Hey, what's up, guys! Pablo Muñoz here, Welcome back to another video tutorial today. I'm going to show you how to model and detail
the handle of a Japanese sword inside ZBrush. Let's go ahead and jump straight into it. All right. So this image that you can see here on the screen
is where we're going to be working on today. Everything was done in ZBrush except the textures
that were done inside Substance 3D Painter. But all the details of the kind of like
overlapping pattern of the threads, that's all ZBrush using the techniques that I'm going to show you today.
All right, let's jump into ZBrush. And I'm using the standard UI that comes with ZBrush
just so that you can follow along a little bit faster. And this is just a reference model of the type of things
that we're going to be creating today. So again, the pattern looks a little bit complex
and especially the overlapping kind of like threads is, you know, something that might take a little bit of time
if you want to do it manually, but with a technique that I want to show you
it's very, very easy. So let's jump right into it. So I want to click on the cylinder 3D from the tool palette
just to select a cylinder 3D. And I also have the perspective off and I also going
to enable polyframe with the shift F And that's it. Let's go ahead and bring in the Gizmo 3D and I'm
going to use the Y axis to push this up a little bit. And this is going to determine the size of the hilt of
the sword or in a katana, I believe it's called the 'Tsuka'. So this is going to be the length of it. So you can push it up depending on the reference you have
or if you're making your own, feel free to play around with the size. Now let's go to this subtool palette
and I'm just going to take this cylinder and duplicate it once. And this duplicate is
where we're going to be using to create that pattern. So I want to hold the control and shift to access my
selection tools and I'm going to select just one polyloop like so we can also go into solo mode. I have that map to my letter 'S'
so I'm just going to press 'S' button right here. And that also allows me to see just this section. And if for some reason you don't see
the behind of the polygon or a single sided polygon that is at the bottom of the tool palette,
we can scroll to display properties, click on double, and that way you can see behind
or like be the inside normals basically. And that's it.
The next thing is to get rid of the rest that we don't need. So right now, if I hold control and shift, click and drag, we basically have the other parts still available to us,
but they're just hidden. So in order to remove them, we can go to the geometry
palette, then open up the modified topology. All of these are still under the tool
palette and I want to click on Delete Hidden. That's it. So now we have removed the rest. Now what I want to do is create a gap in here
so I can connect things a little bit better. So you can do this in different ways. Again, you can hold control and shift and hide portions that you don't need, right? And then you can like, let's say if if I want to remove
these, you can just go ahead and click on delete hidden. Alternatively, we can enable transform activate
symmetry in the X axis and we can go to the brush thumbnail here, select the ZModeler which is the one or the tool
that we're going to be using for the rest of the process. So that's why we can choose it right now and
then hold the alt key to tag, let's say six polygons, right? And then I'm going to hover over these polygons,
press spacebar and I'm just going to click on delete as my polygon action. And it doesn't matter what target you choose
because we have manually tagged those polygons with the Alt key and click once and that's it. We have deleted those. So it's the same thing as hiding them
and then deleting them. All right.
The next thing is to add a polyloop right in the middle. So I'm going to hover over an edge, press
spacebar, insert multiple edge loops. So I'm going to click and drag. And this is the one that allows us to do this type of thing. But I'm just going to concentrate on a single edge loop. Now, you might see that if you press the spacebar,
you have the option to add a single edge loop. The reason I selected the multiple edge loop,
even though I have a single one, is because with this tool it allows me to create that edge loop
right in the middle of the polygon. So we know that the top and bottom
are exactly the same with. All right. The next step would be to hover over the edge again,
press the spacebar or right click, select the bevel tool and click and drag. So it's going to add a little gap in here,
something tiny like that. Maybe that's too much. Something like this, right? Just enough so that we can basically have one, two and three
different edge loops here that then we can connect. So now we can hover over this edge, right
click for to bridge edges. And before I do the next step, I'm just going to go
to transform, activate symmetry, to get rid of symmetry, click at the bottom edge and then add the top edge like so. And that creates a bridge between these two polygons. Now we can add a few more polygons here,
so I'm going to right click or press spacebar go to insert multiple edge loops, click and drag, I wanna set this to five
yeah something that is like an odd number. The reason I don't want an even number
is because I don't want to have a line right in the middle. And just let me show you what that means. If I go ahead and click and drag and create,
I say six, right? If I look at it from the center,
we're going to have this line right in the middle. Okay. So when I do the next one, let's say bridge this edge with this edge,
same thing, right click insert and multiple edge loops. You'll see we have a line that is right in the middle. So under the geometry palette
you can expand mesh integrity. And if I click on check mesh integrity,
we're going to have these this issue, right. And it's telling me that the current mesh has one
or more edges that are shared with more than two polygons. So that is that edge right in the middle. Right. So that's going to become a problem once we want to,
you know, modify things and overlap these things a little bit,
because these points right here are merged together. They're welded together. So the way that you avoid
that is to not have an edge right in the middle. So let's undo that. Let's click on the edge, insert multiple edge loops,
click and drag and we can go for seven, no problem. Because again, there's no points
right in the middle and that's pretty much it. What I want to do before I connect the top and bottom
of the other side is to assign a polygroup, And the way that I can assign that is holding
control and shift and clicking on this point. Right?
