CROC!

bradowado

Sculpting a crocodile in Sculptris. Plan to take it into Mudbox to paint. Any tips on going from Sculptris to Mudbox?

My current plan is to:
1. Sculpt in Sculptris.
2. Use GoZ to go from Sculptris to ZBrush.
3.Layout UVs in ZBrush.
4. Follow the Mudbox manual for going from Z-brush to Mudbox.
- Export a low res base mesh
- Export a high res subdivided mesh.
- Import the base mesh to Mudbox and subdivide as many levels as the high res mesh.
- Import the high res mesh as a layer to transfer detail to the high res mesh.
- Clean artifacts.
5. Paint in Mudbox.

Question:
1. When exporting from Sculptris to ZBrush with GoZ, can you down res the mesh in ZBrush to create a base mesh for Mudbox?
2. Or, is there a better way of going from Sculptris to Mudbox for texturing?

Side note: Exporting an OBJ from Sculptris into Mudbox caused Mudbox to slow down a lot and eventually crash since the OBJ has "High-valence vertices" and wasn't created with "Catmull-Clark subdivision" according to Mudbox. Not to mention, the UVs Sculptris created were pretty bad and the borders between shells caused artifacts to show up in Mudbox.

Here's the first screenshot of the WIP:

TehSplatt

what the fuck are you doing all that for ?!?! why dont you just do it all in zbrush ?? or all in mudbox that workflow makes no sense at all. sorry for the language but that i dont know why you would need to switch between all 3 of these programs

bradowado

Wow, dude. CHILL.

1. Why don't you do it all in ZBrush?
- I've used ZBrush's Dynamesh, but i don't like having to constantly rebuild the mesh. I prefer the fluid workflow of Sculptris' dynamic tessellation.

2. Why don't you do it all in Mudbox?
- Because Mudbox sculpting is dependent on the base mesh. If you sculpt "against the grain" of the base mesh you get artifacts. I found Mudbox sculpting to ultimately be too limiting. However, the Paint tools are excellent. Would love if they offered a secondary dynamic tessellation mode.

3. That workflow makes no sense!
- Maybe, maybe not. If it's not possible, then sure, it doesn't. That's sort of the point of asking the question. Do you have a reasoned argument why it won't work?

Aga22

i also don't see a reason for using all three programs... sure zbrush's sculpting is superior to mudbox, and mudbox has kinda good painting. i would do it like this: make the uv's in zbrush or whatever program in a medium resolution version of the object, export that to obj, and bring that into mudbox for painting. you don't need to re-import anything into Z, you just keep the bitmaps.

TehSplatt

People have been doing amazing work from just using one of these programs ive even seen amazing work come straight out of sculptris this just seems pointless do what you want but in the end obviously its your model but seriously i would probably pick one and stick to it.

bradowado

@Aga22: You basically described step 4 of my plan. What I don't know is what kind of mesh GoZ will give me in ZBrush. Can you down res the GoZ mesh to a low sub div level?

bradowado

Not really sure if this is the best way to get a subdivided mesh out of ZBrush, but I'm getting decent results by using:

1. Sculpt in Sculptris
2. GoZ to ZBrush
3. SubTool > ReMesh All with 1024 res
4. ProjectAll
5. Subdivide
6. ProjectAll again.
7. Export OBJ to Mudbox.
8. Mudbox > Import
9. Mesh > Reconstruct Subdivision Levels.



Now I need to do a UV layout somewhere, probably between 4 and 5...?

gilesruscoe

bradowado wrote: »

- I've used ZBrush's Dynamesh, but i don't like having to constantly rebuild the mesh.work?

Just turn on dynamesh, and ctrl drag in the viewport each time you want to remesh. takes .5 of a second.

bradowado

Yeah, I've used cntrl + drag. I just prefer to be a in a nice flow state with Sculptris where you don't have to think about when to remesh. It's the closest thing to sculpting with clay, IMO.

TehSplatt

Yea that just sounds like a whole lot of hassle for the same result as you would get by just doing it all in zbrush

WarrenM

- I've used ZBrush's Dynamesh, but i don't like having to constantly rebuild the mesh.

Did you move the "Blur" slider to zero? You don't have to rebuild the mesh every time you ctrl+drag in dynamesh. That's sort of the whole point of it - continuous sculpting with good topology.

bradowado

Sorry, I misspoke. When I said rebuild I meant cntrl+drag. Not a fan of having to cntrl+drag all the time. I tried it with blur at zero, but just noticed slightly less blurring. Fine details were destroyed when cntrl+dragging. How would you preserve fine details with a dynamesh? Masking?

TehSplatt

you make your base mesh using dyna mesh then once your happy with you subdivide and start the sculpt how you normally would

dii

You've devised a convoluted workflow to support a bad habit illustrated in your first post: Detailing your model before you've completely blocked it in. If you start sculpting efficiently, working large features to small ones, you will have no blurring problems because by the time you get to detailing your model you won't need to rebuild it.

I suggest you take everyones advice and stick to one application, a few seconds ctrl dragging is literally nothing compared to bogging down your pipeline with 2 completely unnecessary programs.