Sculptris > Unity = Viable?

I've been using Sculptris a lot recently and I've made some pretty high quality assets but my concern with using it for game development is that the polycount is so ridiculously high. Is it possible to bring this down inside of Unity or would I need to export to a format supported by something like Maya LT or Blender(preferably not Blender please...) and reduce the polycount further inside of a second external software? I mean, Sculptris is so easy to use and I've been able to make some very nice looking things but the problem is that I'm terrible with 3D art(art in general actually) and I'm afraid learning to use the Maya LT I've already paid for is going to get me nowhere.

Help?

 

Yes you'd need to reduce the poly count. If you don't want to use blender there are several commercial software you can choose from. Both 3D Coat and Zbrush come with auto retopology tools (converting your high-poly mesh to a low poly one). Perhaps they'd be worth a look?

Warning about 3D coat though - the ones making it are religious fanatics.

 

It's viable and sculptris has a poly reduction tool. There is also simplygon on the asset store. http://simplygon.com/unity

 

I've tried using Sculptris' built-in tool and its usually awful. Not only does it not work as well as I've seen other software work, but it totally deteriorates the quality. A simple eye I made earlier today brought my polycount from 138k to 167k, I went to use the reduction tool and it brought it down to 139k (weirdly..) but made it look like the eye was almost not even there. It jumped from 151k to 139k in one solid leap as well.

@SunnySunshine, yes I've been looking at Zbrush recently. I know Sculptris is its' little brother and I figured if I really want to use a top-notch sculpting software then I might as well go with something from Pixelogic once again. But I've already payed this month's Maya LT subscription fee so I was also looking at Mudbox. I doubt I'll learn towards Autodesk again until I have a better grasp since their products' learning curve is freaking insane.

Thank you guys though!

 

I wonder how you can produce high quality assets when you have no clue about retopology. No offence ^^

Your mistake is that you think Sculptris can do the job alone. But sculping is just one step in the pipeline. And Sculptris is especially made for the sculpting part. Polycount is not of interest for sculpting. Polycount gets reduced by retopology then. Think of it as a fruit knife in your kitchen arsenal. You may need a meat knife and a spoon too ...

The usual workflow looks as following:

Some start with a low poly base mesh. This step is optional.
Then comes sculpting to produce all the details for the normalmap.
Then comes retopology. You produce a low poly mesh from the high poly mesh. Some reuse the low poly base mesh here, which is optional.
Then comes UV mapping and texturing. Here you also create the normalmap from your sculpt mesh and your low poly version.
Dependand if it is something animated you have to do rigging and animation now too.

ZBrush will not magically solve your sculpting problems by the way. When you suck at sculpting with Sculptris then you will even more suck at sculpting with ZBrush. ZBrush has a really wicked UI. And Sculptris is known as one of the easiest to use sculpt modeler. And while ZBrush provides everything from sculpting across retopology down to UV Mapping and texturing, it is still nothing to animate with.

And a building is better modeled in polygon modeling software like Maya, not sculpted. The right tool for the right job ...

 

Well, you can use the Polygon reduction brush in Sculptris.
(Hippocoder said that too.)

With that brush, You can control how many polygons you want in a certain area of the model, and which parts you want polygons or tris reduced.

Or, if you want, you can also use Wings 3d: http://www.wings3d.com/
Or MeshLab: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

MeshLab might be better for your purpose.

Enjoy!

 

The polygon reduction tool is no substitute for retopology though. It doesn't give you any control over the topology. Meshlab neither. Meshlab is a special tool for some special jobs. You can clean up point clouds from 3D Scans for example. Another tool in the pipeline, which you most probably won't need for game graphics. And Wings 3d, while a cute little polygon modeler, is no substitute for Maya LT, which Neffy already owns.