My wokflow is not ideal, but I am getting better results than I did using the techniques at Shiny Life, tho I did learn a lot from there.
That said, my technique is one I have developed over the last year through trial and error, and I donāt use the same technique for every sculpt. Itās been a case of what feels and looks right at the time.
Preparation
- Download Wings 3D and get the sculpty plugin for it. With this plugin are several standard primitives with UV maps assigned.
- Open them in Wings and export them out as .obj files so you can import them into Zbrush. I have a base sphere, base torus, base cube and base cylinder.
- Import each of your primitives into Zbrush and save them as ztools for later use.
Now that the setup is doneā¦
- Load up the ztools that you will need for the task at hand. If building a simple shoe, I use a torus and 2 spheres - one sphere for the sole, one for the heel and the torus for the body of the shoe itself.
- Manipulate the meshes using the Zbrush tools to the desired shapes and export each subtool as itās own .obj file. I find that creating the object with each subtool loaded and visible to be a great way to get the sculpties to fit together nicely, and I often use the SL avatar mesh to sculpt around to get sculpties that fit the avatar in world.
- Import the .obj file into Wings 3D and use the sculpty plugin to create your sculpt map.
- open your sculpt map in Photoshop or similar image editing program and create a black alpha channel. Save the file as a 32 bit .tga file. (this will produce a sculpt map in world that is completely transparent when opened - reduces the risk of your sculpt map being screenshotted and stolen that way - if you like you can stamp your logo or name in white on the alpha channel)
- Upload your new sculpts into second life and test them for fit.
Now for the fun partā¦
- Go back into Zbrush to the model which you have just created. Select a subtool - ie: the top of the shoe. Turn the other subtools off. Go to the Geometry tool and increase the divisions until you have 4 or 5 levels of subdivision. This gives you a lovely smooth mesh to work on. Note, the poles of the sphere based primatives will disappear into long points, I havenāt worked out how to stop that from happening. but if you sculpt cleverly and put the poles of your spheres in a less than obvious place, it wonāt matter.
- Fill the shoe (torus subtool) with a light grey. This makes it easy to colour afterwards. Select a light grey in the colour picker, then go to colour-> fill object. (this is a very important step for baking lighting later)
- Select a material appropriate to your shoeās material. ie: if the shoe is leather, use a low reflective material - for patent leather, use a highly reflective material. I like to use the fast shader and the Jellybean material is also good for shoes. Play around with the materials until you get one you like.
- If you have used a material in the startup standard materials, you can change the lighting at a later stage
- Now, add details to your shoe top. Add stitching around the edge of the shoe using the stitch brush (I have made my own alpha to use with the stitch brush) paint in seams using zadd and zsub. whatever details you want the shoe to have. You can also paint the shoe colour and colour variances if you want to, but keep in mind that you will be colouring it later.
- If I am adding stitching to my objects, I will paint the stitching onto the grey base colour using black, and zadd. Then I export that colour map alone. If I am doing more colouring, I will export another base colour texture before I bake any lighting. I find separating stitching, base colour and shadows and highlights to give me the most control over the end product.
- To export the textures follow the steps below
- Open the texture tool under the Tool menu. The Col>Txr button should be available. Press it! What happens next is that a texture will appear in the Current texture box on the left. It will correspond to the texturing on the object.
- If you want to change anything, you need to turn the texture off in order to paint on the mesh, and then do Col>Txr again to get a new texture.
- Now go to texture ->Export and save the texture out as a .psd file.
- Ok once you have your colours exported the way you like them, itās time to bake some lighting. You can either do this over your colours, or you can do this over a grey base colour, itās up to you. I use either technique, depending on the result I want to get.
- If you are baking lighting over a grey base, first paint your object grey.
- Ensure all other subtools are off apart from the one you are working on.
- Go to Light and turn on the second light switch on the top row - click it again to make it come to the front of your object. Move the lights around until the shiny on your shoe looks good to you. Rotate the camera on the shoe to check that it looks good from all angles with the light setting. Increasing the ambient level, and the GSI setting can also produce interesting results.
- Once you have the light set the way you want it, rotate the shoe around until the light falls in the right place. Now press Projection Master.
- Ensure that Colours, Shaded and Material are all ticked and press Drop Now. Wait. Press Projection Master again and press Pickup Now.
- You will be able to move your object around, and one side will have lighting baked into it.
- Reposition your shoe again to a part that doesnāt have baked lighting. Repeat the process above with the Projection Master to bake the lighting.
- Continue this until you are satisfied that you have covered all areas, and that your shadows and lights please you
- Click Col>Txr and export the resulting texture.
Now for some final work in photoshop to get all the pieces together.
- Open the textures you exported in Photoshop.
- If you have a stitching texture, insert it into the colour texture and select all the grey colour. Delete it, so that you just have the black stitching. Apply a couple of interesting blending effects and maybe a colour overlay to get a 3 dimensional look to the stitching.
- insert your shadows and highlighting into the colour file below the stitching layer and blur/repair by hand any areas that need to be repaired. For the spherical prim texture, you will need to fix the areas at the top and bottom of the texture. just use the clone stamp to blend out those trouble spots.
- Set the blend mode of the shadows layer to multiply or overlay, and adjust the opacity to a level that suits you. Play around with the other blending modes as well, you might get interesting effects.
Resize your texture to 512x512. This can sometimes leave an edge of transparent pixels which will give you a seam in your texture. Remove that with the clone stamp set to very small and hard.
Upload the texture to Second Life and apply it to your sculptie. You will need to change the rotation and alignment of the texture, especially if you are applying it to a torus. I need to change the texture alignment to 0 degrees and then flip the texture vertically. Play around with the x and y alignment until the texture is in the right place.
Done! It looks long but once you get the process down, itās actually very fast. I can go from base prim to finalised pair of shoes in a matter of hours if I plan well.
I just realised that this is the āgetting started on sculptiesā tutorial I have wanted to write for quite some time, so I will be posting this on my blog in the next couple of days with pictures Iāll linky it here when itās done.
If anyone has anything to add or discuss on the stuff in this post, Iād appreciate your input Additionally, if there is anything you want me to clarify, please let me know!
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