3D Printing ​Tutorial in ZBrush and 3ds Max: Making of The Catrina

Sajid Diaz is a 36 year old graphic designer from Mexico. Sajid was originally a computer graphics model designer, but after he discovered CGTrader he started making more 3D printing than CG models. His favorite designs are characters, figurines and all other printable ideas for life. Here is his tutorial on making The Catrina - The Dead Fashioned Woman using ZBrush and 3ds Max. Take a look through the guidance and make your own Catrina or any other figurine you want to bring up to life!

In this Tutorial I explain how I make my 3D Printable Figurines, some of them are sketch-based with a reference to an image or simply sculpting from my imagination. For some more difficult model poses I make the base on 3ds Max and export as Obj to ZBrush, then I start giving them shape.

I usually sculpt with very basic ZBrush brushes like Move, Standard and Displace, it depends on how many details I will be sculpting. Always keeping in mind that it will be a printable model,so you must look for good looking details but not too exaggerated.

For The Catrina I start by importing my last skeleton model to Zbrush as Obj.

Then I transform the pose a little bit as the arms are like “Dress Holding” simulation for La Catrina. La Catrina is a representation of The Dead Fashioned Woman so she must look like this.

The Sphere will be used for the dress as a new subtool, this one starts with avery basic move – brush, giving the form.

Once The Dress is shaped, I make some rough details with Standard Brush and side ruffles with the displace tool.

Displace Brush also worked for all the other borders of the dress like shoulders and fine borders.

I used the Vector Image for making the dress details using a simple vector like this one:

This time I use “Projection Master” for just adjusting the intensity and drawing the levels in the middle.

For other things like the hat, I make a simple Cylinder 3D. I make the waves on borders using Displace Brush.

Then I use Ctrl to paint some circles on it, and use Visibility Tool for the Holes.

The way I make the flowers is fast and easy. I just make the first flower shape and duplicate adjusting the second one inside the first one.

Rest of the Catrina details are made with the standard and Moving Brushes, once finished I merge all the subtools using the Subtool Master.

Later, I use the Decimation Master to reduce the polys count around 30,000. And now the model is ready to export as stl file.

And here’s the final model printed.