Completely agree! I guess the problem is that Blender HAVE to use actual polygons so we can actually do animation etc. Zbrush don’t use polygons but “fakes” it with pixles (pixols), making the polygons not impact the performance and you’re able to sculpt at a higher resolution. And its not before you export it, it becomes 3D. So as long as we have to work with actual 3D in Blender we’re quite limited.. I think a good solution would be for Blender to switch over to the pixel technology when entering the sculpting workspace for example and then converting the model to 3D once exiting/switching workspace again 🤔 would love to stay in one software for the whole production!

Oooh is it like masking based on cavities or something? I can't seem to find the option? I tried using the F3 searchbar to search for it but i simply get the "Grow Mask" option, which just expands the mask 🤨

@@carl3d My bad. It's the EXPAND MASK BY TOPOLOGY that I was talking about. There is a hotkey for it: SHIFT+A While in sculpt mode and hovering your cursor over the model. It just grows a mask along the topology based on where the cursor is. Its under the mask tab in sculpt mode.

@@BoxPossum96 Ooooh that's pretty dope! 🤯 Thanks for the tip mate!

@@carl3d Hey no problem

Yeah it's definitely not for everyone. I like some of the hotkeys, but I definitely don't use 90% of them. Instead I put the operations into the "Quick Favorites" menu instead of having to memorize all the hotkeys. That's what I liked in the 2.8 update of Blender, you had more access to using the menus and a GIZMO to move! But I def think they should consider bringing in Maya's marking menu, that shit is golden!

also 3DConnexion mouse support is nice

Heard good things about it, def gonna have to try it! A decent auto retopo would be massive. Zremesher in Zbrush is getting somewhere little by little but it could be better

The only downside with it is the jank. The developers have a habit of shoving in unpolished features, which in turn create a ton of bugs and workflow annoyances, then ignore them in favor of shoving in more unpolished features. It took way too many years just for them to clean up the UI a bit.

Yeah I noticed some freezing when I got to a certain polycount especially..

Yeah somebody told me that the default settings might have messed it up for me. It's actually a really interesting option though, being able to adjust the density depending on the zoom! But yes constant detail helped a lot! Thank you so much for the help mate !

Thank you, Glad to hear! :D

@@carl3d I personally encourage you to share your techniques with us 👀💪🤗

I have 2 different I kinda switch between. which is the monitor I draw directly on. And then a regular tablet . Ouf I can feel your struggles mate... Sculpting with a mouse is like putting butter on bread with a rock 😭 Wacom sells some affordable simple tablets, that'll do the job real well!

I'll check it out!

Yeah, I think trying out all options is def the best thing you can do! Especially for the wallet 🥹 Nah but seriously love trying alternatives! Aah yeah… Got a comment on that already and I agree it sound horrible.. So sorry about that, I will definitely do better in the future. I think it’s actually the limiter on the recording software. Seem to distort areas around where the audio peaks. I’ll ease up on the limiter next time and see if it works😭 Thank you so much for the feedback though and not to mention for keeping watching through the terrible audio !😂 You rock 🔥

its still very shitty compared to Zbrush, facts

Happy to help! 😁

Haha! 😭😂

You're right the shift > right-click worked ! When I tried it before the gizmo didn't update... Is there also a way to adjust the pivots rotation before rotating the masked area? In Zbrush you can "unlock" the gizmo, move it freely and rotate it around and then lock it again. The shift >A menu is brilliant! I just love how convenient Blender feels. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge mate, really appreciate it!! <3 I'm trying to transition more into blender from Maya and Zbrush, since I'm only doing animation more as a hobby now and don't really need the "industry standards" label on my work. And I must say, just by doing this video and getting input through the comments I've learned so much !

@@carl3d There is, but with somewhat considerably more difficulty than ZBrush, I'm afraid. When you select one of the transform tools, at the top menu bar, underneath where it says Sculpt Mode, View, Sculpt, Mask, etc. you'll see two dropdown menus: Transform Mode and Orientation. Orientation allows you to change the orientation of the pivot to a different mode. Unfortunately, none of the choices are "custom" in any way, shape, or form. So your best bet is either to set it to View, which will anchor the orientation to the camera so that the rings will always face you, or, set it to Cursor, which matches the 3D Cursor in Object Mode. The 3D Cursor can be rotated manually by degrees in the N-Panel (press N to toggle > View Tab > 3D Cursor) or you can select the 3D Cursor in the left hand toolbar (in Object Mode; press T to toggle) and set its orientation to Geometry with the same dropdown menu, before clicking somewhere on the mesh. The 3D Cursor will inherit the orientation of the normals you click on. Back in sculpt mode, the rings will have aligned to the 3D Cursor. I know, it's obscenely convoluted compared to just adjusting the damn pivot like Zbrush. Ironically, you can adjust the pivot just as easily in Blender, just not in sculpt mode, only object mode. But you're most welcome for the shift-A menu :) Good luck in your transition from the industry titans! One last masking tip I have is the pair of interlocking rings roughly in the top middle of the menu bar. That's the automasking dropdown. It has options for things like automatically masking by cavity, connected vertices, mesh boundaries, view normals (facing you), area normals (where you sculpt), and more.

