Reddit mentions of ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy

First let me say, DO NOT GET DISCOURAGED! We were all beginners and this kind of thing takes a lot of time to master. The best thing you can do (which you already are doing) is post for constructive criticism.

That being said, there are far too many anatomy errors to list them all but fixing the main ones will help the others fall into place. The head shape is off. It looks more alien than anything. The sides of the head should be flat not rounded, and the facial skeletal structure isn't well defined. (The jaw is lacking, the cheekbones as well). The ears look too thick and the lips are too wide for the nose and too thick. The chin also looks more like a male chin which is wider.

The neck doesn't look like anything on a human either and the whole body proportion is off. The hands aren't well defined either and there are no definitive wrist bones. The pose is also awkward.

You will want to improve your human anatomy sculpting and this will take a lot of time. Here is a book that will help you tremendously:

http://www.amazon.com/ZBrush-Digital-Sculpting-Human-Anatomy/dp/0470450266

Can you tell us a bit about your workflow so that we can make some more suggestions? Did you use a base mesh? Spheres? Dynamesh? The more detail you can give about your workflow the better since we can either help you with your current workflow or suggest a new one.

Just please don't get discouraged. I know you put a lot of hard work in to this, and letting us help will only make your next one that much better :)

First thing you will want to do is use Z-remesher under the geometry tab ( this will re-mesh your face with some helpful edge flow.


after that it is basically your preference ,



some people like working on on very low polygon models and then subdividing and refining what they roughed out.

if you have used a program like mudbox prior to zbrush this would probably be the way to go because mudbox has a Lovely Lovely layering system that helps prevent destroying volumes you have already established with the smooth brush.

as far as brushes go I think everyone has their favorite, way of approaching things.

clay tubes is a really nice one, as is the clay brush, each can give you a specific look as you sculpt. Personally I am fond of the clay tubes brush with a square alpha. but the standard and clay brush are just as good.

in addition to the build up brushes I also tend to use the dam standard brush to score or dig in and then smooth out the transition. the Face has a Ton of plane transitions So I tend to use it to keep things as crisp as possible when I start smoothing. ( note: having control over your brush strength is important, just because the tools are torqued up to 11 does not mean you have to use them that way.)

also one thing to make note of, you may not see the Dam_standard brush as an option when you press B there are more brushes that you can add to the pop up menue though the lightbox. ( click on the lightbox button top left and then from the drop down browser there should be a brushes tab in the standard folder)


once you have the topology at a density that you like and found a brush you can work with, masking and Poly grouping specific parts of the mesh can help separate things that would normally be almost too close to work on separately. I use this mainly on the Mouth. I follow the method in Scott Spencer's book ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy

he basically has you dig in a hole where the mouth is to be and drag a mask selection on everything from the middle of the hole down . then he has you polygroup that mask so you just have to CTRL +SHIFT Click on it and it will auto isolate select the polygroup. its quite handy for adjusting and moving the upper/bottom lip independently of each other.



Hopefully this helped, have fun messing with all the brushes.

May I suggest two books that will really help you get started with ZBrush quickly and efficiently?

I'd really suggest reading them in order:

Introducing ZBrush:
http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-ZBrush-3rd-Edition-ebook/dp/B008BBA30W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368383501&sr=1-1&keywords=Introducing+ZBrush

Scott Spencers Human Anatomy Sculpting in ZBrush: http://www.amazon.com/ZBrush-Digital-Sculpting-Human-Anatomy/dp/0470450266

These books will explain what others here have been mentioning. I own both and I love them.