ZBrush Bust

This was the first time I had ever used ZBrush.  After 8 months of navigating through Maya almost every single day, I was absolutely lost in the pan/rotate system of ZBrush.  Once the month was over and I switched back to Maya I found myself staring at the keyboard and wondering why Maya wouldn't snap views and rotate like ZBrush does.

We were tasked with creating a self portrait bust from scratch inside ZBrush.  We took standard orthographic pictures of ourselves and got working.  It was extremely challenging but also very fun.  After staring at my face literally nonstop for 3 weeks I couldn't stand in front of a mirror without automatically pinpointing and examining my facial features.

Starting from a base shape, I sculpted our general proportions in.  From there I started building the details of the face.




Once features were established the need for proper edge looping to increase detail arose.  I then went back and retopologized the bust inside ZBrush.

Old topology

New topology

This not only gave more "material" to work with but also made the mesh usable by other programs.  Many times this is an issue, where artists create sculptures that look gorgeous inside ZBrush but can't be used elsewhere (especially when it comes to rigging/animating).

I then textured the face inside ZBrush using the new spotlight system.  This base texture isn't much good beyond giving the base colors and providing a point of reference for other texture maps - I would also need higher resolution photos to gather more skin detail from.  To create a picture that looks real, I would use Sub Surface Scattering and many other textures inside a rendering program (like Maya).

Final sculpt

Final sculpt with texture

Here is a turnaround of the final sculpture: