"Best" all-around 3d program to learn for making sculpted prims

[Harry Hyx]

Hey, I just wanted to start off by saying that yes I know there is no "best" program but I just wanted to know people's opinion on which of the 3d programs has good all-around features. I don't want to spend all my time learning a program just to find out that another program can do it better.

It'd be nice to know which of the programs has these features...

-Can bake shadowmaps onto texture

-Can paint directly on model

-Has a SL sculpty plugin

 

What do you guys think? Is there a more popular program out there that is widely used by the SL community?

 

Thanks!

[Nacy Nightfire]

Blender. 

 

[Ryou Yiyuan]

Blender with some video tutorials around Youtube.

Blender is really the most powerfull freeware for 3D stuff.

The machinimatrix website is helpfull to start

[Poenald Palen]

Um, blender does this stuff. I do know it does this stuff. The few below, I am not sure of and don't use them. But, I do know people use all three in SL and they have sculpt support, some kind of texture support and the rest is a mystery to me.I know some hate the learnign curve of 2.49 version, but at present that is the fullest working blender version and you will still have similar buttons and tools in 2.57 when it is all brought up to date for sculpts. They are doing a 2 month iteration for blender and there are still things missing with scripting in 2.57, so far. In 2 months they might have it all together and start new features, but I dont' keep up with thier development any more than check the news at a few blender websites. I don't participate or peak through the code and such either. But, 2.49 is the best bet for sculpties right now. Look up projection painting and maybe remember to switch on AO to get an Ambeint Occlusion map baked ect. You will see thes tipes around the web, but thought it might be worth mentioning. BUT, once again, back to the topic. There are a few others. I will quickly type up a little I know about them...which isn't much lol. ;P

Maya can do many more thing and is used heavily in the biz for movies and other 3dCG animation.

3DS max does this stuff as well.

AC3D does many things, although I am not sure of the textures. But It has changed since when I tried it a few years back. They have more texture and rendering pug-ins and features...but I really don't know much about them. I do remember seeing a lighted texture bake...but maybe this was not for a sculpt or the sculpt map plug-in is just not compatible with that plug-in for rendering textures or baking? I have now clue, for all I know I saw builds with baked textures form it today...I just don't know. But, it is a starting point to finding out as I know thier forums have a few SL topics in them!

Hexagon has suport for sculpts. But, once again...lighting and shadow baking (or ambient occlusion, global lighting, radience...wow, there is a whole set of little buttons in blender and I bet 3DS to!) is something I don't know about.

Now, I think Softimage had a softare....XSI? It is now owned by Autodesk....but I can't remember the name. It is more or less for games and I am betting it has some texture support and also it has a sulpt plug-in. It is far less popular I bet, so I didn't find much info on it years back. The one they list in the SL wiki is different and non-commercial only now. But, I mean...you need to see all of the specifics for you and your position ect. I mean, some software is illegal in some countries ect. and who knows what other oddities are in those licenses that might upset some people!

I think Cinima 4D has a sculpt plug-in to. But textures..wow, I should know this as I looked into it. But I want to say "no" on the painting....but I really can't remember lol.

Um, there is also the tools from the maker of Rokuru, the sort of famous simple sculptie maker. He has a few tools that are pay for, but he used to sell them for Linden Dollars In world! So, this might be a very quick way to get a tool that allows you to model and paint...but you know, I am not sure of the shadows and light.

Zbrush is one that works well for sculpts that are more organic (what sculpt maps are best for really)....well, not sure about the lighting...but I think it does.

I know I am missing a few....um, there is one called Curvey...I think. The guy put support in last year, if my memory serves me. It was pretty neat,but I never spent enough time. Um, it is pretty quick when you get to know it and it is not as slow to learn as blender. I thought some tools had a bit learning curve to figure out how to get them to not mess your work a bit....um, like you need to learn thier boundaries and how they effect edges ect. But, that is the same for any program. If you learn one, the other always seems a bit odd and you scratch your head now and then wondering what is the best angle, brush settings etc. I seem to remember it did shadow maps..but I dont' know about painting, but I never did any texture work at all and just focused on the modelling tools. I planned on using materials and baking in blender becuase I learned it and was using materials I found at the materials library for blender (also, already making a few of my own) ect.

