the simple reason that the left mouse button is used to apply masks.

Notice the CamView (the face and the arrows)?

Anyway, at this point you’ll notice that the 3D brush (I marked it in the above screenshot) is now also active (no longer greyed out) but as soon as you try to draw on the sphere (using the left mouse button) you’ll get an error. That’s because at this time all we did was add a 3D primitive. Meaning so much that although it does have a 3D surface which we can view from all sides it’s actually not a real 3D mesh. So… click the “Make PolyMesh3D” button which I highlighted in the previous screenshot. This will change the figure into a PolyMesh: an actual mesh which can be edited by ZBrush.

Now, it is important to note that although it may seem as if things simply changed ZBrush actually created a whole new object. This isn’t important for now but it is something you should remember for later. Even so, at this time you’re ready to start working on your mesh.

Some general tips & tricks…

ZBrush is an extremely sophisticated software environment which provides dozens of options to use. Some would argue that it’s best to ignore most of them because you don’t really need it, but I disagree with that. Experiment, investigate and check what things can do for you. You never know if you find something which can be useful.

Consider initializing your primitives…

As mentioned earlier: if you select a 3D tool then you start with a so called primitive which you need to change into a polymesh before you can edit it. That is, all but the so called “PolyMesh3D” figure which is already a polymesh, as such its name. Now, this is just fine if you’re satisfied with the shape of the primitive as a starting point (like a cylinder, cube, cone, ring, spiral, ring, helix, arrow, etc.), but what if you need something more specific?

So, what do you see here? Maybe a flower of some sort which I carved out somehow or… something else? Well, maybe it somewhat resembles a flower now but this used to be the Gear3D primitive which I then adjusted a little bit using the ‘Initialize’ section which I highlighted above. You can find this section at the bottom of the ‘Tool’ palette. If you need some adjustments to get to a specific starting shape then always check out the Initialize section before you create the actual polymesh.

Some important default hotkeys to remember

When working on a mesh there are several options which may be useful for you, some are already placed on the edges of your document window. For example… when you’re sculping (“drawing”) then your strokes have a certain size, but one size doesn’t fit all while drawing. Another issue is the height (or depth?) you’re using to draw, this is defined by the Z Intensity setting, you’ll find the slider at the top of your screen by default.

Now, you could customize your interface and place all these options around your screen, but even if you do wouldn’t you agree that It can be quite a bother having to move your mouse away from your work every single time you need to change some kind of setting? Fortunately there’s a solution for this: hotkeys!

If you press the spacebar you’ll bring up the quick menu, as shown above (you can also press the right mouse button). This gives you direct access to a collection of most often used options such as the drawing size, the z intensity and many of the options that are normally placed around the screen. Very useful for sure, but what if you only need to change the size of your current brush? Easy: press ‘s’ and just move the slider which now pops up right below your mouse (you can also type in a number or use ‘[‘ and ‘]’ instead of ‘s’ to do this one step at a time). Press ‘u’ to bring up the ‘z intensity’ slider, and finally you can press ‘o’ to bring up the focal shift slider.

And there’s a lot more… F1 allows you to quickly pick another tool (this basically mimics the effect of clicking on the tool icon), F2 picks another brush (comparable to pressing ‘b’ or clicking on the tool icon of course), F3 selects a stroke, F4 selects an alpha and F5 selects a texture. Do you want to fully focus on your work without any distraction at all? Press the ‘tab’ key to temporarily hide all items around your document window.

These tricks even somewhat extend to the docked buttons and sliders around the sides of the document window. While you can drag docked palette’s up and down using the left mouse button you can’t do the same for the icons at the direct sides of the screen. To do that press the control key while dragging.

I’ve only mentioned the hotkeys which I use most often myself (I even customized some already), you can find a full overview here.

And before I forget… this is not a hotkey but a shortcut (yet so darn easy to use that I had to include it!): if you ever need to pick the color of some material in your canvas then don’t bother looking for pick options or such. Instead: click on the color you want to change (primary or secondary), keep the mouse button pressed and drag towards the area where the color sample is located and then… just let go! Insta-grabbed the color

Sculpting and modelling!