It's a point that is shared with the yellowish and bluish tones like I seen it,
two different polygroups and then I can hold control and 'W', right? Maybe control 'W' few more times
just to give a different color. So that you can see the difference between the pink
and the yellow one. And now I can replicate the same process. So hover over an edge,
go to bridge, click bottom, top that connects it. Now I can press spacebar again, insert, multiple edge loops,
and this time I only need to click once. Okay. And this is one of the cool things about the ZModeler
that it will remember your previous settings or the previous, lets say, distance
or amount of subdivisions that you created with the tool. So we have exactly the same amount. All right.
So I'm going to do the same thing for control and Shift. Click on this point that is shared by these two polygroups. Control W a few times this will have something different
in terms of color and now we are pretty much ready to go. All right. So there's still some co-planner issues in here,
but don't worry, this is part of the process. We're going to fix that in just a second. So the next step would be to adjust
the curvature of these cylinder. So if I go to the top right, and I press the shift
key, it looks like nothing is in there. And that is because it is a single sided mesh. Right.
So we cannot see the thickness. So we're going to go to the geometry palette,
open up the dynamic subdivision, click on dynamic. Right. And we're going to remove this subdivision. So these sliders set it to zero and the thickness,
we can add a bit of thickness. And this is dynamic
meaning that none of these changes are actually happening. This is just dynamically drawn on top. But what's cool about these is that if I rotate
now hold shift, you will be able to see this subdivision, so you will be able to see the points. So what I want to do
is maintain that roundness of the cylinder, right? So now what I can do is hold the control key, click and drag
and mask those points for control. Click once in the canvas
to invert the selection or in there the mask. And then I can bring in the gizmo, click on this icon
right here, go to unmask center
mesh and I can push this like so, right? If I get out of solo mode,
I will be able to see the additional cylinder I had so I can just push this along there,
go back into solo and do the same thing. I'm going to hold control, click and mask these points. Control, click and mask these points,
get out of solo mode and it's basically rinse and repeat. That's about it, right? So now when I get out of solo mode,
this is more of a rounded shape, which is what I wanted. And I still have all these polygons. All right. The next thing I want to do is separate this a little bit. So I'm going to turn of the dynamic for the time being. And I want to hold control and shift
to isolate the polygroup. This is the reason I gave them different polygroups
and now I can mask this entire thing holding control, click and drag. Or I can just click once and it will be ZBrush will mask
whatever is on the canvas and I can bring back the rest whole control click once
and it will be inverted. And now I can just mask these points
just to make sure that we don't mess with those corners. And then with the gizmo selected, center
to the unmasked areas, I want to go ahead and move this back a little bit
so we don't have that jittering effect anymore. And if anything, we can just flatten a little bit
just by pressing these this Z axis will be right. So I just want to create a little bit of a gap,
not too much. And if I enable dynamic again, you'll see with the thickness
it kind of looks all right. Okay, so that's all I wanted. Cool. So now let's get rid of Dynamic Subdivision again So the next set of edge loops are going to determine
how many threads you want. So if you want for like I have here,
you need to create four in here and four at the bottom. Right? So let me just show you what that means. When I right click or press spacebar on an edge,
go to insert multiple edge loops and I can click and drag and that's about it. I can let go now and you'll see. Maybe the pulling groups are a little bit hard to see. So I'm going to hold control and shift
isolate this polygroup, all control and w and there we go. So the pink one is the one that I'm referring to. So the amount of loops that you set up in this stage is the amount of threads
that you're going to have around the pattern, right? So make sure that you decide that before you
you go into this step. Now, the next thing I want to do is duplicate this whole thing just because I want to be able
to show you two alternatives of the end result. So I'm going to go to the sub two palette
and I'm just going to rename this one option one, and then I'm going to duplicate it and I'm going to rename it option to okay, let's hide
option two and go to option one. And this is purely
just as an extra you don't have to do this step. Just I want to show you the alternative later.