For more of a inclusive list and maybe some of these softwares  have great forums to help you on the specifics youw ish to know about each? Anyway, here is a larger list. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide

[Gaia Clary]

I recommend to take a look at the Sculptie section in the Secondlife wiki. There is one 3D Sculpty Software guide full of information about many 3D programs (free and commercial). That should give you a very quick overview.

when you want to know about which software is mostly used, then looking at the tags in this forum section might give you some further hints ;-)

[Poenald Palen]

My own opinion here, and for the 'tl;dr' in all of us: Blender will do this and has the most tutorials and helpers for a SLer and also will prepare you for any conversions, texture work or COLLADA file tweakign you migvht do in the future if you hate blender and use another tool set. BUT no workman should limit himself to one brand of tool set if the workflow and customer benifits from more than one...even if YOU are the only customer!

Having said that, here are a few more methods and tools I have heard of or seen in use and/or the results of their use:

I remembered that you mentioned "popular" and figure that this is worth mentioning. Photoshop is used, by some, for lighting/baking. Also, sometimes people hand paint shade on and I have done this myself instead of tweaking the shadow settings and moving lights around. I simply put the texture into Gimp and selected an area and used a gradient tool and then guasion blur to soften it all out.

Some also use Deep Paint, I think. This is just for texgtures, and mostly for hand painting and cloning from a render or a photo. There are other progs for 3d model texture painting as well, some of which might work well and be used by people who just keep it a secret!

Photoshop is very popular though and I do know it does have a baking feature.

Also, I forgot Shade. It is a 3D tool. This one is more popular with Japanese users as it was only avilable in japanese for one version. But now the latest one is in English and also available in a few versions. Though I can't remember the price. But more or less...um, yeah it has sculpt export built in and they support other virtual world and also some 3D studio type applications with a store for thier creators to list in ect. So, they are sort of into the virtual environment market more so than many 3D applications which tend to maybe be into visualization or animation software as a focus.

I know my post is lengthly, but these are ones I have heard of in use. I like the tags idea as well, from Gaiga. But I always luagh becuase....well, if it worked well and had a good help file or forum for the product at the makers site...why ask here? I think many would solve thier issues via help or software specific forums. You see some of the stuff here because people who learned about them here come back here for support. But I see very little talk of Shade, though I see it in use and you see a classic example of culture, help files and other-forum-help as a reason, not really popularity or usefullness. I am not saying Shade is as popular as Blender or 3DS. But, it is in use and succesfully so.

This seems to also happen on almost any set of forums that have different tools. You might see some pro's at one forum use tool X and there is none better, while another says tool Y is the way to go and yet another has a few advocates of tool Z and each person who agrees and uses each one goes back to the one with the most help...I mean, usually. Sometimes though, you have people going back to get help because it might be the only forum they remember, they found the password for this other one or many many different reasons. But, overall you can sometimes see this type of thing. Here, blender has a strong advocacy from Gaia and a few others, Maya has help from Chosen(ok, maybe I have him mixed up with another...but you will see him/her here helping with Maya questions) and there is also a few others that use other things and will often come to someones aid with info and tips. Which brings me back to the "popular" bit. Photoshop can bake textures for sculpts with it's 3D support. So, this is an option that many don't think of. But skin makers sometimes use it, as well as people who use in world sculptie tools or others. They know photoshop and it works faster, so this is their route. I have seen tutorials, so I know this exists. I like blender, it has an amazing array of tools. I am not so much help though, I tend to ramble in a to much chit chatty style. Which brings me to remembering to stop right now!

 

[Josh Susanto]

I suspect Blender would be the best for the cost, but not everyone can get it to work.

Every time someone mentions that I should use Blender, I reinstall it, reopen it, and see again that every single button appears to be disabled.

If this is also your experience, I can recommend Sculptypaint.

