Egyptian Front Piece rendered in KeyShot
What began as an exercise in using the ZModeler Brush ended up being a full-fledged project in ancient jewelry design using ZBrush 4R7 and KeyShot. Then the challenge became, how fast could I do such a complicated piece? Since my husband and I adopted 3 young kids just 8 months ago… time is not something I have much of anymore… but I’m determined to keep learning ZBrush so I can use it to illustrate our children’s stories. I needed a big dose of inspiration and needed to get up to speed on the new features of 4R7. So I picked out a favorite historical piece and set out to see if I could complete it.
The first issue was choosing what method to create the metal base? I went a couple of wrong directions and then went with the ZModeler and a Qcube to start with. Unfortunately, I did have a computer crash and lost some of the first steps being recorded. At some point I deleted all the of the cube sides except the top plane so that I could move the points around quickly and get my pattern shape. Things progressed quickly and I knew I could get all of my patterns worked out and use the ZModeler Brush to go back and add thickness and raise the edges. I’ve recorded the process from here so that I can remember the journey of this piece. There may be better ways to do some parts, but I keep going till the end and complete the piece. It took about 1 week of time spread out over 3 weeks. Kids do keep us busy!
PART 1 VIDEO
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I use a plane just behind my model with my reference image applied. It’s easy to turn off and always stays just where I need it.
Basic steps to creating a metal base for stones/jewels:
PART 2 VIDEO
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All the metal bases complete
PART 3 VIDEO
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Somewhere along the way I remembered you can ALT click on a ZBrush part to select it so you could work on it. Soooo much faster than searching through the pallet!