Nomad Sculpt: Beginner's Guide Tutorial

hi this is erika kasab from small robot studio welcome to my beginner guide to nomad sculpt i designed this video for those who are brand new to this software or 3d sculpting in general feel free to follow step by step to create this little book or create your own design let's start with some basic navigation every new project in nomad will look like this to rotate your camera you just have to drag one finger on your screen to zoom in that's a classic pinch with two fingers and japan as well you only have to move two fingers this sphere is our ball of clay that we can start moving around i would like you to tap where it says wire in the bottom left this is going to show you how the sphere is made in 3d sculpting we work with topology topology is the arrangement of points edges and faces that create a whole object the more topology we have the more we can create detail high topology is not always the best especially when we are starting we want to start with as few points as possible because that is easy to manipulate so i want you to tap on the top left on the grid icon and focus on the area that says multi resolution we can pin this menu so it doesn't close if you move along these levels you will see how the topology of this sphere is reduced this is really useful because we can work with detail at the same time with general shapes and at any point you can turn off this topology by tapping again on wire before we start playing around with our sphere i really like to work with mad caps this is just a way of shading your mesh as you can see here we are in pvr shading method this is physics base render this is not the clearest if i want to see detail when i am sculpting not rendering i prefer to use a matte cap something like this is pretty good it's pretty visible you can explore between the madcaps that come by default on nomad and we have our autosave popping up this is a really cool feature which you can check on the project menu by default it will save every 5 minutes i like to crank it up all the way to 10 minutes if you really don't want to you can deactivate it all together or maybe deactivate the pop-out i will do that for this video let's start experimenting with a few of the brushes that we are going to use on the left you can increase the size of your brush here with radius you can also increase the intensity and this is an infinite slider even though it's set by percentage you can always go beyond a hundred and i'm gonna choose a regular clay brush this is gonna push my clay up or if i press this button on the left this is gonna push my clay down i recommend going through the different multi-resolution labels so you can appreciate how this brush behaves depending on the level that you are at you don't have to do anything fancy just rotate around and play around by the way if you want to rotate you will have to tap on the background if you tap on your mesh it will start sculpting there regardless if you're using your finger or an apple pencil i like to go into the pressure menu and make a little modification there here on interaction i'm gonna set my camera two finger and my sculpt to stylus in this way it doesn't matter if i press my mesh i can still rotate with my finger and my pencil it's only gonna sculpt if you wanna undo all you have to do is a tap with two fingers or here on the left you can use these buttons you can even use this history if you really want to go all the way back down and we are going to start by sculpting the skull of our book so this time instead of clay i'm going to use the move brush which might be obvious it lets me move my mesh around another tool that i'm gonna use very often it's the gizmo tool this lets me do some basic operations such as translate rotate or scale so i know that my skull is going to look somewhat compressed now i'm going to start using the move tool to get the jaw of that skull down by the way you will see that i am affecting one side and the other one is affected automatically this is because we have a symmetry setting by default you can turn it off by simply tapping on the icon as i told you before when i'm just blocking shapes when i want to get a general idea of my shape i rather work with low topology it's less points it's easier to manipulate if i was working with a lot of points it's way more difficult to control it's okay if i'm doing detail but right now i am simply blocking out a shape and i quite like that already i think that that is a good start for my skull let's try to do the orbits i'm gonna use my clay brush pressing sub make sure that you have symmetry activated and let's start pushing this eyes down probably will need a lot more intensity but the resolution is not great i can sort of see it but kind of looks pixelated so maybe it's an opportunity to start working with higher detail let's try to do a cavity for the nose and inverted heart shape let's pull some of this clay out to create the orbit of the eyes and maybe we can even mark some teeth at the bottom let's see how this looks with our wire frame it's kind of okay there's some areas i don't fully like for example the teeth don't look very nice they have a lot of texture this is where our next tool really comes in handy that smooth tool you can choose a brush on the right or you have a shortcut button here on the left so it doesn't matter which brush you're using while you press this down smooth is gonna be active and this is literally gonna smooth this is gonna average out the surfaces making them look much nicer at times so i can smooth this part to get a nice fade and again smoothing is much easier when i have lower resolutions changing between those levels can help me out quite a bit there we go i don't know about you but i don't love having this great on the floor that's very easy to get rid of all you need to do is go to the display settings and tap on grid this is a personal preference i just don't like it let me introduce you to one of my favorite brushes which is the crease brush just like its name say it's gonna crease around so i'm gonna use it to push this teeth more really give it that shape to get a nice silhouette that looks much better already but i need to smooth out this shapes i might need to go back a little bit with clay to really merge this and let's do a little smooth so it looks all very pretty all very nice i'm gonna use crease once again just to really mark that shape of the teeth and this already looks quite nice the only thing that i don't like is how symmetric it is so it's a good time to take my move brush maybe just move lower one or two resolution levels this