As I mentioned a few times before already ZBrush is all about sculpting; the sphere added earlier can be treated as if it were a ball of clay which you can shape into a form using dozens of available brushes that are provided with ZBrush. The standard brush allows you to draw (keep the ALT key pressed to reverse the effect and dig holes). Some other interesting brushes: Clay (“cl”), ClayBuildUp (“cb”), Spiral (“sg”), Pinch (“pi”), Nudge (“nu”) and of course the standard brush: “st”. In case you’re wondering: the shortcuts can be used to quickly select a different brush using your keyboard. So… if you want to select the Clay brush then you’d start by pressing ‘b’ to open the browser, then press ‘c’ followed by ‘l’.

Of course you can also click on the brush section to open the browser and select one using the mouse.

But sculpting is only one part of the process:

So here I added a sphere, I used the previously mentioned initialize option to remove one half of the sphere, I reduced the amount of polygons used, turned this into a polymesh and then selected the ZModeler brush (highlighted above) and used the ‘QMesh’ option which allows me to apply all kinds of different operations to a polygon. In the screenshot above I ‘extruded’ a polygon, followed by extruding the side of the now extruded polygon.

And the best part? All of this was done using the exact same interface, the same controls, the same environment. The only thing which changed was the brush I used. ZBrush provides an almost perfect combination of sculpting and modeling.

Fun fact: it was this specific feature which made me decide to get my own ZBrush license; before I used ZBrush I often relied on Hexagon for my editing purposes, a program which only provides modeling features.

Start low, end high (definition?)

One of the specific advantages of ZBrush is that it can handle a very high amount of polygons. If we look at the default Sphere3D tool then we start with 8 thousand polygons. This is a good amount to start working on for sure, but if you zoom in on your sphere then you’ll notice that the surface isn’t exactly smooth:

This is not something you should be worrying about at the start of your project, but even so: it does raise the question: how would we solve this?

Well, the solution is to sub-divide the mesh; this will double the resolution of the mesh: each polygon gets divided into 4 parts, so we’d go from 8 thousand polygons to 32 thousand. If we divide that again we’ll get 131 thousand polygons. Two more subdivides will bring us to 2 million polygons:

Needless to say that this will provide a much more smoother surface, and this isn’t even the limit!

Now, the advantage which ZBrush provides us here is that we can always go back to a lower sub-division in order to make changes at a lower resolution (so: also applying ‘cruder’ changes) after which we can quickly go back to the current (“higher”) resolution, see also the slider under the “SDiv 5” header shown in the Geometry section above.

Obviously this is ideal for sculpting purposes, but what about modeling?

Well…

Remember that ‘Initialize’ section I mentioned earlier? If you expand this section while working on a polymesh then you’ll see the entries shown above, these will allow you to create a mesh at a minimal resolution, which can provide an ideal starting point for modeling with the ZModeler brush.

As a general rule of thumb it’s usually a good idea to start your work at a low(er) resolution and then work your way up from there; make crude changes at the start and work on details near the end. When doing some modeling you’ll want to start small, like with this cube, and work on this with the ZModeler brush. But if you’re focused on sculpting you’ll need some material to work with, in other words: a bigger mesh at a much higher resolution than this. But still not too high, not at first anyway.

Left: Initialized a ‘QCube’, and then subdivided it 5 times. Right: added a Cube3D polymesh, then subdivided that 5 times as well.

Save tools, not documents!

Now, this does depend on the kind of project you’re working on, but if you’re only working on a 3D mesh and you want to save your work for later then focus on the tool, not the document. This may sound a little strange, but within ZBrush all the meshes you work with are effectively tools. A document on the other hand is focused on the 2.5D part (so: the ‘pixols’) and not necessarily the meshes. Remember: if you place a primitive onto a 2D surface then… it’s not a 3D object right away, turning on the Edit mode allows you to access it as a primitive but only after you made the polymesh will you have all options at your disposal.

When working on multiple tools at once then you’ll want to save your work as a whole project; this will save all available tools. Note that this does not apply to sub-tools; those still count as one single tool.

Getting even more out of ZBrush

While ZBrush is quite good at the things it does it’s not perfect. For example, the 2.5D feature is great as-is but if you’re using a graphics editor such as Photoshop or The Gimp then you’ll get much more advanced editing features. Photoshop (Elements) for example can even fix or enhance the whole image when needed. And while ZBrush has a very decent render engine it doesn’t provide common features such as different camera angles, specific lighting presets and so on.

