WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DYNAMESH AND SCULPTRIS PRO MODE?
Dan Boyle, Cheshire
Dynamesh has been available in Zbrush since the mid 2000s and is a very well-established part of the digital sculpting process. Sculptris Pro on the other hand is a much more recent addition and was brought in as a new feature after the acquisition of Sculptris by Pixologic. Let's start by understanding each mode and how to use it.
Dynamesh is a feature you turn on once and then call repeatedly with the stroke of your stylus. It allows you to remesh your entire model with an averaged set of polygons across the whole surface, meaning that if you had stretched out a finger, for example, it would even out the polygons across the entire mesh, thus removing the stretched polygon issue. You can use it in a number of ways; firstly as you are blocking out your model, you can keep calling Dynamesh and regularly average out the surface of your sculpt as you progress. You can also combine two models (called Subtools) together and then call Dynamesh, and it will merge them together, leaving no internal geometry. It is also useful to combine all your Subtools into one before sending to a 3D printer, making it a less complicated model and fully watertight.
Sculptris on the other hand doesn’t work across the entire model. Once you have activated it, it stays on and affects everything you do to your model with certain brushes. If you start to sculpt a detailed area (an eye for example), it will dynamically add triangles where you need them. It is often called Dynamic Tessellation for this reason. If you use brushes like Dam Standard and scorelines on the surface, you will see that it gives you a lot more triangles than if you just
sculpt with the Clay brush. If you use Shift to smooth an area down it will remove triangles, lowering the polycount. It is great for adding detail to localised areas.
Rather than thinking about which method is the better one, it helps to decide where you can use each in your work. Use Dynamesh to block out the main design, and switch it off. Then switch on Sculptris Pro to add more refined details. There is no rule about how and when to do each part, but as you get used to the tools you will begin to understand where they can help your workflow.