should be fine let's turn symmetry off and let's make this design slightly more interesting maybe i can change the size of those eyes i can move around this nose a bit as well as the teeth and we can consider our skull is pretty much done hey make sure that you are subscribed with notifications on otherwise you might be missing out on the many tutorials that we release for free each week here on youtube let's carry on with the body of the book and for that we're gonna need a new bunch of clay and new mesh i'm gonna go into this scene menu and you will see that our original sphere is gonna be listed there if you tap on this pencil you can rename it so we can call this skull let's now create a primitive a primitive is a basic shape this time we're gonna use a box i can still sort of see my scolder to hide it you only need to tap on the eye and it's gone not forever just temporarily every single primitive that you create as you can see on the right i cannot use a brush yet because i need to tell nomad how do i want my primitive how big how small how much topology do i want there we can use my gizmo to give it a general shape actually i'm gonna bring back my skull so i can get an idea of the size of my book and i'm gonna use this controllers to scale it up and roughly position it where i want it we have two ways to control the size of this book we have this big circles which is going to control it equidistant or if you tap on this small circles it's going to only affect one side so if you are happy with this all you have to do is tap on validate and now all the brushes are gonna be back and we can modify it again also we're not really gonna use much brushes for this book now that i have the size i can hide my skull i could try sculpting the spine but it's not gonna be very easy instead i'm gonna create jet another primitive this time i'm gonna create a cylinder and with this cylinder i'm gonna put it where this point of the book is gonna be and i could try to do it by hand but that's going to be kind of difficult instead i'm going to use this snap option over here the number that i put here is how many degrees this is going to snap to see this is going every 10 degrees i like to have it in 45 i personally like to have it on 45 now you might have noticed that on the top right we have a little cube that help us orient ourselves it's telling me where i'm looking at the front at the bottom at the right and if you tap on that brush for example here on the top it's gonna snap to a perfect top view any view that you do it it's gonna snap very very useful here on the interface menu i'm going to tap where it says perspective and by activating this here you will see on the bottom buttons that now i have that same button visible there just to explain you this i'm going to bring back my grid it says right now that we are in a perspective view but when i turn it off it changes into an orthographic view you will see that these lines that were originally going diagonally now are going perfectly straight this means that there is no perspective distortion this can be very useful if you want to be precise about making things match let's go to a perfect top view and now that we have no perspective distortion i'm gonna move this and scale it so it fits the book if you're still having trouble understanding what's different between perspective and orthographic view let me bring two more cubes to show you currently i am on a perspective view you will see that both are the same size but the one that's closer to us looks bigger but when i change to orthographic they both look the same size why because there is no perspective distortion depth doesn't matter the sizes are always kept the same i'm just gonna get rid of these boxes by tapping on the rubbish bin i have two meshes sort of simulating how a book looks like but it's not really there how about i combine them to create one mesh only to do this i'm gonna go into the scene menu and i'm going to select with this checklist the two objects that i want to combine into only one mesh for this i'm going to choose vlog file merge this is going to calculate a new topology by mixing bowed geometries you can change this resolution and the checkerboard will show you the size of the topology there you go you have only one object and it's all together in only one mesh we have a few bumps here on the side which we could treat a little bit with a smooth to get rid of those imperfections just watch out for the corners you might not want to smooth the corners too much or they're gonna lose their sharpness now this is already a bit better but still not quite a book i need to make that hollow inside i am going to create a duplicate of the very same shape over here and this time instead of merging the shapes together i am gonna make a hole with that same shape let's use the gizmo and i'm gonna make it a bit longer to the sides let's make it slightly smaller in general and maybe elongate so everything here it's gonna be a hole now to make this hollow the process is very similar to what we did before the only difference is that the shape that i want to subtract i'm gonna turn off as long as it's selected it's gonna look shaded but when i select something else it's gonna be gone i'm gonna select both objects here on my scene and once again i'm gonna do a voxel merge there we go we have the hollow of the body of my book and i can always bring back my skull so we can fit it nicely although my skull is rounded how is it going to fit a flat book if i tap on it i can edit on it again or i can simply select it once again here so let's use a tool to flatten it out before i actually fit it there if you type on this icon solo it's going to hide everything that is not my skull this time i'm gonna look for the tool that is called project all i'm gonna do is push my topology and because i'm pushing it flat i'm gonna use this line selection let's look at it from a side view probably orthographic very useful so with your pen i'm going to trace a line everything that is on the white side is going to be pushed but again this is by hand how am i gonna get this angle to be a perfect 90 degree that is very easy if you go to this menu change your rotate step all the way up to 90 degree now it's always going to be either vertical or horizontal there we go now it is all flattened down the exact same topology as we had before except it's flattened there i can deactivate solo and with my gizmo i can place my cute little skull there let's now create the pages of my book let's go back to scene rename this so we don't get lost and create a new box primitive and all i have to do is resize