ZBrush | Atlantic Sea Nettle, white

image of sea nettle jellyfish illustration by michelle davis

Switching back to animalia instead of human anatomy, below is an Atlantic Sea Nettle, in white. Sea nettle jellyfish exist in a number of species, and even within atlantic sea nettles there seems to be a decent amount of color and tentatalce number, and size variation — everything seems to be more interesting than you think!

These are really lovely creatures though, at least visually (they do sting).

Below is a final render and an overview of the process!

 
A final render (using Blender’s Cycles engine)
image of sea nettle jellyfish illustration by michelle davis

 

 

 

Process overview:
(0. Do a fun quick ‘frond’ study)
image of jellyfish oral arm study in zbrush by michelle davis

 
1. Use dynamesh to establish the basic form. This was more interesting than a blob-like creature would suggest as there were internal layers and details beyond the outer ‘shell’.
cross section of dynamesh model

jellyfish rough dynamesh image

 
2. Retopologize
zbrush jellyfish retopologized by michelle davis

 
3. Add oral arm detail — the spiral brush was huge for this.
image of oral arm details by michelle davis

4. Add tentacles with an insert mesh brush. Tried fibermesh first, but ultimately an insert brush gave more control.

 
image of jellyfish tentacles insertion by michelle davis

 
4. Pose — after exploring a few different ways to do this in Blender (rigging, deformations, soft body/cloth deforming) I actually came back to good ol’ ZBrush, using a lot of large and generalized brush strokes. Layes were added to the tentacles and jellyfish body so later I can add or make different poses. Again, the spiral brush was used a lot here.
image of posed view of jellyfish 1 by michelle davis

image of posed view of jellyfish 2 by michelle davis

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