SJM > Sculptris UI (Proposal)

[holyenigma74]

Texturing Tab

5. Texture Stencil (Paint over a projected texture stencil on your model that can be scaled, moved, rotated}

this should also be in the Sculpting tab as well so you can do real dragon scales onto the mesh with geometry.

then you would be able to bake out a normal map that is applied
to a lowerpoly model that was "quick retopoed" etc..
(or if you tweak it in the "Tweak tab" maybe it would even have good enough edge flow for animations)

then you can also use a bumpmap on that model as well for even extra detail.

having "both" types is nice, alpha brushes and the screen overlay,
overlay is alot faster and more accurate IMHO for large areas.
and just over all seems better as you can see directly what its going to look like before you even do it.

that style mixed with "sculpt layers" like mudbox would be pretty neat :P

[SeanJM]

It does imply a bit of guilt in this matter as I am expressing a bit fuller opinions on a UI that I have seen, but haven't spent as much time understanding...

I actually have a shirt that talks about something very similar...lol.

I suggest you look closely at it, since there are subtleties in it that make it very user friendly.

I know what you mean on getting some motivation with new ideas being shown visually though. I've worked on a few UI's, though nothing that needed to be as detailed in some ways. I am in no way an expert in their creation.

But you are a user and as user you have expertise that is valuable.

Had a few things to do, but I came up with a simple kind of image to show you what I meant with the crease aligning the edges of the triangles along the brush stroke. I could have made it more detailed, but I think this should sort of explain it.

This is a good behavior.

this should also be in the Sculpting tab as well so you can do real dragon scales onto the mesh with geometry.

then you would be able to bake out a normal map that is applied
to a lowerpoly model that was "quick retopoed" etc..
(or if you tweak it in the "Tweak tab" maybe it would even have good enough edge flow for animations)

then you can also use a bumpmap on that model as well for even extra detail.

having "both" types is nice, alpha brushes and the screen overlay,
overlay is alot faster and more accurate IMHO for large areas.
and just over all seems better as you can see directly what its going to look like before you even do it.

that style mixed with "sculpt layers" like mudbox would be pretty neat :P

I am going to add the Alpha panel next, :-)

For layers to work, it would be probably easy to make it like this; so matter what you do the mesh is tesselated, and when you turn on the layer, it just increase the push/pull for that layer.

Or, there's a construction history that includes the tessellation and the push and pull--I think both are possible. One is dependent on Sculptris projects have construction history (which I would love, since it's non-destructive, and I am all about non-destructive editing--and you should be able to cache your history instead of deleting it like in Maya, XSI, so that you can always load it and access the whole thing if you wanted to.)

[justadeletedguy]

This is where most of you seem to fail to realize the magic of Sculptris. PAINT your scales on in PAINT MODE. There's no need to bake or use that much Geometry. You can get all the smaller details in Paint Mode. YOU CAN PAINT BUMPS. YOU CAN PAINT THE NORMAL MAP. YOU CAN IMPORT A MASK. Everything you're asking for is already there, it's just in Paint Mode!!!!!!

[SeanJM]

This is where most of you seem to fail to realize the magic of Sculptris. PAINT your scales on in PAINT MODE. There's no need to bake or use that much Geometry. You can get all the smaller details in Paint Mode. YOU CAN PAINT BUMPS. YOU CAN PAINT THE NORMAL MAP. YOU CAN IMPORT A MASK. Everything you're asking for is already there, it's just in Paint Mode!!!!!!

I can tell you this, look at 3D modeled scales vs textured scales and you'll see the difference is night and day, :-)

[holyenigma74]

Bump map cannot effect the silhouette.
its fake depth not real.. Make really deep bumpmap cracks on a sphere look at the silhouette
its still a perfect circle(no deformations of the silhouette)

yes, you can save the normal map from Sculptris
It would be cool however if it had the Stencils like this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPKHaCLe-pI

[SeanJM]

Bump map cannot effect the silhouette.
its fake depth not real.. Make really deep bumpmap cracks on a sphere look at the silhouette
its still a perfect circle(no deformations of the silhouette)

yes, you can save the normal map from Sculptris
It would be cool however if it had the Stencils like this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPKHaCLe-pI

It does work like that, ;-) -- take a close look at the controls

[justadeletedguy]

Or you could just do it in Sculptris like this ... http://youtu.be/_kal179Up4c and NOT pay any money !!!

[holyenigma74]

a Bump map cant deform the geometry.
Made with Blender Dynotopo
rendered with MicroRender

[justadeletedguy]

You're right, No a bump map cannot. But there's no reason to need a Million Polygons when you can paint a Bump Map either. Yes, setting up to do it this way takes time, but no more time than it takes to Retopo and Bake. Plus you stay in control of the Polycount right from the start, you can keep good edgeflow for animation, even geometry for nice AO's, and when you UV by hand you waste a lot less Map space making 2048 plenty big enough. How can you guys have so much imagination, working on this Proposal, modeling in Sculptris and other various apps, and yet have none when it comes down to using all these free apps together ???

[michalis]

Millions or billions of poly isn't a renderers problem. Most engines can render it fast. Cycles can do it rapidly.
However, it's a problem in the viewport. Displacement modifiers will work like this. A base cage for previewing, a heavily subdivided mesh in the render engine.
Even better, we have some nice micro displacements algorithms around like the famous pixar renderman solution.

The question is: Painted bumps displacements Vs sculpted bumps, adopted via baking methods. I vote for the second. Unfortunately.
If it's about pores only, the OK, paint these please.

[justadeletedguy]

Blender won't handle Millions of polygons well, and Sculptris certainly doesn't. Sculptris is 32bit GPU software, it doesn't run on many hardware configurations, and it gets you're computer hot if you go into that much detail. And Blender Cycle Renderer isn't used in any Games. I suppose if your looking to 3D Print your creations then you need that much detail in your Mesh. But if your just looking for a Render, you may as well use the bump maps, use the lighting and material tricks. That's why they made them, more realism without all the klunky geometry.

[SeanJM]

Keep on topic guys, thank you.

[michalis]

Keep on topic. Right.
Better find another topic, like one about the future of sculptris. If there is any.

[justadeletedguy]

By the way, Blender Cycles won't use Normal Maps, But it does Bump Maps (black and white version) just fine! Sculptris will export bump maps, they're huge .tif files. But Irfanview can convert them to .png or .jpg.

[SeanJM]

That's all folks, I had a good time and like I said, this was my last attempt and the news from the folks over at Pixologic is--this UI is a no go.

I do not know the future of Sculptris. :-) However, I do know, I want this done and I want this now. What's the next step?