it so it fits within the pages it's okay if there is a little bit of clipping between the geometries that seems to be good enough for me so i'm going to validate it this works but it's honestly a bit boring looking how about we make some individual pages before i carry on i'm gonna name it and now i'm gonna press on the primitive plane just like its name this is gonna create just a plane nothing too exciting let me rotate it to the side but this time i'm gonna use my topology this is really high topology so i'm gonna bring this slider way down to make it easier for me to manipulate somewhere around 7 works perfectly for me because i want to bring it all the way down i'm going to create at least a few pages to break some of this perfect symmetry and here on the right i'm gonna tap where it says clone to create a duplicate of that page maybe once again three is a good number to break this evenness let's validate that shape i'm going to solo it let's look at it from the top it doesn't matter if i'm in perspective view or not and i'm going to use my move brush to make this slightly more interesting break that symmetry so it doesn't look as perfect and maybe give some curvature to this page that makes my book look way more interesting let's do the same with another page let's do something slightly different don't forget to validate so you can start playing with your mesh maybe i can add a little smooth to make this a softer corner that looks good enough let's work on the last one validate solo it and yet again if i had a higher topology this would be a lot more difficult to do and i could even add some variation to these pages as well just to make my prop look slightly more can toony less of a boring primitive and we are done with the body of the book and the pages now i'm gonna create some corner protection for my book something maybe that would be made of metal so let's go back and create a new box primitive this time i'm gonna make this guy quite small and somewhat flat and i think this is a good size i'm gonna create a little clone and put it to the side and i'm gonna start modifying this using this little controllers to make this slightly longer and once i like it i can take my base and create a clone i'm gonna make one run long so i'm gonna bring this controller and take this all the way to the spine of the book let's not yet validate in case i want to do some modifications choose another one clone it and finally this would be the very last one so i'm just going to use my last cube to create this little spiral and because i'm done doing modifications i can start validating so just tap on them validate as you have probably already guessed the thing that i have selected is gonna be shaded lighter if you wanted to change this you only have to go into the display settings and on tap darken unselected meshes and everything is going to look the same if you are also not quite sure what is the thing that is selected i also quite like to activate outline as you can see this creates a line outside which if you scroll down you can change its thickness or even its color another tool that i use very often and now that everything is selected let's all voxel merge it if you choose a really high number you will probably get a warning from nomad telling you that that is probably a really high topology for these sort of things we don't really need to go that high this might be enough slung as the result looks pretty to you as the shapes are not lost we are in the right direction we got one corner protector and we could go around and repeat this process to get all the other ones but if they they're gonna look the same it would be probably a much better idea to simply duplicate it so i'm gonna go into the symmetry menu while my corner protector is selected and i'm gonna activate here on the admin section show line or show plane both at the same time this is going to show me the center from which the mirror is going to be created so that looks good to me i might go ahead and mirror depending on which side i'm working on let's do a left to right and we got it perfect mirror i don't have to do it again saves me a lot of time depending on the axis that you are working on you can change between x y c or even have them all together now to create the bottom all i need to do is duplicate by tapping on this double square and i can now align it to the bottom now because this is the very same object i'm gonna combine them but i'm gonna do a different kind of combine i'm simply gonna do a simple merge this is not gonna change the topology at all this is just gonna stack them up in only one object there we go and we can name this corners and i'm gonna do the very same thing with these loose pages i'm just gonna simple merge them so they are all together and i can name them loose pages now that i'm done creating mirrors i can deactivate this lines and if you want to admire what you have done so far you can go into the tools all the way down to the one that says view which will let you rotate around without anything blocking your view you might have noticed that sometimes the rotation is a little bit difficult to manipulate it doesn't really go in the direction where you want if you go into the camera menu we can change from turntable into trackable this makes the rotation slightly freer this can be a little bit difficult to manipulate at times but it also gives me a bit more freedom which i will need to create the straps on the spine of the book and for this i want to show you another tool you might already understand how masks work if you are a painter software user in short you paint an area that you want to protect anything that is painted black it's not going to be affected if i use any brush i'm just going to take my clay brush and go around you will notice that the areas around my mask are modified but not anything that is black masks are the best they help me protect they help me keep areas intact but one other favorite thing that i love from masks is that anything that i paint i can go here into my mask menu and i'm gonna select where it says extract shell let's set this thickness to at least one and tap on extract so that shape that i painted it's gonna make a geometry out of that another excellent very useful tool i'm gonna use that to create this straps from the side but instead of painting this mask by hand i'm going to choose the next tool which is called select mask and i'm going to use the rectangle selection make sure that you are in an orthographic view not perspective and i'm going to create this selection right here but i actually only want one so i'm gonna clear my mask right