3D Toolkit: Sculpting the Alien Torso

Sculpting the Torso in ZBrush
When Sculpting the alien's torso, head and arms, I began with a basic sphere and used the Move tool to create the form of the head. Using my orthographic design as a basis and a reference, I was able to create the overarching silhouette of the shape, then using the capsule IMM Primitives to form the neck and torso masses. I used the Move tool to get these shapes into the correct silhouette and used the "Clay Polish" tool to smooth geometry. At this stage, I used polygroups to keep these pieces of geometry separate. After I adequately positioned them all, I unmasked all IMM shapes and remeshed the whole model, greatly adding geometry and connecting the disparate 3D forms.

When using the Transpose tool to move, rotate and scale the entire model, I found that the mesh geometry was becoming deformed and warping greatly. This was a problem as this warping was altering the model in a manner that made it much more difficult to work with, as well as turning it inaccurate against my orthographic image. To fix this issue, I troubleshooted the problem I was facing on multiple forums, eventually learning that this deformation was due to an alteration I had inadvertently made to the Transpose tool's focal shift. As such, I lowered the focal shift to -100, which stopped the deformation.

I then continued to block out the forms of the arms and hands, using IMM capsule and sphere shapes to do so. I utilised the Symmetry functionality to ensure that the arms were aligned properly to the torso. I then used the Dynamesh functionality to add geometry to the model, then using Zremesher to halve the overall polycount. I then used the Clay Buildup tool to block out areas of muscle, and the Dam Standard to carve out finer lines between them. I remained using the symmetry tool in this process, which allowed greater control over the uniformity of the muscle masses. I continued to tweak these masses - adding definition to the pectorals, clavicle, pelvis and back.

I further used the Dam Standard and Pinch tools to create thin creases across the model, particularly in the hands to show differentiation between the fat pads of the hands and the bony regions of the ribcage, neck, back and pelvis.

To create the face, I masked off several regions of the head to show where different elements of the face sit. First, I created the protruding mask which sits on the character's face. I used a mask to cover areas I did not want affected, then used the Move tool to extrude the unmasked region. With this form created, I used the Dam Standard brush to create the ridges seen across it. I then repeated this process of masking and altering regions of the head, to create the shapes of the eyes and facial bone structure.

Zeremesher
Zremesher is another tool similar to the Dynamesh functionality that allows for the geometry of a mesh to be altered, cleaning up topology into quads. It can be used to cleanly half the polycount of a model, allowing for manipulations to be made to a mesh whilst retaining a low overall polygon count.

 

Dynamic Subdivision
Dynamic Subdivision is another tool that allows for geometry to be added to a mesh. Similar to the Dynamesh functionality, the dynamic subdivision allows for fine-tuning in how much geometry is added. Unlike the dynamesh functionality, dynamic subdivision can be altered, with the "thickness" slider changing the breadth of the subdivision, generating more or less geometry relative to the slider's position. A preview of how this alters the model geometry can be seen on the selected model, and is not put into effect until "apply" is selected on the sidebar.

Shown below is an example of how the "thickness" slider alters mesh geometry. The leftmost image has a thickness of 0.1, the right having a thickness of 0.