In this article I explain why I’ve given Blender’s sculpting tools another go and what I think so far.
Reasons
I’ve been using Blender for some time now but I hadn’t really explored the sculpting tools much because when I tried Blender for sculpting several years ago it didn’t work very well, something that at the time helped me decide to get ZBrush. I didn’t feel the need to use Blender for sculpting as a user of ZBrush (I got the perpetual version in 2018 before it went to Maxon) however I haven’t had access to my normal computer (Home DIY project still ongoing) so I decided to give sculpting in Blender 4.3.2 a go. I have to say I was quite impressed with it overall.
It still isn’t as optimised for sculpting as ZBrush but the latest version of Blender is certainly more than usable for sculpting. The improved performance for sculpting and the changes to the UI are great. I’m not even using them with my more performant computer and I can say considering the computer I’m working on at the moment is a Dell Optiplex 3000 with no dedicated GPU it seems to perform fairly well as long as I don’t plan on using Cycles or using lots of geometry. Eevee works very well on it but when I am sculpting I generally keep it in matcap mode.
I still can’t use as many polygons as I would if I was in ZBrush or Nomad 1, I’m not sure I would be able to even on my more powerful computer but I’ll try it out one day.
I think the most recent improvements for sculpting in Blender started with the 2.8 version when an engineer and artist called Pablo Dobarro helped improve and add to a lot of the sculpting features in Blender. I don’t think he still works on them but he does work as a developer on some 3D iPad apps called CozyBlanket and Uniform with Joan Fons.
I hope Blender will continue to improve as outlined in their roadmaps but they have to do lots of other things, not just sculpting, so it will take time. There are some improvements outlined for the 4.4 release so that is good. Another great thing is that there are plenty of brilliant free tutorials for sculpting in Blender on YouTube. Grant Abbit’s channel is particularly useful.
Technical Hurdles
In my humble opinion It helps to have a general understanding of Blender’s capabilities, how to navigate in 3D space and of the UI to start using the sculpting tools but I found the sculpting workspace very simplified and easy to understand compared with Zbrush and Nomad. I like the icons for the brushes, it makes it easy to see what does what at a glance. Sure there is a learning curve but all of the menus, toolbars and brushes are very accessible and having used Zbrush for several years I could figure out equivalent tools I needed and use a similar workflow. Any other information I needed was easy to look up on the internet. It took me about a week to get the hang of it during which I made a few squirrels to learn the ropes.
There are changes you can make in the user preferences for Blender that make certain things better for sculpting. A good video to watch that goes through these is 28 tips to Boost sculpting in Blender by CG Boost.
Even though the menus are accessible and most everything you will need can be accessed from them, Blender is a very shortcut key heavy program and knowing the most common shortcut keys will definitely come in handy. For example CTRL usually gives the inverse action for a brush, Shift is the smooth brush shortcut, F resizes the brush, Shift + F changes the strength of the brush, Alt+Q selects different objects in the sculpt mode, CTRL + middle mouse button zooms in and out, A brings up the mask menu, R activates the remesh grid, CTRL R remeshes, Shift +Right mouse button places the pivot point under the cursor.
I would also suggest a pen tablet is needed for sculpting although you can block out and model shapes with a mouse and in the early stages, but for sculpting nice details and preventing RSI it is useful. I’m only using a small Ugee S640 at the moment (until I get back to my Huion) but I’ve found it very useful for sculpting and general work in Blender as it has programmable shortcut keys which I’ve assigned some of the common shortcuts to. I have the middle mouse button mapped to the pen button for rotation in the 3D space and the other button is set to Shift + middle mouse button for panning around.
I also have a Reddragon K585 one handed gaming keyboard to my left which I find useful for many of the common Blender shortcuts and I’ve assigned the camera view and orthographic view shortcuts to the macro keys because it is easier pressing them there than stretching over to the keyboard numpad. All I have to do now is figure out where to put the main keyboard… there are times you have to use that and the mouse so sometimes it feels like a bit of a juggling act.
Remesh is useful for the early stages of blocking out, forming and joining meshes together and there is no performance penalty after the calculation has completed as the brush is not adding extra geometry just pushing and pulling it about. It isn’t so useful for the later detailed stages unless you have a more powerful computer, this is where dynotopo comes in useful.
