ZSculpty

Help! I tried the Zsculpty plugin this morning but the textures I exported came out blank - when I opened them in Photoshop they were just white documents.
What did I do wrong?
I had the polypaint colorize button activated...

Hi Violaine, just a quick check for the obvious first. Did you create a texture in Zbrush? In other words, when you were done polypainting, did you click Col>Txr? If you successfully create a texture, the texture window in the texture palette (on the left side above the colour picker) will display the texture. Zsculpty will export the currently selected texture from the texture palette.

If so, and the exported texture was still blank, I'm at a loss. Perhaps Vlad or some other Zbrush guru might have some thoughts.

I did not check the col/texture button because I thought Zsculpty was supposed to change the polypaint to textures automatically. It's a multiple piece item and if I checked col / text then it would apply the texture of the one piece selected to all the pieces and mess it up, right?
Also I was using a matcap material for the base color, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

Zsculpty exports the current texture of the Ztool (I'm fairly certain--I'm on the road and my lappie can't run Zbrush *sniff* or I'd double check)

No biggie, though. Go to the subtool menu, select the subtool whose texture you wish to export, col>txr, export. Then do the same for all the other subtools.

Remember that a Ztool can only have one texture at a time. You can't have a different texture for each subtool, you can only have different colours.

If you then modify the texture in Photoshop or what have you, and you wish to see it on your Ztool, turn off the visibility on all the subtools except the one for which you wish to apply the texture, which should be the active subtool. Then import the texture and make it the colour for that ztool via txr>col

Regarding matcap materials, the main difference between them and the others is that they don't respond to light but have their own shading. I like working textures in matcap white, myself, as it gives me a fairly good idea of what the texture will look like in SecondLife (i.e. without adding shadows or material). If you wish to see what different lighting sources would do to the object, I'd recommend fast shader. Perhaps someone who is good at modifying materials could chime in here, personally I stick to the defaults, at least for SL use.

Remember that lighting and material will NOT be incorporated in your exported texture unless you use projection master to bake them into the texture.

Hope all that makes sense!

The zSculpty plugin should be exporting the Polypaint colors as a texture, rather than the currently applied texture.

Pretty sure that zSculpty doesn't deal with Materials, they are not the same as the Color of the polygons. To get a texture from your Material you would prolly need to use something like the Material Baker plugin.

Not sure if there is an easy way to get the Material as Poly Colors. Guess you could use material baker on the individual parts of your subtool to create a texture for each part. applying a texture to an object will not change the colors of the Polygons so no worry about messing those up.

One other thing that you can try is to merge all of your subtools, PolyPaint them as one object, then Divide them into their original parts, then do COL>TXR to get a texture for each part of the subtool. Makes it easier to paint all of the pieces at once.

One of these days I will be making a tutorial about texturing and subtools, just need to find the time. Plus, I am still learning about these techniques myself.

Gah. I am sorry! Caught passing bad information. So the Zsculpty does the col>txr, then exports, I take it? I am guessing the texture would be created from the active subtool.

That is what I get for trying to answer without the program at hand.

And now to correct my babbling about projection master, materials will not bake to the texture map, they alter the materials map, which is an entirely different thing and won't be readily exportable as a texture. Shading can be baked to the texture map using projection master, and you can do some basic things with lighting and reflectivity that will transfer to the texture map.

Here's the how to on that:
http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Projection_Master#About_Projection_Master

I thought that zSculpty just exported the texture, too, until 2k enlightened me on another forum post. Usually I export the texture separately so I never noticed that it actually takes take the Poly colors and creates a new texture.

Where can we find that?

You can get Sculpty Maker, and related tools on my website. There are also some tutorial videos about how to use it along with zBrush.

http://www.shiny-life.com/sculpty-maker/

The folder that Zsculpty uses to save the exported sculpties is NOT there on my computer (it used to be, but somehow, it is gone). I have no idea where the exported files are being saved because the folder is not there at all.
Weird.
So I was wondering..is there a way to change where the sculpties are saved to? I was kind of wondering this even before I noticed this problem because I save all my files in a single folder, and would love to see it export them into THAT folder.

It seems to install and I get the button, but when export it says
"Specified Execute File cannot be found"
BUT, it exports an .obj file, .mtl file, and a .bmp.... the .bmp seems to be the texure and not a sculpt map.
I'm guessing i'm out of luck, but had to check.
Thanks.

ZSculpty doesn't work with oblong sculpts, does it?

I haven't tried Zsculpty with oblongs, but SculptyMaker handles them well enough so you can create oblong sculpts with Zbrush.

There is a separate Zsculpty for oblongs. It has some flaws, as far as I can tell. Merged objects (subtools merged) will not export. It also treats non-oblong objects as oblongs sometimes.

http://shiny-life.com/ZSculpty-Oblong.zip

I wasn't aware that Sculpty Maker exported oblongs - is that v2.51? Any tricks to that??

It's Sculpty Maker version 2.4. Thanks Kala for the Zsculpty link-- I remember seeing that now, but I rarely use Zsculpty (I prefer Sculpty Maker because I can control the centre point better with it).

Ponk Bing posted the various oblong parameters that work with Zbrush a bit ago:

So if sculpty maker v2.4 works on oblongs, then does sculpty maker v2.51 not work? (was it a feature that was removed?) I thought I tested sculpty maker v2.51 on the oblongs I was having problems with and I think it failed. I will test it again. SculptyMaker would be a lot easier to use because I'm going back and forth between Zsculpty and Zsculpty oblong due to the problems in the oblong version, but Sculptymaker would go around that

I honestly don't know, Kala. Since 2.4 was working for me, I never updated.

I wish 2K were still hanging about on the forums, but I think he got a bit burnt out from whiny people complaining about freeware

Ok, good to know. It quite possibly is something I did wrong and sculptymaker 2.5 will work. I'm glad 2k emerged from hiding long enough to give us an oblong version Hope it didn't sound like I was whining, I am really grateful to have these tools!

No, you don't sound like you're whining at all! And 2K is a really nice fellow who helped me a LOT when I was getting started with Zbrush.

Things like this were what drove him into hiding in his tree (as he put it):

Hello,

First off, I have a MacBook Pro. (I am aware the Sculpty -Maker- is for PC only...)

I downloaded ZSculpty and put the entire folder in my ZPlug directory folder...(not sure if that was correct, but I'm thinking it was since the "Sculpty" tab appeared in my tools palette.)

I make a 32x33 sphere, sculpt on it to test, and press the "Export" button under the "Sculpty" tab....and then a pop-up comes up saying the following:

"ZScript Note: Specified execute-file could not be found.

[FileExecute,ZSculpty.dll,Make128]"

Sooo...I have no idea what THAT means. Any help would be appreciated, if I did something wrong, or if ZSculpty isn't compatible with Mac's somehow...then let me know. I did check the Sculpty Maps folder and nothing was in there. So I'm stuck.

Thanks in advance.

Yep, PC only - Macs can't use DLLs.

Does anyone have a copy of the last version of the zsculpt plugin that supports oblongs? I was hosting it for a time, but it fell off the internet and I don't have it at all anymore.

I think Vlad is still hosting it on his page. It's not linked in on any page (that I know of)

Here it is:
http://shiny-life.com/ZSculpty-Oblong.zip

Thanks very much

Anyone else having issues with Sculpty Rezzer?
It does not apply the sculpt map to the object it creates.
There are no instructions on how to put the object together.

Ok found a tutorial and figured it out.
Problem solved.