Second Life Sculpties in ZBrush 4 - ZSculpty Tools

[khenein]

I am sure someone somewhere might have mentioned / asked this before but I couldnt google find it.

I have been a bit frustrated because I wanted to use some of my older Blender created OBJ exports into ZBRUSH to make some mods on them. Sadly I have had no luck getting Zsculpty to recognize them (constantly says they need to be a primative first and I have no clue how to do that - tried everything I know)...

So....

I have decided to make them from scratch. problem is that ever since Zbrush4 and the latest ZSculpty for Zbrush, all the sculpty exports that come out of Zsculpty have a huge bounding box inside SL - but only on the Z-AXIS. The sculpty in the box is flattened right out like a pancake.

The X and Y AXIS of the rezzed sculpty is perfect. every one of my sculpties i create has the same problem on the Z. I primarily used the PLANE3D to start but I have even tried a couple others and same issue.

Anyone know how i can fix this? What am I doing wrong?

I think I solved that problem, after doing a few searches and experiments I came up with a very convenient solution that is now working for me quite well.

Now let's assume you have the SculptyMap you exported from Zbrush
The Sculpty map is in "bmp" format
Change the sculpty map into "png" format using any 2D editing software
Get a free software called "Sculptypaint" It's a java software and available on this link http://elout.home.xs4all.nl/sculptpaint/
Now after downloading the software open it and drag and drop your sculptymap.png into it
It will give you couple of choices, chooses "Load as a new Sculpt image (.png)"
This will load your sculpty, you will notice that your sculpty far off or unsymmetrical to the main axis
Now the point is to center your object so that its in the middle of the axis
On the right side of Sculptypaint underneath the sculpty map click on "Select All" this will enable you to move all your sculpty into position
Click on Translate x or y or z till you center your sculpty onto the axis so it's almost balanced
When done, click "Save 64*64 Sculpt Image" on the top left side of the window
It will save the image in the SculptyPaint Folder so dont look anywhere else for it
Now go to second life and upload your SculptyMap, but the next step is important
When you upload the sculptymap you will find it distorted, Dont panic. What happened is that the sculpty paint has enlarged your sculpty to fit in it's bounding box.
All you need to do is to resize the sculpty manually, but in the end you will get a skin tight bounding box around the sculpty.

Note, it might be a little extra work resizing and so, but it sure is worth it and it's not a tough job either.
Hope it works for you as well. cheers!

[soulo]

does the zsculpty plug in work with 4 r2?

[ToysoldierThor]

marcus,

Can you confirm a couple things for me?

1) does the current version of Zsculpty with MEsh support include the ability to export collada with multiple texture zones? i.e. to set texture areas (I think via the creation of UV islands - not sure) so that when it enters SL the mesh can have different textures applied on different surfaces of the mesh?

2) I thought ZSculpty was created by the owner of ShineLife. I might be wrong. If so, I went to ShinyLife and he has stated that his life on SL has come to an end and he is moving on to new experiences. If this is true.... does that mean that this is the last version of Zsculpty we will all see - no improvements ? This would worry me as Zsculpty is critical to why i am using Zbrush for SL mesh creations.

3) Do you ever see that Pixelogic will every create a NATIVE COLLADA EXPORTER?

[Iridescence]

marcus,

Can you confirm a couple things for me?

1) does the current version of Zsculpty with MEsh support include the ability to export collada with multiple texture zones? i.e. to set texture areas (I think via the creation of UV islands - not sure) so that when it enters SL the mesh can have different textures applied on different surfaces of the mesh?

2) I thought ZSculpty was created by the owner of ShineLife. I might be wrong. If so, I went to ShinyLife and he has stated that his life on SL has come to an end and he is moving on to new experiences. If this is true.... does that mean that this is the last version of Zsculpty we will all see - no improvements ? This would worry me as Zsculpty is critical to why i am using Zbrush for SL mesh creations.

3) Do you ever see that Pixelogic will every create a NATIVE COLLADA EXPORTER?

I'm not Marcus, but I can answer 2 of these for you.

1) The current version of the Zsculpty tools includes a good collada exporter which exports the selected subtool using it's polygroups as the multiple material or texture zones. It will fail if you have more than 8 polygroups in the subtool.

