ZBrush Sculpting Tutorial - Sculpting Hair in ZBrush

you hi this is Henning from flip normal calm in this tutorial we're going to take a look at how we can sculpt hair this has been a very highly requested topic and finally getting around to doing it we're gonna be sculpting something very similar to what we're seeing in front of us now just notice detailed because this does take a fair bit of time we're gonna go through some theory first before we get into the more hardcore sculpting aspects of it so I hope you enjoy and let's get started the first thing we're gonna do when we're sculpting here is we're gonna find reference as we pretty much any other part of sculpture it's really hard to get nice and appealing here without proper reference but more importantly for this I'm gonna show you how to simplify it more like the biggest mistake I see when people's coming here is to keep sculpting every single strand of hair to keep doing like a big blob of hair and they go in immediately and start to render the living crap out of it which it's simply not gonna work if you go from completely feature-film quality for something you're gonna use a hair system with we are gonna have every strand of hair but for this kind of work which is sculpture it's going to be stylized to some degree so what we're gonna do is we're gonna simplify it down into big shapes you see for instance on the forehead or the chunk coming out of a fort here you have to simplify it down into a big chunk same with the rest here if you start going into detail too early as we fare ly adamant about in other videos it's gonna look really weird really quickly and there's going to be no appealing and at all you put in what's called or what we refer to as enhancement details meaning you'd put in some strands of hair around a model to define the surfaces here to define the material as hair for instance if you're doing this area here I would put in like some a strand here as here and a strand there to define the negative space and find the creases in here but you don't go in and do and sculpt every single strand as an example of this we can now also blur the image and you can still see that it works you still see the big chunks and this is actually more what you're after you're not doing as I said before you're not doing realistic here we do stylized hair to some degree same with some of my own sculpture let's just look at this guy this is a model did some time ago and while it the hair is fairly detailed it's not even remotely every single strand of hair if a blurred image you can still see it works you still have the big shapes aching you can make out the big shapes so that's pretty much the most important thing you can do when you sculpt here simplify it down into big shapes I would say this is essential and with this said let's get started with some actual sculpting so this is the model gonna be using for an hair sculpture the first step is you obviously some John who desculpe Thanh you could of course scope directly on the head but I prefer to keep it as a separate piece of geometry as it's it's way way easier the first thing I do is I create a base mesh from you some massive mesh extraction so just add a mask where you want to here to be and use finish extraction for that I tend to avoid the ears as there they can create some pretty funky Gentry simple this is totally acceptable for this so hit go under sub tool it's just full screen this and hit extract you get this weird helmet shape we'll just reviewed that extract you have to in hit extract every time you you rotating model then it accept and it's now gonna be a separate sub tool this is fine for now we're not gonna use dynamite to just simplify the shape geometry dynamesh and dynamesh the resolution is fairly low though but that's fine just for now I just want to block it out so I have the reference on my second monitor now and I would highly recommend you doing the same you need reference and sculpting hair so I'm as I said before you need you don't scold hair widths interactive that's gonna kill that's gonna kill the hair immediately like you can sculpt the face with symmetry and then then disable swim to after a while and give it some asymmetry but the hair has it there is not even remotely symmetrical unless it's by choice so the first thing I'll do here us I just blocked it out just remesh it by he'll not control key and dragging outside and just blocking out with a move brush getting the flow of the hair right getting the big mass living mask for the hair down and I want this to be flowing down around her her head like this in a nice flowing fashion like you saw on a lot of the phone and this is not gonna be too detailed because sculpting hair does take a for a bit of time but it's gonna it's gonna prove a point and it's gonna be you have it this is the way I do it for pretty much all my models which has hair in it this is the way I do here so it's it's a proven technique look at the silhouette of it hit the V key to look at so it and you want to be nice and flowing and I finally have with this right now so increased or a solution the resolution is based on the scale of your model so you can't say a fixed number for that use a smooth brush to smooth everything down you don't want the nasty squares and for the majority of the time you're gonna be sculpting when the claybuildup brush