Zbrush Hard Surface Sculpting Tips -- with Marco Plouffe

so i'll do a little introduction announcement and then uh we will cut back to you and uh we'll make it as if you and i haven't spoken before and i'll be like hey marco how's it going and then we can like make a super awkward introduction and get started then super awesome all right i can't wait all right cool all right welcome everyone today's stream is a very special one because we have marco plouffe from chaos masons with us to talk about parts of his creation we have a lot of topics that we have prepared ahead of time um in a very organic way we'll still also try to sort of weave in there organically different questions that you all may have for those who are here live of course like every other interview this will be recorded uploaded on algae studio once we are done and i believe that's all i have to say ahead of time so without further ado let's introduce our very esteemed guest for today and here we are marco how you doing my friend that video just popped in oh hi everyone let's talk about treaty and not food [Music] fritz on fire is asking marco do you use subdivisions on those models or is it just a high-res dynamesh no it's always subdivision it's just that like i i was like at the end of i was texturing in that file so i kind of like merged all my my my things together into like one um one object but the reality is that like uh you see like i can i think i can even do like a reconstruct here yeah you see it's actually yeah there you go it did like a reconstruct to a lower subdivision here um let's try to do another one reconstruct subdivision yeah why are you erasing it why erase the subdivision sound uh i think that was just a mistake i think it's just i merged them and i forgot to click uh reconstruct subdivision but uh like it's gonna go to like everything is exact yeah yeah yeah but like if i was to actually like split like this object again like for example i i'll do it on this one here i'll erase my subdivision level i'll just select like this object here um hide it split it now so now i split it into its own object here and i'll reconstruct subdivision so you see that like i actually started from like just like one of the normal like capsule shape from from that brush here so yeah this uh this capsule here this is exactly what i started from to make like that piece here and uh i subdivided it until i needed to to until i needed for like the details so basically like this is the shape here this is a pretty simple shape here but like some some uh objects that are more like panels i might actually like start from a blocking mesh that i'll split that i'll do like a said remesh and then uh yeah but like other objects like you see like this like cylinder thing here uh this actually was done from a cylinder so of course um but uh i prefer to work with subdivision just because like when you move it around it can actually move like more smoothly than if it was just a dynamesh plus also sometimes if you want to like really play with your shape if it it's like too high in polygon it's just going to actually feel like that it's hard to modify the higher the the lower frequencies like the bigger shapes so sometimes i like to be able to like like this is this is going to be dumb but if i wanted to like erase those details here like right now if i even if i use smooth stronger like well i mean it's yeah it's doing the job but let's say um yeah but you're yeah yeah it's gonna be hard to really get rid of like the details and stuff but like whereas like if you were to actually uh subdivide uh lower let's say like you go to three it like almost disappears in instantly so if you want to smooth like a shape it i i find that it's like easier to manipulate it if you have lower subdivisions also this is why i like to do that but when i explore i'm going to use like dynamesh let's see here any questions bento how uh how do you manage the number of polygons subtools at the end of a project oh i just um honestly uh i just tried to have like my subtools be like at maximum eight ten millions each subtools because uh higher than that like your computer has a hard time to to run that's at least when i'm working uh this is a bad example because like this is an example where i was just working on the texturing so i kind of like merged everything together because i didn't really care about the fluidity of things but normally what i'll do is like to keep to stay fluid like for the longest time i'll uh keep at like eight ten million polygons for each subtools and i'll pr often i'll divide my character into like body arm leg in different like uh z tools actually uh this one is all unified in one piece for the presentation but the reality is that like the arm was actually alone also run us through that process of taking that idea that you have or an idea that you have really sort of searching for it within here make your block out and then let's talk about the whole process from blockout all all the way to the high-res and uh yeah talk about the whole process so basically like the first like step in like that i'm gonna go to is like trying just to find like kind of like the um the general shape of the character that will actually um have all the the the basic like um proportion that will serve for for my purpose um so like i'll take i'll take the sphere i'll i'll just go into like dynamesh because since uh since i'll be like like i said i like to work with subdivision but since i'm just looking for like shapes for the moment like i'm not really going to like try to bother too much with like technical things i'm going to really try to actually like get the the most like get the further with the most simple like methods and that sort of stuff so um the way that i work is like sometimes i'll just try to like find like its face first and