2) "ZSculpty" was created by Shinylife. "Zsculpty Tools" is a completely different plugin created by Marcus for us. I guess if there are any updates to be done to Zsculpty Tools, Marcus or someone from this forum will be the person who does them. Tho I'm sorry to hear that Vlad is done with SL, he is a very helpful and sharing dude.

3) I dunno, tho I don't think it's likely, since they only have an OBJ exporter and have no native exporters for any of the other formats used in the 3D world. Plus this plugin has a collada exporter already, not sure why you'd want another one.

[ToysoldierThor]

I'm not Marcus, but I can answer 2 of these for you.

1) The current version of the Zsculpty tools includes a good collada exporter which exports the selected subtool using it's polygroups as the multiple material or texture zones. It will fail if you have more than 8 polygroups in the subtool.

2) "ZSculpty" was created by Shinylife. "Zsculpty Tools" is a completely different plugin created by Marcus for us. I guess if there are any updates to be done to Zsculpty Tools, Marcus or someone from this forum will be the person who does them. Tho I'm sorry to hear that Vlad is done with SL, he is a very helpful and sharing dude.

3) I dunno, tho I don't think it's likely, since they only have an OBJ exporter and have no native exporters for any of the other formats used in the 3D world. Plus this plugin has a collada exporter already, not sure why you'd want another one.

Well that is great news and a big Relief! I have been trying to get SL Mesh / Zbrush technique questions answered from the SL Mesh forum about multiple textures and no one has responded with an answer. So I suspected it could not be done. So you somehow apply multiple texture zones on a Zbrush model via polygroups? Is there somewhere I can read the details how to exactly do this? I am not that familiar on how polygroups works - much less how to use them to make these texture surfaces for export to SL.

I am glad that support for ZSculpty is NOT from Vlad as I thought that this meant no more support for Zsculpty on Zbrush. Sad to see he left Why would i want Zbrush to have native support for Collada.... because the risk of support for collada would not poof if the 3rd party poofed.

PS I was told on the SL MEsh threads that Zbrush does not support Rigging of mesh nor would the Zsculpty support it - that Zbrush can only create Static Mesh models for SL. Is this true?

[Iridescence]

Well that is great news and a big Relief! I have been trying to get SL Mesh / Zbrush technique questions answered from the SL Mesh forum about multiple textures and no one has responded with an answer. So I suspected it could not be done. So you somehow apply multiple texture zones on a Zbrush model via polygroups? Is there somewhere I can read the details how to exactly do this? I am not that familiar on how polygroups works - much less how to use them to make these texture surfaces for export to SL.

I am glad that support for ZSculpty is NOT from Vlad as I thought that this meant no more support for Zsculpty on Zbrush. Sad to see he left Why would i want Zbrush to have native support for Collada.... because the risk of support for collada would not poof if the 3rd party poofed.

PS I was told on the SL MEsh threads that Zbrush does not support Rigging of mesh nor would the Zsculpty support it - that Zbrush can only create Static Mesh models for SL. Is this true?

I create each polygroup/texture zone as it's own subtool, create the UV, create the textures for it etc all in it's own personal subtool with a single polygroup. Then before I export it, I use the subtool master plugin to merge the subtools, preserving the tools as separate polygroups within the one model for final export. Then you can merge up to 8 subtools for a final mesh that exports with 8 texture faces. Alternatively, do your UV unwrap and material assignment in another program like Blender.

Zbrush doesn't support rigging and skinning in the way we need it for SL. For that you will have to go to another program. Blender works absolutely fine for this, there is a lot of support for it on the SL forums and elsewhere on the internet, there is a 3rd party plugin for GoZ for blender which works like a charm to take your model back and forth for ease of sculpting and building geometry, and it's free.

[ToysoldierThor]

I create each polygroup/texture zone as it's own subtool, create the UV, create the textures for it etc all in it's own personal subtool with a single polygroup. Then before I export it, I use the subtool master plugin to merge the subtools, preserving the tools as separate polygroups within the one model for final export. Then you can merge up to 8 subtools for a final mesh that exports with 8 texture faces. Alternatively, do your UV unwrap and material assignment in another program like Blender.

