Introduction to ZBrush 2024

A Complete Guide to Learning ZBrush with Madeleine Scott-Spencer

Whether you’re an absolute beginner or an intermediate ZBrush user, this workshop will guide you through 19 comprehensive hours of demonstration to help you master ZBrush 2024. No previous 3D experience is required to complete this workshop, and you can expect to finish the tutorial with a strong intermediate grasp of ZBrush as a sculpting, modeling, and texturing tool. 

Madeleine Scott-Spencer, Head of Department Assets and Art Department at Cinesite, draws from her experiences using ZBrush in film pipelines such as The Hobbit Trilogy, Pacific Rim 2 and The Witcher series to share methods she uses every day in the professional VFX sphere. Topics covered include sculpting, modeling hard-surface props, creating cloth and costume elements, texturing with projections, hand-painting creature skins, posing figures, and rendering using multiple methods in ZBrush. 

Many tools and techniques are explored over 46 chapters, providing a comprehensive foundation in the wide array of ZBrush’s multifaceted toolset. The workshop is complemented by many helpful downloadable files to allow you to follow along with the examples at home.

This detailed workshop opens with a quickstart sculpting tutorial where Maddie lays the groundwork for basic navigation and sculpting by blocking a Goblin bust using Dynamesh. Throughout subsequent chapters, she revisits this creature to create a full-body creature sculpt with fine details, including wrinkles and pores. 

Throughout the chapters, you’ll examine not only how to sculpt in ZBrush but also how to use the tools to create realistic, nuanced, and compelling anatomical forms. It is always important to Maddie, as a ZBrush teacher of 19 years, to communicate not only the basics of the tools but also how to begin using them to bring your visions to life in the most compelling ways.