Body work

From this point forward, consider yourself a sculptor, not simply a CG modeller. As with the old masters, familiarising yourself with your tools is only half the job. The other half consists of the never-ending process of developing your artistic skill – which is where anatomical study comes in.

This tutorial sets out the anatomical considerations that went into sculpting the torso and arms of the model above. While this detailed work was carried out in ZBrush, the figure was first roughed out and posed as a low-resolution mesh within Maya. This base mesh has been included for you to load in at the start. Note that it has no symmetry, which means that you will have to sculpt both sides independently. This may seem frustrating, but it will encourage you to consider lateral variations in pose, balance and tension.

The tutorial has been broken down into several sections, each covering a single part of the body. This is different to my own ZBrush workflow, since I always sculpt the entire model at each level of subdivision before moving on to the next. The steps have been arranged out of chronological order in the walkthrough to make better anatomical sense, but you can follow them in any logical sequence you choose.

To help you along, an OBJ of the model at each level of subdivision is provided. If you lose your way at any point, you can import the OBJs to get you back on track. Better still, as you tackle each new level of subdivision, delete any current morph targets, store your current unrefined level as a new morph target, and import the OBJ into the current level. You can then switch back and forth between the reference model and the one you’re working on.

From a ZBrush standpoint, there are very few tools and settings to cover. The entire model was created with the Standard brush in Move or Draw mode, occasionally altering the focal shift. All you need to follow the tutorial is a basic familiarity with the software – and, ideally, a good anatomy reference book.

Click here to download the support files (~21MB)