Zbrush doesn't support rigging and skinning in the way we need it for SL. For that you will have to go to another program. Blender works absolutely fine for this, there is a lot of support for it on the SL forums and elsewhere on the internet, there is a 3rd party plugin for GoZ for blender which works like a charm to take your model back and forth for ease of sculpting and building geometry, and it's free.

thanks for the workflow on how to creat these texture zones with polygroups. I will admit i dont fully understand polygroups and subtools but that will now be the next tutorials and google youtube videos i will look for so i can understand your workflow you suggested. I understand your concept - just not the technical steps.

As for Blender..... big NOPE !!! I started out 3D modeling for SL using Blender and I can say that I created 3 of my 6 landscape sculpty map packs from within Blender.... but even after 1 year.... I never got comfortable with Blender's horrendous overly geekoid UI. I was convinced by a top SL Sculpty creator from IBM to try Zbrush. And even though i am still learning more about Zbrush with mesh arriving in SL, Zbrush and Sculptris are far easier for me than Blender. I wont go back to Blender unless there is something i really need to do that ONLY blender can do.

As for GoZ.... I almost had it all installed for sculptris and photoshop and then the zaplink function broke in Zbrush. It was working for sculptris but when I tried to get PS to Goz I now get errors when I try to engage it all the time. I posted the error on the Goz forum but no one responded. So it still sits broken. Didnt know there was a GoZ for Blender.

The error I get is: [FileExecute,gGoZDLLPath,GoZMergeUVs,[StrMerge,subToolPath,appExt]]

thanks again for all the insight!

[Iridescence]

thanks for the workflow on how to creat these texture zones with polygroups. I will admit i dont fully understand polygroups and subtools but that will now be the next tutorials and google youtube videos i will look for so i can understand your workflow you suggested. I understand your concept - just not the technical steps.

As for Blender..... big NOPE !!! I started out 3D modeling for SL using Blender and I can say that I created 3 of my 6 landscape sculpty map packs from within Blender.... but even after 1 year.... I never got comfortable with Blender's horrendous overly geekoid UI. I was convinced by a top SL Sculpty creator from IBM to try Zbrush. And even though i am still learning more about Zbrush with mesh arriving in SL, Zbrush and Sculptris are far easier for me than Blender. I wont go back to Blender unless there is something i really need to do that ONLY blender can do.

As for GoZ.... I almost had it all installed for sculptris and photoshop and then the zaplink function broke in Zbrush. It was working for sculptris but when I tried to get PS to Goz I now get errors when I try to engage it all the time. I posted the error on the Goz forum but no one responded. So it still sits broken. Didnt know there was a GoZ for Blender.

The error I get is: [FileExecute,gGoZDLLPath,GoZMergeUVs,[StrMerge,subToolPath,appExt]]

thanks again for all the insight!

The good news is that the Blender UI has vastly improved to a more intuitive system with the release of V2.58, so if you haven't tried that, give it another go. You can do everything else in Zbrush if you're comfortable, personally I prefer to build base meshes, create UV maps and do the skinning in blender and use Zbrush for everything else from sculpting to texturing. If you want to create skinned mesh, you need to learn how to do it somewhere, and Blender's price is right. If you can afford 3-4k for something else, good for you, go for it!

[ToysoldierThor]

The good news is that the Blender UI has vastly improved to a more intuitive system with the release of V2.58, so if you haven't tried that, give it another go. You can do everything else in Zbrush if you're comfortable, personally I prefer to build base meshes, create UV maps and do the skinning in blender and use Zbrush for everything else from sculpting to texturing. If you want to create skinned mesh, you need to learn how to do it somewhere, and Blender's price is right. If you can afford 3-4k for something else, good for you, go for it!

Ironic as the last version of Blender that I grapsed was 2.49. Yes I have installed the absolute latest version 6 weeks ago and ironically for me it far more confusing. Menus I used to know where they were are completely not there anymore and when you start up blender its as if the developers felt it was important that they show you almost every functional window possible - and to date I had no clue how to close those windows (remember that I am a Windows UI persion but even such - I could not figure how to close most of those windows). I tried for a bit to understand the changes but to be honest - it was just too confusing and I didnt want to go through another round of trying to wrap my head around Blender. I dont know what the developers of Blender dont seriously consider adding a team that is not GEEK SQUAD oriented and would try to really tackle the UI that Blender is known to be one of the wost UI's in the industry. Anyway... for me ... I will only go into Blender if I absolutely have to. There is no denying that Blender is powerful. So let me asking .... exactly what is "SKINNING" a model? I assumed that mean texturing the surface. Clearly that is not what it means. So.... for creating a 3D model that is destined for SL.... when and why would I need to "skin" a model that only Blender can do and not Zbrush? Thanks in advance.

