Sculptris - dynamic mesh tesselation

[ifxs]

+1, the brushes feel very fluid/precise.

It's also great that Sculptris now takes the tablet pressure into account in the new Alpha3 build, i think its just for opacity at this point, hopefully brush size too soon. Now the reduce-polys tool works very well for me too. I'm enjoying my time with Sculptris VERY MUCH SO. If Dr.Petter gets displacements/baking working and I can push the poly high enough to get in the details I usually refer to ZB/MB for, then...hmmm I just might use Sculptris for (all) of my high-detail work. Once major advantage sculptris has is the reduce polys tool, IMO. The ability to paint on your poly reduction with pressure, VERY USEFUL for my workflow.

With bump mapping making its way into the last beta, and now the refinements in this recent build, I've heard whispers of displacements coming soon, that and baking and sculptris will likely command some major attention in this area of the 3D market, especially with the FREE pricetag, and it being mentioned that it might become donationware, wow a price that is VERY hard to compete with. If this is the case, and multires isn't added to 3DC vox room very soon, I will consider applications that dont make me wait for minutes in between switching tools for much of my high-res detailing work. And perhaps even more of my sculpting workflow, as I can start with a basic sphere in sculptris and get to a finished high-res model without worrying about all the workaround or LONG MERGE WAIT TIMES of 3DC for my high-detail work, 25-million+ in vox room, so hmmm... the ability to not have to WAIT FOR A MERGE bar to continue my high-detail work, tempting doesnt even cover it... Here's to hoping that merging/surface/volume mode gets multithreaded ASAP in 3DC!!! please Andrew please....

I'm using Sculptris more and more, I'm psyched for the next release.... Just wait till this app catches on....

The main point I have is that when it comes down to it, I need to finish a project in as little time as possible, with as little WAITING for the toolset, and as funtional a toolset as possible(and it not being an autodesk product ;-)... Whichever app provides this will gain my focus/money/time/creativity., just being honest. Right now that App is 3D Coat... We'll see how the future shapes up.

[artman]

+1, the brushes feel very fluid/precise.

It's also great that Sculptris now takes the tablet pressure into account in the new Alpha3 build, i think its just for opacity at this point, hopefully brush size too soon. Now the reduce-polys tool works very well for me too. I'm enjoying my time with Sculptris VERY MUCH SO. If Dr.Petter gets displacements/baking working and I can push the poly high enough to get in the details I usually refer to ZB/MB for, then...hmmm I just might use Sculptris for (all) of my high-detail work. Once major advantage sculptris has is the reduce polys tool, IMO. The ability to paint on your poly reduction with pressure, VERY USEFUL for my workflow.

With bump mapping making its way into the last beta, and now the refinements in this recent build, I've heard whispers of displacements coming soon, that and baking and sculptris will likely command some major attention in this area of the 3D market, especially with the FREE pricetag, and it being mentioned that it might become donationware, wow a price that is VERY hard to compete with. If this is the case, and multires isn't added to 3DC vox room very soon, I will consider applications that dont make me wait for minutes in between switching tools for much of my high-res detailing work. And perhaps even more of my sculpting workflow, as I can start with a basic sphere in sculptris and get to a finished high-res model without worrying about all the workaround or LONG MERGE WAIT TIMES of 3DC for my high-detail work, 25-million+ in vox room, so hmmm... the ability to not have to WAIT FOR A MERGE bar to continue my high-detail work, tempting doesnt even cover it... Here's to hoping that merging/surface/volume mode gets multithreaded ASAP in 3DC!!! please Andrew please....

I'm using Sculptris more and more, I'm psyched for the next release.... Just wait till this app catches on....

The main point I have is that when it comes down to it, I need to finish a project in as little time as possible, with as little WAITING for the toolset, and as funtional a toolset as possible(and it not being an autodesk product ;-)... Whichever app provides this will gain my focus/money/time/creativity., just being honest. Right now that App is 3D Coat... We'll see how the future shapes up.

I'm really curious about your work.You seem to be on doing very detailed stuff.

Do you have a Cgsociety page or a portfolio anywhere on the web we can look at?

Or what about posting some stuff in the wip section here?That would be cool.

Im sure it is very interesting work.