@@Arjjacks Aaah I see. It's weird that you can't just customize the pivot, I mean it's such a simple operation. But it's not really a dealbreaker. Atleast it's nice to know that I don't have to spend time looking for this option. Oooh that's a handy feature. I use masking by cavity on 99% of my sculpts so that's gonna be a life saver! :P Thank you, it's going to be a long and bumpy road, haha! And thank you so much again for taking your time to help a noob in need!

@@carl3d Yeah . . . about that overwrought essay I wrote at nearly two o'clock in the morning my time, while either of those methods for adjusting the pivot's orientation would certainly . . . work, after a fashion, it's actually much less convoluted and silly to just set the orientation to local, switch back to object mode, hit ctrl > period to unlock the pivot, rotate it to how you want, then jump back into sculpt mode and shift > right-click where you want the pivot to be. Ctrl > period to lock the pivot in object mode again once you're done. Can't believe I didn't think of it last night. What a numpty :') XD No worries, glad to be of (very roundabout) service :D

@@Arjjacks OMG that worked like a charm, lol! That's waay easier and even exactly what I looked for 😂 Not all heroes wears capes 🙏

I tested it on my other computer and it worked! 🤔 re-installed the latest version of blender and it worked on both all of a sudden! Must have been a bug…

Yeah I used to export the model to rig it and pose it in another software before moving it back to Zbrush again for clean up and detailing.. Was a hassle. There is still some clean up with this but if I spend some ekstra minutes building cages (extra zSpheres) around the areas I want to maintain volume and shape, it actually works really well! Would be sick to be able to weight map though! 3D figurines, really? That's cool! Do you have any places where you display them? Would be awesome to see some of your work :D

thank you for your reply. i haven't posted any works on social media yet. i mostly post on 3d related discords. i can tag you up if you're in any.@@carl3d

I see, a shame you should def post some on SoMe or at least artstation! ☺️ I rarely use discord, so I haven’t really joined any servers other than some minor personal servers with my mates. Do you have any you recommend?

Yeah usually I use Zspheres in Zbrush to change up the pose but even then it's a lot of cleaning up.. That's actually soo clever! I'm gonna try to steal your workflow from now on :P I've seen artists like "SpeedChar" on youtube do this, if you've heard of him. Where he just keeps all the limbs separate, but never actually tried to adapt it. But now I for sure have to try it out! Omg there's a "simplify bursh"?! That's super helpful... I'm gonna check it out. Haha, artists working on potatoes is on another level! Thank you so much for all the great tips man! I really want to get more into Blender, so getting some help is highly appreciated. You rock!

@@carl3d it’s the cleaning up of the mesh after posing that I hate, in my opinion it feels much more natural to form eg. An elbow or knee once the parts are posed, rather than spend ages making a knee and then stretching the mesh out to pose it. The simplify thing I got from someone on KZbin, I was finding the similar problem you had with dynotopo especially when my settings were off and it was making the polys smaller and smaller as you zoom in 😮‍💨 so many crashes.

@@davidburns9766 lol couldn't agree more. It actually sounds so stupid when you put it that way. Imagine spending an hour sculpting a knee only to bend it -> smooth the entire shit out and then restart Ouf yeah, it doesn't help either coming from Zbrush where I feel like I can just be stupid and go mad with polys.. I didn't even know that the polys got smaller as I zoomed in whaat? Have your potato stopped crashing now after you started simplifying ?

@@carl3d I still occasionally find myself sculpting far too far ahead, then realising it’s gonna be a mess when I pose so having to slice it off 🥲 I don’t remember which setting it is - it may not have been the issue you had specifically, it’s like relative detail I think, in the drop down menu of dynotopo, so depending how far out or close you are, dynotopo changes it for you - resulting in about a gazillion polys. I don’t usually use it to be honest, I try to keep all my parts seperate, and just keep remeshing as I go, can generally sit around 1million before the laptop tries to take off. Its definitely must have for faces though, especially at the end when you want to go back over and really fine tune. I think I would enjoy zbrush a lot, just can’t justify that price tag!

