Splash from MeshSplat and Dynamics!

This workflow is quite fun and you can follow it to create all sorts of organic stuff, not just splashes.

STEP 1

Create an organic mesh over a plane. This can easily be done with the ‘MeshSplat’ brush that can be found on the Masking brushes (hold CTRL and click on the brush palette). With this brush, you can hold CTRL and draw a shape over the plan and ZBrush will create a ‘membrane-like’ mesh with volume.

STEP 2

After creating the splat mesh, ZBrush will automatically mask the plane so you can split it and hid it. Now, you can bring in a sphere that will help us create the shape for the actual splash object.

Place the ‘membrane-like’ mesh over the sphere and from the Dynamics, Palette click on the ‘CollisionVolume’ switch

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STEP 3

From the Dynamics palette, reduce the gravity slider a bit (around 3 should be good) and tweak the firmness (I used a value of 3). Once you are ready, click on the ‘Run Simulation' button to let the ‘splash’ fall onto the sphere. Press the ‘ESC’ or ‘Run Simulation’ button again to stop it.

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STEP 4

Now that we have the rough shape we wanted following the volumes of the sphere, we can get rid of it or hid it and use the Gizmo 3d on the splash mesh to rotate it 180:

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STEP 5

At this stage, we can customise the shape of the mesh a bit more and ‘guide’ the flow of the splash using a cloth brush (or any brush with dynamics). I used the ClothHook brush to pull some of the more prominent ‘spikes’ of the splash.

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STEP 6

Now you can either inflate the entire mesh or use the Inflate brush to add some more volume to certain areas of the mesh. You can also Dynamesh the entire object (play around with the resolution) and that will help you polish the mesh and get rid of some tiny holes.

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That’s really all there is to it... of course, you can push the resolution up a notch and use things like the polish or smooth slider from the deformation palette if you want a smoother surface.

EXTRA TIP: You can also use the SnakeHook brush to pull additional pieces out and create droplets ‘flying away’ from the centre of the splash.

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