"Uruk-hai" - Mixed Media Illustration

[Andru]

-Whom do you serve?
-Sarumaaan!

My Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/verisof

I made this illustration following Marcus Whinney 's course, by first sculpting the model in ZBrush, rendering it in different passes and finally compiling everything, editing and painting over in Photoshop. The process was very fun, though the rendering tools in ZBrush are pretty clunky to work with as compared to dedicated 3D rendering packages. I’d say the biggest upside of using this workflow is being able to sculpt conceptually and not worry about polycount and model optimization, while having very high fidelity results.

In the near future, I’m tempted to use this workflow with a more stylized approach and a larger scale sculpt (torso level).

[boozy_floozie]

Cool result

Hard to define but rendering in ZBrush the way you have chosen does give an illustrative quality that cannot really be replicated in standard single pass rendering. The multiple material passes techniques involved allow for painterly cheats that standard rendering does not. That’s not to say you can’t use multiple passes in other software - you can - but it’s just as clunky regarding time if not clunkier

Decimation Master’s ‘use and keep polypaint’ feature does an amazing job of crunching poly count whilst maintaining polypaint. That may be a route of liberation to rendering elsewhere if you are so inclined.

For new users of ZBrush curious about this technique here’s a good overview from 2014 - starts in about 9 minutes CGMA | Interview with the Masters | featuring Rafael Grassetti

ZBrush Guides: Materials and Compositing - Pablo Muñoz Gómez - Episode 12