[Iridescence]

Skinning is the process for attaching a mesh to a rig, in our case, the SL skeleton for attachments like clothing. I know sl'ers call it "rigging", they're wrong. Rigging is the building of the bone structure. You cannot do this for SL in zbrush, at least not that I have been able to work out, so you need to use another application for this process. Maya, max, blender all work. Without this, you're stuck with making static meshes.

[ToysoldierThor]

I create each polygroup/texture zone as it's own subtool, create the UV, create the textures for it etc all in it's own personal subtool with a single polygroup. Then before I export it, I use the subtool master plugin to merge the subtools, preserving the tools as separate polygroups within the one model for final export. Then you can merge up to 8 subtools for a final mesh that exports with 8 texture faces. Alternatively, do your UV unwrap and material assignment in another program like Blender. ....

I finally got an hour to try to go through your workflow. I didnt have enough time to really understand the details nor work out all the missing data that I didnt know from your steps (i.e. how to create subtools from a model that I have subdivided into several polygroups and how exactly the subtool master tool works - it had a lot of options), but I did end up getting two ugly mutated sides of a cube into SL where I was able to texture each of the two sides. WOOOHOOO! Thank you for the seed info on how to do this. What I need to take some time now is to work out the details on how to properly polygroup, and get the model into subtool, and learn more about the options of subtoolmaster.

[ToysoldierThor]

I create each polygroup/texture zone as it's own subtool, create the UV, create the textures for it etc all in it's own personal subtool with a single polygroup. Then before I export it, I use the subtool master plugin to merge the subtools, preserving the tools as separate polygroups within the one model for final export. Then you can merge up to 8 subtools for a final mesh that exports with 8 texture faces. Alternatively, do your UV unwrap and material assignment in another program like Blender.
.

An update Iriescence....

thanks for your initial instructions on how to create SL Surface Texture zones on a Zbrush model. It gave me a place to start learning. After a lot of playing I found a much more simple approach to what you sugguested. There is no need for SubTools and the SubToolMaster utility. It can all be done by just using PolyGroups and UVMaster....

High Level logic to the workflow.... The way Zbrush defines SL Texture Sufaces for SL is by defining PolyGroups on your Zbrush model then telling the UVMaster to create a UV Map & creating a separate UV Island on the map for each polygroup it sees on the model.

Here are the detailed basic step-by-step instructions on how to apply multiple texture faces on a single object Zbrush "Tool" (i.e. Zbrush's terminology for a model) that can be collada exported to SL to allow independent editing of these surfaces. Steps preceeded with the word "Normal:" means that the step is part of the normal workflow of creating a zbrush model for export to SL:

1. Normal: Create a new model (i.e. "Tool" in zbrush) and go into Edit mode and "make polymesh3D"
2. Normal: Do all the basic shaping of the model you want at the lowest polycount (best you get your model to the lowest polygon count at this time before going to further steps)
3. Normal: If you want to fine-tune your model shape now and/or you want to start the PolyPaint process of your model now, you can with no penalties to the workflow.
   - Increase model's polycount to very high res (over 1 million polys for a 1024x1024 SL texture resolution)
   - This is done in the TOOL->Geometry-Divide (press it 5 times for 5 divisions of the model's poly count)
4. Normal: You can continue with both high-res shaping and/or polypainting the entire model
   - Remeber that real subtle shaping changes at this res will barely if at all detected at the lowest LOD destined for collada export to SL.
   
