Top 10 Tips ALL Zbrush Artists Should Know 

00:20 Projecting 03:40 Scale 05:00 Keep it Low 06:18 Reconstruct 08:22 Backface Mask 09:33 Smooth Brush 10:45 Smooth Groups Brush 13:23 Dynamic Subdiv 18:04 ZRemesher 25:31 Reference Images

My tip would be ZAppLink. A lot of people don't know that you can actually do almost all your texture painting directly in Photoshop. Just couple clicks to bang out your character sheet to photoshop and then a quick paintover makes concepting even on low resolution characters a breeze.

This is the kind of video I would have wished for when I first got into Zbrush. Every tip is crucial and helpful!

12:34 the smooth group brush just became my go-to brush

So happy you shared these tips, dynamic subdivision, is so amazing to let us see how the mesh looks like with subdivision levels and also seeing what the mesh looks like with thicknes, as a preview~~

Reconstruct is a nice thing, that I haven't really thought about before. It is worth mentioning with reconstruct, things that change the setup too much like adding new polygons will break it, and if you've got any triangles (which are actually nice for a few modeling cases, even in zbrush) doesn't work with those either.

Worth the time to watch. Excellent video. The last tip for reference images is brilliant.

When ZRemeshing, I like the ZRemesher Guides brush. Much easier than creasing, polygroups, slicing, all that. I learned this from Marcus Whinney.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with the community as always! You’re amazing! 👏🏼

straight to the point and no bs! thank you so much for sharing this. big big help!

This is fantastic. These were all the pitfalls i hit when i self-taught myself this program. You do a fantastic job explaining.

Really I’ve never seen this use of the Draw option for the reference images, I’ve used other ways to use references but this looks like it’s far more efficient!

For Tip9, instead of using polygroup, you can use retopology curve and use the curve slider to guide the remeshing process.

Thanks for this J, the last 2 tips are just awesome and something I have been needing recently!

Thank you so much Jhill this Zremesher part save made my life so much easier!!!

J thank you so much for your knowledge , ive been a 3D instructor for 8 years and you are by far the first reference i encourage all my students to watch . Keep up the amazing work

Here’s a couple tips for you as a video editor, first, the text need to be white and not dark gray on the ZBrush UI. Second, I suggest to add labels and what tool you are using, for this you can get a mouse highlight label plugin. Your videos are awesome and you’ve helped me a lot throughout the years of learning ZBrush. I also bought your course on Game Character, you do a great job teaching. Thank you for sharing.

smooth group brush.....my mind is blow

There is even quicker way than smooth group brush. If you want to create a smooth polygroup from mask press SHIFT+CTRL+E. Zbrush will automatically cut polygons to make boundary buttery smooth. This is a real gem.

great tips! Thank you

Characters you make are amazing as always! Maybe I should learn Zbrush. Thanks a lot!!

Tip number 3 speaks volumes to me as someone who used ZBrush for the past year. Michael Cauchi told me the same thing about low resolution it plays a role in making easier deformations in one of his life streams. And now you’re saying the same thing. He also did tip number 10 a lot in his likeness videos. I wish I could send you some of my ZBrush projects for feedback and advice. Plan to do more soon so that I can mess with game engines. Big big fan. Your videos help me get through my last 2 semesters in college. My latest biggest obstacle is creativity and consistency and completion. J Hill if you read this humble comment you have my gratitude and thanks in all the world. I’m a very humble beginner of ZBrush looking to connect to others that use it.

the reference image tip is gold! Im suprised ive not seen or heard about this before

It took me a while to get a handle on the way scale works in zbrush. This is the most important thing when it comes to going to other programs or to a 3d printer.

Thank you for the useful tips!

Thank you, Jay. Very very useful tips.

Thank you for amazing tutorial!

These tips are crucial for dealing with Zbrush! Excellent video!

the last tip blew my mind, I had no idea I could do that, could you make a dedicated video on likeness sculpts. Thanks for the tips!

Awesome tips. Thanks for sharing :)

Great tips dude. I also enjoyed the relaxed nature of the delivery and the humor sprinkled in

This video is a treasure! ♥ tysm

Very helpful amazing tips! Thank you!

Tip 6 is real deal, Thanks.

Had no idea smooth groups existed, what a great tip!

Another useful tip, when using smooth brush, keep sculpting but let go off SHIFT key, it changes its mode and preserves the form I think. Great video though, those are some really useful tips I didnt know about!

very helpful thank you

Thank you for this!

Smoothing polygroups omg!! That 12:13 was so satisfying to watch. Thanks for the tips!

Tip 10 ! is supper useful. thanks man.

Great tips!

This is one of your best videos yet. Valuable, very helpful for zbrush owners who have put the software aside years ago. Thanks! :)

Awesome video. So helpful!!

Omg last tip its da bomb !

Thanks for the insight again J! That final tip is GOATed for likeness studies!? So much easier than pureref behind and making the Zbrush window see through.

I'm glad you ended the Smooth all even edges with "this took me years to find" because I needed to hear that haha. Legit helpful vid man, Cheers J!

thanks man,it's been a while, please upload more vids

Good stuff, thanks.

