Looking for zBrush assistance - messy sculpts

Hi there, I'm new to making sculpts in general, and also exporting them into second life for use. I've been practicing a lot with making different things in my zBrush program and I finally had made some pieces and wanted to upload them for SL. I used Sculptymaker to make the sculpty uv map I needed, and well.. when I use my textures in world.. they are very bumpy and not smooth at all like they should be. Also a lot of them have this odd like.. invisible block (you can't actually see it even with transparencies) and you notice it if you try to stand on or near the sculpt as it blocks you from doing so. I think I'm doing something wrong.. ._.

I've been using the Shiny Life tutorials, if anyone has any other tutorials, exporting programs, suggestions on what I could do to improve my sculpts, please let me know.

Also are there any nicer ways to paint on my sculpts directly other than trying to use zBrush or Blacksmith3D? Thanks!

Neferi- i just got zbrush myself but am not at any point i can offer advice- however in world, there is a zbrush group - try search there.

Hullo Neferi, welcome to the weird world of Zbrushing. I'm not sure what to tell you about "bumpiness", as I've never had that problem, so long as my mesh is nice and ordered in Zbrush (vertices spaced evenly, more vertices where I need detail like edges, no edges crossing over each other, etc). A little bit of smoothing in the program can help there.

I am guessing that the "invisible block" you encounter is actually the real bounding box--remember that a sculpt is actually a sphere that just looks like a sculpted mesh. Makes sure that scale and centre axis are checked when using Sculpty Maker, and it will use most of the box. But it still won't perfectly conform to the apparent shape. That why sculpted stairs are set phantom with an invisible ramp prim laid under them--the avatar walks on the ramp prim, not the sculpt.

Re: painting programs, I'd recommend just playing with Zbrush more. It really is a powerful painting tool. Collect and make alphas to modify your brush, play with Zproject, try out different brush settings (cavity mask is a very useful one). Add to that Projection Master's ability to add 2.5D brushes, and you've got a really, really powerful texturing suite on hand. Don't take my word for it, look at the Pixologic gallery.

But, you can use your 2D editing program using Zapplink. It works sort of like projection master--you take a snapshot of your Ztool, it sends the image to Photoshop, you paint on the snapshot there, then pick it up and apply that snapshot back to the Ztool.
http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/zapplink/

Of course, you could also get Photoshop CS4, which is beyond wonderful (my current workflow starts in Zbrush, then I finish in CS4 where I can play with all those wonderful adjustment layers and filters)

Check your frame via the frame tool - you may have points that are out of whack. Use the smooth tool to help correct it. I use the smooth tool at VERY low z intensity levels when working on the 32x33 mesh. That's another thing you might try - make sure you are working at the 32x33 mesh, you can subdivide up, but make sure you check your work at the lowest (SL) subdivision level. I hope this makes sense, I'm not very good with technical terms.

there is videos from ppl that have shown you there work routine its really easy actually