then i'll go with the whole body sometimes i go like with the whole body um let's say that like we take like this character i'll just like work on on the body itself uh right now i actually am using clay build up which i'm gonna be using for like pretty much like the entire blocking almost uh like blocking and um sorry clay build up and and smooth will probably be like the only thing i might be using and um even if i want to actually like do something that like kind of like looks hard surface like let's say like those are like pectorals but i wanted to actually i have somewhat of like a more angular shape i'll simply go and like smooth like smooth the angles like this um to kind of like give it like that like faceted faceted look yeah you see like not even using h polish and it of course i mean it's it's it's it's not polished at all right now right but the intention of like having like facetized um facetize the surfaces or angles or faces i should say uh that's like the intention is there right so for me like this will uh in the end uh will answer to my visual language of like hard surface plate metal okay just let's here's a little tip see like there's little like tips like here and there um you know like to give him like more of a let's say you take the move brush and you try to do like the crown of the skull of the head like this and you really give it like that like shape of the cranium um like it's it would be easy to think that like you actually need to use the move brush to kind of like create the silhouette like this but the reality is that like sometimes i don't even want to just change the brush and that's why i love clay build up it's because if you go outside of the shape it kind of like starts to like drag the shape like this so like i'll just lightly do it and you see i'm kind of like drawing the silhouette like this and now you smooth here and then you actually start to have like more of like the big shape that you that you want like there's two ways of smoothing in the in zbrush there's the smooth and the smooth relax and uh the on the way to actually do smooth relax well the way to do smooth is simply by pressing shift before you sculpt right uh but the way to like um the way to do smooth relax is you need to click shift so you see my cursor is now blue start like like click on your your pad and remove your finger from shift and move and now you're doing relax instead of uh of smoothing and uh the big difference i find is that like you see like how i actually created this like cranium shape here like the fact that there's like an apex here and then like there's two angles like this i want to keep it right but let's say that like it was it's like full of like brush strokes and you kind of like need you just want to have like a cleaner surface um if you use shift you see you're kind of like losing your shape it's kind of like melting when you use smooth but if you use smooth relax you see it's keeping it's keeping the shape and it's only like removing the smaller details so um and also you'll notice that the topology it it responds better to pinches and to stars in the topology when you do a relax because it kind of like pushes like the polygons outwards of the star shapes so it's kind of like also a little like interesting like effect so if let's say let's say i want to like make more of like a like um a cavity in my silhouette here uh something that actually philio thought me was is to use a accu curve uh accu curve that you can find in brush uh curve accu-curve and it kind of like just like it will pinch your shape when moving it so like for example if you do it like outward without accu curve it would do this with accu-curve it would do this here so if you actually want to move and like create some like angularities or it actually gives instantly like a sharper fall-off what's your favorite cookie recipe my favorite cookie recipe uh okay um you know like they have like this at subway it's like um i just know the word in french those cookies i'm addicted to those two yeah yeah like i know i know it's like a new mecca macadam macadamia nut yeah yeah i think yeah yeah that was like oh yeah they're super good plus i mean the subway cookies like it's the only thing that's good at subway in my opinion like you don't want to trash like subway or like i mean you can still uh i hope you're gonna get sponsored by subway it's great i could actually just use damn standard with like kind of like a a big uh radius just to kind of kind of like break shapes into more shapes like this you could like break you can break it into like two major shapes here um that i don't like so i'll keep it like one big continuous shape here but like um damn standard you can use it with like a quite a big radius and sometimes you can like after that you can start to go into like smaller uh smaller radius shape to start to kind of like get like smaller shapes here so like here i'll kind of like do like some like abdominal like shape here just by like doing some like line flow i'll figure out like okay well like yeah like that's going to be like this then um i think here i made something hard surface but i could actually like decide to like just like melt my shape with smooth here and like decide to divide it into like two abdominals abdominal muscle here like this so this is like me like drawing figuring out like um what i want to do but like after i drew them i'm actually my might actually really go with a bigger radius and try to really like give them like a cavity that will really give them like a more interesting like shape and you see like just just by choosing the right radius i'm kind of like already like showing that like i'm faster like i created like two planes or maybe like three planes for like this abdominal shape here sorry it kind of like snapped weird so you see like i kind of