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#468

I empathize, truly… But if Sculptris did everything you needed, you wouldn’t buy ZBrush, even if you like to think you would.

Here’s the problem with expanding Sculptris to have more features like Zbrush… If you actually have the drive to learn Blender or another freeware, there’s already no limit to what you can do with Sculptris. If it’s made easy enough for anyone who doesn’t have the determination to either save for good equipment or learn freeware then the efforts of others who fought hard to produce quality work is cheapened, and there’s less profit to be made overall in the 3D art industry. Times are tough enough for us artists.

I’m a broke college student, as desperate as the next guy. But as an aspiring 3D artist of the professional kind, I don’t think it’s a good thing at all to make high-end programs free, and Sculptris is already terrifyingly great. Now anyone with some artistic inclination can rapidly make detailed and anatomically believable models and just retopo and rig them in Blender. No tedious modeling with vertices anymore.

Using it actually prompted me go and buy ZBrush two days ago! :smiley: And good for Pixologic. The reason I want ZBrush, is not to make possible what I want to do, because it already is, but to make things more convenient. Convenience is something that should be payed for, because convenience is for those in a time crunch, mainly because they are running a business and doing this for an income. It’s an investment. …And If someone wants even more powerful freeware than Sculptris just to dink around then all I can do is scoff to that!

Whether people like it or not, Pixologic is a company, (a good one) and I don’t expect them to be shooting themselves in the foot making an already potentially imbalancing freeware even more powerful. They shouldn’t be shamed for that either.

It’s not Pixologic’s job to make things any easier than they already have. I’m really sorry if this seems harsh, I feel great compassion for you, and understand, I just think that having a mentality bent on “you should make things easier for me” is not going to give you an angle to find success.

There are other ways to afford software, too, like going to school for one class at a time, getting student loans to help with expenses, and buying it with a student discount. Get a roomate (no younger than 30 years of age and drug free) to help with rent. Quit partying. Cancel WoW while saving. Tell your family that all you want is (X) and ask them to donate to a savings fund on Christmas. Set it at $10 so it’s affordable, they don’t feel rude for not going high enough because you didn’t give a range. Then they’ll likely donate $20 and feel generous without busting their own budgets. I’m going on, but the point is, you can save up if you want to, and waiting two years is really not so bad. That’s how long I had to wait until digital tablets became affordable. If it’s not worth any of that, then it’s just not worth it.

So lighten up on Pixologic people, and try to enjoy the journey. They’ve been fair and made things free and easy as they should ever be obligated to. ZBrush is well priced for all it enables you to do.

#469

Yes Pixo has been most generous with Sculptris as is! If you can’t afford ZBrush, get the new Blender. It has most of what Zbrush had 2 years ago, plus the animation and Game engine features. Other than the ridiculous learning curve, it’s the perfect starter software for any aspiring artist. There’s plenty of Vid tutorials, you just have to search a lot and watch hours of them. But Sculptris is a very good place to start, build good base geometry, and I love it for painting my final Retopo’d quad models as well. You’ll want to learn to Retopologize in Blender and UV-map in whatever software. I use a combination of Wings3d and Blender for both.

#470

Sound advice! It definitely is true that Blender has a huge learning curve, but it’s rewarded me so much for the time I have put into it. Even being lazy, it took me about nine months to start feeling confident and seeing progress in my projects. After which point I started to really have fun.

If someone doesn’t have the patience to learn how to use the awesome freeware out there, that’s no reason to make demands on Pixologic. I agree, there simply isn’t more needed out of Sculptris. But making it more stable and adding a few things here and there, that’s all great!:+1:

#471

I dont agree whith the last posts cause:
SCULPTRIS WAS FREE BEFORE BEING BUYED FROM PIXOLOGIC
So there is not a real gift from pixologic, it was what it is rigth now a gift from doctor petters for the 3D comunity.
is very remarcable too, that was not only a simply piece of soft, it was remarked by the 3D comunity as one of the most impresive aportations in 3d soft (CGNEWS dixit) and they remarked that never before a piece of soft still in not completely developed atracted all that atention.
it was developed in 6 moths…what we could have seen in all this time if the development was free as it were.
so… the situation is that, and must be read in this way.

#472

“SCULPTRIS WAS FREE BEFORE BEING BUYED FROM PIXOLOGIC”… Sculptris is STILL free. I just don’t understand what you are urging here.

" a gift from doctor petters for the 3D comunity" Agreed. Maybe Pixo takes a little more credit than needed. But I love how everyone makes Dr. Petters out to be some kind of victim when he VOLUNTARILY sold Sculptirs, and was hired by Pixo. Sculptris has also been updated since then. (In my opinion, as much as it will ever need to be.)

