Steampunk Pirate Sculpt Work In Progress

I started my Steampunk Pirate by sculpting a basic body mesh out of zSpheres. I left the face unsculpted for now so I could focus on the clothes. I'll sculpt the face along with the visible body parts once the whole outfit is complete.

I created the clothing using the extract tool in zBrush. This is done by masking off the designated clothing area using the CTRL key, then going into the subtool palette and choosing the Extract function. I made sure to turn off the double sided extract function or there would be twice as many polygons than I need.

Once the mesh is created it will be really messy, so it needs to be retopologised before any sculpting can take place. This can be done using the zRemesher tool under the Geometry palette. This reduces the poly count substantially, so to get any detail into the shirt, it needs subdividing using CTRL+D, or finding the subdivision tool in the Geometry palette. It can now be sculpted as normal.

This is the basic layout of the base layer clothes. I also included a waistcoat, a corset, arm bands and a pair of gloves. The trousers and boots are also separate subtools.

I then went and focused on the armor plates. I chose to do leather armor as it is more form fitting and when running around on a flying pirate ship, ease of movement is key. This is also why there are more panels in the corset and waistcoat, and only metal armor where it is needed (protecting the front of the torso and the hips). There will also be more decorative metal on the long coat when it is done. 

Sculpting the face was challenging but fun. Though more work is needed on it I think I managed to get the base proportions right, and get a little character into her. The pointy ears are to further indicate that she is from another world, however I found a major issue when sculpting the mouth and ears in particular: I couldn't get enough detail into the features. To tackle this issue, I had to detach the head from the rest of the body in order to get a higher number of subdivisions in the face, without slowing down my machine by putting a high number of polygons throughout the rest of the body. This is known as controlling 'Mesh Density'.

To reattach the head again, I used the Dynamesh tool. The Dynamesh tool is used either when polygons become too stretched out and tricky to work with, or if you want to attach two parts of mesh together. For example, the head and the rest of the body. By taking the two subtools in question and merging them together using the 'merge' tool in the Subtool palette.

Dynamesh can be found in the Geometry palette. By ramping up the resolution, you can maintain the level of detail you previously had so if, like me, you had a high level of detail on the face, you can keep that high by using a high resolution. Then just click the Dynamesh button and the two objects are ready for smoothing. Once smoothed along the seam the two objects should then be combined and seamless (as above). You can then retopologise using the zRemesher or use Topogun to create a new mesh based on the high detail one, and project the detail down, though will talk more about that later.