Hi gang. As many of you know my PC died while I was in the middle of a big character creation project. While some were kind enough to offer to send me early builds of my character that I'd made available, I soone decided the character just wasn't up to snuff.  He needed....more. To that end, I purchased ZBrush 3. I had long been against ZBrush's interface but after weighing the features and prices of ZBrush and Mudbox, I decided the features were enough to warrant putting up with the interface.   With ZBrush 3 and Silo in hand, I would be able to create the character the way I'd always wanted too. First, however, I had to learn the program.

So ends my story and begins my quest.  I'm going to post here my attempts, along with wires where possible and explanations if needed. Ultimately, this will lead to me re-creating that character but along the way, many more will see their birthing.  COmment and critique as you like. Be warned, many of these images will be large. Full view at your peril.

Many of these "learning lessons" are just busts, using the same base mesh which is shown in this post.  Due to my work at e frontier, my modeling time is limited, so full body models will be rare until I get to recreating the character I'd mentioned.

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Now, with most of these, as I said, the same base mesh was used. This is a very handy feature of ZBrush and Mudbox and other digital sculpting tools.  They allow you to experiement with ideas simply by sculpting, without having to worry about topology.  However, later on, you may want to worry about topology and that's where a program like Silo can be handy.

Using surface snapping in a program like Silo, you can create a low res, animation ready mesh over the high res ZBRush sculpt. For example, the head in post 9 was taken into Silo, where I used it as a guide to create the mesh you see here.

So now I'm about ready to try sculpting the character I mentioned. I will attempt to take frequent screen grabs along the way and detail as much of the process as possible, including the retopologizing process inside Silo. I hope that you'll be able to benefit from this once all is said and done. I'll post the base mesh tomorrow. For now, good night and feel free to leave questions and critiques. If there is something I can explain with more detail, I'll do my best to do so. Please refrain from the "great work" comments, while appreciated (greatly), they aren't the purpose of this thread.

Nice stuff on the bug eyed superhero dude ther eI woudl give him normal eyes and make bug eyed goggles. Hulks brows seem odd to me but can't make any more precise comments. Really great stuff and your sculpting is really taking off. Now I am relegated to my old craptop so none of that for me.

Thanks for the critique. The bug eyed superhero is named Invincible and he actually has eyes under those things. However, it's true to the source, as I've done it.  I will be posting some step by step stuff for you out there who want to take your modeling a step further. The techniques will be transferable across all sculpting apps.