Any Zbrush3 users for sculpties?

Hi everyone ,

I have been trying to get the hang of sculpties but i must say i am failing miserably. I would like to learn to make them but I am just not very program savvy when it comes to wings or blender. I have a great program called Zbrush3 and I wanted to know if anyone uses it to make sculpties and could perhaps send me in the direction of a tutorial written or video'd

Thank you,

Cherise B

I use Zbrush for making sculpties. What exactly are you having problems wth?

I have Zbrush 3 and it is awesome, a very cool program and I use it part of the time to create sculpties.

Every program has its own positives and negatives in regard to sculpted prim
creation. Blender does have a tough learning curve, but Zbrush isn't exactly
a walk in the park either. Certain things are pretty easy but other areas are pretty opaque due to the nature of the interface. Currently I am not aware of
a way to bake sculptie maps from within Zbrush. So what I do is create a 3d object in Z then do my modeling and texturing, (save your texture separately),
then I import that model into blender where I check the uv map for issues
and bake it in blender.

Have you successfully created any sculpted prims yet?

There are some much simpler programs that are specifically designed for sculpted prims such as Rokuro and various others, I checked out Sculptypaint
for the first time recently and was pleasantly surprised, it is pretty powerful
for how simple it is to use and it holds textures well.

Then there are the programs with exporters like wings 3d, AC3D, and of course Maya.

There is a possibility you may want to start with something easier as
injecting Zbrush 3 into your sculptie creation process will take a pretty
thorough understanding of sculpties and the other programs that can work
well with what your trying to do.

If you manage to create some sculpties in other programs, you can save
the sculptie as a Wavefront object then import that into into Zbrush and
texture it there. As it has repeat face and offset similar to the SL inworld tools, you can also paint directly onto your object in Z. Texturing is probably
the coolest thing that Zbrush can contribute to your sculptie, although
you can also model some wild shapes very quickly in Z as well by using
alphas to sculpt your object.
If you ever do learn blender and want to import a model you made in Z then
export it as an object at the lowest subdivision level, it makes it much easier
to correct your uv maps in Blender.

But just to be clear as of this time as far as I know you cannot bake a sculpt
map in Z nor is there an exporter available for Zbrush 3 at this time.

It seems you should be able to bake an rgb map in Z though I have not figured out how yet.

And I hope someone proves me wrong and lets us know how!

For additional info just check the stickies at the top of the Building tips forum page there is one just for sculpted prims.

I want to thank you both for replying to my post. Unfortunately the only sculpties i have made was in rokuro and torturon (sp) lol. But its limited to what you can do with it . Also i have no idea about uvmaps or baking textures onto the sculpties its self I am VERY new to this all . I just hoped maybe zbrush would make it easier for me to sculpt curly strands and such for my hair . I really have zero knowledge of blender or wings so I suppose I better start looking at tutorials and the likes. I just wish there was a crash course in how to make hair strands and hats . Thats all I would probably use sculpties for . maybe other things in the future. Slyvia you say you use zbrush when making your sculpties , could you perhaps tell me how you do that? Infiniview, do you have any tutorials on the use of uvmaps and baking textures? I will look up sculptypaint and see what it has to offer as well as the stickys on sl forum. I just wish i could learn on zbrush because atleast i have a tutorial cd on how to use zbrush3

Any help would be much appreciated.

Hugs,

Cherise B

I think there is a lack of Zbrush sculptie tutorials because there are so many different ways to do it. Also there are not as many people using Zbrush because of its cost, but I love it. Here is how I do it.

I import this sphere into Zbrush:
/8/20/183764/7.html#post1521794

I use Zbrush to shape it. I use move and the deformation tools. You need to avoid adding any polygons. So don't use edgelooping or dividing. When I have the shape I want, I apply smoothing (in deformations) many many times, as many as I can without losing the shape I want. This helps to avoid lumpiness in SL.

Then I save the shape (save tool) and also export as an .obj file. I then import the .obj file into Wings (which is a free program) so I can use Omei Turnbull's sculptie exporter which you can get here:

/8/20/183764/1.html

Curly shapes for hair might be tricky. But I think my method would work well for hats, so I suggest you start with a hat.

