Reinventing The Structure Of The Face

Welcome to Sculpt. Paint. Create where we will look at all things ZBrush: sculpting, painting and designing.

For my first post, I’ll explore the anatomy of the human face and a constructive approach towards sculpting. To the right is the final sculpt created using this approach. All sculpting was done with the ClayTubes brush. To learn how I painted with materials see the reference section at the bottom of this post.

The above image shows the three main stages I went through while sculpting the face. First, I began with a skeleton, sculpted the muscles onto it and then added the flesh. The movie below shows the entire process.

Reference Section:

Click here to download a starter mesh to try this out yourself.

I have included reference for those wanting to learn the specific forms and their names. This is not an all-inclusive reference but covers most of the muscles I sculpted.

Making Of Notes:

The process of making the muscles and, later, the skin is done by painting materials onto your model while you sculpt it. Its as simply as activating MRGB on the shelf. See below for more information.

First the skull has the MatCap Skeleton material baked into it. This provides a foundation for the other materials to add to. Follow the steps below to do that:

1. Select MatCap Skeleton in the Material Palette
2. Press MRGB on the shelf
3. Make sure no texture is active in the texture palette
4. Press Fill Object in the Color Palette

To begin sculpting the muscles do the following:

1. Select MatCap RedWax in the Material Palette
2. Make sure MRGB is selected on the shelf as well as ZAdd
3. Select your brush in the Brush Palette. I used the Clay Tubes brush with the Brush Mod slider set to about 20.
4. Sculpt

To begin sculpting the skin:

1. Select MatCap Sculpy in the Material Palette
2. Make sure MRGB is selected on the shelf as well as ZAdd
3. Select your brush in the Brush Palette. I used the Clay Tubes brush with the Brush Mod slider set to about 5 because the skin isn’t as thick as muscle.
4. Sculpt

Happy ZBrushing!

Ryan