Zbrush - Stylized Hair

So this tutorial is going to go through how to make stylized hair, so I'm going to starting off just with the demo project anime just because it is stylized and boys will get me started load this up and I'll turn off the floor plane. So I have some reference of what I'm going to be sculpting for the hair right over here, I'm just using a spotlight to load this up. First thing is: I'm going to add a sphere so going to my sub tools and append a basic sphere and I'll turn on transparency, so I can see the character bhop below and just use my ski Yogi's mouth to move. This generally into position was that's kind of there. I will turn on symmetry by hitting X on my keyboard, big ole, move tool, I'm just kind of wish this hair a little bit. It'S not entirely spherical pull that out and then I'll turn off my transparency, I'm just looking for a cap. It doesn't need to be particularly accurate. This is just to get something just start as a base. I'Ll use switch over to my inflate tool. Just add a little bit more volume to these areas all right, so I have a basic shape here. I'M going to be using this hair mesh to create using a lot of ZBrush curves, and I have a couple of custom brushes that I particularly like to use. They'Re by two different artists - and I will load them up using my brush menu, go to load and load up both of these have to load up one at a time actually, so the two brushes are Mac on hair curve, three and de hair tubes. These are my two favorites that I've found so far, just to kind of show you what these look like, starting with the Mac on a curve out, so it has a lot of different shapes to it. If I activate the dynamic subdivisions that your this button on, it really has a nice flow to it and there's, of course, a couple different times. If I switch them and then click on my curve to update will change it. You'Ll notice over here at the very tip it is kind of curling in on itself, and then also this is my start point. This is the end, so it's actually doing the opposite, like tapering that I'd like it to be doing so. For that, I just need to change a couple of curve settings, so I'm going to go up to my stroke, menu down to curve modifiers and this curve fall-off is currently controlling the size of my curve or the tapering of it. If I click on that, it's gon na give me this nice little grid saying it starts off small and then gets larger. So I want to flip this, so I could grab these dots or I can use this F H, saying flip horizontally. If I click on my curve now it's going to switch swap that, and I want to do one more thing and I'll move this curve up a little bit whose dot, so it's not quite as thin right there and that fixes that little problem I had with It kind of collapsing in on itself - and it's also very helpful to add one more dot, give it a little bit more variety and have a different curve and click on that to see what that update says, we'll try a different one. So a variety of different pieces here that are very helpful for the overall stroke. This is the Mac on here. I will now switch over quickly to the de hair tubes. Click on that one. This is a little bit simpler of a brush and there's a couple different kinds. So this is simple a pretty you know simple, then there's multi thick beef and some nice things about this one. If I turn on my wireframe, because it has a start and end, but if I click on my mesh and go down to poly groups and Auto group, they are different sections to this hair. So if I group them by a manifold or geometry that is cohesive, then I have these different polygroups, which are really nice for being able to move them around. So if I switch over to my move brush, I can now move these individual pieces around, which is very helpful to turn on your mask by polygroup when you're go to my brush settings again and down to auto masking the top slider here says mask by polygroup. If I set that to a hundred now, the first polygroup that it click on is going to be the one that I move and it's going to ignore everything else. So it creates a very easy work floo for manipulating these hair curves. So I can grab this one and then just click on this one. Whatever the first polygroup thing, click on is the one it's going to automatically mask to and only move that one. So this allows me to have one curve with multiple different polygroups, so that I can really easily make a variety and have different hairs kind of flying away and go into the directions of turn off. My liner frame and activate my dynamic subdivisions to see how this looks had a little air there, where it didn't update so really nice to show that I can have one stroke and then make it feel like a bunch of different strands and get that variety. So, with these two curves, I will create this sort of short hairstyle about half of the reference over here. I'M gon na undo this one. If I add this to the hair, yes you'll notice, it's clipping through the head, it's not snapping to the surface; instead, it picks the first point and then goes on screen space from there and that can be useful in some instances. But right now I just want to follow the head mesh that I have currently this little hair cap. So what I need to do is change what it's picking instead of picking the first point and then only once picking it and then going from there. I want it to constantly