Sculpting a Sea Turtle with ZBrush - Part 1: Blocking Out the Basic Form
Hello, Steemians. I'm back with a new blog post and picking up where I left off in the previous one. With this, I continue demonstrating and documenting my effort to learn ZBrush, and this time I will present to you, in various parts and not just one blog, a small personal project from start to finish.
For this small project, I chose to give life to one that's been in my to-do list since late 2017. I had originally planned to do this in Blender, but personal as well as professional concerns would often get in the way, and I just decided to do it at another time.
The sculpting process is divided into three parts, namely:
- Blocking of the basic form
- Shaping and refinement of the main form
- Adding the fine details
Other aspects such as the painting of textures will be covered in future blogs, when I have learned the basics of painting sculpted meshes with ZBrush's own polypainting toolset.
Chelonia mydas, the Green Sea Turtle
There are seven types of sea turtles and all of them are in various levels of being endangered. I chose the green sea turtle because it is the most popular, thanks to the characters, Crush and Squirt, in Finding Nemo, who happen to be green turtles. Their pop culture status has made them the poster boys for the plight of their kind, and for all endangered marine creatures, as well.
Some facts about these creatures:
1. The green turtle is the largest species of hard-shelled turtles, and is the second largest of all sea turtles.
2. Green turtles are 3 to 4 feet (91 to 122 cm) long and weigh 300 to 350 pounds (136 to 159 kg).
3. Green turtles are thought to live for 60 to 70 years, reaching sexual maturity at 25 to 35 years old.
4. Green turtles are named after their green-colored fat, which they get from their herbivorous diet of seagrass and algae.
5. Green turtles live all over the world and can be found off the coasts of more than 140 countries.
6. Typically, only female sea turtles will visit shores during their lifetime, but male and female green turtles are known to come ashore and bask in the sun on Hawaiian beaches.
7. Female green turtles return to the same beach where they were born to nest, no matter how far it is.
And, as preparation for this type of project, one cannot proceed without gathering first, as many of the reference images one feels he or she might need for the task. I did not bother to download them, I just Googled "green sea turtle", and left the tab open.
The Sculpting Process in Action
For the first part of the creation process, I begin by blocking out the basic form of the creature. Since the body plan of all marine turtles are pretty much the same, I could also use this base form to create the other kinds of sea turtles. And, here it is in its rough and inaccurate glory.
The sculpting process involves the use of just the basic brushes of the software. You can see that it is just like sculpting with clay, as I push, pull, shave off, smooth, scratch, and nudge along the surface of this ball of digital clay floating in the three-dimensional space of the app's viewport.
Views from Different Angles
Here are some screenshots of the result of this preliminary phase of the creation process. It took me about twenty minutes of sculpting to get this shape that I am happy with.
If you think that doing this was loads of fun for me, you are correct. But, it took me seven takes to get it to look right, resulting in seven sculpts of this creature. As I am still quite a noob, I am still clumsy with it, oftentimes selecting the wrong brushes, or pressing the wrong hotkeys. But, what made me do it seven times was actually the recording process!
ZBrush has its built-in set of screen recording tools that make it easy for the artist to record the creation process. And, as I am still new to it, I often forgot to hit the resume record button after a short pause. Those lapses were not so bad, and were in fact blessings in disguise. It allowed me to learn more about the software, and to be more patient and do things more carefully. I really need to remind myself to dial down my being too gung-ho sometimes.
So, that's it for now. The next blog for this project will show the creation of the correct anatomical features of this creature. Stay tuned for it.
I hope you liked this post, and found it helpful and even entertaining. And, please, be careful with plastic straws and other plastic wastes that are killing these beautiful creatures. God Bless, and rock on, people!
Wanna Try It?
ZBrush has a trial version that is fully-functional and does not put a watermark on your work. It is also useable for 30-days. Download it here.
ZBrush Introduction Videos
How to Start in ZBrush
eSteem Surfer, ZBrush, and GIMP.
Amaaazziiinggg! It looks so hard but you did it like it was a piece of cake. The software looks complicated to me that's why I would just prefer to do it in actual clay lol. Looking forward to the next parts!
Thank you, Hiddi! I made it look easy because I did it seven times to make it look right. Hehehe.
Oh, but it really is easy if one is a traditional sculptor and illustrator. Like I said in the previous blog, it's like drawing with clay on a ball of clay that's floating in virtual space.
The only hurdle I faced was with learning how to interact with objects on screen, the interface, and the hotkeys. Once I got those things down I was sculpting in no time.
Someday we will be doing this thing, and other 3D art, with VR technology, and I can't wait for that day to come.
What a wonderful post, @kryptik.tigrrr3d!!! Sculpting in 3D media always seem like magic to me ! Even after you showed the steps, I'm nodding and really just admiring the turtle XD
It's wonderful that you wrote out the process and the difficulty in making such a model :) I think it's already looking nice but I definitely will look forward to seeing this finished :D I love the stuff that you included about the actual turtles too! I didn't know they live 60-70 years ! Almost like a human life span :D So cool !!!
Thanks, Spidey! I could not have done this without my traditional drawing and clay sculpting skills.
And I'm glad I was given this task of learning this software, as it's a welcome break from my routine production responsibilities, and canned creativity.
Thank God I made a to-do list of creatures for @jacinta.sevilla, before I started blogging here last year. I don't need to think or worry about what to create, I'll just look at my list and cherry pick from it.
That way I can concentrate on the difficulties of learning the software. And it looks like this will be my main task at work until the end of the year. 😃
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