[ifxs]

After I get approval on some of the current projects I'm working on, or some NDA's go up before that, I'd be happy to upload some of my more recent portfolio work. I could probably get away with uploading some crops of some of my current projects, to exhibit the examples IMPORTANT ISSUES I mentioned in my post above, examples of detail levels that just shouldnt IMO cripple 3DC, or any other professional sculpting app as is the case currently with 3DC. In ZB and even Blender, I can pump that resolution far higher than I can in 3DC and still work on my sculpt without waiting minutes for a tool to merge ON 1 CPU CORE! Items like that are hindering my workflow in 3DC, and it's something I dont mind sharing on this forum because I enjoy using 3DC so darn much that I dont want to leave the app if I dont have to, it's my favorite sculpting tool to create with hands down....I cant believe more people aren't running into these issues if they come from Z brush or Mudbox, its rather puzzling to me. I've read some threads that assure me of my not being alone on this, from some notable 3DC artists, they too basically have to skip 3DC for their high detail work due to the lack of a fast workflow when compared to certain other apps ;-) Unless of course you can pull off using multiple 8x uv's with displacement textures in the (microvertex)paint room, if so, please do share your CPU(PTEX is great, but doesn't count, try exporting it to a non-PTEX app, good, but not great(yet)).

On a side note, my (funky/clunky) avatar image was a 5 minute sketch I did in one of my initial 3DC sessions, just a quick import export of an OBJ test to one of my render engines, I wanted to have something up there rather than nothing for now. I dont deal much with CD Society, or online posting forums for my visual work. I'll replace my avatar soon with something flashy, perhaps like Phil's avatar(very cool IMO)

P.S. WOW everyone should try sculptris if you already havent, wow! The import/export of OBJ's works VERY well for me now, I was able to bring in an exported low res mesh and add in all the details as I needed them, thus only subdividing the mesh in the places I was choosing to add geometry... simply amazing IMO... as I said, if the developer adds in displacement baking, looks like I will do most of my high res sculpting in Sculptris(or ZB still) as I can alerady push the poly count rather high in there. Though I would really rather stay just in 3DC, it just feels more like a creative tool to me and my workflow, unlike certain other apps, ZB I'm looking at you... and wow lets not even talk about the "funny" user licenses that Autodesk has for a certain other app...

I have my fingers crossed for 3DC and Andrew's talents... I might be wrong on this one, but IMO there's currently a window of time that 3DC has an EXTREME advantage in key areas, we'll see how things play out. For now I'll use 3DC in all aspects of my pipeline that it doesn't hinder, with it's lagging merge/progress bar with multi-minute wait times for models that are even mildly detailed. I know this email can sound like a downer, but I really want it to come across as constructive criticism. I use the tools that "feel" best and allow for my project to be finished in the most concise manner.. that just what it usually comes down to... no disrespect intended. A fun tool is a fun tool, but timelines are timelines for some projects if you know what I mean :-(

[spacepainter]

I like the feel of the tools in sculptris. The rotate tool is great.

[ifxs]

Rotate is very fluid IMO. I'm REALLY enjoying the reduce poly brush, pretty darn good implementation IMO. I'm getting darn good performance from it too, specially for an Alpha by a single dev, wow! Reminds me of 3D Brush a bit, in its essence anyway ;-)

did anyone notice these recent sculpts from Sculptris?

[Digital777]

One thing i like a lot about this app is how fast it is, it seems ultra fast with high details and it seems to get faster with the updates also. For some reason i don't get this type of speeds using 3DC or at least with a similar detail amount in the model. The only time i made it go slow was when i tried increasing the resolution so much that the wireframe type lines were a solid color, in fact it's probably the fastest app i have tried with this type of details so im guessing it would be ultra fast on a more modern computer also as this one is starting to get a bit older now (handles most 3d ok though). It's a very nice app to make meshes and then use them in other 3d apps also, i wonder if this will become a commercial software at some point.

[spacepainter]

It is not a voxelbased prog is it???

[ifxs]

It is not a voxelbased prog is it???

I dont think so, but it is a dynamic tessellation monster!!! Wow, this app is FAST on my cpu, WOW!!!

[Digital777]

Hmm not sure i don't think so but it doesn't say much about what it is on the site really just 3D mesh sculpting so maybe not voxels but it definately has a similar result in terms of details you can get. It's not a multi task thing like 3DC though although i saw a video where it was adding images to the models so maybe they will make it much more advanced in the future which is why im wodering if they will sell it at some point. For now it's a great free software though

[spacepainter]

What's great about voxels, is not worrying about topology, making a hole in sculptris produces a lot of rubbish. So it can't be compared. The dynamic mesh is excellent ofcourse!

