New to Building, Interested in Using Daz3d Hexagon and Learning Workaround

I'm new to model building in SL. I was not able to locate anything in the SL wiki about Daz3D Hexagon and like to hear how Hexagon is used to build models. From what I've read, some posts mention that there is no conversion feature for Hexagon and that the model is exported from Hexagon into Wings or Blender to export to SL. Being new I don't understand the purpose for the conversion, Hexagon can save in the same file formats as Wings or Blender. If the conversion is not available, what can be brought into SL from Hexagon. I would greatly appreciate if somone could walk me through the steps for basic sculpty creation in Hexagon like what was done for Wings http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D.

I use Hexagon's brush modeling and 3d paint features, if the model needs to be exported into another program to export to SL, I would prefer exporting into wings if possible because of what I read about it being easier to use. Will Wings be able to to convert a Hexagon model with brush modeling and 3d paint into a SL model or would those features be lost in the conversion. If Wings cannot convert a model with brush modeling and 3d paint into a SL model will Blinder? Are there any Hexagon features that would cause problems using another program to export into SL?

If I want to build a model and have the SL prim size that I want to use, how do I convert the SL size to Hexagon dimensions so the model being built in Hexagon matches the SL size?

Hello there,

I use Hexagon for all my sculpty work as it's the only decent modeller I actually own (1.99$ on Platinum Club offer). I tried several times to make a mesh from scratch but despite having the required geometry, Wings3D always gave an error when exporting to sculpty BMP.

The workaround I use is to use a sphere OBJ made in wings3D (As per the tutorial), import into Hex and pull it about to suit, then export back to OBJ, import into wings and then export to BMP. As long as you keep the same number of vertices and simply move them around there should be no problem using Hex as your sculpty modeller.

Size isn't really an issue as the sculpted prims can be scaled either uniformly or on a single axis. The only thing to be careful of is the 'ends' of the sculpted mesh, which always seem to be slightly puckered, so need to be hidden by other prims.

If you leave the resulting BMP as it is the faces will have hard edges, for more organic forms I scale up the texture and apply a slight blur in PSP.