like by choosing the right radius for for for the cavity like i created like this kind of like shape language already for the the the faces if i really want to insist on it i could actually use damn standard without which will kind of like create like false like false corners it kind of like just it pinches the shape but like it kind of like reads as like a break into like two planes and then you can actually just like smooth it out like this and smooth it out like this and then you have like like a assemblance of like a hard edge right here you see some like cylinder thing this is this is just like a tool called the trim hole i think you have to go find it in the in the light box here in trim uh but me i have it under hand all the time because i like to just like add cylinders like on the fly like this um but it's just to say that like there's like a lot of like shapes and stuff that like you see you can create like quickly you can create like cylinders like this uh because it actually like it's the time right now to figure out like the big shapes and uh what each things are going to be right defining a bit more the shapes and this like cylindrical shape thing is like is pretty fast to define like a like a round shape yeah and i'm gonna want to mask the front here now uh pro tip you see like if you actually like mask like this you might get the other side you might get like this edge here and in order to not like get the other faces what i do is i just add some depth mask to my um to my mask brush so i put it here on my ui otherwise it would be in brush and depth here see but like if you click on mask and you click on depth now you can tell him like you know what don't go sorry don't go like low just like stay high so it'll just mask everything that's higher than the angle that you are on so you see how it's like kind of like not going on like this part or this part just because i've added depth to my mask and now in like a much faster uh pace i actually masked like this front face here for those who don't know if you use your transpose line and you you right click but this is the move transpose line by the way and if you right click on the extremity right click on the extremity it does inflate so it's pretty cool i really like this shortcut and then you can just like decide of like how much you want to um extrude it and you can also like even like like i don't like how it's actually like doing like a 90 degree thing here it goes against uh other choices that i've made so i might actually just like move it so it like tapers it tapers that you see like that it's too angular here for me again so i'll i'm kind of like gonna taper it to get like a lower angle thing here like this so let's say like that's my shape let's say it's like you find it's like too sharp and you want it to round it what you can do is just go in masking here and do blur mask sharp mask blur mask shark mask and you see it's kind of like rounding the edges of my mask the same way that i rounded the corners here so you see like this idea of like trying to keep the visual language exists in like all frequencies of my model either like the big shapes or like the smaller shapes uh so now i can actually like uh reverse and do like inflate here like this and like a little pro tip okay if you uh actually just like click control click it'll like blur the mask but in just one direction and look at the effects that it does yeah that's really cool so it kind of like it curved it curved the way in but it's sharp on the way out here so i actually use this to sometimes because you see like this one here is more like super angular like the corners here are more like flat flat flat whereas like this one here this corner is more like round and then flat like this that's the difference between like this here and this here like mold lines you use orb crack or dam standard them standard creates like a rounder a rounder fall off into like the cavity whereas like orb crack which you can have you can find free on the internet does more like a beveled sharp corner so once again depending on like your visual language that you decide rounder sharper that sort of stuff i'll go with uh let's say i'll go with damn standard for this one just a sharper one and it's just a matter of like figuring out like a good line flow like kind of right now i'm just basically placing a line here because it's like it exists here and here those lines and i'm not placing it in the middle because the metal is too boring so i'm offsetting it a little bit higher here then i'll i'll go do a line here because it's the same thing as those two lines here and uh once again i try to not go in the middle of the two because you see like now it's like equal distance and it's not interesting i'll try to actually be like further distance than those the two edges so it will be like this here so now to do it clean you just like do that but you activate your lazy mouse radius and now it's it's just a question of like dexterity and finding the right like maybe the right angle for it here we go so you see that's clean enough for me so i'll just like finish that line here this one here i can maybe like go up a bit and i could maybe like lose the line go inside of the this here like this so now we have like a cavity line and stuff i'll go with um well with uh orb crack like simulate that that's actually like a a plate by itself in the cavity like this sometimes i use shift to uh i start i click and with shift you can actually like do like this kind of stuff i use that for like my straight line and for my curves i just like do it by hand this oops sorry then i curve continue like this here i like to place those kind of like alpha on the side of like cavities because it kind of like creates the illusion that like it's made to put like your thumb in to kind of like remove the