Damn I need to add that Smooth Groups brush to my palette. I've been using "Polish by features" to do the same after extracting, after creasing the polygroups, works well. Another tip is to use Freeze Subdivision Levels to do operations that can't be done when the mesh is subdivided. Like when you deleted the area for the shirt and reconstructed the subdivs, instead you can Freeze Subdiv Levels and separate/delete the parts you don't need, then Unfreeze and it'll recalculate your subdivs. For some reason Reconstruct Subdiv tends to fail a lot for me, even with only quads. Zbrush can do so many things, but it's generally buried in menus and sub menus...

The fact that he remembers the exact year in which he saw the magic of the Smooth Brush tells you how important it is :D

These are extremely useful tips!!!!!! Thanks!!!!!!

13:50, that's the real gem of this video, the secrete tip into the industry

ty so much for making this video its veryy helpfull specially about how to use Zremesher (polygroups) and Project now my vision to modeling characters is better 😁💥

This Video really helped me as a beginner Thank you for creating this video!!

Amazing !!! Make more videos like this 😀

Group Mask = Ctrl +W! All the best!

Welcome back, and as usual, you are always creative and innovative

Ive been doing this for 10 years and this was by far the most helpfull video ive seen on this platform, thank you so much

U R A GENIUS!

Hi thanks for the helpfull tips Some I didn't know at all.

AMAIZIIIIINNNNNGGGG stuff as usual, Thanks for sharing all this tips, I like your stile and way to give you knowledge, thanks thanks and again thanks!

Very good Tips. most of them i didt know. thank you.

Very cool video! Thank you!

i like your tutorials, so details!

Thank you Sir.. You Tips and Guide helps a lot to making my works better. THANK YOU SO MUCH

Thanks dear for sharing this video 👍

So much value, thank u

Thanks so much for this. I’ll be rewatching this fir a very VERY LONG time

Thanks J!

"Video game characters are just belts, pouches and shoulder pads" lmao The secret of cool characters was in the palm of our hands this entire time... :O

Bro, a BIG THANKS to you !

Thank you J Hill, your channel its one of the best to learn 3D from all youtube :)

pure gold

Where have you been man! Missed ya!!!❤️

i love when you talkin spanish perfecto!

Tip 7 changed my life when I discovered it! Over night it made me better at hard surface hahah

Amazing as always J! Thank you! I have a question: my uploaded image always appears too large. How do I resize it?

Hidden treasures in plain sight, Thank you so much!!!

The smooth group will litterally change my life haha ! Thanks a lot for theses tips !

thank you for the great video

tip 7 blow my mind damn

Great Video, Thank you for sharing your knowledge to the community, Your content helped me a lot, I learned a lot and you also inspiring a lot, Hope for more contents and tips in future, Good luck and Love you J hill. ❤👍

hey love your tutorials, I'm a beginner in zbrush so I was wondering how do you do your topology ?? do you use zremesher or export the model into other software for that???

You are Zbrush god 😱🫣

Thanks!

so valuable. oh my god that smooth group brush @>@ xd

Tip 10 was it for me ❤❤

15 minutes in and you blew my mind multiple times

The reaction to the audience to the smooth groups brush was similar to when Capcom was doing their talk on Street Fighter 6 this year and when they used the cloth transpose brush. They are both amazing tools and I use them pretty frequently now. There are so many hidden gems in the lightbox it's unreal, I guess Pixel Logic doesn't want to overwhelm people who are still learning. I would suggest that everyone learn what's already there very well and if there's ever something really specific that you can't achieve with the default brushes, guarantee it's in the lightbox.

i wish i would have known about that morph target trick with projection a long time ago. probably would have saved me my job...

Honestly had thought I’d hit a wall until I saw this video, appreciate the knowledge you’ve laid out perfectly.

on tip no.1 you can also not use 2 subtools. Remesh or retopo your dynamesh mesh and then mark a point in history where your details were (ctrl click on the undo point you wish) and then go back to the latest undo (the clean topo mesh) and click project history . that way you can keep retopologizing and projecting without worrying if both meshes are the correct distance and if something is off in your topology you can work on it as you project the details. also allows you to project meshes with a HUGE polycount, since you don't need to have a duplicate of the subtool eating up your polycount. :)

so helpfull jay, thank you so much. been watching since 4 years ago until now that im already a 3d artist :)

Amazing Tips, always learing something new from your clips. Great job man. I donno if you've covered this in the past, 2 tips i have really found helpful - 1) splitting your model into patches with overlap if you want to go crazy hi when detailing huge full body characters. and 2) Using UVs to transfer shape information in maya even if the vertex count has changed. If you have UVs then you have a way.

Man, this is the most usful zbrush video I watch in few weeks, thank you very much!

Hello sir.. Your video tutorials very helpful... Plz crate tutorials on character art zbrush

25:40 great video JHill, much love homie.

Bruh... some of these tips are helping me so much, I wouldn't even have known what to google to address them

Tip1 - out of laziness I always bypass this process and just keep working on my high poly without duplicating for ZRemesh and project all, I think I will embrace this method starting now. ^_^ Tip7 - what I do is edgeloop masked border, but this is better as I only need to use smooth groups brush, problem in edgeloop was you have additional polygon which sometimes I don't like. Tip8 - I'm stupid I didn't know that Thickness, after I create a belt from planes I directly use extrude in zmodeler, ouch Tip9 - I'm not gonna be lazy of not doing zremesh by group promise ;) thanks for the tip man, thanks! super!

Nice Bro Thanks