From Scratch ZBrush and Blender

NealCrz · October 22, 2012

Ok, I'm diving in and know nothing about it. So going to chornicle some things for others because I find the tutorials and stuff I read don't take into account plugins and other things that are necessary.

I tried Maya and Blender and starting to get it but until my friend on here told me about Zbrush did I get excited.

ZBrush is a natural way to mold clay and once molded and paninted can be directly uploaded to Secondlife.

ZBrush

After trying to follow the youtube video on this I spent a whole day trying to figure out why my ZBrush didnt look like the youtube video.

I needed this SL Plugin

SL Plugin for ZBrush

Youtube Video on Zbrush to SL

The tool is frustrating to learn at first and I used Lynda.com for a day to get over some user interface issues.

Started with a sphere and to my suprise it worked! Will post shortly some of the work.

Also found this helpful by Thor

Thors Walk Through

PLease jump in if you use Zbrush.

Dilbert Dilweg · October 22, 2012

You can do the same trhing with Blender. and have more efficient models if you ask me

Zbrush is nice as well. But All this can be done without plugins

The lattice modifier works wonders for making organic shapes in blender. molding like clay etc. The sculpt tools work well too.

If you think about it. A scupty prim is basicly a subdivided object with a lattice type modifer attached to it..

NealCrz · October 22, 2012

Yea I tried Blender and spent bout 20 hours on it and I think Ill need it for rigging. I just find ZBrush more organic.

Take Clay shape it , paint it, texture it, and upload it. For me I'm having way more fun in Zbrush in the same amount of time invested.

For those on ZBrush my first 4 very crude models. Keep in mind I know nothing about this technology so this is for those that want to learn from point 0. haha

Because i was having trouble with understanding Zbrush, i said heck with it, I'm going to just make sphere and get it into secondlife. Most are 5-9 prims when brought into SL but the 2nd one was 44 lol. The flower attempt is 9.

Mesh work_001.jpg

Dilbert Dilweg · October 22, 2012

Yea sculpting models require a higher amount of polies to sculpt. Learning decimation and retopology comes in handy to reduce the impact. Some users think that if you sculpt them then you have to bring them in as a sculptie.. It is more efficient making them a mesh and make more efficient LOD's

Here is a video on the lattice Lattice Modifier in Blender

NealCrz · October 22, 2012

Thanks ill look up all those words after work. HAHA. All my crude models are direct export mesh files from Zbrush or DAE + BMP. The scripting plugin I found "Export to SL" exports the mesh and texturing for me in one click.

For those new like me, SL uses a file with extension DAE for mesh. Zbrush creates the DAE file and a BMP which is the texture (Coloring etc) that gets applied ot the mesh.

By the way to upload mesh into SL you have to go to SL.com go though 5 mins of training about not using copyrighted material.
Then in your inventory where you upload files you upload model instead and click "Include Texture" on the 3rd tab.

Thats what worked for me.

Dilbert Dilweg · October 23, 2012

Zbrush is a pretty cool program. Each time I have used it, it was a lot of fun ,

Chip Midnight · October 24, 2012

You can use Zbrush but you don't want to use models from Zbrush for SL because of the extremely high polygon count. You'll want to retopologize it first. The latest version of Zbrush has an auto-retopo feature. (http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Topology_and_Reflow_Lab) 3D-Coat also does automatic retopo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEnwxnNMPk4). Other than that you'll need to remodel it manually.

retopo in maya:

retopo in Blender

NealCrz · October 24, 2012

Thank you. When you say too many triangles when does this come up? This is a timely note as I was just looking 5 mins ago about limitations for Secondlife models. lol.

Looking at the aritcles you posted thank you.

NealCrz · October 24, 2012

New images. I'm running into some size limitation issues as Chip talked about. Here I did a cake because I wanted to use the Radial tool in ZBrush that lets me sculpt multiple surfaces at once. However my file was so big, I couldnt upload it.

Second life Mesh Limits

Note the image below shows a 500Meg file and the second cake is 112K file the lowest I could get too. Lost a lot of detail and what made it special I lost. 5 Prim

Also did a spring today to continue seeing what i can upload. 24Prim

Mesh2_001 copy.jpg

Chip Midnight · October 24, 2012

You always want to try to have your models consist of only as many polygons as absolutely necessary for two reasons. First because it impacts framerates and viewer performance for everyone in eyeshot of your object, and second because the higher the polygon count the higher the land impact and the less stuff you'll be able to have on your land.

