Happy New Year 2011

I just thought I'd upload a couple of videos of some turntables I was able to catch out of Sculptris.

You can find them in my 3D Sculpture Section.

Sculptris Assets

Hey guys, I'd like to share a few mcrea materials with the sculptris community, so I made this little post with a preview pic of screenshots of them at work...hope you enjoy.

Boolean Basemesh Experiment: The Slugthing

I've tried quite a few methodes for blocking out my base mesh object for my refined sculpt in programs like Mudbox.

Sculptris out shines it's peers in how well it is capable of adapting to even the ugliest of basemesh topologies.

I'll try to explain with my example. (click image to enlarge)



In this example, I slapped together 8 primitive objects into one resulting Boolean/union object that I call my base mesh. This object was created in an outside 3D package, any capable of Boolean operations could do.

I then imported the result as a .obj into Sculptris and modeled away.

This technique showed as a valuable shortcut to creating difficult shaped models a/o areas like armpits, armor, hard/soft area transitions...

However this method may reserve an occasional surprise in the way some of the polygons react, but that too can be fixed by smoothing and refining the problem areas.

More fun with Shaders

I'm having so much fun with Sculptris...in fact, I discovered it when I purchased ZBrush 4.0 and I haven't even tried it yet...That's how much fun Sculptris is.

Anyhow, I've only scratched the surface to its full potential, and I'm already proud of the results that I'm getting.

Note: these shots are straight out of Sculptris...no external renderer used*

*except for baking the Ambient Occulsion maps on Ed's Head.

Ambient Occlusion in Sculptris.

Thanks to Taron's little trick to simulate self shadowing on our sculptures in Sculptris, it is now possible to get those dark nostrils and ear ducts etc...with no hassel and no hardcore precision hand painting!

I was able to give it a test with my Alan Vert Sculpt, by using xNormal to bake an Ambient Occlusion map that I then composited over my painted texture map then imported the resulting "shadowed color map" back into sculptris. The result is self shadowing greatness! Something that I find absolutely essential when it comes to getting good looking visuals (I know these are bad examples).

These are native screen-shots/renders generated by Sculptris.

I still have a lot to learn...

W.I.P.

aka: Work in Progress (...or the procrastinator's limbo!)

Enter Sculptris

I've tried my share of 3D sculpting applications through these past few years. From Mudbox to ZBrush and even 3DCoat and I must admit that they all have certain advantages over one and other depending on what you have set out to create. The other day I stumbled upon this free little program called...

Sculptris ALPHA 5: A revolution to the world of Organic 3D concept creation. Check it out and dare to try it over at ZBrush Central ... O and it's FREE!

For now!