Thick Skin

Just the Right Touch of Detail

Thick skin example
Thick Skin used to simulate a clay sculpture – ZBrush artist: Joseph Drust

For the true sense of adding and removing clay or moving it across a surface, use Thick Skin. With this feature it’s easy to give any mesh the appearance of having been sculpted as a fine art piece. Thick Skin can also be used to establish a specific plateau for sculpting, making it possible to create scales and other features with consistent height or depth.

Thick Skin works well on low polygon models with Dynamic Subdivision as well as high polygon models. All sculpting brushes are compatible and many different effects can be achieved by simply changing the alpha.

Detail can be added in a free and natural manner. These added details can also be removed and smoothed back to the original mesh with quick, flat strokes. When Thick Skin is used with the Drag Rectangle stroke, alphas can be applied to a specific depth – an ideal way to add regular patterns, scales and bumps.

 


Thick Skin functions

Thick skin example
The Thick Skin functions are in the Tool >> Thick Skin sub-palette.

Thick Skin

The Thick Skin option turns Thick Skin mode on or off.

Important!

Note that when adding a new subdivision level it will be necessary to toggle the Thick Skin button off and on again so that thickness can be calculated for the new level. Until this has been done, the Thickness slider will be disabled for the new level.

Thickness

The Thickness slider controls the amount of thickness used when the Thick Skin mode is activated. Each Subtool can be set to the same thickness or each Subtool can have its own thickness level. Setting can be adjusted any time during the sculpting period.

When using ZSub or holding Alt to carve into a mesh, the thickness will be calculated inwards from the original mesh surface.