Sculptie Creation + Texture (From a layman's point of view)

Well, after much practice I have settled on my Sculptie approach I will be using. I didn't have a huge budget to work with so 3DS Max and Maya were sorta out of my reach and probably extreme overkill. so for folks just getting started I thought this would be some good information for an approach that wasn't too expensive and didn't make your eyes bleed of complexity.

I opted for the following tool set:
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Wings 3D (for creating the starter sphere and exporting the sculptie in the end.) (Free)
Zbrush (for sculpting the model and UV map creation) (~$300)
Deep Paint 3D (for painting the UV Map and outputting the texture file) (~$100)
Photo Shop or Paint Shop (for minor texture tweaking/touch ups) (Already have it)

Steps:
1. Create a starter sphere in Wings (64x63).
2. Immediately rotate the sphere on the X-Axis by exactly -90degrees. This is prevent a goofy UV map rotation issue ater on.
3. Export the sphere out to an .obj file.
4. Import the sphere ".obj" into Zbrush.
5. Manipulate the sphere how you want it, be careful not to skew/deform the object rotation. Not to be confused with generic camera rotation, which is ok.
6. Generate the UV map by selecting the UVS(sphere) option under the texture menu.
7. Export the .Obj with "Flip", "Txr", "Flp", "Quad", "Mrg", and "Grp".
8. Import this new .obj file into Deep Paint.
9. Paint your texture all nice and how you like it.
10. Save your Deep Paint project, in doing so a texture file will be generated.
11. Import that same .obj file you just imported into Deep Paint and import it back into Wings.
12. Export the object out as an SL sculptie with the Wings Sculptie Exporter plugin available from the SL message boards... or use the Obj2Sculpt converter (I havnt used this yet but will soon).
13. Remember to increase the sculptie BMP from 64x64 to 256x256 (or 512x512) in order to prevent compression effects.
14. Upload your new sculptie and texture map into SL.

** I recommend you use the beta grid or an offline viewer till you think you got the hang of it it will save a few lindens. **

Of the toolsets listed Zbrush was probably the most complicated, but the learning curve was very shallow... and not to mention sorta fun too... like playing with a lump of clay.

Oh... and I tried Blender... free yes... eyes still bleeding. I am by no means an expert of any sort and opinions will vary on preferred tools, this is just my opinion as to what seemed easiest for me to come up to speed in a short manor of time.

I have attached a JPG of my Bee Hive project and the intermediate steps as well.

-Phid

oo very nice mini tutorial

I'm actually pretty similar in what I decided would be "best" and have substituted UV mapper in there also

3/4 of the battle appears to be figuring out a decent process for this without bying the pro version of maya which is how the textures we have seen Qarl make

Thanks for the info very well done

Zbrush 3 is 581,91 $ if you buy directly at pixologic.

Deep Paint... seems like its not sold anymore, it might be hidden in one of the
strange Bundles from Right Hemisphere.
Deep Paint 2.0 is free at http://www.download.com/Deep-Paint/3000-2191_4-10398243.html?tag=lst-0-1
I dont know if this one is good enough, but free is free

/me starts downloading

Thanks for sharing, this is great. I am curious however as to why you chose to paint the texture in DeepPaint rather then directly in Zbrush which definitely has those capabilities.

I was wondering that same thought.

It was sorta a learning curve thing plus Deep Paint seemed like it had some good features I liked. here are the things on my plate to try and tweak this flow a little:

- Figure out Zbrushes painting and exporting features. I ran into a few problems but will still be working toward that direction... so the answer to the above question is probably more impatience than anything else

- Compare other SL sculptie exporting options as The Wings exporter seems to introduce some irregularities. I'll compare this to Obj2Sculpt soon to see if there is any differences.

-Phid

Hey I was looking around to figure out a way to best generate ambient occlusion maps, shading lighting etc. basically anyway to help create texturing. I'm taking a look at deep paint,..I've used Zbrush but just can't figure out how to create a texture on a model like that...and have it wrap correctly around the model...just slowly trying to figure things out.

I'm curious as to what the goofy issue is. Several of us are trying to make the tools as inter-operable as we can, so if it is something I can fix, I probably will.

interesting - what I did was rotate the uvmap instead of the model, but both work

I'm having a goofy issue. I know it's slightly off topic but I'm trying to turn my .tga into a .obj file so I can edit it.

I followed the wiki instructions for the gimp filter (pasted the script into the right folder and named it sculptie.scm), restarted gimp/refreshed scripts (many times) and still nothing. Script fu won't give me a second life or export sculptie option. >.<

I have a version of Deep Paint 3D that was released only last month I think. But I had to dig around their forums to find it. Plus, it's a time-limited demo version because I can't find anywhere to actually purchase a copy from their website. I emailed sales to ask what price I should expect to pay because I found it listed everywhere from US$50-US$1000 when searching around (I'm sure the $1k was part of a bundle). But there was no response and no way to purchase an activation key (despite software prompts to the website for that purpose).

I want a mesh painter that supports projections (burning an image onto the texture). I'm sure Maya does it, but that's Maya. Blender supports painting directly onto a model, sorta like airbrushing in 3D... but I want to type numbers, text and paste ready-made textures onto models. And that's not easy, especially around the poles.

There's a freebie program called Tattoo that does it, but the interface is impossible. Deep Paint 3D has a Photoshop-like interface and even borrows Photoshop's filters. If there's a better, cheap, method for getting logos/words/numbers/images onto a UV texture (including the poles), then please let me know.

As for Deep Paint 2.0... I don't believe it paints 3D meshes at all. So, Phidian, where did you get your copy of Deep Paint 3D? Some of the places I've found are very fly-by-nightish, but if you had success getting a copy, no need for me to reinvent the wheel.

DoteDote - check out Zbrush too - the ZProject tool may be just the thing you need. You can paint details from a photo to a mesh with that tool.

www.zbrush.info/wiki/index.php/Tutorial:ZProject_Texturing
www.veoh.com/videos/v53070466q355rd

are tutorials on it - you have to then bake it to a blank texture and that's it.