Sculptris is Great

I’ve been playing around with a program called Sculptris, which I downloaded a while back. Sculptris sounds like it might be a videogame about falling blocks, but it’s actually a 3D sculpting application that was developed by the makers of ZBrush, Pixologic. When it comes to sculpting a new model from scratch, Sculptris is actually superior to its older sibling. Each model generally starts life in Sculptris as a simple sphere, which the user can shape into a detailed organic model with the tools at his disposal. As the user sculpts his model, Sculptris automatically subdivides the area under the brush to accommodate more detail. As of this writing, I know of no other 3D modeling application that does that.

That said, there are still a few kinks in this application that Pixologic needs to iron out. As the poly count of a model  increases, so does the chance of Sculptris suddenly crashing. Fortunately, Sculptris saves the current work in progress periodically and seamlessly. Running it after a crash will automatically load its last save file.

While Sculptris is great for sculpting organic models, it doesn’t come with a lot of bells and whistles. If you want to retopologize a model or change its pose, you’ll need to use other 3D applications for that. Nevertheless, using Sculptris is probably the closest one can get to molding clay in digital form. What’s more, it’s free. That, along with its ease of use, makes Sculptris a winner.