at least that's what I prefer to use I finally build up to be an excellent brush for sculpting hair as you're adding like really big chunks of polish down so click below but and disable the Alpha at least that lets give me the best results we can actually disable dynamesh at this point we don't really need it you can also do see your master of it just get some nice working topology so nice even quads just hit serum extra ones before and after I'll usually go over would sear much for a couple times so this is a nice starting base let's actually add some something shapes into this subdivide a couple times and then let's just add some big chunks of hair keep your brush size big you really really don't want to go into details at this stage only the big flowing chunks I like to go into and defining with where the hair is starting from as it helps to direct the flow later on and ruled the stage is simply to keep it clean also some general tip think of overlaps I for instance here there is the lines overlap one shape going like this and one shape going under it and going under it and going under it it just makes it look really nice and appealing if you keep all apps in mind that's a general sculpting trick as well overlaps can do magic for your for your Lister once I'm done with this stage of losing the claybuildup brush I'll go over everything with a standard brush the standard brush is super nice for for defining the hair or adding a smaller detail add some strands and as this will take some time and it's just a lot of labor I will put this into time-lapse now you so after about 10 15 minutes of scopes in this eye with the clay believers it's now time to go in and to find some more features of this using the standard brush as you can see when I was homeless as well I wasn't only using the clear Bela I was also smoothing out a fair bit as hair is inherently a very smooth thing you don't want to have too many brush strokes in it unless if we do it on purpose so let's start with some standard brush to define some more pictures I haven't done the entire here right now because it's simply going to take too much time so I'm only doing a front part of it that said I'm still blocking outdoor at rest as it keeps my as it can then keep my head wrapped around what's going on here as the back of the head will influence the front of it so keep on a small brush size and let's just start defining stuff getting in and just defining some more some more shapes the general sculpting tip as well it feels really nice if you start your stroke in a soft manner then increased hardness and then fade it out as you go instead of having a stroke for a second which is let's just show here so dividing one small instead homi stroke which is like this then having a seer stroke which goes like soft and then fades out so hard you can also vary this it just it just makes it visually more interesting just a little pro tip for you there you also want to hold on the old key carp in a little bit to define some some shapes as well and again we're not doing single single pieces of hair this is not a time thing it's not like if I had all the time in the world I still wouldn't do it it simply makes it look unappealing it might it might taste it just becomes noise after a while so you can order starting to see that we're getting some definition into it so I'm going all around the model and I'm also evaluating this silhouette as I go this face doesn't infer the silho too much but you still want to sell it to work with it and be careful where you're adding detail as well keep it you know keep it over keep it over the entire model don't focus it just in one point that's said if you want focus somewhere it is a good idea to focus your detail in that area for instance if you're doing a character and you want to focus on the eyes it can be a good idea to keep your details around the eyes so just adding just adding details not really and as I will just keep doing the same thing over and over again it's time to go to time lapse mode you so this is the final resolved after about 20-25 minutes of sculpting as you can see it's still fairly rough in some areas like the back part here but the front is fairly refined for final sculpt I would take a little bit further than this but not a whole lot to be perfectly honest if we take it into Photoshop and blur it a little bit you can see that even without to detail or even without any kind of individual strands it still works we still have the main big shapes and you can clearly see the gesture of the hair and if you get that the main gesture of the hair working as I said before half the battle it's over after after you gonna run with them the standard brushes will sometimes go with the damn standard just to give it like a little bit of an extra polish I hold down the Alt key and I just give it a little bit of extra extra sharpness is some errors but this is about it I hope you find this tutorial useful and go sculpt some hair you

Channel: FlippedNormals

Views: 47,373

Keywords: 3d, sculpting, zbrush, concept, maya, tutorial, autodesk, film, vfx, animation, twitch, mjthehunter, flippednormals, henning, morten, creature, character, Digital Sculpting, Computer Animation (Industry), Autodesk Maya (Award-Winning Work), 3D Modeling (Film Job)

Id: TVItEIr8oXo

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2015