Hi everyone!
Last week I purchased Zbrush and I’ve got a couple of questions regarding my methods to achieve complex diagrid patterns on buildings (such as in the example shown below)
City of dreams by Zaha Hadid
Now, it’s very likely that the people who created the structure used the plugin ‘Grasshopper’ for Rhino 3D which is based on algorithms, although I’m not entirely sure.
My goal is to achieve similair results with Zbrush and trying to push the boundaries in order to get more familair with Zbrush.
1) My first approach/attempt was to generate an alpha of a diagrid and use it as ‘Surface noise’ which is based on the methods of Joseph Drust’s architecture tutorial.
- The 3D space option projects and stretches the alpha.
- The UV option looks like a fair solution, although the seam of the object breaks the pattern.
2) With the second attempt I took a seperate object (the x) and used it to apply a Micromesh to a basic smooth mesh. Opposed to using a Nanomesh I found the Micromesh easier to weld together and unify.
- This looks slightly improved, although the size of the grid should be bigger which I find is impossible without having a low resolution mesh because the Micromesh replaces the poly’s (see attempt 3)
3) Here I created a new pattern by applying a Micromesh to a low poly model, this in order to maintain a certain scale of the pattern. After applying the BPR I tried to project/shrink the grid to a smooth higher poly mesh, this without good results.
Note that the object used to apply to the Micromesh was subdivided in order to bend if necessary.
At the moment I’m stil getting familair with using Zbrush, so I’m probably doing something wrong within my attempts.
My main question is whether there is a certain method to achieve complex patterns such as the building shown above, I’m very curious how other Zbrush users would approach the issue.
Thank you for your patience!
Attachments
Here are some examples and process inside of ZBrush you could use to get the effect you are looking for.
The examples and the tutorial definitely gave some new insights.
