ZBrush to Second Life Slapt.me penguin

[Cleanslate]

Part 3: Creating the textures.

I used many of the reference photographs in this tutorial to texture the penguin.
I haven't done a step by step procedure as I wasn't sure how much interest there might be for it.
I basically use Zaplink when using photo textures.

Here's a quick turntable video of each part of the penguin textured until complete.

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I'll try and put something together for the process of texturing if there's enough interest.

The next step from this point is converting the final meshes to sculpt UV. maps and uploading them and the textures into Second Life to do a final fitting.

[Cleanslate]

Part 3b: Final tweaks & in-world testing.

Having uploaded the UV files to Second Life and tested the sculptured prims in position it became clear that I'd need to do some tweaks on the textures to compensate for the poor mesh construction in-world.

Slappy also needed some final work on his textures which you can see below on the actual ZBrush mesh.

The most difficult part would be the join between the body and the head and the join between the wings and body at the shoulders.

Below is the actual textured mesh in ZBrush.
(fig 1. left.) shows the new eyes in place having got the final texture for the head done.
also, as Grandma had managed to get his beak to open and close with his squawking I finished the inside of his beak.
(fig 1. middle.) shows detailing on the actual body and under the wings etc.
(fig 1. right.) shows the join at the neck. In the end I chose to create an alpha fade from the body to the head as the sculpties just wouldn't line up well enough to hide the join.



Once all the tweaks were done the textures were then loaded up and applied to the sculpties in-world to complete the Mk.1. version of Slappy.

He does everything we planned for the Mk 1.
He flaps his wings and squawks when touched.
He also gives out a note card and freebies at the same time.
You can load him with your own note cards and freebies to give away too so he could be your very own Slappy Vendor!

For those who would like to see the finished version in-world you can see him at the location below or get your very own free available free from slapt.me!
Here:http://www.slapt.me/market/index.php...t&id_item=7089

As mentioned before. I have a specific workflow for converting ZBrush meshes into UV's for use in Second Life. I've omitted this here but if there's enough interest I'd be glad to tag it on the end.

I managed to take some in-world shots of him together with his two buddies on my island sim which I'll put up in the next post.

[Cleanslate]

Part 3c: Final texturing and in-world photo shoot.

Here are the final shots I did of Slappy and his two friends at Pleasure Islands.
I built them an iceberg in the corner of the sim and they're still there.

First of all here's a reminder of the original photograph that set everything off!
My goal with Slappy was to have an in-world penguin that we could use to simulate the real life penguins in the photo below.



Here's the actual in-world Slappy with his friends in a similar pose for the same kind of shot.



His two friends are actually my test sculpts for the Mk.II version with their heads twisted left and right.

Here's a shot showing them chatting: His friends don't seem impressed!?



Still chatting:



Deciding if they should take the plunge!?



I'm really happy with the way he's turned out.
The limitations of Second Life on sculptures can sometimes be devastating when seen finished in-world.
Fortunately due to the simple lines and shape of the penguin the finished result is really quite pleasing and pretty close to the actual ZBrush mesh.

Thanks to Grandma and Taylor at slapt.me for their contributions to the scripting and sounds.

[Paint Guy]

This is really great cleanslate. thanks for the detailed workflow. As a newbie ZBrusher I have two questions. First, how did you attach the head to the body so it was all one piece? Second, I noticed your wing had a hole in it. Did you fill it in and if so how did you do it?

Once again great work and presentation!

[Cleanslate]

Thanks Paint Guy. I'm glad you're finding it useful.

In answer to your question:

To attach the head to the body I simply saved the head as a Tool then Appended it to the body as a Sub Tool and positioned it using the Move and Rotate Tools.

Then used the Draw Move Brush at a very small size to match up the mesh of the head as close as possible to the mesh of the body to get a smooth join.

See below. (This is the actual resolution of 32 x 33 that we have to play with in SL.)



As we only have a sculpted prim of 32 x 33 polygons to work with in Second Life you can't get much detail in so it's best to divide a sculpture up to get the sculpt and texture detail.