   ** Ready to identify the individual texture surfaces for manipulation in SL **
   ** This is done by setting PolyGroups on the model for each of the max of 8 texture surfaces **
5. Reduce your model back down to the lowest Geometry (ie. lowest LOD) - done in TOOL->Geometry-SDiv1
6. Enable your PolyF ("Draw Ployframe" grid) button so that you can select each of your polygroups that will match each of your Texture Zones / Faces you want available in SL.
   - A poly mesh grid will appear on your model and the color of the model will change to a single color weird color.
   - As you create new polygroups, these new polygroups will be represented as a new color on this grid
7. Draw "select" the polygons that are included in one of these polygroups (i.e. using the Crtl-Shift keys and drawing a lasso around all the polygons).
   - All the polys you green lasso'ed will remain visible on the screen and all the other will hide from the screen.
8. Press the TOOLS->PolyGroups->"Group Visible" button. This will set all the visible polys as a new defined polygroup (and it will be assigned a new color on the polygroup grid)
   - To see the hidden polys, just CRTL-Shift and Click the hidden part of the model. This should hide the polygroup you just created and make the hidden part of the model visible. To see all the entire model press the Ctrl-Shift and click anywhere off the model
9. Repeat Steps 7 & 8 until you have defined all the polygroups you need that will = all the texture surfaces you want to be texture surface editable on the mesh in SL
   
   ** You have now defined all the SL texture surfaces on the model as POLYGROUPS **
   ** Now you can either continue PolyPainting each polygroup or the entire model until you are happy **
   ** When you are completely happy and want to take the completed model to SL... **
10. Goto ZPlugin->UVMaster Menu and click the "WORK ON CLONE" button
    - This creates a lowest polycount copy of your entire model where UVs will be applied to it and later on transferred back to your main model
    - protects your main model from mistakes and gets around UVMaster limits on working with models with multiple LODs and/or subtools
11. In UVMaster menu, click the "PolyGroups" button
    - this tells UVMaster to make a UV set where each polygroup must be an island on the UV set
    - each UV island when exported to SL will become your independent SL Texture surface
12. In UVMaster menu, click the "UNWRAP All" button
    - this unwraps your model for each polygroup and creates the new UV set for the model
    - you can see the actual UV set with all its islands if you click on the "Flatten" button. Click "Unflatten" to return
    - you can see the seams of all the islands on the model if you press the "CheckSeams" button
    
    ** Now to place the UV set back onto your main model from the clone **
13. In the UVMaster menu. click the "Copy UV's" button
14. In the main TOOL menu, select your main model again to make it the active model on the Zbrush screen
    - does not matter if your main model is in high or low polycount LOD
15. In the UVMaster menu, click the "Paste UVs" button
    - this applies the UVs from the clone to your main model
    
    *** You have now create a Zbrush model with multiple surface zone that SL will recognize ***
    ** Now to get your model ready for exporting to SL **
16. Normal: Make sure all your PolyGroups are visible (Shift-Crtl and click somewhere off your model)
17. Normal: Make sure your TOOL->PolyPaint Colorize is enabled so you can see your painted model
18. Normal: Make sure your model is at the highest resolution so your painted model is at the highest resolution
19. Normal: Goto the TOOL->UV MAP submenu and click the 1024 buttom
    - you are doing this to tell the texture mapping to create a map of 1024x1024 resolution that matchs SL's max resolution during mesh import or to create your own independent texture map for SL import after some photoshopping of the texture map
20. Normal: Goto the TOOL->TextureMap submenu and click "New Form PolyPaint"
    - this transfers the polypainted data on the model onto an industry standard Texture Map that conforms to the UV Map of the model at the 1024x1024 resolution
21. Normal: Optionally if you want a workable external copy of the texture map the click the "Clone Txtr" button, then under Texture menu, you can export this cloned texture to a file on your hard drive.
    
    ** You are now ready to export your model to SL **
22. Reduce your model to the lowest geometry / LOD from the TOOL->Geometry-> SDiv1
    - you need to do this so that the Collada export tool will export the lowest LOD to SL
23. In the Zplugin->Zsculpty utility, click the "Export to SL MESH" button and follow the simple instructions
24. Save your Zbrush Tool (if you have already a few times during this process
25. Exit Zbrush
26. Enter SL
27. Mesh Import your new Mesh and if you want you can include the texture as part of the import
28. Res your new SL mesh

YOU ARE DONE!!!!
You can Select Texture any of the polygroups from the model and change the imported texture for that surface, or change any texture dynamics that SL Edit allows.