A Master Class in Rock Sculpting, 3D Modeling in 3DCoat, ZBrush and Modo

Indie Dungeon, the 3D and indie gaming community have posted their first tutorial, a look into the workflow behind sculpting a rock formation in 3D, using 3D Coat, ZBrush, Modo, and Marmoset ToolBag.

the full details of sculpting and texturing a rock formation

This represents a Master Class in Rock Sculpting with the workflow starting out using Voxels in 3DCoat, then moving to Zbrush to finish the modeling and surfacing, and finally using Modo to create and bake the texture and normal maps.

Aaron, the host of the tutorial, notes that this tutorial is suitable for film VFX or gaming industry professionals interested in gaining advanced knowledge of a voxel sculpting workflow to improve efficency.

The tutorial is broken down into stages, which are:

  • Create Basic shape in 3DCoat using voxels primitives.
  • Begin the sculpting process in 3DCoat
  • Techniques for achieving a very natural look by subtractive voxel rock sculpting
  • Techniques for sculpting cracks in voxels using plane tool
  • Voxel surfacing techniques in 3DCoat using stencils and extrude
  • ZBrush technique for sculpting photographed cracks into the model using alpha and dragrect tool
  • Zbrush Noisemaker model surfacing techniques
  • Poly reduction using ZBrush Decimation Master
  • Creating UV’s using ZBrush UV Master
  • Using Modo to create the texture
  • Using Modo to create multiple occlusion layers to bring out cracks
  • Using Modo to highlight rock edges using occlusion layers
  • Using Modo to bake textures and normal maps
  • Assembly and display of the real-time ready 3D asset in Marmoset Toolbag.