So wtih option one. We can just hover over any face press spacebar and
I want to select the extrude option and polygroup all. Now you can also use Q mesh for this action. However, the extrude version is better
because with Q mesh ZBrush tends to weld, some of the points that are closer together
and we don't want that. So make sure that it's Extrude and PolyGroup
all and polygroup all as a target. Tell ZBrush that we want to use this action, the extrude
action in just the PolyGroup that we select first. So when I click on the pink one and push that out
just to give it thickness and that's perfect, we still have some overlap in here.
We're going to fix that next. But this is looking good. We're going to go ahead and open up the geometry palette and I'm going to click on Dynamic
and this this error that we see here. That's the reason I duplicated these mesh
to show you the difference. So this is not a big deal, but right now, the problem
or not the problem, but the these warning that we're getting is that this Polygroup,
the kind of like light green or almost yellow polygroup, is actually shared by more than two faces. So that's the issue that we're getting.
But again, it's not a big deal. We can just click anywhere
and ZBrush still going to do it. Obviously the settings are not great, so let's remove
the thickness altogether because the thing is, that's what we just did and we can click on this subdivision
just to give it a bit of smoothness. So smoothness of three looks all right
and we are getting pretty close. So now what I want to do is move these out of the way
so that it looks nicer. So I'm going to use the move topological. So this one right here, you can also access
that brush by hitting the letter B, M, T. and with a larger brush size, what I'm going to do
is hold the alt key and push this one towards the camera, holding alt with the move
brushes allows you to move things along their normals. So that's what I'm doing right here. And if anything, we can just move with a smaller brush size,
just to adjust this. So this is probably the only kind of like manual work
to do just to refine this. Maybe from the inside we can push this in
and the reason I chose the move topological is because the move topological respects
the continuity of topology. So in other words,
if I click on this point that I'm basically moving around because they're not directly connected to the ones
at the top or they're not close to the ones at the top is not going to move them. So that is a lot easier to sort of manipulate. Another thing I want to do is just give these
a tiny bit of curvature. Again, this is kind of like up to you and that's looking pretty good. But if you compare it with this,
it's a little bit far from these, right? Because this looks like it's actually tied together
and it's, you know, it feels solid, whereas in this case it doesn't. So the simple solution or what you can do
next is go to the deformation palette and click on inflate. So I'm going to click on inflate
or click and drag in the slider and I'm just going to tie these things together
and that is pretty much it. We have completed the tutorial. Let's go ahead and change these to a basic material
so you can see it. And this is looking pretty good. And yeah, I'm just going to show you the alternative to this
just so that, you know that if you don't want to have those kind of like issues at the back in this case,
you won't see it right when you when we duplicated and we bring in the handle, you won't see any of that. So you can sort of create a low polymesh
and then bake all those details if you want to take this into a game engine. But just to show you the alternative,
we're going to select this option two go into solo mode, bring in the polyframe again. So the simple alternative is to once you get to this stage,
you can hold control and shift to isolate this polygroup,
the one the outermost polygroup. Right. So the pink one and then go to geometry, modify topology,
delete hidden. So we now only have these pieces
kind of like floating around this kind of like rings. And then we can go to dynamic,
we can play with the thickness dynamically. So that's another plus of these additional workflow. And then we can click on Smooth Subdiviision so we can do that. And if it is too sharp, as you can see here,
that has to do with the post subdivision under the Dynamic Subdivision,
so we can click on that just to turn it off. And there we go. We have these nice lines and obviously too
to make it make them thicker. We can also go to deformation palette So the rest of these processes are pretty similar. Before we inflate, we have to apply the dynamic subdivision. So yeah, let's just go ahead and click Apply. So now we have subdivision levels as you can see, and we can now go to the inflate
and now it's inflating along the normals. And again we can go back to the highest subdivision level
and we have something pretty similar. Again, we can go back and tweak these overlapping
a little bit with the move topological. But yeah, as you can see, two similar options. We can subdivide this even more
