Sculpty Maker V1.5

No, not V1.5!. It's now been updated to V2.5

*** Sculpty Maker V2.5 ****

Description:

Sculpty Maker converts ZBrush object files into sculptmaps.

Features:

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Converts single and multipart meshes into sculptmaps for later reassembling in Second Life using my freely available 'Sculpty Rezzer'.

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Comes with an option to preserve an off-centered axis which is intended for animation and rotating objects around a non-central axis. Ya know, like doors, legs etc.

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Applies a smoothing filter to large sculptmaps (128x128 and greater) in order to help them withstand SL's JPEG compression.


Usage and tips:

To create a multipart mesh in ZBrush I would recommend the 'SubTool Master' plugin which can be downloaded from here:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=057154

SubTool Master has the ability to merge multiple subtools into a single mesh which can then be exported as a single .obj file.

Assembling your object in SL:

After converting your exported .obj file into sculptmaps using Sculpty Maker you may then upload the sculptmaps into Second Life and drop them all into Sculpty Rezzer's contents folder, then simply click on Sculpty Rezzer and watch it do its thing.

"Sculpty Rezzer? WTF?"

Sculpty Rezzer:

Sculpty Rezzer is a scripted SL object that rezzes single or multiple sculpties with the correct position, scale and even prim type. Yes, it's a good thing!... Obviously, if you're only dealing with single sculpty objects then you can just ignore Sculpty Rezzer and set the scale and sculpty type yourself.


Vlad Bjornson has kindly offered to host my latest converters over here:

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

Vlad's site also has lots of useful info and tutorials relating to ZBrush and sculpties.

Thank you so much for this! That will really help animation, not just for sculptmap changes, but for things such as wings, ears, doors, what have you.

OMG, 2K, you have just saved my life! Woo! Can't wait to try this.

I've found it so hard to start with 1000 polys; starting with an 8x9 will just make my whole month.

And it works like a charm! I made a quick and nasty model in about 1/10 the time it's been taking me up til now, subdivided twice, and your converter processed it perfectly. I didn't bother adding wrinkles etc., but I can go back to ZBrush and do that at my leisure -- that's the easy (and fun) part. Now that I can control my mesh, the sculpty is clean and much easier to texture, although I'll still have to be more careful with the sides, where my poles are hidden. And I have a little seam. Still, this is great compared to what I was getting before. A couple quick shots:

Brilliant!

Sir, today you win ALL the internets. No, really, you deserve them.


Those are some nice sheets Ricky. Glad to see you stuck with it and got some community support to boot.

Thanks, Pygora. This forum has really taught me a lot in the past few days. Gotta love SL.

Now to add some wrinkles and stuff.

this and the lossles bug fixed today , must be christmass
tysvm Suisei.

Hey 2k,

I never got around to trying this one, and I dont remember which approach this one took
is this a exporter plug in?

Do you have more contextual info?

It's a small application and is pretty self explanatory. Just select an .obj file and hit the 'Make Sculpty' button and the created sculptmap is saved to the same folder where the .obj file resides.

So converting a file named Monkey.obj will create a sculptmap named Monkey.bmp that gets stored within the same folder.

BTW:

I've just uploaded a new version with a bug fix. The converter was crashing after hitting the 'Make Sculpty' button for a 2nd time.

Yay! I suck at programming.

/me does a happy little dance.

Thanks 2k! Gonna go try it out right now.

Okay, I've just gone through all the ZBrush shapes and I managed to get them all into Second Life. Even that freaky looking cog/chinese star thing!

Some shapes will require that you use the plane topology and others a cylinder. You can even set the Coverage on the tools and convert those. When setting Coverage, if the resulting sculptmap has a black line running down it, this means that an extra column of verts is needed. So rather than the usual 32x33, use a 33x33 object instead.

I'm using the RC viewer at the moment because it now lets us specify the sculpty topology via the interface, rather than having to run a script.

Cool. Glad that the torus is working now. it was the only one I wasnt able to use properly with the old version of your SculptyMaker. Anyone interested in using the zBrush primitive shapes for sculpties might be interested in this tutorial I finished a few days ago:

http://www.shiny-life.com/2008/05/19/using-zbrush-primitives-for-sculpted-prims/

That gear primitive is actually pretty spiffy. Great for all sorts of mechanic things and also a good starting point for flowery shapes.

When working with the torus the HDivide and VDivide should be set to 32x32. This is because the mesh of a torus wraps around in both directions.

To help it all make sense:

A plane is 33x33 because either side of mesh doesn't wrap around to meet the other side.

A sphere, cube and cylinder should be 32x33 because the mesh wraps just horizontally.

A torus is 32x32 because the mesh wraps both horizontally and vertically.

Hullo 2K, I'm confused about how to do the axis thing. What do you mean by the preview window? All I see is the one line, click here to make a sculpty thing.

Sorry, I meant the Preview window in ZBrush.

The preview panel is just above the 'Deformation' options.

Talking of deformations - you can also set the centre axis or pivot point by adjusting the 'Offset' in the Deformation panel. You can then verify the axis change by peeking into the Preview panel where you'll see a red cross that represents the axis.

But a more direct approach would be to just open the Preview panel and drag the red cross to your ideal position.

Whats the bannanas check box do 2k?

It adds balance to the interface.


I bet your Monkey God would enable the Bananas option.

Drat. I was making a bird leg, recentered the X over the top of the leg (double checked from all angles), stored it, then exported as an obj file, then used Sculpty Maker to create the BMP (unchecked the "center" box, and left bananas unchecked as well, not being named Dorothy, an OAP or in need of shaving thank you very much )

It DID change the pivot point, but not precisely where it was in the preview, as you can see:



Am I doing something wrong?

That's just quackers.

Did you try uploading it into SL to see if it was wonky there too?.

I just tested a leg and it worked fine. The only thing that wasn't right was the rotation of the leg. So I went back to the preview window and rotated it to the correct orientation while holding down shift (shift locks it to the nearest 90 degree) and then hit Store.

Yes, still wonky in SL. I'll try again and see what happens

Edit: I reimported the OBJ file, recentered the X in the preview window, stored, then exported as a new OBJ. But it reverted to the same rotation point as above. I reinstalled Sculpty Maker just to check, but it didn't make a difference

You're welcome to gimme your leg and I'll have a play with it.

(Only in SL do I get to say things like that and get away with it. I <3 SL)

Thank you I'll send you the BMP inworld, if you want the object file and you have an email, I could send it to you.

I'm wondering if it is being thrown off by the leg--the leg is very low vertice, as I kept most of them on the foot for detailing purposes. So perhaps it doesn't register as a place the center point could be in? Just guessing wildly.

alrighty, i'm clearly doing something wrong. every single .obj i try to convert, i get the "Oops! Lacking the required number of vertices" error. I'm trying with spheres created in both Wings and AC3D with every combination of sizes you recommend, and also with axis swapping on export as an alternative.

is the program dependant on being in a certain location? is there something specific about the way different programs export .obj's that i can work around?

thanks for any enlightenment you can provide

Hiya Jamma,

If I remember correctly - Wings objects don't have a UV map. I'm not sure about AC3D, but if I get chance later then I'll check it out!.

If possible, could you attach a simple AC3D sphere so I can take a peek at it?

My converter was originally made with Zbrush in mind and so I've only ever tested it on Zbrush .obj files. All the other modeling programs have their own converter and so I've always assumed that non-zbrush users wouldn't bother with mine. Although now that it has the ability to preserve an off-centered axis I can see how some people may be tempted by it. I better get my act together!