An understanding of polycount, topology and how to fix mesh errors is also needed to use the sculpting tools effectively in Blender as the voxel re meshing algorithm does not automatically close holes. It can be a process of trial and error to get the right amount of geometry for sculpting. Too few polygons and you have no detail, too many and you crash Blender. I also find the remesh interactive grid a bit hard to use sometimes, you have to be zoomed out to see it on bigger objects and then you can’t see how big the little squares are.
Dynamic topology (dynotopo) can be useful for adding details and using with the snake hook brush, but be very careful with the detail level as it can be really taxing on the computer. Performance goes down when it is enabled. Something I have tried is to use the detail flood fill with settings on subdivide collapse and manual detail to give the mesh a uniform amount of detail so that I can sculpt details better but if you don’t remember to disable dynotopo mode after you have filled it the performance will be bad. Another thing I read that can help performance with dynotopo mode is to rebuild the BVH. This is only relevant if using dynotopo mode.
There are other modes for dynotopo as well which are useful for doing different things. Subdivide collapse and relative detail is better for moving things about on the surface of the mesh rather than pulling away from it. Subdivide edges and relative detail is better for using the snake hook brush. Some brushes work in the dynotopo mode and some don’t, notably the grab brushes will not use dynotopo even if it is enabled. I would not use the cloth brushes in this mode either although on the computer I’m using at present I’ll only dare use cloth brushes on low level geometry anyway.
I have had some success with using the multi resolution modifier and the shrink wrap modifier to project details from a higher resolution mesh onto an optimised mesh for sculpting details and refining them but I still have to watch the subdivision count very carefully when using it and I can’t get anywhere near the usual counts I would in ZBrush without lagging issues. Add-ons such as Quad Remesher are useful when using a multi resolution workflow in Blender. The native auto-retopology tools in Blender aren’t as good. The developer behind Quad Remesher developed the auto retopology tool in ZBrush as well.
Remember to reset the scale and rotation of objects (CTRL + A) in the object room before using symmetry or the remesh in the sculpt room of Blender or things will not work properly.
It is worth checking your normals are not flipped before using Boolean based tools as well.
If you have used the mirror modifier you have to apply it before you can use symmetry in the sculpt room.
If you want to mesh several objects together you must join them in the object room by selecting them all and using CTRL + J to join them before using remesh in the sculpt room.
Things I like about Blender Sculpting
The general feel of the brushes is really nice for sculpting although I did make a few variations to the clay strips, draw sharp and the flatten brush so they worked a bit more like how I’m used to in ZBrush. Years ago I bought a load of brushes for Blender from Blender Market called the Sculpt Toolbox and I’ve only just gotten around to using them. They are very handy. I actually think I will combine ZBrush and Blender just so I can use some of them more often. Alphas can be loaded into Blender and VDMs (vector displacement maps) can be created and used.
There are some brushes I think are great to use in Blender and I’m not sure if they are in ZBrush (possibly are, maybe I haven’t realised) these include the Grab Silhouette Brush, the Grab 2D brush, Pose Brush, Filter Brush and the cloth brushes. I know ZBrush has a type of cloth brushes but they have to be used in a particular mode and they don’t work in the same way as the ones in Blender. One brush I really don’t like though is the trim brush. I just couldn’t get it to work well.
Another thing I really like about sculpting in Blender is the ability to use camera views to make scenes and access to all the other modelling tools and modifiers can be leveraged. The mirror modifier, skin modifier, curves and lattices are useful. I feel like I’m getting to the point I set out to learn 3D for in the first place, though there is still work to do.
Thanks for reading.
I bought a refurbished iPad Air with an M1 chip recently and tried out Nomad for sculpting. Nomad performs well with no lag on millions of polygons and it is very easy to learn. It doesn’t do all the other things Blender can do but it is great for sculpting. Quad Remesher can also be used with a subdivision workflow in Nomad (extra in app purchase to activate it). It also has auto UV and painting and texture baking tools. I think combined with Blender or other 3D programs it is very useful. I find myself casually doodling things in it which is harder to get into the mindset for me of doing on the desktop. I still think I’d rather tackle the more technical aspects of the program on a desktop setup though so I’m looking forward to the development of a desktop version (if it comes to Windows). ↩︎
