Turn any object into a Sculpty
In this tutorial I show you how you can use zBrush 3.1 to convert an existing object to a sculpted prim. We’ll be using the Subtools feature which allows you to work on more than one object mesh at a time, and the zProject brush to transfer the 3D geometry from the original shape to our new sculpty-friendly shape. I’ll also be using the Material Baker script to bake the shadows and highlights into a texture to be applied to the sculpty in-world.
The zProject brush rocks! The more I play with zBrush, the more ways I find to combine the tools to create new effects. In my first zBrush tutorial I used zProject to texture an object with a photo/image reference – and now I’m using it to transfer actual 3D data. This technique is not limited to just copying objects, either. It could be used anytime you want to copy 3D info from one object to another object. There’s also now reason that you couldn’t use multiple sculpties to convert parts of a complicated object.
If you haven’t done so already, you might want to watch my first video where I demonstrate the entire process of creating and texturing a sculpted prim in zBrush. Besides the Material Baker script you’ll also need 2k Suisie’s SculptyMaker converter program.
Sorry about the scratchy audio in this one, dunno what happened. :) You can also download a higher resolution, Quicktime version of the video.
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Thanks again, Vlad!
Drat, this was my last day of my Zbrush trial. *sigh* Will have to go shake the piggy bank now, and it’s all your fault really for writing such clear tutorials.
Sillyness aside, I think subtools are one of the most powerful things in zbrush. I haven’t tried yet, but as soon as I get my (nonfree) copy, I want to try assembling a multiple tool item and texturing it. It seems the best way to ensure smooth textures across seam that I can think of. I presume you can just make the desired tool active to texture and export the texture, correct?
yes, should be able to treat any piece of the subtool as a tool by turning off the other ones. I’m not sure how the material baker script will work with subtools, as I haven’t experimented with that yet.
My next project is going to involve creating a multi prim sculpty object using subtools as well.
Thank you so much for this additional tutorial, this is something I have been trying to do without great success but you just filled in the blank I was missing.
You’re welcome, Eboni. Glad that you found the video useful. That zProject feature is a real workhorse. I keep finding more uses for it as I explore zBrush.
Vlad, I thought I knew it all, but you’ve just shown me stuff that I didn’t know was possible.
I tried the Material Baker before and wasn’t really impressed with the results. I just watched your video and realized it really was possible to bake decent textures with it.
You have a great tutorial friendly voice too! :D
I’m having trouble turning the sphere. How did you get it centered like that?
Shayna: You can use the Move, Rotate, and Scale tools to change the position of the sphere relative to your object. They are just above the main window to the left. Make sure that you have the sphere selected in the Subtools menu.
It take a bit to get used to the Transpose line and the move/rotate/scale tool but it’s pretty slick once you get use to it. After selecting rotate, draw out a line on your object, then grab the circular handles to rotate the object relative to the line.
Thanks Vlad… it worked :-) I sent you a gmail. Please write back soon :-) Thanks.
Vlad: interesting technique. cant wait to get home and try this. you said something toward the end about using this method not for just transferring one object to the next, but also for picking up details and transferring them. can you give an additional example of that? I may be premature in my question as i haven’t sat through the entire first one yet, only a few minutes of it.
ByteDreams: You could use this technique to copy the details from one object to another. for instance lets say you wanted to make a bas-relief tile that had the imprint of a face on it. You could start with a 3D object of a face and sculpty-ready cube (or plane) then transfer just the shapes from the face area of your new sculpty. Or maybe you have a details Car object. You could grab the shape of just the headlight and transfer that to a new sculpty object.
Thanks, vlad. Appreciate it.
Great video, thank you so much, but I’m stuck now with because I can’t find the tool that u used to clear the tool and made the texture, please help :)
Angella: Do you mean the Material Baker script that creates the texture with the lighting and shadow? If so it is linked up above in the post. Grab it here: http://www.davidikeda.com/zscripts/materialbaker.html
Thanks going to try it now :)
It worked great, thank you!
For Second Life creations, are there sufficient changes from ZBrush2 to ZBrush3 to justify an upgrade? I’m just starting to study my ancient copy of ZBrush2 and wonder what the SL-relevant changes re ZBrush3 are.
Wonderful videos, I’ll be minutely studying them over and over.
Shaoshan: hmm. I don’t really have any experience with zBrush 2. I know that the first couple of versions of Sculpty Maker had 1 program for zb2 and one for zb3. I’m not sure if Sculpty Maker v2.5 works with ZB 2, but it is worth a try.
Maybe someone with more zBrush 2 experience will come along and offer some advice.
We all know how important the UV-map is when you are making a sculptie for SecondLife. All too often I ended up with a decent looking sculpty, only to find that it was almost impossible to texture probably because the UV-map was not quite perfect after all.
ZBrush is a very powerful tool for sculpting and texturing, but the unintuitive interface, and many, many pitfalls that you may encounter makes it hard for the beginning sculptor to find his way around the program. Tutorials like these – and therefore people like you – play a pivotal role in lowering the barrier. This tutorial saved my day, just about as I was ready to give up on ZBrush. You the man, Vlad, keep up the good work.
zBrush does have a steep leraning curve – but for me the journey has been worth it. :) To me, ZB is a lot like Photoshop in that there are so many ways to combine the tools to crate new techniques and effects. I’ve been using Photoshop for 17 years and there is still plenty to learn, I feel that it may be the same way with ZB – always something new to dicsover.