[Nacy Nightfire]

Gaia, lol, I think you meant to reply to the author of the thread.  I have Blender, Modo, Zbrush, Mudbox, Wings3d, and Lightwave, archipelis and sculptypaint an old, old version of amorphium and I still say Blender.

The idea that Blender is harder to learn then other programs is a myth.  If you never have been exposed to 3d programs the learning curve can be daunting in ANY software package.  Many advanced/professional users have not liked the Blender interface, but who cares.  They are already advanced users and have access to software packages that cost thousands of dollars with expensive training options.  And the newest version takes care of this anyway...you can set your own shortcuts and interface to work exactly as you expect to.  

Blender seems to me to have the biggest, most generous free source of tutorials on the web, not the least of which are those  fabulously authored by Gaia Clary on her Machinimatrix.org website.  And for whatever you are going to need in SL, mesh or scultpy creations, Blender is already overkill. (And also I recommend the blender/sculpty specific tutorial series is by SLBlender (BlenderSL?) on youtube.)

[Gaia Clary]

 

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Nacy Nightfire wrote:

Gaia, lol, I think you meant to reply to the author of the thread.

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That's right. I was not able to correct the linking after i created the message so i just left it as it was.

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Nacy Nightfire wrote:

The idea that Blender is harder to learn then other programs is a myth.  If you never have been exposed to 3d programs the learning curve can be daunting in ANY software package.  Many advanced/professional users have not liked the Blender interface, but who cares.  They are already advanced users and have access to software packages that cost thousands of dollars with expensive training options.  And the newest version takes care of this anyway...you can set your own shortcuts and interface to work exactly as you expect to. 

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Chosen Few (one of the Maya Gurus here) told me a while ago that his original opinion about blender (2.4) was that it had an unintuitive, inappropriate and hard to learn user interface. But he realised that it was not the program itself but its documentation which made it hard to learn.  BTW blender 2.5 comes with a "Maya preset" which is meant to keep Maya users comfortable (I can not tell if this is a good thing because i do not know Maya)

I think that the biggest problem in sculpty making is not mastering the 3D software, but understanding how sculpties realy work. They do have a few properties which make it very hard for beginners to deal with. And professionals usually have the most problem with what they learned about good modelling practice and can not be aplyed to sculpties.

I do not exactly know how good the sculpty related tools for other 3D software are. But i know that the blender add on for sculpty development (primstar) offers so many features and makes the creation of Sculpties easy and efficient on blender (IMHO). And it integrates so nicely with blender (2.5) that you hardly can tell that it is an add on ;-)

[Josh Susanto]

[i think that the biggest problem in sculpty making is not mastering the 3D software, but understanding how sculpties realy work. ]

Seeing the way most people are continuing to make rocks and plants with "better" sculpting tools than mine, the above statement cannot possibly be very far from the truth.

[Mira Kamiguwa]

I'd say don't waste time on blender 2.4 and move to 2.5.  Blender 2.4 was released in 2005? Thats 7 year old software people are using.  You also need to figure out how to make a sculpt map using primstar.  I've seen way better results by zbrush users because zbrush was actually designed for sculpting not mesh design.  If you want to make great meshes blender is awesome but for sculpties its just a lot of unnessesary work imo.    If you really want to use blender wait for the new primstar to be fully released I'd say.             

[Gaia Clary]

Blender 2.49b is the last official release on the 2.4 series. That version of blender was released on 2009-Sep-16. So it is 18 months old, not 7 years... But it is true, that since end of 2009 developer efforts mostly go into the development of Blender-2.5.

Although Blender-2.5 is surely less buggy and more future oriented than Blender-2.4, there are still some big advantages to use Blender-2.4:

- Primstar-2 is not yet fully developed, although we are now very close to the completion of the sculpty part of it.
- Blender-2.5 still has issues with Collada (which is relevant only, if you aim to build for meshes)

Regarding fitness for purpose:

I believe strongly that blender plus primstar is one of the best available programs for sculpting, if you aim for more than balloons and rocks... If you want to see what realy can be done with sculpties (made on blender 2.49b btw), then you should take a closer look on what Claudia222 Jewell has created. Here is a try to capture her builds on video: