Tutorial

Zbrush Plug-ins: Decimation Master

Ben Courtenay

Art Heroes Contributor

For those that didn't know, Zbrush comes with a bunch of handy plugins that can really help you get the most out of modelling! One of my most used plugins is Decimation Master, it's extremely powerful and has multiple uses, so let's jump into it!

What is decimation Master and why use it?

Basically it allows you to reduce the number of polys while retaining as much of the detail as possible. It breaks down your model into triangles, very similar to the Sculptris mode.

So why use it?

It can greatly improve the performance of Zbrush, by reducing a mesh (or multiple) down by 70% or more. So if you ever find that your Zbrush is lagging try decimating one of the denser meshes.
Quick and light exporting! When you've finished modelling and want to get some renders done in another program, decimating the whole model can again really help out with performance. What makes it awesome is that you can keep UVs and/or Polypaint!
Stylized look! By reducing a model down you can create some very stylized looking models.
And a personal tip: modelling rocks!

Let's cover how to use Decimation Master and some of it's uses in more detail.

The Basics

Pre-process Current for one subtool or Pre-process All if you want to decimate every subtool (generally used for exporting).
The three sliders: Decimation Percentage, K. Polys and K. Points work in unison so if you slide one the others will change too. You can select how much you'd like to decimate the model.
Then press Decimate Current (or all)

You also have the option to preserve UVs and Polypaint which are really useful, especially exporting the model for rendering.

Triangulated Low Poly

I came across this fun use of decimation master in one of Pablo Muñoz Gómez ZbrushLive streams so I'll include a link to the video below!

(I definitely recommend checking it out, as well as all the others!)

Hopefully I've shead some light on a new tool that you can add to your arsenal. I'm excited to cover some more plugins in the future! If you have any questions feel free to send them my way!

Ben Courtenay,
Art Heroes Contributor