Creating complex roots!

The first thing you want to get is a basic single-sided shape with a low polygon count, so you can use a 3D Plane to mask the area you want to keep and then remove the rest, so:

1. Create a plane and mask your ‘root’ shape (or similar).
2. Use the ‘Ctrl + W’ to assign a polygroup to the masked area
3. Hold ‘Ctrl + Shift’ to isolate the ‘root’
4. Delete hidden geometry (Geometry > Modifiy toipology > DelHidden).

‍

‍

Then you can go ahead and use the Polish by groups slider from the deformation palette to smooth out the borders a bit and then run a quick ZRmesher process to get a better topology (you can simplify it as much as you need to).

‍

‍

Once you have the single-sided mesh in the shape you want, you can use the Dynamics palette in ZBrush, let it fall over any other object from your scene. For illustration purposes, I quickly build a rock using a few IMM rocks from my rock brushes pack and enabled the Dynamic Subdivision on the ‘root’ to make it softer and to visualise a bit of the thickness:

‍

‍

Place your root over the object you want to ‘wrap’ it around and press the ‘CollisionVolume’ switch from the Dynamics palette to tell ZBrush you want to take the object (the rock in my case) into consideration when you simulate... Click ‘Run Simulation’:

‍

‍

That’s basically it.

You can of course apply the Dynamic subdivision and maybe repeat the process with a few more of the ‘single-sided shapes’ to create more complexity with some overlapping roots. To refine the mesh you can use the inflate slider to add volume as well as the Polish slider to clean the roots and make them a bit more rounded.

‍

‍

The cool thing about this method is that you can control the simulation of each piece you add individually and also have different polygroups for additional tweaks.

I didn’t do much ‘tweaking’ after the polishing of the roots but you can use the move topological to improve the shapes a lot more. I did, however, run the UV Master on the meshes and exported it to Marmoset to test it out with materials... not bad for a 10 min job:

‍

‍

Hope you find this useful!