Intro to Sculpting

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Everything below represents notes for Sepha to finish the YouTube vid and article with.

They need to get into creative free form sculpting and play, as we've been quite dry with the content so far ...

Sculpting

Inversely to box modeling, sculpting is a modeling style that gives us the most amount of freedom, with the least amount of direct topological control.

There are many dedicated Sculpting programs, but to keep things simple, we will remain in Blender. Blender is a perfectly fine and capable sculpting program, and the ability to work directly in our DCC where we have access to all of our other modeling tools is certainly a plus.

However, the industry standard sculpting program remains ZBrush - and for good reason. It is exceptionally powerful, purpose built, and highly performant, and widely taught - traits which make it the industry leading tool for sculpting without question.

Basic Hotkeys

Tab - Toggle Sculpt mode and Edit mode.

F + drag - to change brush size

[ - Shrink brush size

] - Grow brush size

Left Click - Sculpt!

Ctrl + Left click - Sculpt inverted!

Hold Shift + Left Click - Smooth verts

Shift + Space - Open the brush selection Menu:

You can then rapidly type to find a brush by name:

Brushes

G - Grab brush

S - Select smooth brush

C - Clay strips brush

P - Pinch / Magnify

At this point we should get them into something creative, free flowing and fun.

They know about box modeling.

Introduce another style of modeling - sculpting.

Introduction to Sculpting

• Transition from box modeling to organic sculpting workflow

• Enable Dynamic Topology (Dyntopo dynamesh thing

• Start with a smoothed cube as base mesh

  • Doesnt matter with dyn toppo lol but probably a good habbit to build early

Essential Brush Types

• Grab - move and pull geometry around

• Snake Hook - pull and expand shapes

• Smooth - blend and soften harsh edges

• Inflate - puff out areas (great for bulging eyes)

• Crease - add sharp definition lines

• Draw - basic push/pull sculpting

Key Settings to Show

• Strength - how intense the brush effect is

• Radius - brush size ([ and ] keys)

• Falloff - how the brush effect fades at edges

  • Might be hard for them to get but whatever send it

• Symmetry - mirror sculpting across axes

Fish Creation Process

• Stretch the sphere into a long body

• Snake hook to pull out the fins

• Inflate and smooth the fins

• Inflate the bulging eyes

• Use the crease brush to add creases etc.

• Use the draw brush maybe to block in some surface scales

• Grab brush to position and shape fins

• smooth as needed

Key Points to Emphasize

• Focus on experimentation and play

• Don't worry about clean topology yet, don't worry about perfect modeling skills

• Dyntopo creates messy geometry - we'll fix that in future lessons

• Have fun with exaggerated, cartoon proportions

Missing Common Elements:

• Alt+Click to subtract/invert brush effects

• F key for quick radius adjustment

• Ctrl+Z works in sculpt mode too

• Entering and exiting sculpt mode.