pick the depth, so this is actually found in the picker menu under depth right here it says once so. This means that it's going to sample or pick the depth once or you can pick it constantly. So if I change this to constant Z and we'll loop, this undo that one and then draw a stroke on now, if Smith snapping to the constant piece here. So that's most of what I want here, but there's also the point of how much depth. How far is it going into my mesh? Currently, it's kind of sitting, just on top of it, and we can still control this as well. So if I go to my brush menu and then down to depth, this is the depth of the stroke or how much it's adding so right now has 9 in bed. So it's just like sitting a little bit above. The center point is higher. If I want to sit that a little bit lower, we'll move this just quite a bit by 26 here and then click on this you'll see it's snapping inside of the mesh more of we'll change that back changing the depth. Here: click on that and now it's kind of almost floating on the mesh, so finding it a middle ground, you can put that 10 at 0. If you want it to be exactly midpoint, you want to sit in. It depends on the stroke of what you're working with so with these couple of tips, adding these two brushes, the de and Mac on curves, changing the stroke curve modifier. So it has a little bit of depth and it's going the right direction. We went to the picker and changed it to constant Z, instead of just for once and finally in the brush settings. There'S the deck amount, depending on how much you want to add, also up to maybe two and see what that gets us right. So those are, there are different settings that we can play with to create this different hair mesh. Now I'm going to go through and add the basic level of hair, I'm going to start with this Mac on one because it has thicker strands and then afterwards I'll go to the e one, because it has those multi strand pieces that I can then play with. And make the hair more hair like less uniform, so one more thing to consider when doing your hair, it's and why I have the the de Mac on one with the multi strands and I can move them around. You don't want your hair to look like this. It'S too even there's evenly spaced part hair goes on top of each other, so something more like this is a more realistic amount and it'll have more life and variety to it, not evenly spaced lines. You want to have more depth. So with that we'll start sculpting I'll draw out my hair mesh one more time and also undo so. I have just lay all right and at this point I don't need symmetry because I just needed to get the basic shape. But now I want to have any symmetrical hair, so turning off symmetry by hitting X. One more thing I like to do is just use it a little bit of damn standard to define where the part of the hair is so for her. It'S mostly in the back and I'll do fine, a little bit of where the hair planes are gon na be going with some clays use clay buildup, it's probably a little bit better, just to give me some directionality, while I'm adding these different strokes to it. So I might speed up this part of the video, as I just add strokes. So one other thing I want to point out, and sometimes it can be difficult to control the hair spines. It'S just not quite working the way you would like it to, and it's just not twisting the right way. In those cases, there is a another way to control the different hairs, especially useful for a little bit longer hair. This one is a shorter, so it's fairly easy to control, but I'm going to use some different modifier for this hair. So first off I don't want to have constant for this. I want to just sample in the picker depth once that way. It'S gon na snap to the mat initially but from then on. It'S just gon na be going in screen space so I'll draw that out and it's not snapping to the mesh as you can see, I'll pull it out a little bit, so it straightens. And then I'm actually going to remove the curve by just clicking on the mesh I'm gon na keep it still masked. So I'm only using this area here and I'm gon na click on my move gizmo and go to the customize gear icon, and I want to select the Bend curve. This is going to allow me to use these orange dots to manipulate and Bend the hair planes. As much as I want to first off, though there's only two right now, I prefer having at least three is a basic amount. So I'm going to grab the orange curve and you cannotice that the resolution it's going to tell you what those different cones do so we'll click once on this, and that gets me the nice curve time or another dot. If I needed to change the access say like I had it up and down, and rather than left and right curve, that would be the axis over here, so I could turn click on that one. It turns green for why and blue frizzy see how the direction changes, but I like X so we'll go in this then all I have to do is grab those dots and I can move them around. So you can see how this is a lot easier to manipulate for those longer hair curves. That can happen additionally, once I click on one of these points, there are other like modifiers, so let's say I want to make this up earlier, a hair. If I hover over it, this is the twist, so I can twist this some more. I can click on this one and also twist this one, maybe doing it the opposite direction, maybe just a little bit. It depends what I want change. My