Creating a skull in ZBrush

     My weekly task for this week is to model a skull in ZBrush (Pixologic, 2020) to introduce me to the software. 

    The first time I opened this sculpting tool I was very confused. Even after instructions, I could not understand everything properly, but the more I used it the more I understood. 

    Before I started sculpting I gathered two pictures as a reference:


Fig 1.

    

Fig 2.    

Here are all the steps that I have taken:

Firstly, I hid the lightbox using a shortcut ",". After that, I found the Toolbar and I chose a 3D mesh, which was a Cube3D. Then I pulled the cube to the middle part of the screen and I pressed "Shift" to make it straight. Later I pressed "T" to change the mode to "Edit" and I made PolyMesh3D. This allowed me to sculpt it with the help of my graphic tablet and stylus. I changed the material to "MatCap Skeletor" and I started modelling. I used the brush that was already selected: "Standard". I have learnt that I can use "Shift" to smooth the mesh of my model, and "alt" to subtract. Knowing that I kept sculpting with the help of the head responsible for representing positions. When I realised that the perspective seems kind of off, I changed it with the key "P". Unfortunately, after a few hours of modelling the mesh still did not look good and after a while, I recognized that I have not turned the symmetry on. 

    That is how my first model looked:





    I felt horrible about the result, so I started once more, this time with the symmetry on. This helped me a lot. In the beginning, I was still struggling with the overall shape of the head and when I was about to give up, it started working for me. While sculpting, I kept changing my brush depending on the stroke that I needed. The brushes that I used the most are: "Standard", "Clay", "Dam Standard". "Move" and "TrimDynamic". After finding a general shape of the head I divided my mesh. Every time I felt like I cannot sculpt any more detail, I divided my model again, up until 7 times, because after 7 my computer was not able to work fast enough.  When I was quite satisfied with the mesh I decided to render it. I changed "SubPixel" to 7, rendering the model with "Best-Preview Render", then adjusted shadow settings and saved my render as .jpeg's. 

    The final look:



    Overall I am happy with my progress and I feel like the symmetry being turned on changed a lot in my project. I am looking forward to the next things I am going to learn about ZBrush and hopefully I will improve much better soon.


Bibliography:

Images:

Fig 1. Oscar Schwartz (2019) There's a thriving market for human body parts on Instagram. [Online Image] Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/theres-thriving-market-for-human-body-parts-on-instagram/ [Accessed 23/06/2021]

Fig 2. Tony (2020) Repeated head impacts associated with later-life depression symptoms, worse cognitive function [Online image]. Available at: https://guysandgoodhealth.com/2020/06/30/repeated-head-impacts-associated-with-later-life-depression-symptoms-worse-cognitive-function/ [Accessed 23/06/2021

Software:

Pixologic, 2020. ZBrush [software]. Windows 10. Los Angeles: Pixologic.

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