Frog Warrior Sculpt

Here is a sculpt I’ve been working on. The frog was done in Sculptris. The accessories were done in Blender. I wanted to do it all in Blender but I cant seem to get Dyno sculpt under control. I feel more comfortable in Sculptris. If I can get Blender to behave like Sculptris, it would be all Blender.
I took the frog into Blender and remeshed it. So it has subdivisions where I can further refine the details, also it doesn’t bog down my machine. I can adjust the preview settings in the multires modifier. I plan to add a dagger and a sword. I also plan to add a tribal necklace. C&C are welcomed.


C & C: None. This looks awesome to me. The right wrist looks a little weird(lacking separation of forearm/hand), but I figured that was part of the froginess, or the angle of the pic. If not, I think I would put the accessory on that side too.

I’m curious as to what behavior your having problems in Blender with Dynotopo.

Wireframes please. :slight_smile: Do you plan on painting? If so, what app are you going to use for that?(just curious about other’s workflows)

I really love the way you sculpted the arms muscles. That kind of twist of the forearm, when you’re not used to draw it or sculpt it looks sometimes strange.

You were wondering about sculpting better with Blender. I don’t know if it could be useful to you but for me, sometimes just taking a pause and chill watching a tut with someone using tools can be a good help. MAybe you know him but check the channel of this guy

This one is for hard surface modelling but just to know the befavour and more than that how another guy sculpt with those tools, what he uses for that kind of shape, what are his favorite tools etc. etc.

But yeah man, of course if you can get the same result as Sculptris withe Blender it’s better. I hope someday we will be able to have a sculpt mode that could be a little more like ZBrush but I think that it will be impossible, too much sculpting focused, too hard to integrate with Blender.

I see that you sculpt directrly the clothes. Is it better to do this instead of sculpting an entire body and then clothes etc. etc. ?? what re the pros and the cons ?? Do you rig your models at the end ? Did you encoutered problems when rigging with loose parts of some objects like buttons or shoe straps that couldn’t follow well the diformation of the rigging and couldn’t fiy the problem with weight paints ??

Same question for the props and items like the bags attached to the belt. Is it better to include them in your final retopology of your model or is it better model them separately and then join them to your main body ?? Thank you in advance if you have an asnwer.

cmomoney- Thanks for the compliment. I haven’t decided if I will retopo and paint him. His hand does look a bit odd, I think it is do to the angle. I will rotate it. Thanks.

SOL_33 - Thanks for the link. I have seen the video. I really like Sculptris because I can just concept sculpt without fighting the program. It really is just a free flow. I then take it into blender and add the accessories where I sculpt using a multires modifier. I sculpt pretty good that way but cant seem to get dynotopo. For instance, the 2 brush that i absolutely need are the crease brush and the move brush. In blender the 2 brushes act very odd to me, I now the snake brush can be used to extrude arms and what not. But I cant get the 2 to behave the same way in blender. Here is a break down,

Move brush issues: I move polies, the radius is very sharp and inconsistent at what grabs and also causes polies to be deleted (doesnt show in the pic but it does) which is aggravating when there is detail in place that I already like, while in sculptris it is smooth and doesnt decimate my detail.


Crease brush issues: I just cant it to behave like sculptris. Much more sharp and smooth right out of the box. I tried playing with the settings to no avail.


These are deal breakers for me. Im still trying to figure it out though.

“Same question for the props and items like the bags attached to the belt. Is it better to include them in your final retopology of your model or is it better model them separately and then join them to your main body ?? Thank you in advance if you have an asnwer.”

This is a loaded question. To try and answer your questions, each object is its own separate piece. I try to treat each object separately when I sculpt. They all have their own details. The final overall model could easily reach millions of polys. That is why I use the multires modifier and the scene editor. It allows me to view the objects without bogging down my machine. I can lower the res, hide certain objects that aren’t needed at the time. It gives me more flexibility. Though it can be a big blender file.

