Scultpies: wings3d to zbrush

Anyone know why my wings3d models which looks completely normal in both wings3d and SL is importing into Zbrush inside out?

Steps:
Make model in Wings3d - looks great
Export to SL Sculpty
Upload using SL Image Upload to SL
Rez cube look at sculpt, looks like a very dull version of my model, maybe it just needs textures proper
Go into Wings3d
Export model as .obj
Fire up Zbrush
Import obj
Draw it on canvas
Tool/obj/model appears inside out.

:/

Wings - ohh lookie a not sphere!


SL - erm uhm ok maybe it just needs some textures?


ZBrush...hmmm

Further more I wish I understood why my sculpts never look anything like my meshes. Its pretty frustrating.

Hey!,

After importing your object, in the big panel down the right hand side, select 'Display Properties' and then 'Flip'.

You could also try messing with the 'iFlipX', 'iFlipY' and 'iFlipZ' options in 'Preferences/Importexport/' found across the top of the screen. These may help in the long term because the options can be stored with 'Preferences/Config/Store Config'.

But the first suggestion should definitely work.


As for getting your sculpties to look like your meshes:

Initially you should model in 16x16 (or 16x17 in ZBrush). Sculpties have a top detail level of 32x32, but the uppermost detail level is very superficial and should only be used to help smoothen the appearance of your object.

Unfortunately my convertor (and maybe Wings) insists on you providing it with an object that was modelled at 32x32 from the start. This is why I always use Maya to convert my sculpties. That and the fact that lossless sculpties have been broken since day one and convertors like mine and Wings3D's are totally useless without the lossless option. This is because their sculpties are directly mapped and can't withstand the JPEG compression.

Maya's convertor works in a such a way that the JPEG compression doesn't degrade the sculpties as much. Take a look at the sculpt maps from Wings and Maya to help understand the difference. The pixels in a Maya sculpt map are smooth and not pixellated.

When LL fixes lossless scuplties I'll look into making my convertor deal with objects that were originally modelled in 16x17 (or even 8x9).

Another reason why your model doesn't look the same as the model in ZBrush is that SL uses a special shading technique that's been turned up to max. This helps to make objects look much rounder than they really are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouraud_shading

You can get around this by applying a baked texture to your object. Even better would be to enable full bright too!. As you know, full bright disables all that fancy shading.

I'll leave the particulars for smart people like you and Omei, but after using Wings to export my Zbrush obj file as a BMP sculptmap, checking lossless DID make a slight, but significant difference inworld. Vertices seemed more apt to get distracted and wander off without it checked.

Any other suggestions for the Mayaless set?

It's possible that your Object Details settings in SL are causing some of the differences in the appearance of your objects. Try going to PREFERENCES (in your SL client) then the GRAPHICS tab, then look for the OBJECT slider right under where it says Mesh Settings. Slide that Object slider all the way to the right. You may have to check the CUSTOM option to see all of the various graphic sliders.

Of course, this may effect your client performance but at least you can see what your sculpties look like at full detail.

thanks. Actually wings seems to only handle 8x7, 16x15, 32x31 and 64x63 on its exporter of sculpt maps. I start with the largest since my model ends up looking like a cube in SL otherwise. Plus I dont know how to get the division level up in wings3d if I start with something like a 16, I cant get any nice curves or anything sexy out of that, just angular blocks.

I dont understand zbrush at all. I cant make something like the above in zbrush no matter how hard I try or how many tutorials I read or how many deformation buttons I push or how many different brushes I use, it just doesnt make sense to me, still.

I went back in and tried to paint my model in zbrush and I still dont understand that either trying various tutorials. My brush seems very limited to the faces of the model, I cant figure out how to just let me paint on it without confining me yet lol. PLUS the painting that I do manage to eek out is so distorted and pixelated I dont know what the issue is, its crazy, I must be missing a step or something or I guess I am just sculpty impaired or something. Its a shame really since I never had any problems making/texturing normal meshes for other games.

Odd, I have never had a problem with lossless image uploads, and I use your converter for my sculpties. I get a nearly perfect translation of my 32x33 sculpted zBrush object into a sculpted prim almost every time. My sculpts are general pretty organic in nature and might not show any artifacts as readily.

I have heard other folks mention that lossless doesn't work. What exactly is the problem? Maybe it is happening to me and I don't realize.

For really organic models I think you wont notice it as much, but if you have anything that needs to be somewhat exact like furniture or whatever - try using the SL Image Upload in the wiki, use the check box on upload and then compare the two sculpts side by side in game.

Supposedly only images over 5kb need to be uploaded differently but I have seen the difference in sculpt images at 4kb.

The lossless option appears to be great. It makes perfect sculpties. The problem now is that they take an unreasonable amount of time to download and sometimes wont appear at all.

I've made models that are made from 40+ sculpties (not lossless) that can download long before a single lossless sculpty downloads.

So right now, my only suggestion for "Mayaless" sculpty makers is - RUN AWAY!!! RUN AWAY!!

Read all about it here:- https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2404

I feel a little sorry for Qarl, he's been brought in to improve the rendering engine of SL and is being held back by the screwed up cache.

SL is messed up.

Vlad's tutorial will help you learn how to paint on a model.

But basically you need to 'Geometry/Divide' the mesh many times to create millions of faces. You then paint these faces and later apply the color infomation to a texture with the 'Col>Txt' button.

THanks for the link 2k, I had no idea this was happening. After reading that JIRA entry it appears that the problem might be fixed (again) in the most recent Release Candidate viewer.

I guess that I have experienced this bug when viewing cached sculpty images. I have one sculpted prim flower that sometimes looks a bit odd and misaligned, and sometimes doesn't. I had just chalked it up to borked asset servers and didn't realize it was a widespread problem.

Nectare: It's also possible to paint on objects in zBrush without using the geometry divide feature by painting directly on the texture. i plan on making another tutorial soon that demonstrates this method. In the meantime, if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to watch my zbrush to sculpty tutorial.

http://www.shiny-life.com/2008/02/12/video-creating-sculpted-prims-with-zbrush-3/

Yes Vlad, I have been watching your tutorial over and over - however this is what happens when I subdivide




Any idea why?

I sometimes get holes in the ends of my objects when I subdivide, too. Not sure why. I generally just ignore them as it doesnt effect the shape of the lo-res object that will be converted to a sculpty. One of these days I will do some experiments to see if I can avoid this glitch. I assume it has something to do with the geometry at the 'poles' of the object.

I just paint right over those glitches and have never even noticed them in the final texture. If the glitch is noticeable in your textures you could attempt to fix it in Photoshop after texturing.

For non-Maya people I have had pretty good results using Zbrush in combination with AC3D.
Especially starting in Z and exporting from AC3D. But I was also able to start in AC3D go to
Z then back to AC3D to export to sculpt.