As far as the hole in the wing.
I'm absolutely frightened to death of touching the poles in a mesh as it can often destroy the entire sculpt in SL.
As the hole would be hidden from view inside the shoulder join and as it worked ok in SL I left it in rather than risk destroying the mesh by accident.

I'm still searching for a method of fixing this pole problem as it happens very often.

[0bz]

I'm still searching for a method of fixing this pole problem as it happens very often.

Use a cube?

[WailingMonkey]

workflow for converting ZBrush meshes into UV's for use in Second Life

I'm interested!

[hazonku]

Very interesting. I've just been using susie2k's sculpty maker plugin for Zbrush & it's been a blast. Still having issues trying to do the textures though. Lightbox doesn't seem to get along with SL at all.

[Nancyan]

hazonku have you tried Marcus' wonderful new Zsculpt plug-in? It has many more features then the one you are using. And it also includes features such as collada export which will be very useful when regular 3d mesh object import is introduced to the main grid (and very useful right now on the mesh beta grid).

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthr...0&page=1&pp=15

I can't help with the Lightbox problems because you haven't provided enough detail about your specific situation. I haven't personally had many problems other then occasional crashing when I use it.

[StephenCook]

I have not tried this just yet.
For the poles:
Use a mask to mask the entire object except the last loop where the poles are. This way you can keep the shape and adjust the poles.
You can use the move tool and move the verticies one by one to where you need them to go. A slight relax adjustment should smooth them out again.

I will try to test this idea out and post my results.

Nice penguins. I would like to know how you put them into SL as doing multiprims is one of the hardest parts.

Stephen

[Nancyan]

Stephen, you asked this a while ago so perhaps you already found an answer, but I'll explain how these get automagically put together.

If you have used the zsculpty plug in or sculpty maker mini program available from the Shiny Life website, the name it gives the sculpt map has positioning information. You also download a little script that is called sculpty rezzer. In SL you put the rezzer script into a primitive along with all the sculpty maps and touch the prim and the object appears put together over it. Its not perfect but its pretty great if you have and item with alot of subtools.

Bear in mind zsculpty and sculpty maker from the Shiny Life site requires you use the standard "Make Polymesh 3D" button from the tool palette. In Zbrush 4 that type of polymesh has become incompatable with the polypaint texturing which won't transfer over to a texture properly. Marcus kindly made a workaround plug-in, but you lose the position data. So some people are using both scripts...one for the texturing and copying the uvs over and one for the sculpty maps..complicated, I know. The Shiny Life website has an excellent video explaining the workflow.

There's a similar feature in Blender for multipart sculptie objects using the primstar scripts. You can learn about these from the machimatrix.org website.

[ozdolphingirl2012]

Part 3b: Final tweaks & in-world testing.

Having uploaded the UV files to Second Life and tested the sculptured prims in position it became clear that I'd need to do some tweaks on the textures to compensate for the poor mesh construction in-world.

Slappy also needed some final work on his textures which you can see below on the actual ZBrush mesh.

The most difficult part would be the join between the body and the head and the join between the wings and body at the shoulders.

Below is the actual textured mesh in ZBrush.
(fig 1. left.) shows the new eyes in place having got the final texture for the head done.
also, as Grandma had managed to get his beak to open and close with his squawking I finished the inside of his beak.
(fig 1. middle.) shows detailing on the actual body and under the wings etc.
(fig 1. right.) shows the join at the neck. In the end I chose to create an alpha fade from the body to the head as the sculpties just wouldn't line up well enough to hide the join.



Once all the tweaks were done the textures were then loaded up and applied to the sculpties in-world to complete the Mk.1. version of Slappy.

He does everything we planned for the Mk 1.
He flaps his wings and squawks when touched.
He also gives out a note card and freebies at the same time.
You can load him with your own note cards and freebies to give away too so he could be your very own Slappy Vendor!

For those who would like to see the finished version in-world you can see him at the location below or get your very own free available free from slapt.me!
Here:http://www.slapt.me/market/index.php...t&id_item=7089

As mentioned before. I have a specific workflow for converting ZBrush meshes into UV's for use in Second Life. I've omitted this here but if there's enough interest I'd be glad to tag it on the end.

I managed to take some in-world shots of him together with his two buddies on my island sim which I'll put up in the next post.