plate that sort of stuff so i'll kind of like try to give like a purpose a functional purpose to like my choice of alphas um like sometimes like stuff like had adding like uh those um those little dots here for kind of like if there was like a screw here well that's kind of like the idea so now i have this one here so what i want to do i have my volumes so now since we're polishing we're doing volumes then we're going to do faces and then we're going to finish with corners like i said um i'm going to divide just a one more step and uh it's hard to say why but i just know that it's gonna go better and what i'll do is i'll h-polish uh my surfaces so that they're clean i'll actually want to use maybe the metal mat cap because i really want to be diligent and really like make sure i'm clean and people that don't use a shiny enough material might actually not notice that like their surface is all warped and bumpy and just not aesthetic not um not hard surface right you really have to make sure things are like polished to a high degree to really like give the sense that it's a very a very clean high hard surface uh material so i'll use a h polish i'll vary the degree of strength depending on like the the size of the surface but since since this is like a big surface the radius will be pretty big and i'll just like gently like give strokes in the direction that i want to smooth if i wanted to have kind of like a like a kind of like a curved corner here like this is a bit too strong but like curved corner here like this like so it's like actually divided into two planes what i could do is which h polish i could actually kind of like like be more like abrupt in these areas so it's kind of like crushing the surface so you see like it was like much rounder before and then like i kind of like crushed it but by crushing it i kind of like created like like three planes and if you kind of like reduce the the radius and you kind of like destroy each corners like this you're kind of like creating like this kind of like fall off of like um having it's still like three planes like one two three but it's really smooth out it actually transitions one from the other and if you want to get rid of like your final brush strokes what you can do is just do a quick like relax so you see kind of like remove the last brush strokes by doing like a quick relax and okay and by the way believe me this is going to take you like some practice to actually just like have the dexterity to get this like clean clean level but believe me it's really not um it's not sorcery it's really just a matter of like just making sure you take care of your planes correctly and you're being methodical and using age polish and smooth relax and that sort of stuff and you'll get there my baby is starting he's trying to get in my room right now i just see like the the handles turning like in jurassic park with the raptors it's pretty fun i want to say uh thank you by the way this is awesome everything you've shown thoroughly amazed and impressed by pretty much everything you've shown and i think that that probably is the same for everyone who's here where can people subscribe to the content that you produce on a regular basis and follow what you're doing um i think that like uh like a place that actually uh people can follow me easily is um well for okay uh if you go on our like web page here uh first of all there's like the newsletter uh for people that are interested to know about our collectibles and that sort of stuff also you can follow us on like pretty much like all the platforms like instagram facebook twitter um but there's like one uh one link where like people can see like everything that we uh everything that we do we have a little uh link tree that's actually like we we provide it um we provide it like uh like often i just realized that it's not like on our website so i'll probably need to add this but like uh from our link three like people can like access like our website our instagram uh but like any platform like instagram uh it's always like at like chaos masons that's it uh art station the facebook page uh we have we actually lost our facebook page uh like a while ago so we started from scratch yeah yeah it was so weird yeah but like now we have chaosmation.official but like you can actually like follow us from here or or more you we have like youtube it's the youtube chaos mason twitch uh we have our gum road uh that sort of stuff um oh actually that's a that's kind of like a good time to let people know um i've actually actually had a demand to create more of um more collectibles because we were like sold out so now we're taking pre-orders for anybody that wants to buy a wasp or a rocker bot or a lancer they're now available for pre-order so if you go on shop you can actually have like a few well this one is still available these ones are like good for purchase these ones are coming soon like my uh four horsemen the white widow those ones i'm actually working on producing them also some are sold out we have like uh gumroad stuff also here some merch for people that won't merge but whatever um so yeah you can always like visit our shop here and uh in all our other social medias it's just a question of like looking for chaos masons but on our web page we have like a few like youtube instagram facebook uh twitter and i'll actually be uh i think i'll add like uh the link tree icon it's probably gonna be best for people i want to look at our stuff everywhere so uh yeah that's pretty much it for for where to follow us all right thank you very much thank you mark pleasure thank you so much thank you thanks thanks you all have great voices i love you all [Music]

Channel: Outgang

Views: 92,440

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Id: O71KzZ_K-F8

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021