Tutorial - Adding torn holes to clothes in Zbrush

My zombie needs clothes badly.

He's wandering around chewing peoples faces off...and all the while naked! he's liable to get arrested for indecent exposure (and cannibalism).

The trouble with zombies (isn't there always such a problem with those crazy guys?)is that they usually don't go around in their Sunday best. Zombies are messy and their clothes get ripped and shredded all the time. 

Recreating this in Zbrush is a slight problem  sometimes because Zbrush doesn't like open meshes - and torn clothing = open mesh.

So it's better to model stuff in it's pristine perfection first and then mess it up with holes and whatnot at the end. 

This is probably one of the simplest tutorials you will ever see for Zbrush.

click to enlarge

The final image in the tut is not the greatest you'll ever see(I spent literally a grand total of 2 minutes on it) but with a tiny bit of extra effort you can get some great looking ripped clothes effects.

For a more complex way to achieve realistic torn cloth/fabric effect in Zbrush you should check out this thread on ZbrushCentral by artist GMP1993. Also read this thread by LVXIFER which develops the idea further. I don't know much about using Micromesh in Zbrush and haven't tried the above tips yet but the results are amazing. (I think this trick only works for internal Zbrush renders using BPR so probably not suited if you want actual geometry that you can take into a different software program.)