AC3D Forums - View Single Post - Second Life - Sculptie Starting Shapes (no. of faces) ?

lisa · 1st October 2009, 07:33 PM

The Wings exporter and the AC3D exporter work on a completely different principles.

The Wings exporter uses the geometry itself to generate the sculpty. This requires that the topology to be very specific. You can't change the topology of the Wings model, only the position of the vertices. That is why there is a restriction on the number of points / faces.

The AC3D exporter uses an internal rasterizer to project the geometry into UV space. i.e. It works exactly like a normal mapper or displacement mapper, only in reverse. It analyzes the surfaces of the shape and generates a 3D displacement for each point in UV space of the surface. This means that the topology of the model does not matter, only the UV space, so there are no restrictions on face counts or layout.

The size of the bitmap happens to be hardcoded in the exporter. The number chosen was based on recommendations from Linden Labs.

1st October 2009, 07:33 PM	#3
lisa Senior Member Professional user Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 917	Re: Second Life - Sculptie Starting Shapes (no. of faces) ? The Wings exporter and the AC3D exporter work on a completely different principles. The Wings exporter uses the geometry itself to generate the sculpty. This requires that the topology to be very specific. You can't change the topology of the Wings model, only the position of the vertices. That is why there is a restriction on the number of points / faces. The AC3D exporter uses an internal rasterizer to project the geometry into UV space. i.e. It works exactly like a normal mapper or displacement mapper, only in reverse. It analyzes the surfaces of the shape and generates a 3D displacement for each point in UV space of the surface. This means that the topology of the model does not matter, only the UV space, so there are no restrictions on face counts or layout. The size of the bitmap happens to be hardcoded in the exporter. The number chosen was based on recommendations from Linden Labs.