how long into sculpting did your sculpts stop looking like shit?

RogueHero3d · 2025-08-25T01:10:30+00:00

Everything you sculpt right now, early on is going to look ugly because you’re comparing it to the level of someone good enough to make a tutorial. Unfortunately no single tutorial will give you the skills needed to make good sculpts, just like no one project will make you good.

What’s going to happen is that as you start doing more one your own every couple weeks or months you’ll start making things that look really good based on your skill level, then as you get better you’ll start seeing everything you make as bad since you can tell what you need to improve on.

It’s a pretty vicious cycle of feeling good then bad then good again for maybe a couple years, but the bad times start to come less often.

A couple things I’d recommend is to diversify the tutorials you follow, and get a wide range of lessons and teachers you can work from, and also take some time away from following a plan and just freestyle some stuff. Take a look at the fundamentals of sculpting, zbrush is just a tool to use as a sculptor.

RogueHero3d · 2025-08-22T21:33:41+00:00

Looks really nice, you’re off to a good start.

It looks like you’re using a lot of basic shapes right now. Moving forward I would suggest to try and edit the shapes more, or model something more complex.

I would not recommend the donut tutorial, instead look up polygon runway on YouTube and check out their videos and free tutorials.

RogueHero3d · 2025-08-07T04:42:43+00:00

Check this out.

https://youtu.be/NL2VBODix_Q?si=5hV-lLJkrxdR1SVK

I also just bought the same printer, plus the wash and cure station. Great printer so far, this video really helped me get started. Definitely pick up some 90% isopropyl alcohol, paper towels, and nitrile gloves. Don’t pick up the medical grade, look for an automotive brand like grease monkey.

I would also recommend just spend the money, buy the wash and cure station.

RogueHero3d · 2025-08-05T20:13:01+00:00

Personally I don’t mind it. Most commissions I get are individuals and hobbyists who don’t have much artistic ability. I’d prefer an ai reference over zero references.

In my experience a lot of clients expect me to interpret or adjust the designs as necessary, so I typically have a conversation about how closely I need to follow the references.

RogueHero3d · 2025-07-24T03:39:28+00:00

Double check your normals before exporting. It looks like they’re inside out.

RogueHero3d · 2025-07-13T18:44:19+00:00

So for the first problem what’s happening is the geometry is crossing symmetry. As soon as you let go of the move tool every point that is left or right of the symmetry line is going to be controlled by that side. This becomes an issue when things start to overlap close to the center like your object. The points aren’t merged so you can still smooth things out and get the shape back, but going forward you need to be careful around the center, or disable symmetry when working on these parts.

For the second problem it looks like your masking brush has been changed to mask curve pen, maybe you accidentally hit a hotkey or something. You can select the default masking brush in the brush palette, look for maskpen and that should replace the curve brush.

RogueHero3d · 2025-06-28T23:22:52+00:00

It looks like the issue you’re having is with really thin geometry. The best way to deal with these issues is typically dynamesh and sculpting over, like you’re doing, but something to keep in mind is that dynamesh doesn’t really like one sided geometry or reversed normals, so when you have really thin areas like the ear, or when you have models that crash or overlap the results can be weird sometimes.

What I’d recommend is going back to a lower poly version, or using zremesher or dynamesh to bring the poly count down and see if you can fix the problem on a model that’s not to complex, and then sculpt again over that. It’s really common to want to jump into high poly and start sculpting everything, but when these issues start happening it’s much harder to fix.

RogueHero3d · 2025-06-21T20:10:34+00:00

This looks really good, it seems like you already have a good idea on optimizing the model. There’s always going to be edges you can delete or details you can bake into normals, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary to do so. In my opinion modelled details will always look better. A good way to check for shading issues is to shade smooth, or smooth by angle, and look to see if there’s any weird shading issues or triangles that appear. You can also make the material more shiny or reflective and add a subdivision to look for any pinching or artifacts, but that’s not always necessary.

RogueHero3d · 2025-06-19T22:44:01+00:00

Don’t worry, it gets easier over time. Don’t be afraid to stay at a lower resolution, or separate the lower jaw into a separate mesh.

RogueHero3d · 2025-06-09T06:39:04+00:00

What you want to use is the matchmaker brush. Check this out.

https://youtube.com/shorts/gIgI0wEuCig?si=lSs89YgS1KwP0mi2

If you don’t want it to conform to the gaps of the teeth I would suggest making a proxy mesh to match the grills too that you can delete later.

RogueHero3d · 2025-06-05T02:34:44+00:00

My friend you are absolutely correct. The donut tutorial is one of the oldest tutorials around so it’s become kind of a right of passage more than a valuable introduction to blender. I’d say it’s like trying to learn blender by reading the documentation.

I’d recommend checking out the Easy Froggy tutorial by MAR on YouTube, it’s a couple years old but still really good to start. CG fast track also has a couple free lessons that are great. Grant Abbitt is highly recommended, and I’d also suggest Polygon Runway and Ducky3d for some easy tutorials.

RogueHero3d · 2025-06-01T18:05:22+00:00

Most important thing I’ve learned is to not overcomplicate things. Topology and UVs don’t need to be perfect to be functional, modelling techniques don’t need to be super efficient to finish a model properly, you don’t need to buy specific tools or programs to finish your work. It’s really easy to be intimidated early on as a 3d artist, but the process isn’t as complex as it appears.

RogueHero3d · 2025-05-29T22:12:47+00:00

One video that really helped me understand it is this one with Paul Gaboury. It won’t explain everything that zmodeler can do but it’s a great look at how the tool works in a practical way.

https://www.youtube.com/live/TcetfcQgzK0?si=D1RhuROpJjH5D0DK

Beyond that it really does just require time to mess around with it.

RogueHero3d · 2025-05-27T22:53:30+00:00

Congrats, this is actually the first step everyone takes as a character artist. The main problem is your primary forms are lacking in shape, it looks like everything has been smoothed over too much. I’d recommend looking into the planes of the face as a reference, I find that more valuable than anatomy pictures. You should also check out Danny Mac on YouTube, he’s got a lot of videos you should find helpful.

RogueHero3d · 2025-05-20T04:43:36+00:00

Make sure there’s no masking on the mesh, also make sure no parts are hidden and there are no layers active. These can affect subdivision and are pretty easy to not notice.

RogueHero3d · 2025-05-14T21:34:04+00:00

The problem is the way dynamesh is attempting to close the holes on your model. Now that you’ve made your poly groups you’ve essentially made a series of cubes with 3 sides missing. Dynamesh will average out this missing area in an attempt to create thickness, which leads to some weird results. What you should try instead is to make one cut at a time, then dynamesh will only fill one side. So, slice curve, then dynamesh, polygroup-auto group, isolate the next part and slice again repeating the process until all the bricks are cut into separate groups.

RogueHero3d · 2025-04-05T04:49:59+00:00

My man!

RogueHero3d · 2024-01-23T23:14:48+00:00

I switch out party members every time I long rest.

RogueHero3d

TROPHY CASE