As far as a lower res model. It really depends on what is needed. For instance the strap on his arm, which is its own seperate object, I would Bake it into the normal map with the arm. The Pocket on the side would be its own object. After a retopo I would join the lowpoly pocket to the low poly frog and then unwrap it. I would then seperate it and then bake the maps. Combine the low polies again and combine the maps and then begin the paint process. Hope this helps in answering your questions.

Thank you MwGraphFX for your answer. It’s a bit confused for me right now cause I didn’t know this workflow. I never used lowpolys to bake meshes into but it gives me a clue to where to seek informations. It was useful. Is it a game technic ?

I’m a bit in a hury right now but I have other questions.

But to return to the subject of the sculpt brushes and the crease, maybe you could try to raise the pinch bar and choose another curve.
As you I don’t like the grab brush either. You’re always obliged to go in edit mode and refin the details you lost.

See you soon and thanks again.

Okay, so if I understand well, you bake some meshes (here the strap on the arm) in a normal map for the arm. I imagine this normal map includes the muscles as well.

So before, you created a low poly mesh. You duplicated it. In the number 1 you used multires modifier and sculpted details including clothes and items. Some of those items you bake them in a normal maps, others, as the bags, you retopologise them to lower the number of polys, you join the, to the low poly version (ctrl J I assum), and now that’s what I don’t understand;

you unwrap the retopologised bag,with the same map as the low poly main body (if they are joined now I imagine that’s the case), and then you separate them again ?? why. And then you bake the maps ??

I lack of technique and CGI’s knowledge for the moment that’s why I don’t understand it very well right now.

Here’s a quick 20min sketch trying to get used to dyno. Ill eventually get comfortable with it.


Hi @mwgrafx, first of all, that character looks pretty cool!
I assume you already know more about dyntopo as you spend more time on it, but to try to help here’s my two cents on the matter:

Move brush issues: I move polies, the radius is very sharp and inconsistent at what grabs and also causes polies to be deleted (doesnt show in the pic but it does) which is aggravating when there is detail in place that I already like, while in sculptris it is smooth and doesnt decimate my detail.

For the grab and snakehook brushes change the curve of the brush to a straight line, that’s the one that works best for me. It’s a trial and error thing finding one that works for your specific needs, but is worth the effort.

Crease brush issues: I just cant it to behave like sculptris. Much more sharp and smooth right out of the box. I tried playing with the settings to no avail.

Also, change the curve; it has a tremendous impact on how this brush works, and set the Pinch strenght to 1.

For both cases and in general when sculpting in Dyntopo, if you want to be able to add detail and maintain that detail change the settings from “subdivide collapse” to “subdivide edges”, and (from personal preference) keep it on Brush Detail. Is the setting that feels more natural to me.

Dyntopo is very powerful, but there are a LOT of options open for the user to find out how they work properly; but if you spend some more time playing around with it, you’ll see is actually very fun and fast. To maximize the experience, install Pitiwazou’s pie menus addon, and right click addon, you’ll be able to switch to full screen, hide all the menu’s and options and just sculpt. :slight_smile:

Wow Julperado! Thanks so much that helped out a lot. The crease settings helped a bunch. The move/snake hook tool, I got it to behave like Sculptris. Here is the brush setting.


I can retire sculptrs and move completely to Blender for my sculpting and modeling needs. Thanks for the link for the pie menus. I will definitely check it out. THANKS!

It’s not easy to help to someone to sculpt. It depends on the questions. You previous posts helped a lot a could lead to a pinch increase 0and curve change of the crease brush.

I don’t know if you’re going to make the rear of the head rounder if I may say that, but if that’s the case, I would suggest you the add brush. or the clay in add. Just try but those are some personal tips.

I usually don’t use the snake tool so much since at the point of the snake the topology is so messed up that even in dyntopo is acting weird It produces like islands of meshs, it’s weird but maybe I’m the only one.

I saw someone use the skin modifier to get a global mesh and then resculpt in it with retopo. The french girl that works with the Grandilama team said that she uses that modiier a lot. That’s not my case for the moment, it an “error” I think.

Here is some fun just playing with the sculpt tools. I love sculpting in Blender.