views move this way for this one back. Maybe I wanted to be a thicker on this end like it's too thin or maybe here needs to be scaled up scaled down. You can even do a squeeze. So if you have something like a square, you can change the amount pretty easy, so very handy. Sometimes this is an easier way than doing the curves, but it depends on what you're working with really. I just want to show you multiple ways. If I need more curves points to add, I can simply go over to curve resolution and click a little bit more to add more to this piece, and then I can even twist farther because I have more points to manipulate when I'm happy with this curve. I'Ll go back up to my gear icon and I need to accept those changes. Otherwise, it's like a transform. It'S kind of a preview until you've accepted it from here. If I wanted to kind of speed up the workflow a little bit as long as you don't have subdivisions on this, which in this case I drew out a curve, so you can't have subdivisions when you're using curves. So that's really gon na be a problem. Then hold down control and grab one of my gizmo arrows and drag, and that's going to duplicate that mesh. So then, I can move this into place and just manipulate it a little bit with my move tool, get a bit of variety and have a little bit faster workflow than individually curving. Every single one last tip is sometimes you want to curve or twist this end piece and there's a brush that I particularly like for doing this sort of thing. Sometimes it's just a bit annoying to be able to. Let'S say I want this point to curl upwards and that's. I would have to mask off and move to actually get the twist that I want. Otherwise, I'm just kind of getting a bend in so I'll do a couple times and go to my brush palette, and this brush is called spiral here. It is so if I click on that and I'll isolate, so you can see just this piece. This is going to twist or spiral the piece as you can see. Now it is pretty strong and it is based on your view. So if I go this direction, I can curve it this way I'll, maybe make it a little bit bigger and just twist that a little bit. If I go the other direction, then it's gon na twist the other way. So it's based on screen space in the direction that you're facing. So if you want to have a different direction, just change how you're looking at the mesh say! I want this to curl this to the left twist that a little bit just a couple taps on it is usually enough and will curl it a little bit this way as well go back to my move tool, and that gets a lot easier. This is really useful as well for twisting the base of the hairs, because sometimes that can be hard to get it to look like it's curling in from the scalp, so this direction not the way direction. I want it to go so I'm I'll rotate around my view and we'll isolate this by well they're the same polygroup. So I can't isolate right now, but I hit ctrl W. Then I can isolate and twist that so it looks like it's coming up and out of the scalp instead of the place image that I had before all right. So with that, I will go into the next part of the video okay, so I have a basic base of hair. I did do a quick dynamesh on this as well now going to my Mac on here and I'll start with the wide cover these ones. Obviously, add a lot of width and quickly add the depth that I'm looking for I'm gon na go to my stroke a little bit right to that end. If you want to adjust how wide this is just move your cursor off of these curve, once it's read and you can change the drill, scale, click on it again and that's going to actually modify the curve width. Well, if it's blue, when you change the cursor, that's just modifying the curve modifying brush, that's just how wide of a brush are you going to be using to modify the screen wow this red one is the actual size once I've laid down one stroke I want, And I'm happy with a stroke, I can click on the mesh itself and not the curve and that's going to delete the curve. So I can start a new one and I'll speed up the video. For this part. All right, I have a lot of the base. Shapes here, so what I'm gon na do now is isolate that base smash that I used initially, I don't really need this. It was just to build out all the shapes and to kind of give me a guy, so I'm gon na go to my split and split hidden. So now I have all the hair pieces as well as that base mesh. And if I look at my wireframe each one of those hairs is its own individual piece. So I can go through and tweak each individual one using the move brush and making sure that my masked by poly group is set to 100. At that point, I can move individual pieces by first initially clicking on that one. I want to move and then it just will Auto mask so that I'm only moving that one piece so, let's week, a couple of these pieces will get a the center of this piece a little bit modified. So just that looks nice. Knowing where your hair part is, is the most important we're getting all these shapes now checking silhouette. So it's very easy to do. This part is just hitting beat on your keyboard and it will change your color to black and you can see just the outline up and I already knew that up here at the top. It'S a little bit too high in one section, and I don't quite like that so unit B again, and in this case I want to change multiple hairs at the same time. So I'm going to turn off my auto masking