I do the texture bake in Zbrush and it is not difficult to do, but it is a bit tricky to describe to you if you are not very familiar with Zbrush. If you get a sculptie to work in Zbrush, ask me how to do the texture bake and I will try to describe it for you.

Ooh , awesome . I have the exporter for wings too so this could prove to be not as hard as i thought . I like to play around in zbrush just because its so smooth and effortless atleast for me . I will try some hat making with your tips . thank you so much its so nice to see someone else uses it . Once I make a few sculpties I will ask about baking on textures.

thank you again

The link you sent for sphere when i download it and try to unzip it says the file is corrupt. . is there another place to download this sphere?

That link is working fine for me. Give it another try.

Your process is similar to mine, Sylvia. Could you maybe shed some light on how to bake the textures in ZBrush? I can paint textures onto the surface of the shapes, but I cannot bake in the lighting.

HI Slyvia

I tried downloading 3 times and each time when i try to unzip it still tells me that the CRC failed and that the file is corrupt . I dont see any other places to get obj files from to put into zbrush . I did play around a bit in wings and Im getting the hang of the interface and where everything is pretty much I just have no idea how to make my touch gentle so that I am not caving in sides of sculpties lol . Also not sure I am understanding how to select certain areas without touching others but I will continue to look in to it later today after work. I'm making some progress so I dont want to stop now.

It's a bit of a pain. But it involves the Projection Master. I've not used the program for quite some time. But if I remember correctly, it goes something like this:

Hit the Projectiion Master button. This will drop the object onto the 2.5D canvas. Hit the Projection Master button again to "pick up" your object (convert back to 3D) and you should see the option to pick up the lighting. Unfortunately, it'll only pick up the lighting and detail on just one side of your object. So you then have to spin your object 180 degrees and do the same again to light the other side.

After doing the above, you'll notice that there's nasty seams down the sides of your object where the lighting couldn't be taken.

Basically, it's all very messy. But that's ZBrush for you.

Cherise,

I'm having all kinds of problems with attachments on this forum lately. Even jpg attachments show as corrupted blocky areas of jumbled colors.

I can't unzip that file either. After using 3 browsers to d/l the file and 2 different zip utilities, both tell me the zip file is corrupt.

I do have the 6463sphere.obj file (I don't remember where I got it from) and I'm attaching it here in the slim chance that the forum's servers will be more kind to it, being more recently uploaded.

Here's the same sphere file on an outside server:
http://www.mediafire.com/?6m9nmljmyd1

Maybe someone can upload both obj and uvs on mediafire.com or somewhere else. I think the corrupt attachments is a server issue.

As far as sculpties, baking textures, zbrush and SL:

I found a couple of tutorials on this site:
http://www.houseoftutorials.com/page2.html
(scroll all the way down to see them)

He has also posted two SL avatars with grouped uv maps for zbrush use - Thank you Mr Welsh! Unfortunately he's going too fast for a beginner like me and I haven't yet been able to duplicate his steps. I think he clicks on buttons or has set settings he assumes the viewer would know about to do the same thing on their own.

If anyone is able to create a displacement map from the female head as it's shown on the first video please let us know - when I click on "create displacement map" nothing happens. I'm using the demo of zbrush 3.1 and it has a couple more buttons in the displacement map creation area which may be the cause of why I can't the same results as him (he's using an older version of zbrush on the video).

I've found only winrar (one application I use to deal with zips) was able to open the sphere zip file. Any other application I tried (winzip, windows unzipper, pkunzip) wouldn't work. Not sure what the deal is, but there's my 2 cents.

Also, anyone willing to talk to me privately about texture baking I'd really appreciate it. I just can't get the darn thing to work. Pretty familiar with zbrush. Basically need to apply a handmade texture to the sculpty and then bake in the shadows to that texture. I've tried everything and it's not functioning properly for me (I must be an idiot).

If you contact me inworld anytime between 3:30 SLT and 8:00 SLT I can provide you the insides of that zip file for anyone having trouble unzipping it.