I think you didn’t even read my most critical point which you and seemingly most unhappy people are missing… is that while, yes if Sculptris had continued to develop independently at that rate, it would have evolved many more features similar to Pixo’s ZBrush. BUT THIS IS TERRIBLE, because it would cheapen and imbalance the market and make it generally less paying for everyone involved, including the Sculptris users. For advanced features that make extreme quality super easy, you SHOULD pony up the dough. This weeds out the weak and ensures quality models make a profit because of the barrier of entry: dedication to learn multiple programs or pay the cash for one that makes everything insanely convenient. IT’S A CRAPPY ENOUGH MARKET FOR ARTISTS without lazy people saturating it when they can LEARN other freeware that produces the same quality.

This is the true situation and the only way to read it if you are reading with your head and not your emotions. Our dear Dr. Petters even knows and accepts this, that’s why he is on board with Pixo, why Sculptris could not be allowed to become a ZBrush replacement, and why everyone is just whining and oblivious that they already have all the tools they need.

Edit: I payed someone $80 to make a 3D model of a creature I drew, because I didn’t think I had the time to learn Blender. A week later I found Sculptris and made a model without the painstaking process of building vert by vert. I wished I had just done it myself. I quickly realized retopology in Blender wasn’t too hard to get a sculpt I did just the way I wanted to have the right quads and loops. If I had found it a little sooner, they wouldn’t have sold me anything. It’s called economics, and it’s real.

#473

I guess that I’m of the opinion that more is not worse.

I’m just not understanding the logic of if Sculptris had grown with similar feature sets to ZBrush, or other sculpting programs, that it would cheapen the market. A program is only a tool and only as good as the user. Regardless of the program, you still need to have the artistic skills and technical expertise to create quality models, textures, etc. Especially with the resolution and detail needed for selling those models effectively for an audience that is willing to pay for those things. People will always pay for quality, not the fact that you spent hundreds, or thousands, of dollars and years to learn a tool. Yes, a lot of those tools are currently out there for free, but in no way does that mean that Sculptris can’t have more.

While ZBrush is quite an amazing program. It’s programs out there like Sculptris, and many others, that force the market leaders to keep innovating to justify their costs. In my opinion its great for the market, and artists in general, to have more programs out there like Sculptris that marry the higher quality possibilities with a rarely seen ease of use for beginner to expert alike.

While Sculptris is currently free (and don’t get me wrong, I love it for what it is). There’s a lot that they could do in terms of where it’s currently at or aiming for a middle end market that they could create for those that want many of the higher end features but just aren’t ready for the higher costs and complexity of programs like ZBrush. They could be using Sculptris as a test bed for some of the amazing future features that they are working on for ZBrush. There’s a lot that they could be doing rather than just sitting on such an amazing program.

But, who knows, maybe they are working on the next iteration. They never really reveal much until it’s ready. But, with so many versions of ZBrush since they acquired Sculptris, it is starting to seem like it’s less likely that there will be that next amazing version of Sculptris.

And it was the ease of use with Sculptris, compared to many of those other high end programs, that is what many loved about it. You could pay hundreds of dollars for those other programs, but for many, there’s just far too many nested/hidden options to really create what Sculptris made so easy.

#474

Hi Rhodalle:

I totally disagree with you. If someone is better of someone else despite the software’s quality or pirce, then it’s nobody’s fault. Sculptris was a great hope for the moron like me that don’t have time to learn 100 new commands or new tricky way to sculpt just a face. Zbrush was a revolution in its times and was cheaper (and more effective and faster) than the other very famous softwares (3d studio, maya and whatnot) and Sculptris was just the next step of the same revolution and it was cheaper too…too bad for zbrush: it’s called economics (lessons in competition). And I bet there are a lot of people like me, lazy you could say, that sculpt just for fun, just to get a better grasp of something that the other software (so rich of the same barriers that you praise) take for given, and we just love this software the way it is. That it’s killing us to see this piece of art die just for “economics”.
But for me the thing is also that: I was happy when pixo bought sculptris (dr petter already stated he wasn’t willing to develop the software any further anyway, so he isn’t a victim) because I hoped too see this software blossom, and mind that please: I WAS WILLING TO PAY SOME 50-100 BUCKS for the finished product (even without all the cool zbrush’s stuff), 'cause not everybody here sculpt to make money, some of use just do it for fun, I just plug in my headset, start some music and play along with the best game I ever had.
But more specifically i complain about the staff’s behavior: there isn’t anyone who is willing just to show up and tell us what is going on, and I think it’s just because they don’t want to look bad. There is a video about auto retopology in sculptris, what about that? There is the fact sculptris is only 32 bits, what about 64 bits? it crashes when you have too many tris and you try to go in paint mode, wanna fix this? It would be nice a palette to store colors for texturing, there will ever be something like this? You see, simple things just not to make the software too powerful, but worth a price I could gladly pay.