@@davidburns9766 That sucks... Kinda sounds like me, like all the time.. I used to get too fixated on details one area at the time too early on, so I would create a hyper detailed eye for example and then when I started the lips, I had soo much trouble just getting the basic shapes because the geometry was way too dense. It's better now when I work in a "stepped" workflow. Push the limit of the current polycount on the whole model before moving on. Aaah yeah I checked now, the default setting "Relative Detail" does in fact add denser geometry the more zoomed in you are 🤯 1 mill in blender doesn't seem that bad. I noticed it started lagging here as well around 1mill when using dyntopo. What kind of laptop you currently working on btw?

Never actually. I kind of want to though, cause it would be awesome to just chill on the go with a tablet. I just need to get a tablet first.. I saw there was an addon or something that made it possible to use Nomad on PC? But I kind of want to try it all natural!

I have it on my iPad Pro. It’s pretty good. I like zbrush more but you could use it to get sculpts started or using it like a sketch book. It has a pretty good pbr as well. For the price it’s a must buy imo. Zbrush is coming out with an app they might make you buy it again though🤬

Nice! That's kind of what I want also. Just being able to do some rough sculpting on the go or chilling on the couch :O Do you feel limited when it comes to detailing vs what the Ipad can handle? Zbrush is always trying to make money... Love the software but it's not meant for the little guy unfortunately :/ Unless that little guy is rich 🤬

Naniii very much indeed!

Not yet, I'm still working on it ! :D

Yeah I'm surprised how well Blender handled things. Only part where I started to lag was when I used the trim curve to trim off parts of the mesh. But everything else was smooth sailing! Love it!

​@@carl3dtrim brushes are very unstable in blender, you can mask with laso mask brush or any other mask brushes then go to top bar's mask menu then mask slice to new object.after that delete..i know it is to many steps but this is far more stable...you can add mask slice to quick favourites.

​@@yashmalhotra9202 Omg that's super useful! Would actually be a better way of doing it. Then I wouldn't have needed to start the ears from scratch over again, but just scale and place them as a separate object. Sculpting in Blender is growing on me more and more. And learning so much from just the comments on this video alone lol! Thank you so much chief!

@@carl3dhaha your welcome. u can do alot of things in blender, it is so customizable, right now im learning blender's python api so i can make a blender addon to speed up sculpting and character modeling.

@@yashmalhotra9202 To be honest I'm just falling more and more in love with Blender. The development is just through the roof I feel like. Damn that's dope, keep me posted on that !

Aaah yes I definitely have to take a look at the posing brush! Kind of frustrating bruteforcing it like I did.. Thank you I looked up the multi res modifier, and that looks amazing, it's kind of like sDiv in Zbrush, super convenient! However I noticed when I moved back some levels and tried to sculpt at a lower res, just to modify the overall shape. The model got ruined when turning up to the highest level again? Is this just a bug on my end or can I in fact not jump back to sculpt on a lower resolution ? Thanks for the tips, I appreciate it!

The multires modifier is the thing I see people talk most about - but my potato of a laptop cannot handle it 😢

@@davidburns9766 Hahaha I think you might need to get a new potato ☹

Oooh reeeeally :D I'm for sure gonna have a look at that Thank so much for the tip!

Pose brush or faceset which are the equivalent of polygroups

@@VBshow3543 Oh that's awesome! I guess you still have to mask out and create the facesets then to use the Pose brush ?

Oh I didn't notice.. I guess it's the limiter from audacity.. seems like all the peaks were cut, and the limiter distorted everything around it :( Sorry bout that, thanks for the input tho, I'll lay off the limiter so people wont get annoyed in the future

''The reference in your mind is never as good as the reference you can find'' will definitely stick with me and my colleagues now:D

Hahah good to hear, it's soo important! All rules and important things should rhyme in my opinion so it's hard to forget :P Thank you so much for your support mate, I appreciate you!

I haven't really given it a thought to be honest. I'm quite clueless as what even patreon is other than I know some creators use it as a funding platform in a way? At the moment I'm just trying to get out some (hopefully helpful) videos, not really seeing it as a profession. Thank so much for the support mate, appreciate it!

Thank you, that means alot! I will try my best to live up to that!

Thank you for the feedback ! One for eyes coming up as well :)

Great to hear! Thank you letting me know 🙌

Glad I could help!