just to get a little bit softer. But you have two options that work really well. Like I said, I prefer to use the option one,
even though there's like some issues at the back. Just because in a scenario like this,
I wouldn't actually have that many pieces of geometry unless it like a highly detailed sculpts. But, you know, I can just basically bake
all those details into a low polymesh. All right. So a couple more things. Just to wrap up this tutorial
and this is completely up to you. I'm just going to show you
how to duplicate this pattern really easily. So I'm going to bring in the gizmo. I have the option one selected. So I'm going to push this down bottom. You can use the array mesh actually,
and you can click on array mesh and you can just add as many repeats as you want
and then you can use in the offset the y axis. So the y axis would be the green one, right? So you can just go y axis,
which is this one and increase the offset. So that's kind of like a dynamic way
of doing it around there and that's it. I obviously I did too many
so I can dynamically change the amount and then adjust. So that's a very simple way of doing it. The cool thing about this workflow is that not only this is dynamic, so if you turn off array,
you only have one, one pattern to deal with, but you can also turn off dynamic
and you still be able to change these on the fly. So that's pretty handy. Okay,
so let's go back and set it to array. An alternative to this would be to actually duplicate these. Just to give you an extra tip, select that one. I'm going a turn off array mesh and instead of using array mesh,
I'm going to bring in the gizmo and I want to hold control and click the arrow
and the y axis. This allows me to sort of like duplicate along this axis
and what I'm going to do before I let go of the click
or the control key is just to set the distance around there. Okay. So again, holding control and dragging,
just determine the distance between the two. And now that I have determined the distance
before I let go of my click, I'm going to let go of control and then I'm going to keep pushing up and there we go. So that way
you can make sure that you duplicate these consistently. So that's a really nice technique. Again, sort of like holding
control click and drag to duplicate, then let go of control and as long as you just keep going in that direction,
ZBrush is going to duplicate that mesh and that's about it, right? One thing
in case you want to do it is, you know, if you look at the the references of the hilt of that katana sword
is not necessarily cylindrical in nature. So what you can do as well is merge things together. So for example, let's actually undo one of these
because I when have too much and a little bit. All right. So there we go. And then the cylinder that we're using as a reference,
you can also use the dynamics of subdivision. Well, actually, we need to create a polymesh
3D out of this so that we can play around with this when a copy it from the subtitle palette,
go back to where we were pasted in here. And now we can go to the geometry
and we can click on Dynamic. And if you don't want to see this,
we're kind of like triangulation here. We can enable polyFrame, bring in the ZModeler. add a couple of loops in there and a couple of loops in here
and maybe one at the bottom and a top here. So that's just to sharpen those. Again, all of this is up to you,
but what I would do is combine these two together so I can hold control and E in my keyboard,
which is what I have assigned to merge down. Or you can just leave that to that. You want to combine and click on Merge Visible
and ZBrush we create a new tool. Of course it just removes the dynamics subdivision,
but we can just enable it again and that's all good. So now we have the dynamics subdivition here
and what I was talking about the kind of like the non cylindrical shape, the reason I merge
everything together is so that you can do it a lot easier. So let's turn off dynamic. Let's bring in the gizmo center to the unmasked areas. Click on the gear icon
and I'm going to use the soft deformer. So let's go ahead and actually rotate around. And these are for me, soft is kind of like a lattice
if you're familiar with the term I want to mask and then or hold control to mask
and then the alt key. And that way we only mess with these points
and we can scale within this area with the Z axis. So you see it's like changing that sort of circular shape
and we can go ahead and click Accept. Now, if anything, we can scale this even more like so. So that is not a cylindrical shape. It's more like the real shape
we can click on Dynamic again is going to give you always this issue or this warning,
but like I said, is not a big deal. And there we go. We have a katana that we can, you know, continue working. And obviously you can separate these again,
add some details to the to the inner side or the kind of like the wood or metal
that goes underneath the wrapping. But that's pretty much it.
Hopefully you find this tutorial useful. Let me know what you think. And if you do something
following this tutorial, feel free to share as well. I'll love to see it.
All right. I'll see you in the next tutorial. She is.
