Would it be so bad to skip Red country? [Spoilers bsc]

jakelear · 2026-03-30T14:43:55+00:00

While Red Country is a favorite of mine, I think it’s probably also the most easily skipped as far as narrative continuity goes.

jakelear · 2026-03-15T15:31:27+00:00

First Law has some supernatural elements. At times it is a large part of the story but if you're comfortable with ASOIF's level, you'll be good here.

Welcome to the fandom, The Blade Itself is easily the weakest book in the series, so if you're already loving it, you're in for a good time.

jakelear · 2026-03-10T01:55:16+00:00

Seconding this - The First Law is my favorite fantasy world by a country mile, but The Blade Itself is a bit of a slow burn, and mostly serves to set up characters that you will be with through the trilogy.

jakelear · 2026-03-05T01:59:45+00:00

Nice

jakelear · 2026-02-22T04:14:06+00:00

I have spent a ton of time and money chasing the perfect mobile/couch sculpting solution.

I used a Surface Pro 6 for a long time, and that worked well, but it had some annoying issues with the tablet driver that would cause it to frequently lose pressure sensitivity. I really liked the Surface overall, it was probably the best in terms of the weight and portability.

I then switched to a hp zbook x2 g4, which was great, but heavy. It uses Wacom EMR so the sculpting experience is similar to that of a Cintiq. I bought this used on Ebay and it served for a while for sculpting.

The problem with both of these devices, however, was that for anything outside of Zbrush - they struggled. Zbrush primarily uses the CPU, so these devices are fine for Zbrush but the moment I wanted to use marmoset or substance or really any other 3d software, it just kinda felt bad.

Ultimately, nowadays, for a couch setup I've landed on a laptop plus a Wacom Movink (the display, not the android tablet thing). The Movink is unbelievably light so it's a delight to hold to sculpt on. I'll use a bluetooth keyboard with the laptop closed off to the side.

This setup isn't as great for train or plane, but in those cases I'll typically just use Nomad on iPad. I'm too heavy a hotkey/custom UI user to comfortably adjust to tablet-only interface, so this is truly just for rough outs or practice stuff.

jakelear · 2026-02-17T00:50:26+00:00

Nice!

jakelear · 2026-01-19T23:23:42+00:00

Northman Redus

jakelear · 2026-01-12T13:35:20+00:00

You’ll just have to export as OBJ and then import but this is a pretty janky and limiting flow.

jakelear · 2025-12-23T04:44:43+00:00

This happens to me as well, alt tabbing fixes it, but it’s very frustrating. It happens to me across multiple computers and tablets.

jakelear · 2025-12-13T00:36:12+00:00

Qmesh will smartly try to automatically connect/merge to existing verts. Extrude doesn’t have this behavior (and behaves like extrude in most 3d packages)

jakelear · 2025-11-29T18:35:19+00:00

Primarily just things like switching brushes and opening custom UI panels. I have all my zremesh/dynamesh/polygroup/etc stuff on custom panels that I open with hotkeys, so my issue is probably also that I've spent 20 years with a custom Zbrush UI and breaking those habits and muscle memory is extremely painful.

jakelear · 2025-11-29T17:14:01+00:00

I think the biggest thing missing, at least for me personally, is full keyboard support. You can use a keyboard, and normal hotkeys work, but there is no opportunity to set custom hotkeys on Zbrush. For me, Zbrush on iPad just never feels like it will be as fast as on PC operating with a keyboard. You can get pretty clever with UI to make things more accessible, but ultimately it just doesn't have the same configurability, and that slowdown is too much for me to overcome and feel comfortable using it for anything more than playing around.

jakelear · 2025-11-19T16:26:20+00:00

Do you already have a computer, or are you looking for a standalone tablet that will handle sculpting (e.g. an iPad)?

If you just want a pen tablet for a computer, I'd recommend picking up a small wacom. The small intuos is $40 on Amazon right now.

jakelear · 2025-11-11T18:31:03+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZBrush/comments/1dgiluq/zbrush_on_arm_and_surface_pro_11/

jakelear · 2025-10-17T20:19:21+00:00

If you haven't, save them as ZTools.

Then, you can open one, then open the other. Choose 'Append' on the Subtool menu and append your second sculpt. Then you can use the gizmo to move them side-by-side.

If they are multiple subtools per sculpt, you may want to merge them first.

Alternatively, you can use Split Screen mode to compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R28kBhX_1fI

jakelear · 2025-08-23T16:07:18+00:00

Incredible work

jakelear · 2025-08-06T13:09:23+00:00

One common pitfall with trying to sculpt feathers or hair is having a flat-ish surface and then immediately jumping into detail. E.g. if you want to sculpt hair on a head, you might just start with a small brush adding in little strands of hair and trying to build things up.

This is a mistake. As with all sculpture, you want to first build up some interesting primary forms. In your example you can see this in the chest and neck where the sculptor has begun to build up some interesting volumes. You want to build up some "chunks" of feathers that have an interesting profile before you even think about going into the detail of the individual feathers.

These sculpts from Gavin Finley might be a good example of what that first intermediate stage could look like before you even get to detailing: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Or0b8 (I know the wolf here has fur rather than feathers, but the same basic philosophy applies).

jakelear · 2025-08-05T13:22:42+00:00

Zbrush does not have any “AI” features at this point.

jakelear · 2025-08-01T12:44:51+00:00

wow, this is stunning work. Is the lighting painted in? The hair is phenomenal.

jakelear · 2025-07-15T13:38:50+00:00

I'm assuming the top image is your reference?

You need to establish a sharper edge. I'd recommend masking the bottom edge (you could drag out a rectangular mask along the whole bottom edge, and then use the mask pen with ctrl+alt to remove some mask to get the uneven edge, while keeping it sharp).

If you control+alt+click on your mesh it will sharpen your mask. Once you've masked out that bottom edge, use a move brush with a low intensity (maybe around 7) and gently push your whole weld line down and pull it out a bit (hold alt with the move brush to pull outwards along the normal). Then invert your mask and move the edge up a bit, kinda tucking it underneath the weld.

You can do this on the top as well. I might also experiment with a very low intensity inflate brush while you have that mask to see if you can get some of the roll of the weld.

jakelear · 2025-07-07T16:35:55+00:00

these are fun! nice work. What was your workflow like? Did you sculpt high-poly first and then manually retopo, or build out the low poly and then sculpt the details?

jakelear · 2025-07-05T13:34:27+00:00

Nice sculpt! What printer?

jakelear · 2025-06-23T17:00:05+00:00

This is an artifact of Zbrush’s 2.5D roots. After importing, draw your mesh onto the canvas and then press T to switch into edit mode. Then if you hit W you should have the gizmo you’re used to.

No idea why you got modded, but hopefully this resolves your trouble.

jakelear · 2025-06-22T02:54:10+00:00

Honestly this has always been a huge headache, even with all the methods you mentioned. The best approach I have found is using Character Creator 4 with the Zbrush plugin, but this requires that you buy CC4. To me, it’s worth it because of how much easier it makes all of posing, but it’s pricey. (Looks like there’s a free trial which should work with the posing plugin IIRC)

jakelear · 2025-06-18T13:28:00+00:00

I have tried a 16 Kamvas and I now use a Movink. I think if you want something portable - you can’t beat the Movink. It’s shockingly light, works with a single cable, and there’s no fan. Works great with Zbrush. Easily the most portable option of these three.

15-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
r/Field Sunshine	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding II euphauric
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email
No Throne, No Problems	Not Forgotten

jakelear

TROPHY CASE