[ifxs]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, 3DC plus dynamic tessellation for the surface poly redraw (w-key mode) would totally rock in 3DC!!!

[haikalle]

Well, I tried it and I like it a lot. Very smooth. You can see that how the surface moves by itself to avoid all the spikes. Only 1.7 Mb. That's insane. This would be very cool in 3d-coat. No pressure Andrew

[OnlineRender]

Sorry I haven't posted in a long time ........ javis hello hope all is well , same to geo ;P and Andrew superb work as always ...

ye sculptris is an excellent program , although about 10 miles away from 3DC but the framework is there and its comming along nicely ..

SHAMLESS PLUG ...............sorry

sculptris time lapse

" i was the first to do this with the software so the video is outdated now ! "

go 3DC again excellent work Andrew , wish you and your family all the best .

pEAce

[ifxs]

did anyone see the fee app release by the developer of Sculptris for automatic texture remapping when you change your UV coordinates?

I haven't had to redo my UV's in 3DC yet, I've gotten them right the first time usually, but does anyone who has had to do so know if this is a feature of 3DC as well?

Yes I know about PTEX, but for game-engine exports and the need to prevent unnecessary subdividing, UV's are still needed in realtime environments(for me anyway).

"The tool will allow you to remap a texture between two different sets of uv coordinates for the same model. Basically, if you've mapped a model and painted a texture, then change your mind and make a new mapping - just run this tool and it will update the texture image to fit with the new mapping coordinates."

Impressive IMO, free, and darn useful.

http://drpetter.se/

[Klaus Nordby]

Sculptris is brilliant! Except . . . it produces nothing but triangles. If such adaptive tesselelation could be made to produce quads -- wow!

[philnolan3d]

did anyone see the fee app release by the developer of Sculptris for automatic texture remapping when you change your UV coordinates?

I haven't needed to do this either, but I'm pretty sure there is a way of doing it in 3DC. I remember other people talking about it.

[Taros]

Yes it begins to be better and better. It could grow to a serious competiton to the known tools.

And because of tris only: I think, they develop it step by step. First the sculpt part and later quad producing... we will see.

I am very curious.

Coming soon, mask and bumpmap painting:

[Digital777]

Here is one with texture painting also -

Im not sure if that was added yet but it definitely seems like it could be competition for similar apps. If the high speed is there like it is now for the brushes feature with that type of high detail then this will be great. It seems this is a very optimized app also, high detail and speed without having the most high end system and cards available is definitely a good thing.

[Taros]

Here is one with texture painting also -

Im not sure if that was added yet but it definitely seems like it could be competition for similar apps. If the high speed is there like it is now for the brushes feature with that type of high detail then this will be great. It seems this is a very optimized app also, high detail and speed without having the most high end system and cards available is definitely a good thing.

Yes, this is what I think, too. The small hardware requirements are really a "must have" feature. This is the same like zBrush: you don't need a monster graphics card or a 64 bit system with a lot of memory to realise very detailed models there.

[splodge]

Here is one with texture painting also -

Im not sure if that was added yet but it definitely seems like it could be competition for similar apps. If the high speed is there like it is now for the brushes feature with that type of high detail then this will be great. It seems this is a very optimized app also, high detail and speed without having the most high end system and cards available is definitely a good thing.

I'm not really seeing the high speed sculpting that a few people have mentioned. 3D Coat runs much faster even with models that are greater than 8 million polys. I suspect this is because Sculptris isn't storing the model in the video card's ram, but instead it's using an immediate mode whereby the whole model is constantly being updated/optimized by the CPU and then being sent to the video card on every frame.

But that issue aside I'm also finding the resulting mesh in Sculptris isn't very efficient. A decimated mesh from 3D Coat is far more efficient than a Sculptris mesh. This is because Sculptris doen't have any concept of edge flow in its models. Instead if you draw something onto a Sculptris model (a letter S for example) then you'll see that the detail is made up of hundreds of triangles. Whereas in 3D Coat when you decimate and export your model you'll see that the triangles edges actually flow along the contours of any details, and therefore resulting in a much lower poly model overall.

I did read on the Sculptris forums that the programmer plans to add an overall polygon reduction feature to Sculptris. But I'm not sure if he plans to make it smart enough to preserve the edges like 3D Coat's decimator does.

So to sum up - Sculptris has a lower poly models that render slower than 3D Coat's high poly models. And then to add to that, Sculptris's exported models can ultimately end up having higher poly counts than 3D Coat's exported models.

Still, it's early days yet, so I'm definitely still gonna keep checking on Sculptris. The upcoming bump map support should be great and could help to alleviate some of the issues relating to overly high poly details that I mentioned above.

[artman]

I tried importing a mere 20 0000 polys .obj and it crashed .

We are talking 20000 polys here,that is a not 20 millions.

Also I find the sculpting weaker than Mudbox 1.0 and definetely not comparable to 3DCoat feeling.

Definitely not "High speed" sculpting here either on my side.Sorry.

Two of my friends who are fulltime game artists deep in ZB/MB also tried it and found it sloppy and even slower than 3DC.

It seems to us its more aimed toward CGtechnology enthusiastics than people who actually sculpt for a living

And I havent seen any pics on the website showcasing real highfrequency details,just plain 1million range details...

[ifxs]

RE: The speed in sculptris... I'm testing out the Special-Alpha3 build with Multithreading, THIS IS NOT THE STANDARD SCULPTRIS RELEASE BUILD, and the usual speed increase is MUCH faster, uses most of the cores on an 8 core system. really really fast when compared to the standard Alpha3 build, though some glitches are in there when compared to the official build, but still, wow such a big increase in speed!...

If you have a system that will "enjoy" a multhreaded build of sculptris,., hop on over to this link to download the multi-thread build of Alpha3, and prepare see a VERY drastic speedup in the app when sculpting a lot more polys.

http://drpetter.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tech&action=display&thread=105

EDIT: also, for those than want to see some higher poly sculpts done in Sculptris, check out that link as well, I've enjoyed Taron's work for MANY years, and its cool to have such a talented sculptor alpha testing and providing input on a new 3D sculpting app IMO.

http://drpetter.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wipsculpt&action=display&thread=97

[SonK]

A hand i did in sculptris:

[AbnRanger]

A hand i did in sculptris:

Cool stuff

[Pimpmymonkey]

I tried importing a mere 20 0000 polys .obj and it crashed .

We are talking 20000 polys here,that is a not 20 millions.

Also I find the sculpting weaker than Mudbox 1.0 and definetely not comparable to 3DCoat feeling.

Definitely not "High speed" sculpting here either on my side.Sorry.

Two of my friends who are fulltime game artists deep in ZB/MB also tried it and found it sloppy and even slower than 3DC.

It seems to us its more aimed toward CGtechnology enthusiastics than people who actually sculpt for a living

And I havent seen any pics on the website showcasing real highfrequency details,just plain 1million range details...

Hi Artman,

Did you try triangulating your mesh first. I just imported a mesh with over 200K triangles. No problem.

Sculptris only uses Tri's. First, I made sure that the mesh was clean by removing all doubles.

Also, I think that it's a little unfair to compare an Alpha release to a fully developed 1.0 release.

Wasn't Mudbox in beta for like forever?

P. Monk

[artman]

Hi Artman,

Did you try triangulating your mesh first. I just imported a mesh with over 200K triangles. No problem.

Sculptris only uses Tri's. First, I made sure that the mesh was clean by removing all doubles.

Also, I think that it's a little unfair to compare an Alpha release to a fully developed 1.0 release.

Wasn't Mudbox in beta for like forever?

P. Monk

The mesh wasnt triangulated at all so this is why it crashed.

Of course,thats not fair comparing it to Mudbox 1.0.

Sculptris looks very promising...altough Im not impressed by the level of details it can reach at all.Yet.

Anyway,I need to spend much less time on forums talking about apps and more time improving my sculpting skills if I want to be good in any of those apps someday.

I noticed Ive spent too much time posting here,I was shocked to discover Im the top poster just below admins...which is not something to be proud of .

I realised ,maybe I spend so much time troubleshooting and discussing about apps X and Y to avoid actually scultpting...

[ifxs]

NICE work!

[Javis]

A hand i did in sculptris:

Nice dude, I love Vampire Hunter D. Good job.

[SonK]

<3 Vampire Hunter D, I actally like Blood Lust better then the first one. I just finish Frog/Sir Glenn from one of favorite SNES game: Chrono Trigger(showing my age here lol)!

I'm surprised i can reach 1.9 million triangles with Alpha3, and no that counter is not broken. I hope Alpha4 will have even more performance.

[philnolan3d]

One thing that always drives me nuts about sculptirs is that it always seems to have that seam going down the middle. I haven't tried the most recent version maybe there's a way around it.