Intro to Sculpting
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Everything below represents notes for Sepha to finish the YouTube vid and article with.
Before we proceed ...
Many begginers are intimidated by the idea of sculpting. I want you to understand that there isn't any reason at all to be. As you work through this chapter, I want you to give yourself permission to simply experiment and learn. Sculpting is a very "free form" method of modeling. Don't put yourself in a box and worry about if you're doing things right - just have fun, tinker, and play.
What is sculpting?
Inversely to box modeling, sculpting is a modeling style that gives us the most amount of creative freedom, with the least amount of direct topological control.
Brushes
Instead of a TRS, we interact with the object using tools called "Brushes":
Which allows us to create sweeping creative changes, and explorations:
Or even create fine detail:
There are many dedicated Sculpting programs, but to keep things simple, we will remain in Blender. Blender is a perfectly capable sculpting program, and the ability to work directly in our DCC where we have access to all of our other modeling tools is a big plus.
However, the industry standard sculpting program remains ZBrush - and for good reason. It is exceptionally powerful, purpose built, highly performant, and widely taught - traits which make it the industry leading tool for sculpting without question.
If you have the resources to get access to ZBrush, I highly recommend you do. However, I don't mean to mislead here. Blender is an amazing sculpting program, and you WILL be able to make quality sculpts in Blender.
Basic Hotkeys
There are some basic hotkeys, but for the most part, sculpting is primarily interacted with via Left click.
Tab - Toggle Sculpt mode and Edit mode.
Left Click - Sculpt!
Ctrl + Left click - Sculpt inverted!
F + drag - to change brush size
[ and ] also work.
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
Most of the common brushes are also hot keyed directly:
G - Grab brush
S - Select smooth brush
C - Clay strips brush
P - Pinch / Magnify
Tool Menu
Of note, is also the tool menu, found on the Left of the 3d viewport when pressing "N". This controls your current brush settings.
Pen Sensitivity
If you're fortunate enough to have a drawing Tablet, you can control the pressure sensetivity here.
This same area also controls the radius and strength of our brush.
Symmetry
Brush strokes can be mirrored along the axis in the top right of your viewport.
This is typically preferable when sculpting over utilizing the mirror modifier, as our strokes will regularly come up to or even cross the centerline of our mesh.
Modifying our Topology
When sculpting, we may "run out of mesh" to create certain shapes and forms:
Mesh topology will have a significant impact on sculpting, and we have at least two methods out of the box that give us "kind of good enough" topology to sculpt on, very quickly.
Topology - Remesh
At any point we can "remesh" our sculpt to more evenly allocate polygons across the surface:
Before Remesh:
After Remesh:
Notice the distorted surface that remesh has created?:
Remesh, while quick and easy, can often create problems. When using it, just visually double check the surface of your mesh for errors, and re-work / smooth them out. Its fine to use, just be vigilant.
Note - Similarly to Dyntopo, automatic solutions like this can readily create problems that will negatively impact your sculpting later one, however - because they are so quick and easy, its totally acceptable to begin a suclpt this way, and utilize these tools to give you enough geometry to feel out and build the overall design and form of the shape before we consider retopologizing and polishing the surface later on.
Topology - Dyntopo
We can also enable "Dyntopo", which will allow blender to automagically retopologize our mesh as we apply our brush strokes.
It is very destructive, and when enabling it, Blender will warn you of this:
Before enabling it:
After enabling it:
After sculpting on the fin area:
Note - Like remesh, this can create distorted and error prone geometry, and will fundamnetally change your meshes topology. Like remesh, try to utilize this primarily when "feeling out" the form of your model and experimenting with its overall design.
History Lesson: "Sculptris (sculpt tris)" initially pioneered this concept, shortly before being aquired by and integrated with ZBrush. Some years later, blender would implement the technology also.
Thats it?!
You'll notice that at first glance Sculpting appears to be a lot "simpler" than box modeling was ...
There's way less hotkeys involved, and basically everything interacts with the mesh via clicking with brushes.
Do not let that fool you.
Sculpting has a level of complexity and mastery associated with it that takes years, even decades, to master. It will rely on a keen eye, studies of visual appeal, and anatomy. But gosh if it isn't fun.
Lesson:
Lets make something cute!
✨Homework✨
I created a fish because I think they are goofy. I want you to create something that you think is goofy, and utilize all three of your learned modeling techniques so far to make it!
Box modeling,
Subdivision modeling,
and of course sculpting.
Keep it simple, think about what shapes lend themselves to which technique best.
Perhaps you create a fish, and then box model them a subdivision surface based Crown, or set of cute eyes, while sculpting the overall body, fins, etc. Have fun with it, and remember there are no wrong answers.
If you're a mentee of mine, please provide this file to me next time we chat.
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