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Old 1st May 2008, 04:41 PM   #1
raynold
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Default general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

Hi all.

I'm thinking of purchasing AC3D because of it's ability to export second life sculpties.
I would like to create objects with pre-rendered textures... means sculpty UV-map and shadowed texture-map for an excellent realistic look.
Is it possible to pre-render these texturmaps with AC3D, like in Maya for example?

greetings
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Old 1st May 2008, 07:56 PM   #2
Severa
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

I've been using it for a long time now and it's great but I've been wondering about this too. Though loading it up in zbrush and baking in lighting seems to do the trick fine too.
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Old 1st May 2008, 08:07 PM   #3
raynold
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

well.... it seems, AC3D even can't handle real materials, right? I just saw a point "Texture" without anymore settings like transparency, shinyness, refraction, ...

Do you know, if ZBrush is able to export that baked textures in a SL-compatible file (UV-spheric projection like the sculpty-map)?

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Old 1st May 2008, 09:40 PM   #4
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

In Zbrush I just bake the lighting in and save as a texture, Bring it into photoshop and use the flamingpear solidify b and then it fits on the sculpted prims great and looks good. I really found AC3D to do better work than Maya or Zbrush in terms of making the actual shapes though. I'm still having problems and the interface and some of the terms are different. The TCE confuses me and some other stuff, but for making shapes it seems to do it better for SL than Maya. I made better heads then some of the "top" people have with Maya and 3dsMax. The baked textures definitely help to reinforce definition though.

If AC3D can bake any sort of lighting I have no clue though. That's why I use zbrush. I wish there was more video tutorials at better resolutions for AC3D. Not making easy stuff like Pears and Apples but stuff that will show how you could encounter problems and how to fix those problems. Seems all these tutorials for sculpted prims always go for the easiest shapes anyone can do. I'd like to see people do complex stuff like the tutorials you find on 3dbuzz.com but talk about it in a way where someone who is new will understand and learn something.
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Old 2nd May 2008, 11:34 AM   #5
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

What do yoou mean by AC3D can't handle 'real materials' ????
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Old 2nd May 2008, 12:58 PM   #6
raynold
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

@MyKel_D: AC3D has no direct raytracing visualization implemented like Truespace for example, right? That was it, what I meant. You can define the materials in AC3D maybe, but the rendering does POVray or something else, right?

@Severa: Do you have an idea, why I just get a white texture, using Projection Master in ZBrush? It only works well with a usual sphere (ZBrush-Object)... with Wings3D imports (Obj) it doesnt work ..... dont know, if AC3D will work better.
Or is it just a ZBrush-Setting I missed?

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Old 2nd May 2008, 02:07 PM   #7
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

Ah ok- Am just new to this so trying to learn the slang.
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Old 2nd May 2008, 10:52 PM   #8
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

Well you place your lights first in Zbrush and that it visually looks good, then when you hit Projection Master make sure Colors, Shaded, Materials are all checked. Click Drop Now. Then click Projection Master again and click Pick Up. You'll see the map shaded to the left in that little texture box. You can rotate the model around and once more hit Projection Master>Drop Now, then click it again and Pick up. Should Map out both sides. Then save the texture up at the top. Open it in photoshop, use the magic wand on the white areas, choose similar in the menu and it'll grab all the white areas. Make sure it's not highlighting anything important, hit delete. Then go into the filters>FlamingPear>Solidify B. Then you can play around with cleaning it up, Smudge, Gaussian Blur, whatever you need to do until it looks right. Use SculptySpace do view it. It will let you load up the Sculpt Map and the Texture Map and it'll look like it would in SL. Very useful and very smooth set of additions to AC3D.

Oh also when you import your mesh in Zbrush, sometimes after you do if you hit CLONE in that same box then drop the shape in the window, it'll work better. Then make sure your texture is white. Click the Lights at the top and mess with them until it looks good. Then go through the steps I mentioned above.

My biggest problem right now is with the ends making a hole through the middle at times. I wish I could solve this. If I load it in SL it might split and I can use the torus script to fix that but it will leave this tiny hole from end to end. Not really a problem since I use those sections for joints or areas I play to put something else on. I just wish for the LOVE OF creation, I could figure out how to handle the sections of the mesh in AC3D and still do the insane shapes I enjoy making, without this annoying, make me cry a lot, hole end to end that never goes away. Usually that's a split first as I said. In SL i use a script to close that but the little holes remain and when you select the sculpted prim you can see a tunnel inside the sculpt end to end. I posted about it in another thread. I am not getting the technical terms of how to fix that. If I could fix that, I'd be very very happy. It's my only complaint. I never got that in Maya or a couple other apps, but at the same time I find AC3D to have BETTER control over the kinds of things I want to make. It's definitely the best tool, and I've used them all. It just keeps giving me this one little issue.

Last edited by Severa; 2nd May 2008 at 10:54 PM.
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Old 3rd May 2008, 04:26 AM   #9
raynold
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

@Severa: The first part of your last post I understood
Works well with a usual ZBrush-sphere, but not with custom Sculpy-Objects, I import from Wings3D for example.

The middle part of you post shows the problem I have: the white texture. If I do it the way you wrote, I still got a white texture
Got any ideas? TY for your patience

greetings

EDIT: woot ...... it worked now

Last edited by raynold; 3rd May 2008 at 04:30 AM.
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Old 3rd May 2008, 09:44 PM   #10
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Default Re: general questions about sculpties and texturing / pre-rendering of texture-maps

Happy you got it to work! If you can help me solve my problem (that paragraph at the end of my post) let me know. I am so frustrated by it. It is something I try to fix, spending countless hours on it daily. I took work off this week to really look at it and that problem described in my last post is just something I cannot for the life of me overcome. :cry:
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