Fortunately there is a solution: connecting with other software.

GoZ

GoZ is short for “Go ZBrush” and it allows you to sent your current mesh into another 3D program such as, for example, Daz Studio, Photoshop, Sculptris and so on. Expand the GoZ section within the Preferences palette to point ZBrush to a specific software that supports GoZ. Because clients need to register themselves with the GoZ framework ZBrush should be able to automatically find the clients available to you.

After that you only need to press ‘GoZ’ (found in the ‘Tool’ palette) to send your currently active (sub)tool over to the other 3D environment. Use “All” to sent everything over or “Visible” to only sent over the visible subtool at that moment.

ZAppLink

Not all graphic programs support GoZ but you’ll still be able to use them with ZAppLink which you can find in the ‘Document’ palette. Just click the button to open the ZAppLink dialog which will allow you to point ZBrush to the graphics application which you want to use. If you plan on using this feature more often then I suggest to assign a hotkey for it because that will allow you to skip the dialog and open your graphics program right away.

Keyshot for ZBrush

And last but most certainly not least… Keyshot!

ZBrush has a decent render engine but it’s mostly there to provide a good impression of what your figure is going to look like. To actually use the mesh in a full render of its own you’ll need something else. You could sent the mesh into programs like Daz Studio using GoZ but that is more for setting up a whole scene, including posing figures. If all you want to do is use the figure as-is then you might enjoy Keyshot.

Keyshot is a 3^rd party render environment specifically designed to provide quick results, take for example the screenshot above: all I did was open one of ZBrush’s demo projects (“Kotelnikoff Earthquake”), enabled “keyshot rendering” and sent my project over into Keyshot. I then added one of the many HDR enabled backgrounds and you get the above result, as you can see the figure even casts its own shadow onto the ground.

The advantage here is that Keyshot provides dozens of ways to build up a good render; it even provides a large selection of material settings which can be applied with a simple drag and drop, the software is very easy to use yet at the same time also quite extensive with the things it can do.

Dedicated version

The only thing about Keyshot is that it’s rather expensive; the regular version is almost as expensive as ZBrush itself and the Pro version even costs twice that price! To be perfectly honest I can’t really say for sure if the price is worth it or not, it really depends on context. Render engines are often expensive, true enough, and as an added bonus this software does make it quite easy to set up good looking renders. But on the other hand, so can Daz Studio and that is fully free of charge.

Even so, there is a nice solution here: Keyshot for ZBrush. This version is fully ‘dedicated’ to ZBrush meaning so much that you can only import a mesh coming from ZBrush using the so called “ZBrush to Keyshot bridge” (which is sold separately). So this construction allows you to get your hands on the Pro version of Keyshot for a price that’s actually a lot less than the regular version sells for. Another advantage here is that you can continue working on your mesh in ZBrush while also setting up your render:

Here I set up the giant with a nasty cut on his belly. I then click “BPR” while having the Keyshot external render option enabled (this option is not shown on screen) which then immediately updates the mesh within Keyshot, resulting in this screenshot / render:

In conclusion

Although I am definitely biased as heck I also honestly think that if you want to get more serious with 3D graphics then ZBrush is a hard to ignore competitor in the field, there is almost nothing like it. While it has a somewhat specific workflow I also think that it’s relatively easy to get your fingers behind it all, not in the last place because ZBrush has some really good documentation available; both for reading as well as video tutorials. And of course there is a lot of information available within the software as well (press control and hover your mouse over a button or slider and it’ll give you more information about it). Not to mention the awesome #AskZBrush video series on YouTube.

Most of all don’t focus too much on the sculpting part. While sculpting is definitely an important part of the ZBrush workflow I think it’s fair to say that modelling (so: working with polygones, vertices and points) is just as important and it’s fully supported as well. At the time of writing I’m honestly doing more with modeling than sculpting myself and I’m making really good progress I think though I mostly use ZBrush for creating morphs (= small adjustable changes to existing meshes) and texturing (I officially stopped buying texture packs in favor of polypainting). Even so, I have also started working on creating small props for my renders and… so far, so good!

