New to sculpting and having a lot of trouble

Hi am I'm new to this game and I just got into sculpted prims. I have zbrush and I was hoping to create base meshes then modify them in zbrush. Is there a way to do that? I guess the questions I need answered are :

what is the actual poly and vertex limit? I've seen 16x16, 32X31, 64X63, and 64X64.

Also if I start with somethinga that isn't like the above, but fits the standard poly limit, can I arrange the UV's to be used in Secondlife?


I'd really appreciate any help.

You can definitely use ZBrush to "massage" and paint meshes for Second Life, and this is how I have been working with sculpted prims lately.

For me, I use AC3D and the AC3D Second Life Exporter plugin to create my base meshes. The exporter plugin comes with several subdivision-surface base prims to start with, all already properly uv-mapped.

When I get the rough shape that I want in AC3D, I commit the subdivisions on the object, and export it as a standard Wavefront .OBJ, which can then be imported into ZBrush and worked on.

However... There is a max 1024 vertex limit (I believe) for SL sculpted prims, so what you'll be able to do with them in ZBrush is limited as far as modelling. On the other hand, you can increase the geometry in ZBrush and paint to your heart's content, and because the object is already properly uv-mapped you can use CLR->TX and then export the painted texture to use directly in Second Life.

After you've done whatever tweaks you want in ZBrush, export the object back into a Wavefront .OBJ file again, which you can import into AC3D and have AC3D export it as a Second Life Sculpted Prim.

It's not as much work as it sounds like, and is working very well for me now that I'm slowly getting the hang of things.

Best of luck to you.

I've had great success with using ZBrush to make sculpties - as long as I start with some pre-made spheres that were uploaded to the forums. They have the proper geometry and UV mapping for sculpted prims.

Here's a link to the forum post about the UV Mapped Spheres.
/8/5f/188429/1.html

I load up a sphere and sculpt away. Gotta be careful not to add or subtract vertices, tho. Then I export the ZBrush shape as a .obj file and use Wings3D to export the sculpt map.

If I am going to paint textures in ZBrush - I subdivide the original object many times then use the ZProject tool to paint colors onto the object from a reference texture.

Even if you don't use AC3D and aren't interested in the AC3D Sculpty Exporter, the page for the exporter has some good information that answers your questions regarding number of vertices, etc.

It's at http://www.ccccybernetics.com/, check out the "Questions and Answers" section near the end of the page.

after doing a bit more research I found this :
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=49781&highlight=secondlife

Unfortunately it's now left me more confused then anything else.

Select the sphere and in the initialize pallet set hdivide to 63 and vidivide to 64. Or you can use 31 and 32.

You can do any shaping in zbrush as long is it doesn't change the number of polygons. Deformations are good. Edge looping is out. When you are done, export your zbrush tool as an .obj

Download Wings3D which is freeware. Get and install the scultie plug-in here
/8/20/183764/1.html
Import your .obj into Wings and export your sculptie map .bmp.

These Zbrush instructions are based on Zbrush 2 as I am on the mac and Zbrush3 for the mac has not been released.

When you get comfortable with making sculpties, check out my tutorial on texture baking: http://www.throughlinedesign.com/ZbrushBakeTut/page1.html

The new version of Blender does sculpting! I don't know yet how easy it is to export the maps for SL, but I'm a very big noob to Blender and I was able to play with the sculpting after googling for a quick tutorial.

Thanks so much! I was able to get a sculpted prim into secondlife.
Something I'm working with right now that seems to be functioning so far, is to make meshes that match up to 64X64 (4k poly) objects, then set up a proper export in wings. While this may seem impossible here was the sculpty following the information above with your baking technique

Since sculpties hit the grid, I have been making them with Blender. And since I am a total noob concerning Blender, it costs me quite a lot of time. But I am getting better and better results. I wish though Blender was more intuitive...

QFE

Oh and does anyone know how to go into "triangle mode"?

Check out Blender Underground. There's some amazing video tutorials there. I'm only through the second one and I'm already starting to use Blender as proficiently as I used to be at 3D Studio. I first though Blender was unintuitive as well, but I'm finding that's not the case.


1. Select your object and hit TAB to enter Edit mode.
2. Switch to the face selection mode with CTRL TAB 3 (or click)
3. Select the face that contains the triangle you want to edit
4. SPACE -> EDIT -> FACES -> Convert to Triangles

It looks like Blender basically splits the quad. To get back to quads you shift select the two triangles, and instead of Convert to triangles you choose Convert to Quads.