This is my rendition of the Cave Troll from Lord of the Rings. I used Blender to do the initial modeling, and then used Pixologic’s Zbrush to do the sculpting and texturing. The final scene is rendered in Cycles Render and composited in Blender. The render was 1,000 samples, 2 layers, and took about 5 hours.
The total sculpt took about 4 hours, with texturing/polypaint. Setting up to be rendered and modeling the background took additional time. This model is also fully rigged and animated. I worked on this for a period of about 4 weeks.
I just made a quick rig, nothing too special. I parented the rig to the mesh and used automatic weights. I did some minor tweaking and a few shape keys. It worked well though.
And I’m running an intel i7 processor. 10 gb ram. Nvidia GTX 550 ti (but I rendered with CPU)
I initially modeled a low poly base mesh in blender with good topology, so no need to re-topo. I used the second or third subdivision level in Zbrush to export, so the mesh was maybe 40k. The textures were 4096X4096 each.
I purchased Zbrush years ago, before blender could sculpt. Zbrush has been a part of my work flow for years, and I enjoy it. Not only that, I believe the tools you use don’t matter, only the end result. I just like to give credit where credit is due, and I used both Blender and Zbrush.
Also, using multiple software packages allows me to post my work in multiple communities, because each 3d software package has it’s own community, so I can share my work with Zbrush and Blender, because I used both pieces of software.
I am currently beginning to learn Maya, Mental Ray and VRay so there will probably be a time I use Maya, Zbrush, Blender, Vray, or whatever I want to use to get the end result I desire.
