Persephone Milk

Although a violin has curved surfaces, those surfaces are easily represented as simple curves. I don't think any of the things I am interested in modeling will require the type of organic sculpting that is handled so well in ZBrush. I watched a couple of the video tutorials on Blender this afternoon (thank you Chalice) and it seems I can do all I want to do with Blender fairly easily. In fact, even the texturing seems pretty straightforward. I am sure I will struggle a bit with the user interface, but I am up for the challenge

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Chalice Yao

Here is something else that just occured to me:

As soon as Mesh import hits SL, all the classic 3d Modelling apps will really allow you to tap into their featuresets. Definitely learn to model general meshes (not sculpts) in one of those, folks, no matter if you are into organic sculpties or not.

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"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - George Carlin

Persephone Milk

I agree Chalice. The process for creating a sculpt (deformation) is quite different from the optimal process for creating a full mesh. I suppose I would want to redesign items as meshes once that support becomes available.

As I was thinking about this, I was curious about some of the very detailed sculpts I have seen in Second Life. Statues of human forms come to mind. It seems the easiest way to create a human form in a modeling program is to start with a human form mesh that you have purchased or licensed. However, since these objects would not be deformations as required for sculpts, how would one do this? Would it be possible to subtract a human torso from a cube, and then use the result of this to somehow subtract or carve the sculpt object?

Am I thinking to hard about this?

Miriel Enfield

I didn't read the whole thread, so apologies if this has all been mentioned before.

I would not use Zbrush on its own, because - to the best of my knowledge - it doesn't offer the kind of fine control over individual vertices that can be very useful when doing sculpties. You know that trick that some people use to make one sculptie look like multiple objects? You can't do that in Zbrush. I use a similar trick to set aspect ratios for sculpt maps I'll be applying to megaprims, and you can't do that in Zbrush, either. And if you need fine control because the low resolution of sculpties is biting you in the ass, well, I hope you like nudging vertices around and hoping.

You can do some beautiful things with Zbrush, but - as far as I know - there are some very useful things that you simply cannot do.

I hate to recommend Blender, because the interface is truly nightmarish and what you don't pay in money you will pay in time, but if you've got the time and patience it may be worth looking into.

Casper Priestman

Well, if you ever look at any of the detailed sculpts or human figure type sculpts, they're always comprised of multiple pieces because you can only get so much detail out of an SL sculpt map. Statues and figures inworld for the most part were standard models to begin with and either someone used them as reference while sculpting a similar model for SL, or they used a shrinkwrap type tool to deform a sculpt primitive ie: sphere or cube over the regular poly mesh. While Blender has a shrinkwrap tool, it's not as handy as Zbrush's Zprojection. Vlad Bjornson of Shiny Life had a video tutorial on such a technique using the default poly model heads that ship with Zbrush. He used Zprojection to create a similar head from the original, and uploaded it to SL. To further the illusion if you use multiple sculpties, set the textures to full bright (yus, I know this is ebil) and it will hide the seams between sculpts.

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

I definitely mirror majority of the sentiments already given in this thread. There is no one proper tool for everything, and really a workflow between multiple purpose-oriented programs is going to be best. UI standardization in 3D modeling is virtually nonexistent across software packages, but in many ways this is good, as it does allow applications that chose to focus on a narrower feature set to carry out their limited functions extremely well (and efficiently, once you do know the proprietary interface of each package).

For those who do use ZBrush and would like to dabble in modeling with harder edges, the new Planar brushes in ZBrush 3.5 are promising to greatly improve its ability to do such. I can't really vouch for it, as I don't have access to the tools right now, but Digital Tutors did just release their series on 3.5, which contains a chapter specifically for these new brushes.

ETA: http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/ The "Planer, Trim Brushes" section has a good overview of the new ZBrush tools

eku Zhong

yup.. the planar brushes are amazing.. the only problem though is that a lot of the plugins i use dont work with the latest Z and it looks like they wont update them till Z4 comes out.
but i have played with them.. and they are pretty interesting.. even in low poly.

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Siyu Suen

I use Zbrush 3 exclusively, for absolutely everything. I adore it. When I was first looking for a program to sculpt with, I felt so welcomed by its intuitive interface and how easy it is to play and explore and experiment with forms. I tried a lot of programs but I am so not going back!

I think for forms for musical instruments you will be very much at home. Imagining it now, I can see the sculpting in my head and not encountering any big hang ups as long as you use enough separate objects. And you'll be able to do your object painting, material baking and detail work all in Zbrush. Normally all I need to do is take things out to PS for a bit of tweaking and polishing but Zbrush does all of the heavy lifting.

In short, Zbrush =




(Edited to add = everyone else is right too, I have to admit. Especially Miriel (she's right, I'm pretty crippled when it comes to folding objects ridiculously and my clumsy handling of individual vertices. Doesn't mean I don't love Zbrush and have a right to totally gush )

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"Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever" -Baron Munchausen

I'm attempting to bring about the end of the world to usher in a new era of mask wielding overlords. This is how!

Ayumi

I liked zbrush a lot too. I'm really bad at it, but in comparison I cant even INSTALL blender properly. So zbrush wins !

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Pamela Galli

A new more user-friendly Blender is supposed to be out sometime in November. I will give it another try sometime after that. I have never felt as stupid in my life the week I spent trying to get through ONE Blender tutorial.

