Persephone Milk

I am considering purchasing ZBrush so that I can create my own sculpted objects for Second Life. I really cannot justify the cost of of Maya or 3DSMax, and I would rather not go the Blender route because the interface is so non-standard that I fear any skills I might learn wouldn't necessarily be transferrable to a more traditional tool. The price of ZBrush ($600) is within my budget. But is the tool a good one for SL development?

I read somewhere that ZBrush excels at modeling organic objects. Is it at all suited for creating things like the parts to a piano, the body of a cello, or the pipes of a pipe organ? Is there a way to create sculpt maps? Will it still be a good tool when SL eventually supports mesh imports?

Any feedback or thoughts from those experienced with ZBrush, particularly for creating in SL, would be greatly appreciated.

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Khamon

I believe you still have to deal with texturing the items outside of ZBrush so you might up spending the savings, in money or time, plus some learning to do that separately.

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Hypatia Callisto

I find Zbrush to be ideally suited in combination with a regular modelling app. Most pros use Zbrush for texturing and normal mapping, but do a great deal of their hard edge modelling in another application.

I use an unholy trinity of Modo, Zbrush and Silo personally. Silo is a bit of an odd app, but I lurves it for the fact that it is centered squarely on modelling and has a few tools that make it invaluable for inorganics. Modo has industrial strength UV tools and for uvmapping sculpts and general modelling and texturing, I can't recommend a better application.

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Chalice Yao

If I am correctly, Zbrush itself has a quite unique interface. I might be wrong, of course, however usually when it comes to 3d Apps, it's not actual usage experience that is transferrable..the UI of Maya is vastly different to that of 3DSMax, to ZBrush, to Blender et cetera.

What is transferrable is knowledge about terms, how 3d modeling in general works, how sculpties work, kinks in the sculptie system and tricks on how to circumvent or improve things. Those are all transferrable to all kinds of apps that have to do with sculpties or 3D Modeling.

I can only suggest to try Blender before going to Z-Brush as a possible follow-up. Yes, the UI is supposedly hell, but there is a wonderful, -wonderful- series of Youtube videos that lead you from the Blender installation, Domino Designs sculpty script installation over to how to make the UI more comfortable, before leading into basic sculptying, texture making and various other sculptie+Blender topics.

Those videos actually made me like the UI and shortcuts of Blender. Well, aside of the damn file selection dialog.

I can't access youtube from work, can't even search in google, but search for

youtube + BlenderSL

Check that user's channel, his uploaded videos, and start from the very beginning. They are all voiced.

Blender can be grabbed from blender.org - Home, the latest python 2.* from Python Programming Language -- Official Website (install before Blender), and the sculptie scripts from http://www.dominodesigns.info/sites/...tar_0.9.23.zip
Give them a try.

I know you asked about ZBrush, but still I strongly suggest to try a free solution and learn a few things about the sculptie basics (Which interestingly I've only seen mostly talked about in Blender tutorials as opposed to Z-Brush or Maya. Dunno why).

Another good site that is a great completion to the youtube tutorials is Sculpt Blend - Second Life Sculptie Tutorials


Later, when you got the basics down and still consider Blender not to be your thing, go for Z-Brush, with the basics you learned. Again, it's less about UI or application experience, but more about sculptie experience.

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Hypatia Callisto

Also for uvmapping sculpts, there's always UVMapper Pro. Really useful for dealing with the "starting stage" for a sculpt, allowing you to target its mesh density to what you are creating, and autouvmaps the primitives you create in it. Modo can do this too as I stated above, but it costs a great deal more.

Hypatia Callisto

This is true, Zbrush has a very non-standard interface. However I think its interface is extremely suited to the task at hand.


The same rule for Zbrush and Modo applies to Zbrush and Blender. Modo and Blender both have some ability to sculpt, but their sculpting abilities are no where near the ability of Zbrush. Not even close. If you find yourself doing a lot of organics, Zbrush is a very useful tool.

But I agree that Blender is a good app for general modelling and its worth giving it a try. It's got one of the best SL plugins out there for building and sculpting.

Cindy Claveau

Pers: I have Zbrush and I love it to death, even though I haven't made any serious attempts to upload sculpties. (I'm hung up on 3D computer art, however).

But if you do go Zbrush, I strongly STRONGLY urge you to also pick up a Wacom tablet. It fits to the Zbrush interface hand-in-glove and you'll be thankful you're not trying to manipulate objects with your mouse.

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Chalice Yao

This is indeed mostly true for complex organic shapes, I'll give you that. It's what Z-Brush was initially made for all those years ago, and still is the major selling point, its strength. For non-organics, I don't see any big advantage, tho maybe I don't know about specific features.

Also, yes, WACOM tablets are seks, and from what I've seen of Z-Brush, would be a perfect addition.

Hypatia Callisto

It depends on what it is. I've used Zbrush for furniture legs and ornate items, which needed that bit of sculpting finesse finishing touches I could give it with Zbrush. But most furniture you are better off in a general modelling app.

