Sculpted Shoe

Hi Does anyone know of a good tutorial anywhere on the beginnings of making sculpted shoes. I simply dont know where to start. I have no 3D experience but I am in the process of learning and about to embark upon a 3d studio max college course within the next few weeks. I already can make prims shoes but really would like to make the transition to sculpties. I have experimented with wings, maya and blender, but I dont have the faintest idea how to even begin to make my sphere look like a shoe lol....please any help or advice would really be appreciated )

The short answer is to download the avatar meshes from:

http://secondlife.com/community/avatar.php

You can then import ( .obj for blender) the mesh and use it as a guide for modeling your shoe. Then it's "simply" a case of moving the vertice around to get the shoe shape you want. Keeping each face about the same size will generally give better results. Using a grid like http://dominodesigns.info/images/sculptie_grid.png can help you to see the LOD points if you aren't using multires or similiar techniques.

Slightly longer answer

As above, but when modeling the shoe you'll want to consider texturing. Make it easier by ensuring the edges between vertice line up with where the materials change on the shoe.

Even longer answer

As above but consider the ankle joint. Using two sculpties ( one attached to foot, one attached to shin ) and modeling so that they make a single "boot" with the joint on the ankle can avoid problems like the back of the shoe going into the leg mesh when the avatar points their toes.

Blender Tutorials etc:

If you are going to try with Blender, make sure you have the basics of using it down first. http://blenderunderground.com has a good introductory tutorial series. And /8/60/203571/1.html has scripts and videos that are specific to sculpties.

Domino thanks so much for your response......Im gonna get on this straight away!!!! Your my hero...ive been scratching my head for ages lol!!!