Sculpted Prim Modeler: Amorphium

I highly recommend using the award winning Amorphium to model scuplted prims.

The best thing about Amorphium is that it is only US$79!

Download the trial for starters:
http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/products/amorphium

Quick tutorial follows:

Start Amorphium.

Select the Composer tab:

Delete the first default sphere you see that it creates automatically (right-click on it ->delete)

Right click on Mesh Sphere (left menu, greenish sphere with red dot next to it)

Click on Synthetic.
Set X to 64
Set Y to 63
Click OK

Create the new sphere (Click->drag in Perspective)

You'll see a new sphere.

Click on the Tools tab.

From here... any click on the sphere will mold the object by any of the tools you select on the right. On the left are the different methods to push, pull, pinch, grab, smudge, etc.

Click on the Paint tab.

Use the brushes on the left and the colors on the right to paint directly on your creation.

When you done, you'll want to export your object and textures.

Click File->Export

Under Export Textures, select Targa.
Select a size (128x12
Click Export

Use one of the converters, Wings3D, obj2sculpt, or Blender, to create the final sculpt map from the exported OBJ file.

There is a tentative plan to import OBJ files directly into SL. This will make it easy when the OBJ file already contains the UV map information, which Amorphium automatically adds for you.

Problem is, the sculpt prim export methoods for Blender aren't yet designed for handling arbitrary/imported meshes, at least not without a lot of manipulation. Still probably worth looking at though.

I haven't DLed Amorphium yet, but could this be a solution?

Get Wings and the exporter (which works great, by the way).

Make a SculpySphere of 64x63 in Wings and export as an .obj.

Import into amorphium and play there, then export to .obj, import into Wings and export as a sculpy tex.

I've been using ZBrush this way and it works great.

I'll have to try that Wings3D trick and see if it works.

I believe being able to export to Blender, and have Blender create/render a UV map from the import is a good solution. I read there are scripters working on that with blender.

Being stuck with a 64x64 point sphere is very limiting to the flow of creation! In Amorphium, I twist, push, and pull endlessly. Worrying about face normals ruins the flow.

I've sent support request to the Amorphium author to make a direct sculpt and texture map export for us residents.

That's exactly what I've been doing Mickey. As soon as more varied and stable exporters are available the field will open up, but for right now Omei's Wings exporter works great and the .obj format is a useful lingua franca for getting a properly formatted mesh in and out of your preferred modelling program to do the fun stuff.

I was able to import the mesh made by Wings3D into Amorphium. It gives the option to import as a mesh or nurbs/tin. I choose mesh. It originally came up really really small and had to find it and zoom in to it.

Attached is a sample screenshot of Amorphium that shows the paint-on features.

It is only using the 64x64 sphere mold to start with, so the chiseled hand is not as edgy. Maybe I should try a 128x128 sphere. =)

This was pretty simple to make in Amorphium. I made a hieghtmap out of the SL hand to demo this. Then I flattened one side of the sphere. Next, I applied the hand like a brush and pulled. Turned it around, flattened again. Turned it around and started to paint. Once painted I turned on the reflectivity to get a preview of what it would look like in SL.

Alas, it was only a demo of the hand... I can't upload it... lol.. don't wanna break TOS

This progam it was definatly worth the the $80.
I sculpt in rl and amorphine is the most taktile tool ive used on pc.
The only isue im having is trying to export the direct paint textures,any tips in that area would be apretiated.

1. Click on menu: File->Export
2. Select a format under Export Textures
3. Select the size of the texture
4. Click Export



If you have more than one object, you'll have to select which object before step 4.

Thanks Dzon
I had got that far, and can generate a mapped texture ok.
I just cant seem to get anything i make in the paint area to export.

Do you use the obj2sculpt converter or Wings3d to get the sculpt map? I've noticed the scaling is different between the programs that import and export OBJ files.