value to zero move that bit down pull this part out it V. Givi again we'll go back to my polymaths can add a hundred to that. So I can move individual pieces. There'S a couple of pieces. I'D like to manipulate individually as well as because I had that hair plain initially there's a little bit of a more than a gap than I'd like between the skull and the character, so I'm gon na shrink down the overall size. My gizmo is not in the right place, though, so I'm going to unlock it first then Center to the unmatched area and also send you the rotation. So I don't worry about that. So now it's in the center that looks good, lock it again and now, when I transform this, it's going to manipulate and move the whole head, the whole hair mesh. So I just said I have some pieces to fill in move things around some more like. I have a big old gap right here in the back of bag. Mostly, I focused on the top area, so I'm going to fill in these couple of different areas and I'll speed up the video for this part. So I have all the bass hair pieces using the Mac on hair curves, I'm going to switch over to the de which has the multiple thick elements, and this will allow me to create even more variety from from this and just kind of clean up a couple. Little areas like there's kind of a blank spot over here, I could hide some of this stuff intersecting here a little bit more variety in the back, but mostly around the ears. I think that's where it needs it most. It'S currently, I have the dynamic subdivisions on. I'M going to turn that off for a little bit here on both my under hair and the top hair and I'll create multi, think B, first so automatically. I can see that this is going the wrong direction, put a stroke, so need to go back. To my stroke, menu curved modifiers and flip horizontally make that a little bit different stroke. I think I want this depth to be a little bit higher 10. Some constants out of it just stretch that out it's not quite so then increase my draw size. I think the tip of it could be a bit thinner in this case, unlike the other one. Okay, let's get nicer all right, so isolated. All these now, I'm going to kind of break them off into their own piece, holding down, control and shift clicking these multi branch strands, and each one of these does have a and a tip beginning an end. So I need to make sure to get those so I'll just grab in the middle section as much as I can. That looks like the most of them. There'S two all right, so I have all those I'll hold down, control and shift and drag to invert. My selection and there's a couple of ones, I'm kind of grabbed. I didn't need to they're, not the de kinds, so I'll just hide those all right. That looks pretty good. Now I don't have the beginning and end of a lot of these. So what I'm going to do is go to my visibility and grow all so anything that's connected that has like partially hidden pieces is going to become visible again, so just using this grow all because I have the middle section. It'S gon na grab the rest of those strands. Now I'm going to break this off into its own sub tool, going to split, hidden, I'll, call this and then going to my polygroups, I'm going to hit auto group, and this is going to isolate each one of these pieces that are their own section or manifold Geometry into their own now all I have to do is bring back that so currently, I'm moving to my move brush and I have poly groups off, so I'm moving everything initially just to kind of tuck some of these hairs in and then I'll go switching to My move by polygroups and move them all at once. I want to switch to the other poly masters holding down alt clicking on it, move this hair higher back to the other groups. Now you can see how much I am going back to that auto mask piece. So, typically, on my custom, you ice, I will just have that slider be able to pop it up in any place than I am so that makes it much faster in the workflow just by putting into a menu in deciding that menu to a hotkey. So I suggest having something along those lines to make things go a little bit faster because otherwise hair does take just playing a long time to do so. Anything you can do just speed that up helps alright. I think I got them tucked away good moves bar now, just separate out these pieces and before I do that I'll just go to my other two top and bottom hairs and hit deep to activate the dynamic subdivision and see what that looks. Like kind of the end state, let's go to my brush mask apply polygroup some of these hairs around and again I'm gon na speed up the video cuz. This is pretty just using the same thing, so I have my broom move. Brush I've activated the move by polygroup, auto masking I'm just gon na grab a poly group one at a time and move them, so they can have some other pieces. So this end of the hair isn't quite as tapered as I'd like it takes. I'M just grabbing the pinch brush and they'll move that brush along the curve and go back to my wheel brush so I'll speak here. I'Ve completed the hair, I've got all the little tiny da de hair flyaways and I'm pretty happy with the end result. Here I have three layers now I have the tiny flyaways that I use the de one, for I have a top layer and then the under hair underneath all of the other pieces. So this is kind of my process for creating stylized hair. I hope you found it helpful and I'll see you again. Next video