Sculptie? Maya? Tutorial? HELP! :)

Ok... so I have not tried Maya with sculpties since they were first implemented, and I couldn't figure it out =/
Anyways, I want to try again, and searched through these forums, but everything is so mixed up and goes from one program to another and none seem to stay on topic so it's confusing to me.
Can someone direct me to the best info and tutorials for making sculpties using Maya?
I would love to be also to texture bake the sculpties
Thanks in advance!

Sorry to hear that. In order to help you best, let me ask, are you brand new at Maya, or are you experienced with it but just not quite understanding sculpties in particular?

If you're just starting with Maya, the best thing to do is to watch the short training videos (Help -> Learning Movies), and then step through all the tutorials (preferably in order) in the Help file. You'll find the tutorials under Help -> Maya Help -> Using Maya.

Unlike with most other programs, you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that Maya's Help is actually helpful. I know of no better resource for initial learning.

I'd recommend going through all the tutorials, but at a minimum, you'll want to start with General, Modeling, Deformers, and Rendering.

You might also want to consider investing in some good books. There are tons to choose from. Getting Started With Maya from Maya Press is a good one.

Of course nothing in any of that stuff will be sculpty-specific, but all of it will teach you what you need to know before you should try to start doing ANYTHING specific, including sculpties. You don't want to just dive into Maya blind and try to beat it into submission, or expect to be able to just figure it out. While it is an incredibly user-friendly program, it works according to a very distinctive logic, which won't be obvious right away. You really have to start at the beginning with it.

If you're already experienced with Maya, and I've just been wasting my breath (or should I say my keystrokes) for the last few paragraphs, then say "Hey Chosen, quit telling me what I already know, you big silly head," and we can talk about some starting pointers for sculpties right now. Really though, if you're new to Maya, trust me; going out of order would be bad. Take a few days, or maybe even a week or two, going through all the introductory Help tutorials, we'll talk about sculpties when you've got a good handle on the subjects they cover.


Sorry about that. A lot of the threads tends to degrade into friendly arguments about who likes what program best. I'm not without my share of guilt on that. I'll try to do what I can to keep from going that direction in the future. Hopefully everyone else will too. You're right that that stuff is probably more likely to confuse people than help, so thanks for pointing it out.


There's some basic info on the wiki if you haven't been over there yet, but unfortunaely there aren't really any fully detailed A-Z tutorials for Maya sculpties yet, at least not that I've seen. I've had one in the works for a while now, but I've been so busy with work the last few months, I haven't had time to get all that far with the writing. I'll see if I can back to it soon.

In the here and now, maybe the best thing for you to do is ask some questions right here (only after you're done with those Help tutorials, that is). What kinds of things are you stuck on?


Baking's a big subject, as big as texturing itself. I think the best you can hope for from any single tutorial would be to learn one little trick or two at a time. Obviously, you'll first want to learn the basic mechanics of how to output a 2D image from the surface of a 3D object. After that, the the more you learn about lighting, shader procedures, rendering techniques, etc., the better your baked textures will turn out.

Also, the particular renderer you use will make a big difference, so you'll want to develop some experience with both the Maya software renderer and Mental Ray (the two that come with Maya). If you want the best one you can get your hands on, I recommend Turtle (www.illuminatelabs.com).

I hope I'm not making it sound too scary, by the way. I don't mean to imply that it's all that hard to dive into it. I just think it's worth going into it knowing that there's a lot to learn, and that as with anything else, your results will probably be fairly simplistic in the beginning, but will become more refined over time. That said, you can get some OK results within your first few minutes, once you know where to begin.

A good place to start is with Qarl's advanced sculpty exporter. It automatically outputs baked textures at the same time as the sculpt maps (using the Maya software renderer). You can then use it in conjunction with Eddy Stryker's .primscript uploader to automatically assemble your objects in SL. So if you've got an object made out of 10 sculpties, you don't have to manually upload 20 and apply 20 images to 10 prims. It's pretty slick.

See these posts on Qarl's blog to learn more:
http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=49
http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=50

Wow, Chosen!
First, thank you so much for your reply, explanations and understandings!

I am fairly new to new to Maya, new being , I have had it for awhile, watched the basic tutorials as well as some from lynda.com, but it has done more sitting on my hard drive than anything. I get frustrated easy and when I don't see results I give up... Well I am trying not to do it this time. I REALLY want to learn to make sculpties, so bad my tummy hurts

I use Photoshop CS3, Poser 7 mostly, and these programs came natural to me, whatever I didn't know how to do, after a little playing with it and trying different techniques, I was able to figure it out... Maya on the other hand is driving me nuts, I just want to throw it out the window After looking through these forums and reading comments and rants about one program or the other, I decided I just need to be patient and really learn Maya and make sculpties in Maya... I figure if I learn and do it in Maya it can also help me in making clothing and animations (I already do both) so anyways... here I am, trying to learn Maya lol

I am the type of person that has a really hard time with learning new things, not just software.. anything... The reason is, I learn better hands on or through tutorials, but not just any tutorial, video or pictures, plain text or verbage does me no good, I will read or hear it and forget it moments later, or read it over and over again and it not make sense... hmm maybe I have ADD, now that I think about it? lol

But, I am going to take your advice, I did watch the basic tutorials, but it has been awhile, so I am going to take the time and watch them again, and then hopefully, come back to this thread and be able to pin point my problems... when I tried making sculpties last time, everything was coming out inverted and jaggedy, nothing smooth or how it looked in Maya.

I am really tempted to look at Qarl's tutorial but I think it's best if I just go back and start from the beginning first..

Thank you so much for your help and any tips, suggestions, guides, whatever... is greatly appreciated

Alright so I went over the basic tutorials a few more times... ok like 6 more times LOL Now I will try again at Qarl's tutorial, wish me luck~

eek seems its not a tutorial at all its some neat tricks/scripts/tools to use... very impressive...

so what Maya sculptie tutorial would be best to start with?

Dear Chosen Few,

I dont have Maya yet but was considering investing in some form of 3D programme in the future.
I want to thank you very much for the helpful and comprehendible posts you make on the forum. Though I dont post often I DO read and all the information you give about texturing and such which has been a huge help to me...
So I just wanted to say thanks and show my appreciation