Persephone Milk

Thank you so much. Stroker has recently spent some time learning Blender and has been recommending it as well. I suppose it would make sense to give it a try before I spend money. Silo is quite inexpensive as well. My sculpts are going to be relatively simple compared with what most of these tools can do. The texturing part is what really concerns me. I had a friend create a simple cello body for me, just as a test. I have no idea how I would apply a realistic wood texture to that shape and have it look nice - but I guess that is what the UV mapping is for. I have so much to learn.

eku Zhong

I use Z for most of my sculpties.. also the texturing methods are excellent.. not outside Z at all
i find it the most excellent tool for making sculpties. .. theres also Zsculpty rezzer that will assemble your sculpts inworld...
for non organics i would recommend AC3D.. its affordable and the learning curve isnt too great

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Hypatia Callisto

Bear in mind that Silo doesn't have the autouv tools... so you may still be starting your sculpts in something like Blender. I have Silo for many years and I just use it because well, its there and I bought it already

But I do like it for things it can do, and it has some features I wish modo had. Its edge modeling is really simple and easy.

Blender is still a good one for doing inorganics... and for sharp edges you may find Blender to be a useful tool in your arsenal.

Chalice Yao

As an additional thought:

I am not a Blender fangirl that wants everybody to use only that thing. I like the right tool for the right job, which is why I also bought TATARA - Sculpted Prim Previewer and Editor - Ver. 4.0 from SLX after I got used to Blender, since it is a perfect addition for making Sculpts with symmetric, geometric shapes.

Likewise I'd use ZBrush for the organics. Blender for the non-organic, architectural, synthetic and technical, Tatara for symmetric and twisted shapes, Zbrush for the aformentioned organics.

Many 3D artists use a whole slide of tools to achieve their art, I don't see this case as being different. The reason I had to mention the Blender tutorials in this thread is because I also was one of the people downright disgusted and scared of the blender UI..the youtube tutorials actually made me like it, and a friend I introduced them to a few days ago has already started to replace prims of his builds with sculpts. Had to mention 'em for that alone :>

Hypatia Callisto

I forgot about AC3D, you are quite right on that one.

Persephone Milk

Ok, you guys have convinced me to get started with Blender. It sounds very well-suited to inorganics and objects that need hard edges, which is exactly what I will be sculpting. I can always add more tools to my toolbox later (ZBrush sounds like a lot of fun).

Cindy Claveau

Zbrush art

Chalice Yao

Remember to use the version of the Primstar scripts I linked, not the one that is referenced in the videos..it's old.

If you need any help with the setup, yell.

Casper Priestman

I have to agree with most everything that's been said. Zbrush is an amazing tool for sculpting organic shapes but should be used in conjunction with another modelling app such as those mentioned. Someone had asked in the other forums if Zbrush was suitable for making shoes, which it definitely is, although don't expect it to make razor sharp edges or a lot of straight lines.

I think some of the important features a regular modelling app like blender, Silo, Hexagon, and Modo etc need to fully complement Zbrush are edge tools including slide and loop subdivision as this is where you'll get sharp edges if needed. Yes I love my Silo too, it's uncluttered and has a few tools that just work so much better than comparable ones in other apps. If I recall correctly AC3D had no edge/loop tools which for me killed it. I only played with the demo so If I'm wrong, please correct me.

If you end up using more than just Zbrush to make your sculpties, be aware that the sculpt map baker plugin is picky about the format the file was saved in. Not all .OBJ files are created equally when saved. You can swap back and forth between some apps such as Zbrush and Modo, but say if you create a model in Zbrush, then save as an obj and work on it in Cinema4d or some other apps and save it back to obj, Zbrush will let you work on it but will crash when trying to bake the sculpt map. It's not a fault of Zbrush but the plugin which was made to adhere to specific rules. So to avoid headaches, I just do all my map baking in Blender.

eku Zhong

there is one small unbeknownst thing about Z that i truly love..
i save my sculptmaps as bmp... and when copybotted and brought back inworld by nasty ppls..
the poles of the sculpty become wonderfully fucked up =^^=

Chalice Yao

That one surprises me, really. If one grabs the sculptmap and reuploads as lossless again (It's not bmp when grabbed) it should be identical. Hurm.

eku Zhong

nope.. z makes 32x33 for a sphere.. whereas everyone else likes a good 32 32..
the one line goes poof and so does the very neat and smooth pole

CoyoteMomiji

Wings3d for hard-edged models. Zbrush for organic or curved models. Works better.

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Ayu Sura

... so would a violin qualify as hard edged or curved? It has both! zbrush then?

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Compulsion

I wouldn't advise anyone spend money on an application that they will only use 10% of it's features when you can get those same 10% for free in blender. blenders tools might not have the amount of options or finese that zbrush has but you have to remember those tools in zbrush are designed for making normal maps for very high polygon models and are not applicable to second life sculpties at all.

Chalice Yao

Yes, but that does not matter. Somebody copying the texture to their drive and re-uploading it losslees would upload the identical texture, so there would be no difference to your version and theirs. The image does not know it was made in Z-Brush.