Forget Meshmixer !! Groups and Smoothing from Wings3d!!

[justadeletedguy]

I am such a Dummy!! I've been playin with and braggin up Wings3d for Years, and I never stumbled upon the coolest stuff until today!! Wings3d will build Group loops similar to Zbrush that stay Quad-mesh and easily be selected even after import/export from Sculptris! And since they stay loops, when over extruded, the edge-rings can be easily selected and subdivided as needed, serving the same purpose as dynamesh. There's no magic Go-wings, you have to import/export to jump between applications, but you can build, sculpt, build, sculpt, and stay all quad-mesh and leave your Group-loops easily selectable. I'll do a video after I get a little better at it, as I'm having to re-learn how to work in Wings3d, but I'll give you a hint .... Inset, Tweak, select the new edge-ring, connect, tweak again! I never really used or understood the reason for Tweak in Wings3d until today...

[justadeletedguy]

... I also worked out a nice "Mat" image for Wings3d Environment Map shader. This turntable was done in Wings3d.




To Use this you must replace the "grandcanyon.png" image in the c:\install-path\wings3d_1.4.1\lib\wings-1.4.1\textures\ Folder. Rename that one if you want to keep it. Notice it's slightly different from the Sculptris Material images, Wings3d uses the whole square and folds them differently, but this one works and is a fairly good template.

[justadeletedguy]

Here's a short video I did showing what I'm doing. I hope the info is helpful to some of you, I'm having a blast with it !!
I use the Manifoldlab version of Wings3d that was released in July, There's a newer one but it had some bugs for me.

[justadeletedguy]

Here's one I'm still workin on. I Sculpted the body base in Sculptris, reworked the details in Wings3d, then went back to Sculptris for paint. Then I built the wheel in Wings3d, and exported to Trackmania using Old Blender 2.48 I think ... A Sculptris model in a Game !!!! Wooo ....

And here's the reflective Mat if anyone wants it, really seems to work nice !!

[justadeletedguy]

Just a little Wip ... My take on the Caped Crusader .... Quad mesh from Wings3d .. Sculpted in Sculptris.. back to Wings3d for extrudes and parts... the cape I did in Blender using cloth sim ... And I'll eventually get back to Sculptris to Paint Him.

[Serek]

You could easily make the bat-logo with a stretched circle, an oval, and crafting holes with smaller circles shapes here and there.

Quick and cheap example with SketchUp

[michalis]

@serek
Sketchup yeah, now try to import it... I don't dare to look into this topology. Impossible to even retopo it. Such sharp edges...
Better import an image of the logo as background and start adding quads manually. Extrude. Add some loops to keep sharp edges, subdivide.
Blender may has some hard learning curve but becomes very handy soon. A clean app. My suggestion to justadeletedguy too. If you gonna sculpt on traditional box modeling bases then learn blender. Sculpt there, works better than sculptris.

[Serek]

LOL sketchup meshes are useless! I used it just for the example while keeping wings3d in mind, doesn't it have some boolean properties?

[michalis]

SU meshes are useless, it seems so but they aren't really.
There're two useful free ruby plugins and a simple operation in blender that fixes them
1. remove inner faces (kills non manifolds)
2. free obj exporter
3. Optional, Subdivide and Smooth (this isn't free but makes nice loops)
In blender, remove doubles. Welds vertices

An example, SketchUp (the grid) and Sculptris for multiply-symmetry trick and rotate for the artifacts.

[Serek]

Thanks, Michalis. I'll try it later.

[K.R.I.S]

That car model is the lumpiest, worse mesh I've seen. You can't be serious that it's a good model? I agree with your enthusiasm and your willingness to share, but shouldn't you work on your models a little more before trying to 'train' others. If don't want a bunch of artists who create lumpy, bumpy and warped models, then you may need to rework those models before you teach someone else. I think you have lots of potential; just work on your stuff some more.

[justadeletedguy]

Ya mean like this ?


As far as the Car, It's lumpy because Sculptris doesn't do Smoothing. Max, Blender, and even Wings3d have auto-smoothing that is usually set by the angle. You're right it doesn't quite display right in Sculptris.

[K.R.I.S]

That logo looks like a nice mesh, although the edges look really, really too sharp. Good job though.

As for hard surface and smoothing in Sculptris, you're right; it doesn't do it very well, but I've managed to make it work in some cases. You just have to fiddle with it for a bit between the flatten and smooth brush.

[justadeletedguy]

The Smoothing I'm talking about is an option in many other 3d-apps . It allows the user to choose which edges should be displayed as hard or soft. While it defines the edges, it really has nothing to do with the mesh, but is just more of a display option .... Sculptris just doesn't have this, and tries to display all edges as smooth, and can make quad meshes look chunky.