If you have watched any of my sculpted prim tutorial videos, then you’ve probably heard me talk about Sculpty Maker. It’s a shiny set of tools that make it easy to take objects created in zBrush and convert them into sculpties in Second Life. The person who created these tools was having some troubles finding a place to host the files, and he didn’t really have the time to offer support for the tools. So, I’ve volunteered Shiny Life as Scultpy Maker’s new home.

I’ll be hosting all of the files, as well as answering  any questions that you might have about Sculpty Maker – at least the ones I’m able to answer. :) I’m also in the process of creating some new tutorials specifically geared toward getting you up and running with zBrush and Sculpty Maker as quickly as possible. So all of you zBrush adventureres, head on over to the new Sculpty Maker home page and get sculpting!

VIrrginia Tombola, fellow zBrush adventurer, has posted another great tutorial on LaBicyclette. This time around she demonstrates several tools and techniques that you can use to create a sculpted prim skull.  You’ll learn how to:

• Use a reference image to assist with modeling
• Use different levels of division to create an organized sculpting workflow
• Use the subtool menu to group objects together, and be able to manipulate them and edit them individually
• Understand the difference between texture and color, and color individual subtools
• Use symmetry when sculpting
• Use the various sculpting brushes for their various purposes
• Make a cute skull

Great step-by-step instructions and detailed info. Thanks Virrginia!

Virrginia Tombola Gets Animated

Virrginia Tombola has posted a great tutorial about how to create animated sculpted prims with zBrush and version 2.1 of 2k’s Sculpty Maker. Woot! I am so psyched that 2k has added these new features to his converter, and Virrginia’s tutorial will save us all some time with our experiments.

2k Suisei has been busy lately, updating his zBrush to sculpted prim converter several times in the last few weeks. This newest v2.1 includes several exciting additions. You can now rescale objects while converting. This provides a higher quality conversion and keeps the physical bounding box closer to the shape of the actual sculpty. There are options to help you animate sculpties in-world, either by changing the center axis of the final object or aligning multiple ‘frames’ of an animated shape.

2k has also added the ability to import multiple object sculpties. You can create an object in zBrush using several individual obejects, convert them, then automatically re-assemble them in world with 2k’s Sculpty Rezzer object. Shiny!

Check out the Sculpty Maker forum thread for the download and other info.

2k Suisei has updated his zBrush to Sculpty converter to version 1.5. Woot! This version is a bit more forgiving on the order of the vertices in the mesh and also allows for off-center placement of the axis of rotation – which should be great for animating sculpties. Check out this forum thread for more info and to download the new version of SculptyMaker.