Sculptris

Draft

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Introduction

Sculpris is a very easy, yet powerful artistic modeling application. Basically you start from a geometric form (e.g. a ball or whater and then sculpt/deform with various tool "brushes". E.g. you can crease, grab, draw, flatten, smoth, etc.

Sculptris (alpha aka 1.02) was developed by Tomas Pettersson and will be further developed by Pixologic: “Sculptris has captured the hearts of artists with its fun, intuitive and user-friendly interface - indeed a perfectly sweet companion to our big monster ZBrush! Tomas will be moving to California, from Sweden, to join our team. It is our pleasure to welcome Tomas and we look forward to a fruitful collaboration on future Pixologic projects [...] Pixologic would also like to give you a little appetizer ‘goodie’, an Alpha version of Sculptris for Windows - a unique, very ‘cool’ artistic modeling application still in raw baby stage and now incubating at Pixologic HQ. The current version, formerly known as Sculptris 1.02, will be renamed under Pixologic banner as Sculptris Alpha 5.” (A Gift From Pixologic, 07-23-10, retrieved nov. 18 2010.

Sculptris is based on dynamic tesselation.

Before you start

Print out a good cheat sheet

• We recommend this Sculptris Cheat cheat. (author unknown)

Basis are *.obj files

With scultris you start by working on a simple ball or a plane, but you could import any *.obj file. However, in the latter case, symmetry operations won't always work correctly, i.e. if you already have two arms attached to an object, Sculptris won't know about this.

Sculptris (as of 2010/early 2011) is alpha software. Therefore save frequently !!

Symmetry

By default all operations are symmetrical, i.e. if you pull out something to the "left" it will also pull out to the "right". It also will remember up to certain point which "parts" go together. You can turn "Symmetry" off.

When you import an *.obj file, symmetry is off, therefore turn it on if you work on structures like a human.

Brushes and tesselation

• You can set the "Brush/Tool" Size and Strength with the rules on top middle.
• However, these don't define how many new triangles will be created when you draw, inflate, grab. etc. This is done with the Detail [Q] slider. For starters keep in the middle. When it is to the left (0), Sculpris will not any new triangles.

Views

• mouse-middle to orbit around the object, i.e. rotate it to look at it from a different angle. (So this won't rotate the coordinates of the object, just your view).

• mouse wheel to zoom in/out and (if necessary)

• Shift-middle-mouse to pan (move it left/right or up/down).

Wireframe and triangles

• Click on wireframe to see the structure (at least when you feel that Sculptris has trouble). Reduce triangles with reduced selected tool or the reduce brush if the program starts being being slow. In fact, rather learn how to anticipate using the detail tool.

Basic modeling procedure

(1) Define the very rough shape of the object

• Use the Grab [G] tool for the very rough work, set the brush size and pull out. Make sure to untick Global and Limit.

(2) Use the Grab tool with limit ticked to modify things that stick out

(3) Use the other various sculpting tools to define the rough shape

Sculptris for Rapman/RepRap modeling

Sculptris is an interesting tool for modeling objects that then can be printer with low-cost fabbers like the Rapman. Sculptris imports/exports *.obj files. With Meshlab they can easily be translated to *.STL if needed. Skeinforge does import *.obj but I never tried.

Here is a rough outline of the workflow

• Start either the default globe or with an object that has more or less a flat bottom. If the object is very low poly, subdivide first using the subdivide all tool for example.
• If you want to speed up g-code generation, reduce the meshes after you are done sculpting.
• Translate to STL, e.g. with Meshlab
• Position and repair with Netfabb
• Translate to g-code and print

the sculpting tool set

Drawing options

Positive vs. negative effect

• Depending if you select a tool with the left or the right mouse button you either produce a default/positif effect or an inverse/negative effect. E.g. with the draw tool, you either either add volume or carve out volume.

Detail (number of polygones)

• With the detail slider you can control how many triangles the the brush will add. If you set it to zero, none will be added.

• You periodically you should reduce unneed polygones. The easiest method to do so, is to press several times Reduce selected. Alternatively, the Reduce brush will optimize areas that you brush over. Drag it from rougher to complex areas !

• Always or sometimes put wireframe [W] on in order to control details

Size

• Sets the size of the brush.

Strength

• Sets the strength of the effect. For rough modeling you probably want this at least at 50%.

List of paint tools

(to do ...)

Links

Download

Version 1.02 aka Alpha 5

• Pixologic announcement (link is at the end)
• direct link
• Download at Sculptris.com (this site will probably go away).

Tutorials and Manuals

• Sculptris Cheat cheat. Nice cheat sheet that includes all the shortcuts (nov. 2010).

Propaganda videos

• How to model a reindeer or an elk in Sculptris 1.0 Tutorial

Training videos

Good training videos are not too easy to find.

• Sculptris sculpting primer Part 1 by 3dioot (the person who made the PDF cheat sheet]. (45 min)
• Sculptris sculpting primer Part 2 by 3dioot (the person who made the PDF cheat sheet]. (1h26 min)

Others (but these are too fast for beginners)

• From Concept to creature a Sculptris tutorial, howto
• Sculpting me in Sculptris pt4, howto
• Head modeling in Sculptris
• tuto sculptris part 1
• tuto sculptris part 2
• ... lots of others

Specialized stuff

• the hideous - character workflow
• retopo in blender 2.5
• Repairing Simple Non-manifold meshes with Blender (this is of general usefulness, Such happen a lot with CAD programs when you position two objects just next to each other instead of overlapping).

Shared models

• Default Model sharing Forum thread on ZBrush Central > Sculptris

Support

• ZBrushCentral forum
• Old forum (closed for writing, but does include more useful stuff for beginners).