Archipelis Designer: Sculpty Program for the n00bs?
Posted on 24. Oct, 2009 by Tenshi Vielle in Digital Life
I include myself in that statement.
I’ve been working with Rokuro since Sculpties debuted to get what I need. This means I’m limited to a 360-degree round, I can’t make holes, I can’t have asymmetry. I would always have symmetry. Symmetrical damnation. See above.
In a pathetic ditch effort to break away from Rokuro, I tried ZBrush… can’t do it. Or at least, I don’t have the patience to do it. I don’t even want to look at Maya.
Then I found this other program one night while checking my email. Ah, the fun of Google Ads on my email. The program was called Archipelis, and boasted easy SL importation. So why the hell not?
How Archipelis Works Look In SL
My first attempt was a heart. I figured it was a simple shape, and it would give me a good idea of how the program worked with rounded edges and sharp angles. Creating in Archipelis is interesting – you actually hold down your left mouse button and just … drag. Just hold and drag. It’s easy, and would be even better with a tablet.
You can even switch to a point-system and fiddle with any mistakes you may have made. On mine, my edge was a bit flat and I wanted to fix that. You can see, however, where the program wasn’t responding quite perfectly to my inner angle. I don’t know what was going on with that but it wasn’t enough for me to worry about.
There’s also a quad-view you can try out. I didn’t mess with this much.
Yay! Weird edge fixed — time to import to Second Life! Exportation in Archipelis is easy, as indicated in the above image. Just click, and wait for the green progress bar above your draw area to finish rendering.
A few more clicks, an upload, and there it is! There’s something really odd with the upper right edge though, and I haven’t been able to figure out what it is yet – whether it was me, or the program.
Yeah. Not so awesome. However, at this point I was getting tired and frustrated, and as I am easily and often overwhelmed by new programs, colored my heart and left for the day.
I sent the Archipelis creator an email inquiring what to do about the particular ridging, and got this back:
Regarding the accuracy of the mesh, you have two solutions:
- first increase the mesh quality (but warning this increase dramatically the computation time)- second, change your workflow and export to 3DSMax or Blender (for instance) to smooth the mesh(Blender perfectly does that for free).Hope this explanation helps you.Thank youBest regardsArchipelis.com
scd
Oct 24th, 2009
I tried Sculptypaint – it's ridiculous and annoying.
DuskyJewell
Oct 24th, 2009
I set aside some money and time for Maya this summer. I got tired of messing around with ZBrush's limitations. Good luck with this tool.
CyclicGearz
Oct 24th, 2009
I can't honestly say I would spend 40 euro's on a product that doesn't even do what it says on the tin – to have any kind of detail you have to use an external program? I get that it is probably a great tool for beginner or small time sculptie makers, but I think it's bad business practise to not mention about the need for external programs before customers buy the product ¬_¬
scd
Oct 25th, 2009
Well, I'm still not sure if it was the program or my own mistake, Cyc.
Fenec
Nov 19th, 2009
I tried a lot of tools and to be honest, Archipelis is the one I choosed.
For instance, the ability to use photo is unique… the modeling concept is also nice: I’m sure my 7 year old boy can do better than me with the tool!
recommanded.