I did try AC3D and it was the simplest (along with Sculpt Studio) but when I imported sculpts they often were borked.

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LA GALLERIA

eku Zhong

hits agree button many times..

but...
what it all boils down to is a proggie that works for you ..
theres no wrong or right.. just right for you .. whatever it is.

Persephone Milk

Thank you again everyone. I have Blender installed, as well as the scripts for making sculpt maps. I will work through the tutorials over the next couple of days. I really appreciate all of the helpful advice!

Siyu Suen

Don't forget that Zbrush also has a 30 day free trial, with all of the capabilities of the full program. Definitely give it a try, play with the tools, and see how it feels before putting down the money.

Pamela Galli

Persephone, if you find Blender impenetrable (many do, some don't), keep a lookout for the new version, as hopefully it will be easier to pick up.

eku Zhong

feel completely free to come back to this thread and cry and scream and yell as you climb the learning curve.

ALL of us have been there, in some way or another, with whatever proggie we use.

Even Zbrush .. which to me now is like second nature... at first i cried.. a lot.

we will be here with steaming cups of tea, hugs and encouragement.

Chalice Yao

Also remember to show off your produced sculpts! :3
We should make a collective thread for that.

Hypatia Callisto

I call BS.

I use normal maps all the time in texturing SL sculpties.

Perhaps you just don't know how to use them

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Hypatia Callisto

All these objects were textured by using the normal maps from the rendered high resolution geometry sculpted in Zbrush, later used to render out textures in modo.

Lamp model made in silo+modo, detailing of the base in Zbrush



Shoes created in silo+modo (bump mapping done in modo as well), detailing of the shoe (stitching, fabric seams) in Zbrush



collar made in silo+modo, sculpting of the textured design in Zbrush



lions made in silo+modo, the texture having been sculpted in Zbrush and rendered out in modo.

Hypatia Callisto

the basic workflow is this:

I make the initial sculpt in modo by using a primitive, generally. I create a primitive that is targeted the best I can for what I expect that the item will need as far as edges, as low a resolution as possible. The primitive is autouvmapped by modo upon creation so that takes care of my uvmap. (some uvmaps need adjusting, thats not hard to do either)

I generally do some shaping of the sculpt in modo but if it needs hard edges, I usually move to silo and do the rest of the shaping in there.

Once its at a level I am happy with, I take the sculpt to zbrush, for detailing. I save a morph target and up the subd usually 4 or 5 times. I then go to work on sculpting the mesh with the details I want to have. As zbrush does not destroy the low resolution sculpt, what you are able to do is save out a baked map of the high rez geometry, via normal mapping and displacement map. I save both of these. Also the subtools of Zbrush are very useful in making sure that your design is cohesive if you have to use several sculpts to create the item.

when done, export OBJs with morph applied at lowest level of subd and the normal and displacement maps. This all goes back to modo, where I do the texture painting on the sculpt and set up lighting and shaders to render the resulting textures, in which I up the subd on the meshes to where it was in zbrush and apply the displacement and normal maps on the geometry, making sure to check that modo uses the original uvs for the unsubd mesh, and go to town texturing and rendering the resulting textures out to what you see here.

As you see on the collar, that also utilises a rendered reflection map added to a second sculpt with glow applied, to give the "shine" look and pop the metallic design. It's a rendered silver shader out of modo. ETA: use an alpha mask to constrain the glow effect.

Persephone Milk

Wow, beautiful work Hypatia. I have no idea what most of what you said actually means, but it sure sounded incredibly sexy.

Hypatia Callisto

I have another trick for that, that avoids the need for vertex precise accuracy with a sculpt... knowing where SL samples the mesh from then baking the sculpt precisely to the color ramp.

I've also developed a shader that allows me to maintain a high degree of sculpt fidelity while making the sculpt a microsculpt.

muah ha ha

But why, why should I have to deal with this? Far better to have meshes, really. But as long as I am stuck with sculpts, this is what I have to do.

Persephone Milk

Just an update ... I am having some fun with this. I have even made a couple of sculpties that resemble something

I seem to be having a problem with the UV render where my sculpt images are always 16x16 no mater what my multires settings are at. I am sure I am doing something wrong, I am just not sure what yet.

Atashi Yue

Good God I've said this over and over again the last few days. Sculpted prims are such a poor substitute for meshes. That said, I certainly understand the why behind LL being reticent about mesh uploads to the grid.

Mafy

o/

Now this is a first for me, a forum! Oh well, desperate times need desperate headbanging against the keyboard and some forum post thingies
I actually read all the comments on this thread (no, I really have no life), and this kinda seems like the perfect place to ask all you sculpt gods a lil' something I'm having trouble (huuuge trouble) with:

I recently got Zbrush 3.5, and after watching a great hour long tutorial on Shiny Life, I opened zbrush, aaaaaaand when I went to click the "initialize" button (under the display properties button) to set the number of poly faces, that 33x32 thingy, I noticed *dramatic music* IT'S NOT THERE ON V3.5! Then I had a small heart attack. And looked eeeeverywhere on the web to see where I select the 33x32 thing now. Couldn't find it.
I was wondering if any of you is working with zbrush 3.5, and could tell me this so I can friggin start sculpting something *giggles*

p.s.: I'll offer pixel candy in return, promiss ^.^

TY! xoxo

eku Zhong

Draw out your whatever.. go to top left .. hit the edit button.. THEN youll get the initialise