Ok, you asked for it. Here is a ZBrush texture bake tutorial.
http://www.throughlinedesign.com/ZbrushBakeTut/page1.html

Also I hope the OP was able to get Hypatia's sphere. The file unzips fine for me, but I am on a Mac.

I used ZBrush generated spheres. What makes you use an imported one?. Doesn't Wings3D like them?.

Sylvia,

Thank you so much!

First time that a zbrush tutorial worked as expected!

I just want to thank everyone participating in this thread. Its really helpful and relieving to know others use zbrush too and we can all discuss it. I see many tutorials for wings3d, blender, maya and so forth and I just wondered why no one is using Zbrush for sculpties. to me 2.5d is much easier for me to deal with then 3d form . I guess cause I have no knowledge of 3d programs lol. Well thank you for the tutorials , the downloads and discussions. Hopefully you all wont mind if one day I IM you in game to maybe pick your brain abit .

*HUGS*

Cherise B.

Sylvia- Thank you and I will try to run through your tutorial. I'll let you know the results- taht way you can say if it works/doesn't on a PC running 3.1.

So glad to finally see some tutorials on Zbrush!
I just got a copy (running 3.1 on a Mac with Parallels/Windows XP) and it sure does have a tough learning curve if you're new to 3D.

The Welsh tutorials are great, but yes some things I thought might have been skipped over or just went fast.
I also had the same problem of not having anything happen when I clicked on "create displacement map". Anyone know why that would happen?

Also I couldn't get Hipatia's sphere to unzip either I'm at work right now but thanks to whoever put it up there again on a different server, I hope it will work this time!
As for creating a sphere within Zbrush, can we do that and make sure it has the right amount of vertices?
I have looked but don't see anything about vertices mentioned, so what should we be looking for in terms of resolution or size of the object? Would the cube and cylinder 3D objects export out okay as object files that wings can turn into sculpties too? Or do we absolutely have to start with a sphere?

Thanks in advance for all the help! I do wish there were more tutorials for making SL sculpties in Zbrush!

When you first create a sphere you should see 'Initialize' in the panel on the right hand side. Click on 'Initialize' and it will open to reveal the "HDivide" and "VDivide" of the sphere. Set these to 32 and 33 respectively.

The cool thing about Zbrush is that a lot of its starting shapes have the same mesh and UV layout of a sphere. So yes, a Zbrush cube will convert into a sculpty just fine.


I've never tried converting a zbrush object into a sculpty using Wings. I used Maya to convert my sculpties. If the wings conversion fails then I suggest you try the obj2sculpt converter that can be found over here:

/8/e8/182763/1.html#post1505114

Initializing a sphere at 32 and 33 gives an unsupported mesh size when turning the .obj file into the sculptie map in Wings. It works with 31 and 32 or 63 and 64. I could not get this initialze to work for a cube in ZBrush 2 as it won't accept abritrary odd numbers for these parameters but changes it to 30 or 28.

I have been using a 63 by 64 sphere in zbrush which gives more polygons to work with and gives smoother shapes, but only the 32 by 32 vertices are actually used by the sculptie, so the 31x32 sphere is perhaps going to be more accuarte to what you actually get on the sculptie in SL.

Ah yes, I remember now!. I've gone over this issue before when Omei first released the Wings3D sculpty convertor. Omei was mapping the vertices directly to a 32x32 bitmap and so his exporter insisted on you using a 32x31 sphere (31 rows=32 vertices vertically). This meant that the Wings3D sculpties were actually missing a row when taken into SL. Because a sculpty sphere actually has 32 rows or 33 vertices vertically (including poles).

Thank you thank you thank you!
I always wondered where in the world I can set the vertices!

Very cool.

But, now, if I don't have Maya, is there any way I could use a cube in Zbrush and export it with something else as a sculpty since Wings won't accept the zbrush cube? Or do I just absolutely have to start with a sphere?

Scwheet! Thanks so much Sylvia. I had almost figured it out on my own and your tutorial cleared it all up for me.

ZBrush is awesome, but it sure can be confusing sometimes.

I'd like to know that myself. In the meantime, Zbrush sculpting tools are awesome and I can do a lot with that sphere.