My girlfriend (who has much more experience than me) mostly uses ZBrush to design clothing for her favorite 3D figures; I’ve been told (and shown) that ZBrush provides support for “dynamics”, so it can simulate the effect of gravity on certain meshes which – according to my girlfriend – makes it the ideal tool to work on clothing. I’m really not even close to doing anything like that though, I’m already proud that I managed to create some kind of smartphone object

But what I personally like the most about ZBrush is that once you learned the basics of the “ZBrush workflow” then all that’s left to do is to become more familiar with all the different options and learn which ones to use. Sculpting or modelling? It’s merely an issue of selecting another brush, everything else (including the use of the quick menu) is basically the same; eventually you’re still moving and dragging so to speak. Texturing? Using Polypaint is no different than sculpting, the only thing is that it’s usually a better idea to turn off “change mode” (referring to the ‘zadd’ option) so that you’ll only apply colors and don’t destroy your mesh.

You get what you pay for!

Yes, ZBrush is massively expensive. But if you want to get more out of your 3D endeavors and you don’t want to endlessly continue purchasing stuff on various 3D markets then… this could be a solid alternative. Mind you: I’m not claiming that you’ll be able to “just” design all your stuff using ZBrush “just like that”, don’t get the wrong impression here. I AM saying though that ZBrush makes it very easy to learn and you can really take things one step at a time.

For me ZBrush is the perfect addition to Daz Studio. I use Daz Studio (and Bryce) to set up nice 3D sceneries and the moment I need ‘more’ then I rely on ZBrush to do some actual editing, whether that editing is “morphing”, “texturing” or maybe even fixing something … ZBrush has your back there.

My tools of trade?

• Daz Studio (tip: don’t rely on “Daz Central” to install but instead grab the ‘Daz Install Manager‘ for maximum flexibility) => To me Daz Studio is the perfect software to build up complex 3D sceneries, customize everything (building your own shaders? no problem!), easily find what you need and just get awesome results.
• Bryce => Dated as heck, but there’s nothing alike to quickly create terrains, stunning skylines and bizarre virtual effects. Don’t believe its outdated store page though; this software is best used in addition to something else, like Daz Studio, as support. I mostly use it to create backdrops for my renders.
• ZBrush => Obviously.
• Photoshop Elements => Having worked with Gimp for years I eventually ended up dropping it in favor of Photoshop. Gimp is an impressive project, and free too, but like so many times you still get what you pay for. And as a casual user myself I can get much more work done in Photoshop than Gimp (and don’t get me started on Photoshop’s awesome navigator; the tool to help you organize and sort out all your media!). The main reason why I enjoy “PE” is because you don’t need some dumb subscription. Word of the wise: if you plan to use ‘PE’ in combination with ZBrush, like I do, then don’t buy it in the Microsoft store; if you do then you won’t get an executable which you can point ZBrush to. I’d also suggest to grab the full package (including Premiere Elements) even if you don’t plan on making movies… because good slideshows are also movies, ya know
• Keyshot for ZBrush => As mentioned above. While you can make nice renders in ZBrush it doesn’t exactly provide a state of the art render engine. You’ll get better results using Daz Studio (for example, there are more alternatives) but you’ll definitely get quick & solid results using Keyshot.
• Aurora HDR => Although I primarily use Aurora as an ‘extension’ for Keyshot fact of the matter is that it can seriously enhance everything (it even provides plug-in support for Photoshop Elements). Keyshot heavily relies on HDR backgrounds, and what is HDR I hear you ask? I politely refer you to this Wikipedia page. But both Aurora and
  Luminar provide a really compelling way to enhance, edit and change your images. What was once a simple snapshot taken using your phone can somewhat easily be changed into a dynamic HDR image which in its turn can then be used as a background in Keyshot. But more on this in a later blogpost.

The workflow is “specific”, sure enough, but so will the results.

And there you have it!

Thanks for reading, I hope this was useful for some of you out there and yah… 3D graphics is definitely something special, especially when using the right tools (and without getting a monthly bill shoved into your face!). As crazy as this may sound: you don’t have to be an artist to still get some solid results. I can’t draw, and yet.. I still manage to get good results by pouring time & effort into these tools. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be doable!

And dare I say: very enjoyable and satisfying as well, but I suppose that depends on you

Thanks again, see ya guys next time!