Stumbled upon this: https://www.uartsy.com/course/hard-surface-sculpting-in-zbrush
It seems like much faster than modeling with polygons, as you don’t have to worry about topology at all.
I don’t recall having too much luck with Sculpt tool for hard surface sculpting as it’s almost impossible to get straight lines and non-organic curves made 
After sculpting always need retopology for minimize the number of polygons. Hard surface sculpting in Blender https://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/sculpting-a-sci-fi-weapon/
Saw that one. Have to subscribe to watch it, but by the look of the preview it’s not quite mechanics as that ZBrush mecha.
As I mentioned, futuristic curvy hard surface stuff isn’t bad at all with Blender’s Sculpt. I just haven’t see anyone making mechanical stuff with it.
The difference be the expensive software has a free tutorial series and the free software has a paid tutorial series.
Yet the link to the free tutorial series is here in the forums of free software yet somehow could not receive a response that should have contained a free tutorial series for the free software but instead was a paid tutorial series for the free software making the free series for the paid software look more interesting, especially considering the paid software is only astronomical units ahead in functionality over the free software which does not mainly focus on the related area of 3D. This makes me ask why we could not get a link to free tutorials for free software!
Pretty dumb question
You can create your own tutorial and publish it for free 
the maker (tom Paul) of the tutorial said this isn´t shared with his consent.
you are in fact sharing illegally shared videos.
It was on 3DTotal, (June 10th news)
So maybe Tom Paul should get in touch with YouTube and have YouTube take care of it. I only shared link because it was publicly available on 3DTotal, nonetheless!
As for paid tutorials, I sure would pay for one for Blender, if it was about sculpting mechanical hard surface models (not the curvy, more organic looking sci-fi gun, which I’d buy too if I didn’t have to subscribe - pay one time and own it for life is what I prefer).
Don’t be afraid to look outside of the blenderverse for learning. Hell don’t even be afraid to look outside of your modeling type for learning,
You can do hard surface sculpting with blender just like in ZBrush. For the method which involves no poly modelling , where clipping and boolean operations are required you need some addons to perform some tasks quickly.(Sculpt Tools - Mask Tools - Bool Tool ).
Without these addons there are also other methods (create a rough sculpt > re-model as hard surface > check Kent Trammell 's sci-fi helmet on CGCookie).
Have gone through with this idea of hard surface sculpting many months ago. I have looked back and if I have to do my electric drill again my workflow would be to scupt it first, then retopo it. It’s nice that devs are starting to see the advantage and developing hard surface tools.
The whole idea is not to retopo, at least not manually. I need it for video games, so sculpt>retopo>lowpoly is a way too time consuming. Sculpt>lowpoly is really the only option.
Tom already contacted 3DTotal hence it isn´t available there any more.
you know… 3D-Total makes mistakes too… but corrects mistakes when they are done.
the tutorial costs $99 via uartsy.
Link to the store:
https://www.uartsy.com/course/hard-surface-sculpting-in-zbrush
Edited my posts. Can’t edit those who quoted me.
No such thing as low poly in sculpted objects. :yes: You have to retopo it.
I myself hate retopo. It’s a thankless chore. But the idea is having a base to form and craft your polygons, instead of forming them in empty 3d space. ;-). A sculpted base is a huge help. Of course there are many parts of models that are better done using standard poly/subd tools. But you will see some details that are better carved and sculpted, then retopo.
Just do your thing, bud. My own thing is none of anyone’s business.
A work sample done in standard poly/subd modeling.
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Sure thing. Except that the way Blender Cookie tutorial has it, you’d have to sculpt first, then retopo to get clean surfaces and sub-d and then you would make an optimized low poly model (kinda a second retopo).
The idea is to sculpt hard surface model so that it appears and bakes as clean as if it was modeled sub-d’ed mesh. This way a low poly model can be made off sculpted one and be done.
Note that game engines don’t care for loops. So you can’t really retopo in a usual sense of it, and use that kind of low poly in games - might be too many polys.
Zbrush has autoretopo. This is probably what you need. I don’t really know how effective it is since I don’t have ZB, and I don’t have plans in buying it.
Go for it, save some money and buy Zbrush. Waste of time talking about it. :yes:
So basically Blender can’t do that kind of hard surface sculpting ?
@@motorsep
no problem thanks for acting that fast.
to your question, have you considered using pre made meshes and slap them together?
what you obviously want is something which even surpasses Modos Meshfusion, don´t know if something like that is available?
Like kit bashing ? Yeah, it would work for volumes made up of separate pieces. Complex curvatures would have to be modeled anyway. I guess I’ll stick with conventional modeling and kit bashing