The wire technique

My illustration tool of choice right now is ZBrush, because of the immense level of detail that it can add to images. It’s a software package that can be used in an artistic way, yet one that provides all the technical power you could want. It’s also extremely fast for both sculpting and rendering, making it an ideal choice for 3D modellers and illustrators alike.

The reason why ZBrush is so good at creating complex images like the one on the right is its unique Pixol technology. Once a 3D object is placed onto the canvas, it is converted to Pixols (basically pixels on steroids, able to hold depth and material information). At this point, it can no longer be rotated. But now that your geometry is converted into ‘2.5D’, you can add an incredible amount of detail to it, safe in the knowledge that your computer will not slow down, and that rendering times will still be minimal.

To create this illustration, I used by own ‘wire style’ technique. This involves assigning a black-and-white texture to a base model in order to mask parts that I want to be deleted. Pressing the ‘Int’ button in the Tool > Masking palette masks the areas of the object that are textured with the darker colours. Once the areas have been masked, they can be hidden by hitting the ‘HidePt’ button, before the ‘Del Lower’ button in the Geometry section of the Tool palette permanently deletes the hidden faces. To get thickness into the model, I store a morph target, inflate the geometry outwards, and press ‘CreateDiff’ in the Morph Target section.

In this way, I can convert a solid model into one which looks as if it has been created out of wire. By creating several different variants of differing sizes, and overlaying them on separate layers, I can quickly build up the complexity of the image. I then add extra detail with the large selection of 2.5D tools, and finally render a completed print-ready image directly in ZBrush.

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