Mac and Linux General

[Nicoletta Lefevre]

Grrr, I dislike the new forum system.

I'm using Zbrush for some sculpted prims, and I export as obj. file, but then obviously have to convert that to a sculptmap bmp for uploading to SL.

How I'm doing it now is: export obj file, restart under Windows (sigh), use that cool little Sculpty Maker converter program that converts from obj to bmp in a zillionth of a second, then restart back into Mac again and so on. It is so incredibly tedious, frustrating and time consuming to have to start up Windows for that tiny task.

Is there a better way??? I've tried Wings3d with the SL plugin, but I always get unsupported mesh error message when trying to export as bmp. I've Googled, and from what I understand, all you can do is work within Wings; you can't import an object from Zbrush and expect to export it in the proper format.

Is there ANY program/doodad out there that could keep me from having to fire up Windows on every sculpt attempt? If I want to smooth out one tiny spot....there I go, back and forth.

Thanks for any suggestions,

Nic

[Autumn Palen]

I've got Sculpty Maker to work on my mac with this program, no Windows needed at all: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

One other person in the in-world Zbrush group got Sculpty Maker to work with Wine, the free source of the program above: http://davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/

Also, if you had Parallels or VMware Fusion, you could boot into Windows without booting out of OS X.

One thing I did before I got Sculpty Maker to work on my mac was starting with a sculpted sphere created in Blender, export that as an .obj into Zbrush, do all my zbrush deformations on it, then export as .obj back to Blender and use its scripts to make my sculpt map.

The same workflow "should" work with Wings3d.

Those are about the only options I can think of, but I do think the Wine or Crossover solution works the best, as you can then use all the Zbrush primitives and Sculpty Maker, as well as Sculpty Rezzer.

[Nicoletta Lefevre]

This is beautiful; just what I need. I'm downloading the stuff needed for Wine right now, and crossing my fingers this will work.

I thought about old Virtual PC, but it's been so long since I used that, I wasn't even sure if they still make it, or if it would run on Snow Leopard. These programs seems like perfect alternatives!

A million thank yous.

Nic

[Autumn Palen]

Welcome It really is a great solution for me, and I hope Wine works out for you. It should Then you just have Sculpty Maker on your Mac, run it like a Mac program, though it will take a while to start up.

[Nicoletta Lefevre]

Absolutely AWESOME!!!

I chose Wine because it was free. LOL. It wasn't hard to install, just time consuming. And now, WOW, I can do just what I wanted: use SculptyMaker without having to reboot into Windows. It works.

What a great learning experience!