How to make a Bow (for a hat or clothing) in ZBrush, with pictures

[Bonnie2001]

I had to put "for a hat or clothing" in the title so you won't think it's an archery bow!

Okay so here is how I made a bow for a hat I made for Dawn, details of which are in this thread: What I worked on today


So, for a start, I imported a ZBrush cylinder primitive.

I didn't want the full cylinder, only 6 rows of polys from the centre. So I held down Shift+Ctrl and dragged the green rectangular selection over the centre 6 rows, which cut that section out. I was unable to screengrab that part, it wouldn't work for me. But the image below shows the result.
I could also have used ZModeler to do this (I used ZModeler for everything else here) by holding down Alt and selecting the polys I didn't want and deleting them.

Into ZModeler to squeeze (scale inward) the bow along the Z axis, to get a starter loop shape.

Then I masked the outer ends and made a polygroup of the centre, which will later be the knot.

 

[Bonnie2001]

Next I wanted to shape out the bow. First thing was to mask the ends of the bow and pull the knot area in along Y axis.

Next I inverted the mask and shaped the bow (on X axis) up and then out at the ends, adjusting the mask as I went.

 

[Miss B]

Nice Bonnie. I like that next to last screenshot. It really shows off the shape well.

 

[Bonnie2001]

Which left me with this.

Still in ZModeler, I needed to shape the bow on the Z axis. First, I wanted to add thickness to the bow. I did this by using the Extract option in the Subtool palette, setting the thickness at 0.002. This is the result.

As you can see, the thickened areas are a new polygroup, which I didn't want. To fix that, I made the knot area into a polygroup, and the rest of the bow another polygroup. To do that, mask the area you want to group, then hit Ctrl+W. You can see the result in the image below. Also you can see how I shaped the bow using masking and ZModeler as I did in my previous post.

 

[Bonnie2001]

Here is the end result for the basic bow.

 

[Bonnie2001]

After that, it was time to have fun shaping the bow to fit on the hat. For that, I subdivided the bow about 6 times. Then I masked the knot polygroup and in the Deformation palette I inflated it along Z. Then I inverted the mask and used a ZBrush stock cloth fold alpha on the wings of the bow. I had used a custom Alpha on the hat itself, as you can see below.
With that done, I moved the bow into position on the hat and used the Move brush to shape it so it looked the way I wanted it to look.

 

[Bonnie2001]

Nice Bonnie. I like that next to last screenshot. It really shows off the shape well.

Thanks. I made a mistake there, that image should have been last one in that post. Can't edit it now, too late.

 

[Bonnie2001]

That's all there was to it. I think it took less than 30 minutes to make the bow, from start to finish. To be honest, I spent more time thinking about how to make it than I did making it.

 

[Miss B]

I sometimes wish that were the case. Oh, and I realized you had the images in the wrong order.

I can try and edit it for you. As a CV-Bee I have lots of options, and I think editing a post is one. Annnnnd it's done.

 

[Miss B]

BTW Bonnie, you mention the Z axis in your notes, and I know not all 3D software has the Z and Y axes in the same direction. For instance, in Poser the Y axis is up and down, and the Z axis is front to back, but in Blender they're opposite with the Y axis front to back, and the Z axis up and down, so I have to be sure to switch them before exporting.

 

[Bonnie2001]

Thanks for fixing the images Miss B.
Yes it's odd how the axis are different in some programs. I wonder why they all don't do it the same? I mean it surely can't be hard to implement. At least ZBrush and Poser are the same.

 

[Miss B]

Ahhhh, good to know.

 

[Pendraia]

Great job Bonnie!

 

[RAMWolff]

Nice little tutorial BonBon... thanks so much for sharing with us!

 

[Bonnie2001]

Thanks RW!

 

[Stezza]

yep.. thanks for sharing that... good job Bonnie