PS: the man in charge of sculptris’s development is the same dr petter who wasn’t willing to develop the software any further, so I call this a bad choice or a clear declaration of (negative) intentes from pixo.

#475

Based on what I have seen, and experienced in the art community, it’s just what I believe.

I have been witness to many people who have some artistic talent, but they are way too afraid to try to learn the 3D software that they would have to use in tandem with Sculptris as it is. I also know people who would pay those same artists to sculpt a model on the cheap, instead of go to a professional. I know this isn’t always a bad thing but the sheer volume at which this is happening does force the prices of models lower. I am guilty of selling my models for way cheaper than mainstream price, and I’m new to 3D but not to art. I learned Sculptris very quickly, and I believe it is dangerously easy!

I am sure that to most it sounds over the top, but the same thing is happening with 2D art, on the community sites I frequent. Full color illustrations have gone down in average price to as low as $30 and at that point, because of how much time I put into a full color, it’s just not worth it to even be a digital artist.

I agree with others that this kind of thing within reason is natural and fine. I just think that in the 3D market it’s getting serious enough that it’s even touched me. After all, I am being commissioned as a total beginner to sell my detailed and anatomically accurate character sculpts on the super cheap because sculpts are quicker for me than illustrations… To be honest I don’t feel good about it, and that’s one reason I bought ZBrush, becasue I knew I was hurting others. Because someone like ME is imbalancing. I’m sorry if that sounds big headed, I’m not trying to be, it’s just that there are a lot of people doing what I did out there. More every day.

Starving artist shouldn’t be true. In a world where there is demand for the art. Decrease demand, decrease value, I’m speaking very basic economics, but it’s a matter of not wanting to believe the scale of which this is happening and the impact it has on profit, that makes all the hobbyists feel ripped off. And sure, Sculptris is a company, they want to keep making money on ZBrush, but I’m explaining why them making money, is good for professional artists, too, it’s an ecosystem, and I hate that this sounds, harsh, I do, but hobbyists who want something as high end as ZBrush for nothing should really just go back to playing with Sculptris. That’s like being mad at a petting zoo for not having a cheetah.

Anyway, you can’t make people believe something if they don’t want to. I am not trying to be argumentative, I have actually seen this, been guilty of it, and am subject to this kind of thing. I know my opinion is hear-say, so I won’t push it anymore, you don’t have to believe me and I have no intention of forcing anyone see it my way. Just presented my POV because I was sick of hearing so much whining.

It’s totally fine that you think what you do, and you are probably not talking about making Sculptris an actual ZBrush replacement. That’s what I was talking about before, and I am not accusing you of being one of the whiny people on here, but regardless of economics, there are a lot of people generally acting like spoiled children, and angry that ZBrush did what a company is going to do. Dr. Petters is no victim, he got an awesome job. That’s the world and entertainment is one of the few good markets left that’s still working right! I think there’s general irreverence and disrespect for Pixo from a lot of people, not you, but a lot of hobbyists who just want the professional tools. If you want to drive a Ferrari, you have to BUY it.

#476

This isn’t about being anyone’s fault. This is about real impact on the ecosystem for artists. That’s right, there’s no one to blame, not Pixo, me, you, or Dr. Petters. ZBrush bought Sculptris becasue it’s a bigger company, so it’s not suffering due to the economics, lol. Both developers benefit. So does the 3D art world. I’m sure everyone here is plenty aware of what makes Sculptris and ZBrush revolutionary programs, that’s what makes them imbalancing if any “moron” can use them and sell art without a barrier of entry. I’ve already seen Sculptris cheapen models. I quit buying them from a Blender artist because I could sculpt them myself with such ease.

It seems dramatic to assume Sculptris is “dying” when Pixo said they’d make updates. If Sculptris wasn’t going to be developed further by the creator anyway, then I just don’t get why be so mad at Pixo here! Be patient people… Improvement will come! In the meantime, learn some other freeware, I think you are being a little hard on yourself about what you can do. Just give it a try. :slight_smile:

It’s not actually the -staff’s- behavior. They do not operate of their own free will. They are not -allowed- to give development information until they have buttoned down which improvements to implement in the next upgrade.

