Watch Sculptron 2022.1 Introduction Video:
Sculptron Intro Video
Dear all,
We are excited to bring you Sculptron 2022.1 XB1!
What is Sculptron?
Sculptron is a GPU based sculpt-animate application.
Sculptron primary target is to provide artists with a powerful sculpting tool conceived to work with 3D animation. It's not a replacement for ZBrush or any similar specialized sculpting applications you can use to edit static models. Sculptron introduces sculpting into your animation workflow, along with a set of new deformers and animation capabilities.
Sculptron 2022.1 XB1
Sculptron has been deeply re-engineered to enhance the possibility of implementing a wide range of important features, with the scope of making it a powerful and very specialized cache editing and 3D animation system.
Even if still in XB state, this build shows to be pretty stable. Please report any crash or bug you may find.
What's new:
Content Management
We've introuduced Content Management to favour data organization in Sculptron.
When working in Sculptron, is now important to define a content path for the current project:
Click on Create Directories will create the proper folder structure where data will be stored (Objects, Caches, Images and so on).
After changing the content path (and, more in general, any option in the Preferences) be sure to save the configuration using the Save Preferences options you can find in the File menu.
WARNING: "Link" option is currently causing a crash. Please do not use it in this build.
File Formats
OBJ
LWO (new)
Alembic (enhanced)
MDD
Alembic import/export has been made way more robust than before.
It is now possible to export what's selected only (if nothing is selected all items will be exported).
Alembic Objects Sequences (topology changing) are now supported, even if it's not yet possible to use the sculpt option in this case (most deformers will work, by the way).
If the source 3D package allows for it, static or animated joints and nulls can be imported as Sculptron static/animated Nulls.
Also, animated Cameras can be imported.
Very importantly, it's now possible to load curves. This allows for hair caches animated sculpting.
We also introduced LWO import, in order to be able to use the vertex maps (morphs and weight maps) stored in the mesh as Sculpt Layer's usable morphs and Falloff masks.
We're going to add the possibility to paint and store Vertex Maps in Sculptron very soon (possibly when in RC state).
OBJ import has been also improved and should definitely be even more robust now.
Brushes
- Buldge
Clay
ClayTubes
Clip (new)
DeltaMush
Flatten (enhanced)
HairClump (new)
HairComb (new)
HairMove (new)
Mask (new)
Move
MoveElastic (new)
Pinch
PlanarTrim
Restore
Rotate (new)
Scale (new)
Smooth
Smudge
Standard
Twirl
Available brushes have been improved and we also added some new important ones, especially dedicated to animated curves sculpting.
Curves can be imported in Alembic or LWO format (ZBrush can export Fibermesh in LWO).
We've created 3 specific brushes dedicated to hair sculpting (other brushes can somehow work when that makes sense for curves, feel free to test those as well): HairClump, HairComb, HairMove.
You can find a new Curve tab in the Brush options where is possible to define the geometry behaviour while using brush on curves.
Masking an area of the mesh is now possible thanks to the specific Mask Brush.
Videos showing how each specific Brush works will follow soon.
Materials
- Materials.JPG (14.81 KiB) Viewed 2798 times
PBR and MatCap materials received several improvements.
We also added a new Toon Material and Edges for artists using Sculptron in Cel-Shaded productions, so they can have a closer preview of what they will then render in the 3D "source" 3D package.
Lights
- Lights.JPG (15.95 KiB) Viewed 2798 times
We added 2 additional light types, Area and Spot.
Deformers
The Camera Lattice deformer adds a grid in front of the current camera. Deforming the grid will deform the meshes the Camera Lattice Effect is applied to.
Jiggle adds a jiggling effect to the mesh it is applied to. Very useful if we need to add secondary motion, especially when weight maps are used.
Motion Blur deforms the mesh according to its animation, simulating the well known Camera Motion Blur acting on the mesh shape directly.
In this case, the helicopter's rotor blades are animated. This is what we have before adding the Motion Blur deformer:
After applying the Motion Blur deformer:
Push displaces the vertex along the normal.
In this example a Texture Falloff (using a Noise Generator) has been added to a Push Deformer. Also, a Radial Falloff has been added to the "In Falloff" of the Texture Falloff:
Videos showing how each specific Deformer works will follow soon.
Falloffs (new)
We added several falloffs that can be used as "filters" for deformers.
Curves Preserve Length helps keeping the length of animated curves consistent. It should be applied after any other deformer when sculpting curves.
Videos showing how each specific Falloff works will follow soon.
Utility Commands
- Commands.JPG (18.97 KiB) Viewed 2798 times
Fit to Bounding Box adapts the bounding box size of a Deformer reference to the mesh bounding box the deformer is assigned to.
Convert Deformers to Sculpt Layer can be used to convert the deformers in a stack into a Sculpt Layer, in this case from the first deformer to the currently selected one.
Converted Deformers will be disabled, while a new Sculpt Layer will be created.
Convert Deformer to Sculpt Layer does the same, but for the currently selected deformer only.
Audio Support
From the Primitives menu is now possible to load an Audio File (in MP3 or Wav format) that can be used as reference for project involving Audio-to-animation synchronization.
Render to Disk and Render With Octane
The Render to Disk option allows to generate an animated preview of the current scene.
The video will be generated using the resolution defined in the Camera Properties.
If you have an Octane license, you'll be able to see the current scene in Sculptron rendered in Octane.
The implementation is still very primitive and it will be improved in future builds.
In this cycle we'll also implement:
- Vertex Map Painting
- Cloth Brushes and Cloth Modifier
- Variable topology mesh sculpting
Stay tuned!
Video showing and explaining in detail how the new features work will follow soon.
You can find Sculptron related video on this Instagram profile:
https://www.instagram.com/3danimecreator/
Download Sculptron 2022.1 XB1:
Sculptron Download