here deactivate symmetry and i can try again to create this shape let's isolate my book to see my mask and i created my mask it's nice but it's also created from the inside so if i try to extract this it's gonna extract it from the inside which maybe i do not like i'm gonna snap to a side view and this time i'm gonna pick a lasso mask selection this is gonna be a freehand selection but i wanna unmask i wanna remove this paint that i have here so i'm gonna tap on this button on mask and i'm gonna go around just on the inside to get rid of that mask there but i still have it there on the outside now i should be able to very easily extract this you might want to change the settings if you don't want it as thick and i'm going to lower this border smoothness because i want it to have a bit of a corner like the rest of the book this seems like a good size and once again it breaks that silhouette that i had from the book i can bring the rest in to see how this starts looking but for this one i don't want it to be a rectangle shape everything is already quite rectangle that is somewhat boring so just like i did for the skull to flatten it i'm gonna do the same i'm gonna use my project tool i'm gonna bring it back all the way to zero so this angle is free and don't forget white is gonna be pushed in oh no it disappeared why did that happen that is because symmetry is active so it's pushing it actually from both sides so i might wanna deactivate symmetry there and there we go i don't mind that this is not perfect i actually like that imperfection it adds to the cartooniness of this prop that we are creating let's delete that mask that we had there you can quickly select a mask tool by using this button and just tap on clear and we got this side strap which if you really want to you can modify a little bit with your gizmo and i do want to have more than one so i am going to clone them if you cannot quite see your book this is a good option to start moving around your madcaps and explore which one lets you see things better now it's a good opportunity to add some imperfections to the book just like we did for the pages so i'm gonna select the corners the body as well and i'm gonna select all of these new meshes that create those straps that i just created with the outline i can see everything that is selected and i'm gonna go ahead and do a simple merge and i'm gonna call this body now before we were using the move tool this could be useful the only problem is that you will see that the corners don't follow this tool is set to only select one mesh without affecting the other ones it's only affecting those that are within the symmetry but not really all together if i want to affect everything at the same time i would be better off by choosing drag let's turn symmetry off because that can be a bit boring if it all looks the same and you can see that now it's selecting everything i will make this slightly smaller now i'm going to push this maybe a little bit outside maybe give it some curvature there and maybe you don't want to affect the top part so do you remember what was the tool for protecting stuff yes you got it we're gonna use a lovely mask so let's mask the top it doesn't have to be a perfect selection and we can go ahead and modify the bottom and now the top is intact i can go to the top while selecting my mask button invert that mask and do the opposite just make some tiny movements don't modify it too crazy we only want to add a little bit of cartooniness but you don't want to exaggerate this let's erase that mask and look at my book looking much better looking quite cartoony now if you are done doing all of these modifications and you want to separate these meshes you can go back here to scene and tap where it says separate you're gonna lose the naming which can be somewhat annoying but you can always do that again i'm gonna select once again my clay brush and i'm gonna snap to a front view but this time i'm gonna tap and hold on front and this is gonna lock in my front so now i can zoom in without losing that perfect front view or i can pan and still have my perfect front view without any rotation happening i'm going to use once again my crease tool because i want to make some nice carving some kind of flower is going there you might want to activate the lacy rope stabilizer or some stroke smoothing if your lines are looking not very pretty this is going to help you stabilize these lines and even if your hand shakes a little your lines are gonna be very pretty let's finish up that flourish and that is looking very pretty let's tap now on those corners and i'm gonna use a little bit of smoothing to make this corners slightly different thinking that they might have somewhere i don't want everything to look perfect don't make it all symmetrical think where things would be more worn same with the straps let's break a little bit that perfect symmetry oops we got a little line going on here because of the mask we did previously but this is where our soft brush can come in very handy i don't think it's terrible because it makes the book look somewhat broken if something happened here some kind of story behind it that is all good and just to finish off i'm gonna use the flatten tool as you can guess with its name it flattens things i'm just gonna lower a lot of intensity and i'm gonna use it just very subtly on the corners as if this book fell on the side and i think that we can consider our book finished now we can go back to a pbr shading and rotate around this light so we can get a better view of my book this is looking quite nice to finish off to be able to see my whole prop i'm gonna tap on this nomad scope logo and i'm gonna activate a turntable right here this is gonna rotate my prop and now i can show it off on social media on instagram whatever you like to hang out so i hope that you found this project good to get started with nomad if you want to learn more about these tools check out my other videos in which i review them and break them down with a lot of detail i look forward to see what you sculpted feel free to tag me on social media that's it for this tutorial if you find it useful make sure that you leave a like so other people can find it and if you haven't already make sure you subscribe as we are bringing out cg and illustration tutorials every week become a patron and access tutorial assets bonus content a private discord and more by clicking in the link below

Channel: Small Robot Studio

Views: 61,958

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Id: nmK-9uCESSg

Length: 31min 11sec (1871 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021