I've made a Sculptris 3D Conexion Profile

[sbmongoose]

I've made a Sculptris 3D Conexion profile. It's for Space Navigator, so other controllers with more buttons I wouldn't know how to set as I don't have one. It's certainly not perfect, but I hope it is a useful starting point for people. The major issue with it is that you can't sculpt at the same time as "navigating", and to make sure your Wacom Pen isn't near the tablet as you are navigating as it causes conflicts.

Please feel free to download it here if it's any use to you all...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28915093/Sculptris.xml

If anyone makes any tweaks that improve it, please repost for all to get the benefit.

Best Regards
Simon

p.s. Can't wait for Alpha 6 and ZBrush 4 R2. I'm so hoping that they will add native 3D Connexion support. If Dr Peter and the other geniouses at Pixo wan't to send me advanced copies to test I'd be more than happy to

[wozabee]

I've been on the SpaceNavigator/sculpting bandwagon for 2 years now. Mine has absolutely become a part of me whilst constantly using Sketchup. Finally, recently - after someone released a sculpting plug-in for Sketchup (Artisan) - Ivé witnessed first hand how nice it really is to zoom around and over a sculpt "Death-Star-Trench" style, sculpting AS I move! Feels sooo immersive it's illegal!

I'll have to see if I can record and post a short video of actually doing this. Just gesticulating my arms around wildly in the air, and saying "it feels great" simply won't convey it terribly accurately.

My first question is (me being a little bit thick on this part of things):
WHERE do I drop this XML file? (I've tried it almost everywhere but round the S-bend).

Well, that's my ONLY question really...
...except, I DID want to shout out (well, a little bit) that getting this to work could be the COOLEST and most worthwhile achievement this year!

So... if you KNOW your code, or you know someone's great-grandmother's aunt who might have the know-how, and you have some imagination, and you want to make an historical DIFFERENCE (shh, calm down now Woz...), please think about helping Simon here to get this great thing done.

Thanks guys,

Woz

[sbmongoose]

Hi Woz,

You need to have the latest 3D Connexion driver from their website (at least 10 Beta 10) http://www.3dconnexion.com/index.php?id=60
Then from the new 3D Connexion control panel you can click Manage Profiles to load and save profiles. The biggest issue with the current driver implementation is that you can't sculpt and navigate at the same time. You will need to make sure that you are not using your mouse/pen at the same moment as the 3D Connexion device.
Hope this helps.

Best Regards

Simon

[wozabee]

thanks Simon,
yes, as it happens i loaded that driver just a few days ago,
I'll give it a go.

I'm quite aware of the tablet conflict issue, but at least you made a start on this.

PLEASE someone out there get on board and help. I can't stress enough how cool this may turn out to be when working fluidly!

Woz.

[wozabee]

I think this now lies with the developer(s).

This works fine for the way that it's been made to get something working at all.

I can see that the navigator is basically behaving like the mouse, by performing the "click" and moving the cursor appropriately, it rotates the sphere.

To get rid of the troublesome conflict that comes into play when one uses the tablet (or even the mouse), the interface needs to bypass this way of relating the navigators movements to sculptris.

I imagine whoever works this out will no doubt have most of the answer to using the SpaceNavigator with Zbrush also!

C'mon!!

Please, somebody do some REALLY hard thinking (...just a short burst might do it. Really).

This will honestly be a momentous breakthrough in digital sculpting when it works, folks.

Remember... Nobody is REQUESTING this nifty function, because they're not yet aware of it, or what benifit they'll get from it... Bit of a "Catch 22" I'd say.

Off m'soapbox for this month.

Cheers again,

Woz.