SL male and female OBJ for zbrush

Howdy, I whipped up a zbrush ready version of the male and female avatars. The uv's are layed out so you can cut the texture up in photoshop. I noticed that zbrush was flipping the uv's vertically when I imported it, so these models have there uv's flipped vertically already (so zbrush will export right-side-up textures).

Let me know how it goes, I haven't had a chance to really test these models out, other than paint some arrows on the model to make sure everything is where it should be. Special thanks to Kensuke Leviathan for the male model and helpful suggestions.

Download here

Thanks!

I've looked up what ZBrush is and it looks like a modeling software. How do you use it for SL?

Its both a modeling software and also a 3d model painter which you can use to paint skins or clothing on.

Wow, that's really an interesting idea. I can't wait to see if someone puts it to use.

Another choice would be Bodypaint, which is also pro-level and used heavily by Sony Imageworks among others for film matte painting. Zbrush of course has its main value in displacement painting, which absolutely blows me away. If it weren't for SL, Zbrush would be how I'd be spending my free hours.

Only problem I've run into so far is on the male model, one of the arms as a unwelded seem an easy fix and it only shows if you've subdivided the mesh. As a note the OBJ files seem to transfer well into other 3d applications as side from zbrush, you just need to flip the UVs once they're in, or you can work on your maps upside down :3 and flip em in photoshop.

D'oh, sorry about the seam there, I'll update the file later tonight.

Zbrush is a great program, I use it primarily for it's hi polygon sculpting tools but it also has top notch texturing tools, probably the best 3d paint ap I've ever used.

One more thing, I was pretty tired last night and only did quick tests to see if everything works, so consider these models in the beta stage so test it out before spending hours working on something!

I updated the zip, the male model doesn't have any unwelded seems now

Is your site having DNS problems? Host is not resolving properly so I can't contact it.

-- EDIT: Never mind, it has returned --

thanks a lot for this, you just saved me some time I definitely will give you feedback on how work progresses with these.

Love the ZBrush models!!! Been playing with 'em since you posted 'em!

I used ZBRush for some funky text for a sign for a store, using the lil' tentacle brush.

Awesome this is what i been looking for thanks

Ysg, thanks for posting these files and giving everyone more options! You're so good.

I have a question and a concern about the placement of the UV's:

Why not leave the UV's as they are with the original *.obj avatar files ,weld the seems, then use the polygroups, selection, and hide features inside Zbrush to hide the unwanted overlapping UV's and textures?

I would agree that producing a single texture file is initially faster inside Zbrush, but the cut and paste still needs to be done inside PS to generate 3 texture files for uploading into SL. Also, a single texture for each polygroup will get you twice the resolution (upper limit of 4096x4096 I think) out of Zbrush. I found the side by side placement of the UV texture maps on your *.obj files did not line up perfectly once cut up in PS by splitting a 2048x2048 image into 4 equal 1024x1024 quadrants. I tested the files on some skins inside SL and the seems showed either misalignment or a slight size variance by about 2 or 3 pixels. Rather than troubleshoot it I created my own *.obj files from Poser, leaving the UV placement untouched (I don't think Poser has that option anyways?). Zbrush did a wonderful job of working with the file once I set the head, upper, and lower to different polygroups. This gave me perfect alignment. The issue with the vertically flipped UV maps is so quick to fix in PS that I didn't even bother messing with the UV's elsewhere.

Oh wow thank you! I've been trying to use Tattoo for cross-seam shading and such and it's been a bit of a nightmare, so I really look forward to trying this out.

Could you post up your models?

I have the polygrouped female avatar saved as a ZBrush tool. I haven't gotten around to making one for the male avatar yet, but I'll see what I can throw together a little later.

Addendum:
Please see my latest post here for the new download link

I now have a male and female avatar set as Zbrush tools for downloading. The original avatar symmetries have been corrected for accurate texture grabs with ZBrush's Projection Master. The polygroups match the head, upper body, and lower body UV groups of the original SL mannequin. Overlapping body textures can be avoided by hiding any 2 of 3 color coded polygroup regions. You must vertically flip the textures in ZBrush or Photoshop before uploading to SL.

This link is to a new Downloads page on my web site. There you can download the file by clicking the blue text or the icon on the right.

Thanks Nam!

An old thread but a goodie!
many thanks for doing this for the ZB users!
not to be greedy but..... Any tips on how you use these models to get the individual textures

Hello thanks for creating the objects for zbrush. Im still trying out how to use this program to make skins. And its so very complicated if someone can create a tutorial for me i would be greatly appriciated. Thanks again in advance. Im trying to make skins by the way

If I ever get a large enough chunk of time to throw a tutorial together, I may consider it. It wouldn't be so much a tutorial, but rather a process video from start to finish. For now, I'm waiting to see what can be done with Z3 (due to be out on May 15th). That will probably change the way I do skinning myself (at least for part of the process).

Reading this tread something struck me:

Could you take those .obj files, render them into a sculptie texture and upload them? I'm thinking its possible but the level of detail will suffer a bit, but it could be usefull for 3D manequins in clothes stores..and skin stores...etc.

The download link is not working for me.

thanks for the offer but i've found a great tutorial made by jason welsh on texturing with zbrush. I've noticed alot of things i've seen in this tutorial on other peoples skins and what not. One of the most obvious things i've seen is the fixed uvmapping he did for his edited avatar mesh that some people have been posting around here and other sites not giving credit to the original maker. Anyways heres the link so you guys can check it out. The tutorials are all the way in the bottom


http://www.houseoftutorials.com/page2.html

Jason's skinning technique is interesting in that it relies on an enhanced and subdivided avatar model. That, however, always produces results based on that model unless you sculpt a new model each time you work on a new skin. That may be why some of the skins floating around SL all look similar to Jason's.

I prefer to use photographs of live models and import them into ZBrush. That way I get natural lighting on a variety of live model shapes. The Image Plane and Texture Library Z-scripts for ZBrush aid with this method. You can see a tutorial here.

Dnel, I don't think you can easily build a sculptie mannequin of the SL avatar (not without many sculptie prims). The avatar UV maps are not spherical maps, and mapping the skin or clothing textures would be a nightmare. Even if someone pulled it off, would the result be worth it?

sweet thanks for the tutorial i downloaded this one earlier today and never had the chance to check it out. Looks pretty intresting and you right about sculpting multple maniquinns to get diffrent designs would be way too time consuming.


By the way are you the guy who made those skins at Second Life skinning Lab or something like that. They look very good, You did a good job with those.