I don’t understand why people are so mad that a company is keeping future developments to themselves until they test and are sure what they are going to offer. They can’t get halted from adding something and make everyone disappointed so it’s better to keep quiet until they are really sure.

#477

Hi rhodalle, I get your POV now, but maybe the problem you see is the same problem that is in every job scenario in that days.
The solution maybe it isn’t the more expensive software but high level specializations (this could somehow led to expensive software), originality and speed. We know for sure the market is merciless, but I’m quite confident that cheap models could be used only for cheap purposes, maybe I’m wrong but I think serious companies hires serious 3d artists. It would be nice to know the POV of successful 3d artists and expand this topic, I would be very interesting.

For every other thing you say, if the forum works this way then I can do nothing except let it be like this, but I feel neglected and I can’t help it. The community before pixo was…well not that big :slight_smile: but was strong and funny, we had contacts with the development and we could see the software grows, and this behavior (of this forum) let many people leave the community.

Then I agree with you, if you want a Ferrari you HAVE to buy it. I would gladly pay for a complete version of sculptris, which for me doesn’t involve new astonishing features, I would just like to have the ones already available, finished.

#478

This is true. And I accept that saturation is natural as technology and entertainment advances… like YouTube taking over cable TV and allowing creative and talented people to get discovered. I admit, that I’m just in no rush to get crowded out since I’m not a professional with security from a big company, I’m on the border line of making pretty art for less, and competition with others like me is always rising. A barrier of entry protects those who are already in from too much saturation too fast. But I admit, these are personal ideas and feelings, and I would also love to hear how practical it does/doesn’t sound to a pro.

I understand your POV as well. I don’t doubt for a moment that if I’d been around to see such changes in the community and forums, I’d feel saddened also. And I also hope that an intermediate form of Sculptris is released! If it allowed retopo, or texture baking, I admit I would be thrilled… I would still buy Zbrush to pose more detailed models for 3D print, so it wouldn’t be bad for ZBrush in my eyes. I also am hopeful that Pixologic will make Sculptris into something where I can finish up a mesh and send it off to someone ready for rigging with one program. I’d pay for a Sculptris like that. :slight_smile:

#479

You might also check out 3DCoat. It about a quarter the cost of Zbrush, has Sculpting, auto-retopo, Painting and more. The new Blender has Dynotopo (similar to Sculptris), Snap tool (for hand -retopo) and Shrinkwrap (if you wanna just start with a simple box model around your finished product and then subdivide). And Blenders sculpting tools are similar to Zbrush, mirroring the stroke rather than the vertex order, allowing for symmetry and asymmetry to exist in the same model. Wings3D has had sculpting for a bit. I’ve shown several ways to use Wings3d functions to produce similar geometry to what can be produced with Zbrush. Depending on your needs, there’s also Meshmixer, which can do simple extrudes and extracts from Sculptris exports. This is great for making clothing and adding hair to Sculptris models. The biggest problem with Sculptris isn’t in the program. In fact it’s so easy to use that it attracts bitchy, noob users that haven’t got a clue, and wont bother digging around here to get one. Every problem, every concern, every flaw has been discussed here numerous times, and for many the answer is to download another free software and continue your work in that program. From Retopo to Render, Baking to Rigging and animation, Everything’s been discussed right here in the last 4 years, you just gotta find it. No, it’s not Zbrush, but there’s a round about way to do everything you want, it just takes a little more time and a little know-how. That’s why they can charge so much for Zbrush!! I use a combination of Sculptris, Wings3d, Blender, Paint.Net, an a little UV program called RoadKill. With this I can build for Daz Studio, Trackmania, 3DRad, and UDK (although I’m not great with this one yet!)

#480

I’m a little OT but… I’m trying to get a grip on meshmixer’s sculpting system. The program has a lot of features: booleans, sections planes, zbrush like symmetry, clone tools, and best of them all is the speed of the program. Even while sculpting the performance is impressive, I can go up to 2 milions tris and rotate and scale the object as if it was a light weight, and after 1 Mil tris I can still sculpt almost without lags even with adaptive topology on. The only problems are the sculpting tools that sucks a lot and is quite unstable when there are many tris and I try some advanced features, but beside that is a wonderful program and it did huge leap forward since the beginning, the most impressive was performance wise, it was slower than blender and now is incredibly smooth.

EDIT: after a fast research I’ve found the missing knowledge to use blender’s sculpting tool more effectively, I will try what I’ve found to have an exact comparison but I think I could reach around 4 millions tris and have some stability left.