Vlad, first off – thank you for the great videos and info!
My question is about the material baking you have used in this video. I finally got Zbrush for my Intel Mac, and I am not getting the same results with the Material Baker script that you have linked to. It seems to go through the motions, but I do not end up with a baked texture at the end – just a texture with a solid color fill and a lot of perspective views in the texture tray. There is always the possibility I have done something wrong too :P
My ZBrush version is 3.12 – I have already noticed a few interface differences – (the Texture and Polypaint items seem to be different for me). I would be curious if you have heard from any other Mac users about some of the differences, and any possible workarounds for them regarding this Zscript.
Thanks again!
OX
I found my own answer:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=63527
- OX
ah good, glad that you found some info – I have zero experience with zBrush on a Mac. :) Thanks for posting the link. I bet that eventually Pixologic will fix up the Mac client so that existing plugins will work.
Yes, we Mac folk are the step children of Pixologic at times. I am just glad they have a Mac version at all!
Thankfully, I have a decent PC and second ZBrush license code to play with (ZBrush under VMware or Parallels is not much fun because there is no easy pressure support when using your tablet). After successfully going through this tutorial again with the PC version, I found an updated version of the Material Baker in the ZBrush Central forums that may be helpful if you have not come across it:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=49966&highlight=Material+Baker
It seems to simplify the process compared to V1 and works with 3.1 (still not 3.12 because Pixologic has changed the color>texture and texture>color interface in that release. I have yet to find documentation on some of the new changes in this version, but it breaks a lot of scripts/plug-ins from what I am reading).
Again, thank you for the time and effort you put into this site – it is truly appreciated ;-)
- OX
I cant do everything you do in this program because you are using a trial version ;p
Zach: hmm, not sure what you mean. I am using the full version of zBrush, and the trial version is exactly the same. I’m using version 3.1, which looks slightly different than version 3.0 so maybe that is the confusing bit,
Hello, I’ve downloaded the Material Baker, but there’s no documentation of how to implement it into ZBrush that I’ve found. From what I understand the material_baker.txt should be put in the ZSCRIPT folder, but what about the rest of the .txt documents? When I load the single material_baker.txt into ZBRUSH it gives several pop ups about the lighting and such. I thought maybe because they weren’t in the folder, so I put them all in the folder…still doesn’t work lol…maybe I’m doing something wrong…any feedback would be great.
BigK: You don’t really need to install the Material Baker in a specific spot, you just load in the script from anywhere and run it. Just unzip the files into any folder you like. THere should be some files in there, as well as a images and include folder.
From the Script menu in zBrush, choose the Load option, then load the material_baker.zsc file and the Material Baker stuff should open up underneath the modeling window.
Ahh, yeh I’ve got it. Thanks alot for the help.
Скажите, а можно ли взять новости с вашего сайта? Со ссылкой на первоисточник естественно. :)
Да, вы можете получить RSS канал, который показывает все новые позиции, как они появляются.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShinyLife
I can’t see this video whats wrong?
OMG! Vlad.. you are like the god of Zbrush and SL sculpties..
You’re the reason I bought Zbrush… but I just have Macs now.. any advice on how to convert a Zbrush Object to a sl sculptie?
Thanks Vox. Mac users could try using WIngs3D as a sculpty converter. thats what I did before 2k made the sculptymaker. Instead of starting your sculpt with a zbrush primitive, import one of the premade wings3D objects into zBrush. ( Omei Turnbull provides with his Wings3D converter. ) sculpt your object, export as obj, then import into wings3D and convert.
Hey vlad. I’m a 3d artist and I have a friend who pulled me into SL and I’m really getting a kick out of it. your tutorials have helped me wrap my head around the sl engine.
Now I do have one question, I saw this video and I have never used material baker. Generally I use 3d studio max and render to texture from a high poly model to a my SL texture map. So I figured I can over lay my base colors and create my high poly details and bake that all inside of zbrush. Thus saving me a ton of time.
But when I run material baker it seems to darken the majority of the map. Do you know why it does this or how to solve such an issue. it would be fine if it was just dark across the board then I could just photoshop it, but all the edges seems to lighten up. I have tooled around with lighting and materials to no avail.
I wasn’t sure how else to get ahold of you so I hope this is the best option. thanks for any help you can supply.
SL name – Kyoske Davi
Thank you for some great tutorials. Because of you now I’m actually using my zbrush and exporting maps into SL:) Your way of explaing just about everything that is needed for a particuler project is amazing. Thanks again:))
Kyoske: I now longer use Material Baker to grab the shading and materials on my objects. It’s just kind of flaky and doesn’t seem to work at all in ZB 3.5. Fortunately there are some better alternatives. Check out this post:
http://www.shiny-life.com/2010/01/19/better-alternatives-to-material-baker/
Ron: Cool! THe worst part about sculpties is just figuring out how to get an object from your modeler to SL, after that it is much easier. :) Thanks for the feedback.
hey Vlad, I was just two minutes and twenty-three seconds into your tutorial video and ran into a problem. At this point you say to go over to the Initialize option on the right, under Display Properties. I do not have this Initialize option; it doesn’t show up anywhere. Any advice on this?
Hey Vlad, love your tutorial videos, they really helped me out.
My only problem is that, just like another commenter, I don’t have the ‘Initialize’ option.
Any ideas or suggestions, or perhaps there’s another way to do it?
Thanks for any help you can give.