ZBrush -> Sculpt... any news?

When Sculpts first came out, all the hype said that a plugin for zBrush was being developed. Well it's been more than 6 months, and I haven't seen anyone who says it's finished yet. I like zBrush for it's ease of making good models, but my current exporting solution is a little bit tedious, and involves using Maya as little more than a converter.

Is there something out there that people are using for zBrush, that I don't know about? I don't "get" Maya at all, and it's wasting tons of time and HD space. I'd really like to get Maya out of the loop without sacrificing output quality.

So, what are people using to go from zBrush to SL?

I use Wings3D, which is freeware and the exporter at
/8/20/183764/1.html

This is a bit tedious too, but may be preferrable to Maya.

Export .obj file from Zbrush. Import .obj file in Wings3D. I usually have to rotate it to get the shape in the right orientation. Export sculptie map .bmp file.

problem is, Ive got the maya process down to about 45 seconds. It's just the incredible amount of wasted space on my HD, since I really don't "get" maya, and have no use for the program besides converting ZBrush obj's to sculpts.

any chance of instructions on how to make a proper sphere? this is the problem, Maya's exporter handles this without an issue.

In ZBrush 3, in the right hand panel you'll see an 'Initialize' tab. Open it up and set the HDivide and VDivide to 32 and 33 respectively.

In ZBrush 2 you'll find the Initialize tab in the Tool menu.


I'm like you, I only use Maya just for converting sculpties. But I love the fact that its convertor can deal with multiple objects. Unlike mine.

does anyone know where I can find an uncorrupted copy of obj2sculpt?

/8/e8/182763/4.html

I've tried it before and it produced corrupt sculpties. I just tried it again and it crashed.

I think we're stuck with monster Maya.

Yeah, Maya is a real uphill climb for me (and I've used a lot of 3d modelling programs, including alias, vertigo, infini-D, sketchup and autoCAD)... unfortunately Blender/Wings has been worse. at least with Maya I have been able to get the sculpts to come out properly, and I can work with zBrush to bake textures as well. I like thinking of sculpts as clay, rather than wire meshes.

I do wish that "Linden Exporter" we were promised, would hurry up and get here. ( http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide#Zbrush_.28Pixologic.29 )

I am having some success with zBrush and then importing the .obj file into Wings and exporting a sculpt map from there. I am however having major issues uploading the sculpt maps into second life and getting pretty crap results. Still working on getting my sculpted prims to be a little less blocky and awful, once I get them into SL!

{edit} heh, a LOT of tweaking of the ztool before exporting, and then a lossless uploader and a really good texture has gone some way to improving the look of my sculpties Tired now...

In my experiments the slickest workflow I have experienced so far is Zbrush
to AC3D using the sculpt map exporter written by AC3D. Which is available on their site. I got great results with edges and other inworld integrity issues using
that exporter. AC3D is a beginning modelers program, it is easy to use and of course somewhat limited compared to the higher end programs, however it is only 75$ after a 30 day fully functioning trial program.

So then when I tried using primitives created and exported from Zbrush, imported them into AC3D and using it primarily for the export relay I got really nice results and it was so quick and easy. No messing with numbers of vertices or anything as compared to the wings sphere issue. It has been awhile and I have been busy with other things but I remember trying a number of different prim types and having them work.
I was even able to use the sculpting tools in Z and was able to import those objects into AC3D and export them quite nicely. The thing you want to watch out for is striking a balance between your detail in Z and number of polygons to export your object as. As it is so easy to get into the millions of poly's with Z. Instead make sure you get all the major features into your sculpt that still show in your shape at the lowest acceptable resolution before export to AC3D.
So instead of trying to export a huge object you can make textures and displacement maps while the object is at high resolution in Z then use those on a lower poly object in your favorite renderer. Then simply upload your sculpt map from AC3D then upload your textures you created on the same object separately and use them on your new inworld sculptie.
Another thing that worked really well with the AC3D exporter was that the textures set very nicely on them even before using other inworld techniques
to perfect them.
Also make sure you are upgraded to Zbrush 3.1 (a free upgrade) if you plan to export displacement maps. Also check out Zapplink it is a method of using photoshop in conjunction with Zbrush 3.1

I hope this helps.