#481

You don’t need 4 million Polygons. Scultpris lets you paint straight to Normal map, straight to texture. The Million Polygon thing is for Zbrush, because in Zbrush your “Vertex Painting” … assigning colors to the Vertices, edges, and polygons. Zbrush then “Bakes” the Texture and Normal Maps to an image. Sculptris lets you paint straight to the Normal and Texture maps, bypassing the need for Millions of Polygons. Understand, Zbrush million+ polygon models are Useless outside of Zbrush … it’s the low-Poly with Textures and Normal map that you want! Sculptris along with say Blender, Wings3d and Paint.NET is just a different way of getting there.
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#482

Wow, justadeletedguy… I totally put my foot in my mouth, honestly, I haven’t been using Sculptris’s paint feature yet because I’m still doing a lot of research on coloring and texturing 3D models in general, and working mainly with Blender and learning one thing at a time so it’s like being in a big dark room with a flashlight… don’t see the door right next to me, lol. I also heard some griping about Sculptris’s quality level on other forums, so I put off learning it’s features, and wish I hadn’t now. Well, guess I’d better let people get back to bashing Pixo in this thread and myself back to learning in the productive threads lol. You floored me with some great tips, and telling screen-captures, thank you…

#483

Only one question we have. Is Sculptris still in development yes or no?

#484

As a user who has watched development on this and several other projects: I doubt it. I haven’t seen any hints that it is, then again, I haven’t parsed the entirety of the forums and site here. Although Pixologic is the only one that can answer definitively - they probably wont give an answer as doing so would probably cause a lot of casual artists to stop checking in. They’re hoping that if casual artists keep checking in, they’ll see the features in zBrush and if they ever stop being causal artists and start doing this for money, they might invest in zBrush as a tool.

Points against it continuing development: Scupltris has become pretty unnecessary at the moment. Even tools like Blender are incorporating similar functionality, and have a far larger support base. Blender has an insane learning curve for anyone just getting into this sort of thing - which is a point in sculptris’ favor because scuptris feels natural and is easy to use. Then again, just try to wrap your head around Maya or Zbrush without watching a lot of tutorials. Also there are issues with the meshes that Sculptris produces, which when you bring them into other applications require either extreme decimation before export or a lot of optimization once you’re in your target app - or both. Finally, Scuptris’ feature set might get incorporated directly into zBrush when they work out the tessellation issues (triangles bad for geometry, so you need a geometry cleaner in the system which adds a lot of processing weight to the subsystem. It depends if better geometry algorithms crop up in the future.).

Had the project remained semi-open or gone full open-source it would have garnered some community support and input plus if the developer lost the edge on it someone might have forked it or picked it up. Seriously, though, lots of projects like this one fizzle and die. I think there’s a lot of utility for an app that just does one thing really well. But, I think what the sculptris designer was looking for was to show of his skills at developing an application of this nature, and get picked up by a software company like Pixologic. A steady source of income or food on the table is always a number one priority. You can’t develop good software for people if you’re starving to death. I don’t blame the dev for taking that route. He gave us an amazing tool that is still usable even if it is losing its relevance. We got it for free and it got him a job.

Its still on my desktop, but with all the other tools, its lost a bit of its shine.

#485

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I use Sculptris all the time, like almost every day, if my computer is turned on, ZBrush and Sculptris are both running.
I think its going to come out at the same time ZBrush 5.0 comes out, Pixologic just doesn’t talk about their plans. Sculptris is still the best sculpting program I have ever seen and this is simply because it fun, easy to learn and VERY easy to teach. Your mention of Blenders sculpt tools got me laughing, they, in comparison to Sculptris are simply hidious (I have been using them since they began and honestly they have gotten MORE aggravating, not less!). The only things I have seen that come close are MeshMixer which I can’t stand (Im not even sure why), and SculptGL which is actually seriously cool and IS open source. My reasons for thinking that Sculptris is is going to come out as maybe v.1.0 at the same time as ZBrush 5.0 is simply that the two are STILL a perfect pair, to me flipping back and forth now between ZBrush and Sculptris using GoZ is totally natural (though slightly buggy), I think all those bugs will be squashed, some of the painting stuff improved and somewhat tighter integration between the two. Sculptris not only caused me to buy ZBrush, it has helped me convince over a dozen other people to get ZBrush simply because Sculptris was so good they got hooked and wanted more, the gateway to ZBrush theory is not a theory. I think its very much in Pixologic’s interest to continue it, but thats just what I think, they aren’t talking and the silence is deafening.
I betcha its gonna be AWESOME!|

#486

This is an amazing app, one of a kind, but I can’t help but feel it’s gimped by the lack of polish/planar brushes and more advanced masking tools. Will they ever add more brushes ?

#487

Well Sculptris has not been updated since 2010 so don’t hold your breath.