This is what I've been wanting to automate, so one doesn't have to refix or rewarp the textures outside of the modeler if the UV map is already included in the OBJ file.

Ive been using wings ,havent had any succes with obj2sculpt yet, it keeps spitting my obj's back at my face
Wich one is giving better results for you ?

Use Wings. Its fairly user friendly. Blender not so much.

If I start with a mesh created in Amorphium, the uv map is automatically scaled appropriately.

Select the Composer tab:

Delete the first default sphere it creates automatically (right-click on it ->delete)

Right click on Mesh Sphere (left menu)
Click on Synthetic.
Set X to 64
Set Y to 63
Click OK
Create the new sphere (Click->drag in Perspective)

You can also start with a mesh created by Wings3D, but the uv map is not scaled automatically. The Wings3D thread shows how to create the 64x63 mesh. When you import the mesh from Wings3D, scale it up to a factor of 100. Here is Wings3D thread:
/8/20/183764/1.html

That sounds like a great quick tutorial Dzonatas, and Amorphium looks equally user friendly as Wings

But .. Is it right that the demo version doesn't save/export? Or did I manage to corrupt my installation in 1 day?

Oh and another question: Does Amorphium support applying several texture maps (e.g. photographs) on 1 object? Or am I asking for too much now?

Thank you!

You'll have to buy it to get the save & export ability, as those are disabled in the demo.

I'm trying the Amorphium trial.

Text in the dialog boxes is near to illegible, like it is grayed out text in the modern, make inactive options really hard to read as well as looking inactivated style, except that this is how it looks through the whole interface. Is this color scheme the way the interface is designed to look?




The picture above is clearer than the real thing, I suppose as a result of the jpg conversion.

Thats how the interface looks Suezanne.I found the greyed out look a litle disconcerting at first, but you get used to it.

The dialogs still follow the old UI scheme back when Macs were B&W. There has been several changes that make it more Windows like.

Hello...you must speak slowly and simply...I am new at Zbrush. I love it so far, it's great tool. But can you walk me through what you talking about there or have you posted it else where?

Thanks

Lucinda

This thread discusses Omei Turnbull's plugin for exporting sculptie textures from Wings3D:

/8/20/183764/1.html

In order to work properly, you need to start with a sphere made with certain parameters, hence the reference to "SculpySphere of 64x63". Since then, Hypatia Callisto has offered for download some pre-made spheres of the correct type in this thread:

/8/5f/188429/1.html


Basically the idea is, if you start with a properly formatted sphere in Wings3D not only can you export a sculptie texture directly, but you can also export a .OBJ file which can be opened in any number of programs, including Amorphium and Zbrush. Then you can use the more advanced tools in these programs change the sphere into the shape you want, export a new .OBJ file that represents your sculptie prim, import the new .OBJ back into Wings3D, then use Omei's plugin to create a sculptie texture ready for uploading into SL.

So you see, since programs like Zbrush and Amporphium do not have sculptie export plugins available, you use the common, portable format of .OBJ to move your creation back and forth and finally into Wings3D, which is free and *does* have a plugin (also free) thanks to Omei. The main restrictions there are you must start with one of the correctly-formatted spheres, and you cannot perform operations on them in Zbrush which add or remove vertices like cutting or extruding.

I'm far from an expert in this sculptie stuff, but I recently worked through the process with Wings3D and Zbrush so I thought I could summarize it pretty clearly. Hope that helps some.

Amorphium creates the correct spheres to import/export with the need of Wings3D. It is still nive to have a few tools like Wings3D.

With the OBJ in-world importer, there is no need to export to Wings3D from Amorphium or like modelers.

Look at the jira issue VWR-1110 for the source and binary to try the in-world OBJ importer.

Whoever it was that told us about Amorphium....

I hate you...

and love you...

I'm supposed to be a clothes designer... but this program is soooo fun. I can see myself spending hours with this. Now to figure out how I can afford the full version..