Typically what you do with an object created in a sculpting app like Zbrush or 3D-Coat is to sculpt the high resolution model with all the details and use that to generate a normal map to be applied to the low polygon version. You can use that to render the object as if it had all the detail and generate specular highlights and shadows accordingly. Or, when we get normal map support in SL which is coming in the near future you can use that directly in SL.

If you compare the two pics you posted of the cake with the deocrative piping on the side. The top one has all the nice shadows from the piping details, but that detail isn't really necessary to describe the overall shape of the object. You just want to end up with those details in the shading of your texture map.

NealCrz · October 24, 2012

Thanks Chip learned a lot from your message!!

Heres today's attempt. Once i figured this out took about 3 mins to make. Just a draft for now to learn.

Mesh First Mask Rudamentory.jpg

In Zbrush

1. Use average man

2. Paint on Mask with control or command key

3. Extract mask using Move and Control(Cmd) SHift A

4. Delete man just mask

5. Resample

6, Make Polymesh 3d in tools menu

7. Make UV Map

8. Paint

9. Upload

NealCrz · October 24, 2012

OK Shirt Failure, 2400 PRIMS! I thik ill need a class V sim for a full outfit.

Giant Shirt.jpg

Dilbert Dilweg · October 25, 2012

Lol thats the downside of using a sculpting program it uses very high amount of faces/poly's) After you make the high poly model like you have there, you then you have to think about making it friendly for in world use. ( low - Poly) . Poeple need to be able to rez it with out any lag. Lower poly mesh = less prims ...And also making LOD models

After you make the mesh you have there, if Z-Brush has a "decimate" function, use it to reduce the poly count... If Z_brush does not, then you can take it into blender and use their decimate modifer and reduce the count by .25 incriments untill you get to about between 1000 or 2000 faces give or take a little. . I am not sure how ZBrush works in that aspect. But that should be number one thought in planning a mesh. So make sure you research making low poly models/sculpts in Zbrush

KEEP YOUR HIGH POLY MODEL for baking and high quality uses like Chip mentioned

It is also best to not make clothing solid. It creates doub;e the verticies. Only make it solid where needed in places that are visible.

There is also a program called meshlab. free open source program that will crunch the polys also

That shirt looks extremely high poly lol nice one tho

NealCrz · October 25, 2012

Thanks Dilbert. Ok after decimate.

I did download a program called TopoGun to hopefully help with retoplogizing or from what i understand making lower detail models from higher detaield polymesh. Still getting stuck on all the terms like which ill list for others trying to beak in to mesh

after this thanks!

NealCrz · October 25, 2012

Questions I'm trying to solve now if anyone wants to jump in .

1. I was able to get my avatar out of Secondlife using Phoenix 1.5x Getting Avatar to Blender (But when i tried to follow the Blender Import I can't find the -x90 degrees in the tutorial on my MAC. Stuck on this one.

2. Why initialize a 3d prim and why sometimes I dont have to do that?

3. Whats the purpose of a UV map and how does it differ from a Texture map/ poly paint?

4. Whats the difference between a Tool which I think is a paint brush, polymesh and 3d polymesh?

5. Do I have to retopolgize everything I make?

6. What's the deal with triangles and subdivision issues? Often I try to do something but get messages about object contaiing trinagles.

Dilbert Dilweg · October 25, 2012

I wouldnt be able to help you with any MAC issues. /me loves his weeenders 7 .

I will also not be able to translate any functions from Zbrush. A UV map is a corridnate map for your textures. It could be called taxture map in ZBrush I dunno. I dont mess with it enough to even matter lol

number 5 . You may hvae to retopo everything if you use a high poly mesh to sculpt. Most cases yes.

Number 6 . I think you can only subdivide quads. Triangles are too messy , Use quads to model with is always best.

Here are some videos showing how to create things lower poly by box modeling and using quads

If you import the second life model into blender. then you can see it is very low poly in edit mode.

It doesnt take a lot of polys to make something nice in SL ....

But if you chose to sculpt with a high poly mesh. which there is nothing wrong with it. You just need to learn to retopo them and make them game worthy.

I would not even begin to be able to tell you how to model low poly with Zbrush. But i do know how to use bsurfaces to make a new topolology for a high poly mesh in blender lol

NealCrz · October 26, 2012

Dilbert Dilweg wrote: