
Pixologic
Sculptris Alpha 5
-----------------

  pixologic.com

    July 2010


Thank you for downloading Sculptris. I hope you will have a good time!

If you are wondering about something not covered in this brief manual, please consult the forum linked on sculptris.com. There are many experienced users there who can help you figure things out. Look for instructional threads and posts before you ask questions, as the answer might have been posted already.

Tomas Pettersson aka DrPetter
tomas@pixologic.com
Developer of Sculptris ALpha 5 (formerly Sculptris 1.02)



This is a prototype of software currently being developed by Pixologic. Visit www.ZBrushCentral.com for more information, and to hear about future developments.

If you like working with Sculptris but want to try something more advanced, please take look at Pixologic's ZBrush software - the leading professional 3D art package used by most in the entertainment industry, visit www.pixologic.com



Disclaimer
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Make sure you read the enclosed EULA.txt file and agree to what it says before using the program.
To avoid losing work in case of a crash or failed file write, save to a new file every now and then, to keep a record of your old progress.

If you experience a crash, you can change log_enabled to 1 in config.txt to get a log file with relevant information. This might help you or someone else figure out what's wrong. By default, only the first run of the application will be logged.


Sculpting
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Use the left and right mouse buttons to sculpt. Middle mouse button rotates the view. You can also hold Alt and use the left mouse button to do the same.

There is pressure sensitivity for Wacom-compatible tablets. See below for navigation shortcuts.

Select a tool from the palette and apply it using the left or right mouse button. Left mouse button is the default/positive effect of the tool, while right mouse button is the inverse/negative effect. You can control the size and strength of each tool's brush using the two main sliders.

Remember that you can undo an operation using Ctrl+Z if it doesn't turn out the way you intended.

The 'detail' slider controls how detailed the brush stroke will be - more triangles will be added to better describe the shapes you put down. It is helpful setting this to zero if you want to tweak some areas without adding more detail. Press W to activate wireframe view if you want to see how the triangle mesh looks.

You can change the visual material using the 'material' slider. Materials are  stored as images in the materials folder.


Painting
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Press the paint button to calculate a mapping for the object and switch to paint mode. Here you can paint color on the surface using a round brush or texture images. You can also paint a bumpmaps for finer detail.

Multiple materials can be added if you have a shader-capable graphics card, and you can mask each material individually to control which areas it will cover.

There is a general-purpose selection mask which can be edited and toggled using the checkboxes on the left or the M key. This selection mask will apply to all painting operations.

Masks (material or selection) can be copied and pasted using Ctrl+C/V, and inverted using Ctrl+I.

Heightmasking can be used to paint inside cavities or on top of parts that stick out. It will also work for bumpmaps. You'll have to try it out to see how it really works in different scenarios.

There is also an option to export the current view as a layered PSD file where you can paint color that will be projected back onto the model when you import the image again. Paint only on the layer called "paint", and only use the "normal" blending mode. You can do whatever editing you like, but the end result needs to match this format for it to work.

Before going into paint mode, you can enable "UV deformation mode", which will allow you to deform the mesh such that selected areas get larger surface area and thereby higher texel density in the following mapping process. This is a one-shot operation that is not saved with the file. If you leave UV deformation it will discard your changes. This mode can also allow some control over automatic seam placement depending on how you introduce or remove corners (by smoothing, for instance).

The "Tight mapping" checkbox will result in less texture stretching for low-poly areas, so try that if you need it.


Controls/shortcuts
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Keyboard shortcuts for specific buttons are shown when you hover the mouse over them.

Ctrl+Z               Undo an operation. There are 11 levels of history.

Ctrl+left mouse      Inverse sculpt, like right mouse button
Shift+left mouse     Smooth shortcut

Mousewheel           Zoom in and out
Shift+mousewheel     Adjust brush size
Ctrl+mousewheel      Adjust brush strength

Plus/minus keys      Same as mousewheel, i.e. zoom, size, strength

Space                Popup brush controls (useful for tablets)

Middle mouse button     Rotate the view
Alt+left mouse          Rotate the view
Alt+right mouse         Pan the view
Shift+middle mouse      Pan the view
Alt+shift+left mouse    Pan the view
Alt+ctrl+left mouse     Zoom the view

Z                    Lock camera view to nearest axis

Backspace/Ctrl+F     Clear/fill selection mask (see below)

H                    Hold and click or drag to hide areas or objects. Right mouse button isolates them.
Ctrl+H               Show all

P                    Enable or place pivot point, which can be used for rotation and scaling

Q                    Toggle detail slider (between zero and previous value)

A                    Toggle airbrush
L                    Toggle lazy brush

Ctrl+A               Select all
Ctrl+D               Deselect all
Ctrl+I               Invert selection mask

Ctrl+N               Add new sphere
Ctrl+C               Copy selected objects
Ctrl+C               Cut selected objects
Ctrl+V               Paste selected objects
Delete               Remove selected objects

1/2                  Toggle mask/texture (no texture in sculpt mode)
3/4                  Toggle pressure sensitivity for size/strength


There's a button for saving a snapshot of the current view, if you bring up the options window (look to the top right). It has some special effects that you can edit with the nearby controls:

- Background button selects the background image to use (both in the application and for saving images)
- Fog backg. selects an additional background image that will be used as distance fog. Control strength of this effect with the fog slider.
- The DOF slider will enable and adjust the strength of a camera focus effect that will be based on the current camera pivot/target point (which it rotates around). Enabling this will significantly increase processing time for saving an image, but it can look pretty neat. You can customize the lens/aperture shape by replacing bokeh.png in the data folder.
- Save with BG toggles showing the background image or a colorkey for saved images.
- Save with AA toggles supersampled antialiasing for smoother edges. It only operates on image save.
- GL AA is realtime OpenGL antialiasing which is used while sculpting as well as for saving images.


Paint mode (some of the above still applies)
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S                    Open/close color selector

C                    Hold to pick color from surface

I                    Adjust lighting direction in shaderless paint mode (edit config.txt to disable shaders)

Ctrl+C               Copy current texture buffer, which is what you're editing (colors or mask, not bumps)
Ctrl+V               Paste previously copied image buffer, with opacity from the strength slider
                     (this is a way to get a "blended layer" by copying, painting, then pasting with low opacity)
Ctrl+I               Invert texture or mask, depending on what you're editing.


Tools/buttons
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Most tools will be relatively easy to understand by just experimenting with them for a little bit. They are not very complicated.

Grab, scale and rotate can be switched into "Global mode", in which they will manipulate the whole selected region rather than just the area you're pointing at.

Crease        - Draw creases or folds. Inverse will make a ridge.
Rotate        - Rotate brush region. Click and drag outside the circle.
Scale         - Scale brush region horizontally and vertically.
Draw          - Draw/lift smooth features on the surface. Inverse will push down or draw holes.
Flatten       - Push surface towards the local plane. Inverse will deform and amplify details.
Grab          - Move a region freely in the image plane. No inverse.
Inflate       - Expand in the direction of the surface. Inverse will deflate/contract.
Pinch         - Squish the surface towards cursor, tightening creases and corners. Inverse will do the opposite.
Smooth        - Soften features to make an area smoother and rounder. No inverse.
Reduce brush  - Remove triangles to decrease mesh density in the area touched.

Reduce selected - Automatically reduce detail of the selected areas. Will primarily remove small triangles from flat areas where you won't notice it very much. This helps to maintain performance and memory usage.

Subdivide all - Split all polygons to increase detail of the whole scene.

Mask          - Paint a selection mask onto the mesh. Areas that are not selected are protected from editing. Press the button again to deactivate mask. Right mouse button erases from mask. Backspace clears or fills entire mask.

Wireframe     - Display a wireframe view on top of the model.

Symmetry      - Mirror all operations to make an object with complete horizontal symmetry. Note that enabling this will delete the right half of your mesh and any shapes you may have sculpted there. Use undo to disable it and get them back.

New sphere, new plane   - Create a new model to make a new scene or add it to the current one.

Import OBJ    - Import an existing OBJ file. Useful if you want multiple objects for sculpting, or somewhat more complex topology than a sphere. Compatibility is limited. Use single closed triangulated mesh(es) without sharp corners, and with less than 24 connections per vertex (no high-resolution spheres, unless they are geospheres)

Save          - Save project.
Open          - Open project.
Export OBJ    - Export model as Wavefront OBJ, for use in other applications. The exported model will have vertices, triangles and vertex normals. Texture coordinates if painted.


Tips
----

Feel free to play around and see what the tools can do. I highly recommend creating improvised chaotic shapes without any careful design - it's a great way to become familiar with the tools, and also a lot of fun.

Use Smooth to fix any small jaggies or unsightly blemishes. It will not increase mesh detail, so it's perfectly safe to use a small brush for added precision. A surface may be slightly flattened by this tool.

Reverse Inflate can make smoother holes than Draw.

Draw a tall bump and Pinch the tip to make a tooth or cone.

Move the Flatten tool around while using it to make smooth directed transitions between surfaces.

Crease can be useful for making mouths. You may want to Inflate or Draw the mass of the lips before Creasing.

Watch out for "losing your grip" of the surface if you draw in such a way that it falls away from the mouse cursor. Upward/positive strokes are best drawn toward the camera while negative ones work better starting close and going into the distance.

Reverse Flatten can make brains and walnuts or create/exaggerate surprising organic detail, but be careful when it starts "grabbing hold" of a shape, or it might quickly go overboard. Undo is useful here, as is a low brush strength.

Mask is useful for quite a lot of things. Try masking a pattern and then using the Draw tool to "extrude" it. You might have to use a large brush to avoid deforming the pattern too much. You can also use the Grab tool to extrude sideways, and it might give you a better idea of how far you're moving things.

Masking a small patch and inflating it will create a bubble. Watch out for jagged edges - a tiny bit of smoothing helps.

Fill the mask by pressing backspace once or twice and then use the right mouse button to erase the mask for parts that you want to protect from editing.

For best results, try not to create detail that you later want to remove. The reduction tool does help with this, but it has some flaws and is currently a bit hard to use. Overly detailed areas are more difficult to smooth properly, and they might show up as small bumps.

If your graphics card isn't doing a good job rendering the pixel shaders, you can disable them manually in config.txt





