Need help creating Second Life Sculpties

[LightWizard]

Hi, I'm trying to create a few sculpties for Second Life. I was able to create a couple of objects, one a goblet. This was created by creating a curve for both the outside of the goblet, and a parallel face for the inside. I then rotated these curves by 360 degrees to create the globlet shape.
This came out looking great in AC3D (I did have to reverse the surfaces on the inside to get the surface normal direction facing outward). However, when I try to export it as a Second Life Normalized Sculpted Prim, I get some nasty looking distortion with parts of the globet being missing.
I tried both cylindrical and spherical texture maps. To do this, I started the AC3D Texture Editor, then used the UV Map tool. As this was an upright object symmetric with the Y axis, I used the Y axis for Sphere/Cylindrical Alignment, with Space Polar coords seleted. As I said, cylindrical looked the best but even it was messed up. The spherical mapping lost the entire base of the globlet.
In all cases, the inside of the globlet was transparent. Apparently, the spherical/cylindrical texture mapping doesn't see inside concave surfaces so no textures got mapped inside.
I checked the model very carefully, optimized vertices and faces. All looks good, no nasty sharp transitions (well, the top of the glass has a narrow lip that is 90 degrees to the inside and outside surfaces). And, cylindrical mapping does a pretty good job, but the inside textures aren't mapped. Again, how can I create a UV map that works for both inside and outside.

The second problem is even more confusing. I started with a sphere from the AC3D Mode menu. I expanded it's size a bit (not too large). I then flattened it some, being very careful to not create degenertaive triangles, etc. I then also created a concave area in the center (trying to create a rock pool for a waterfall, so I wanted the inside to create a pool or cup shape). I smoothed the top which previously had a sharp edge to it (got rid of that). So this is basically just a somewhat flattened sphere with a concave pool area in the middle of one side. It's not a torus, there is no hole.

Again, both spherical and cylindrical texture maps look very bad for both of these. I keep getting tearing with a bunch of vectors from the object connected to some phantom point outside the object (this is not in the object model in AC3D). There was a default map, and while this works with only a small amount of texture bizzare distortion, it creates an object that appears to be hollow but actually takes up the entire space of the prim (ie it's not really concave, it just LOOKS concave, weird).

So, I'm obviously missing something. I would think spherical texture mapping would ususally be best for 2nd life sculpties, but I've had zero luck trying to use spherical texture maps. BTW, I'm matching spherical/cylindrical texture maps to the texture map type in the 2nd Life viewer when I import (forgot the exact term used there, but I matched them).

So, questions:
1) Is AC3D 6.4.3 all I need to do this? Do I need additional plugins, etc?
2) Where can I get good doc on creating texture maps for odd shaped objects that'll work in second life?
3) Why, when the object appears to be "perfect", so I get the texture map distortions I've been seeing?
4) Is there a good tutorial on this latter part of the process, creating the texture map and bringing it into second life?

I have seen some amazing work already in the forum from people doing this for second life...HOW do they do it!?

Thanks, I'd really like to use this tool but I'm having very little luck bringing my AC3D creations into 2nd life without them getting pretty heavily damaged...what's the trick?

[rockfists]

I still get these same issues myself.

[LightWizard]

It seems I can get a texture map to work correctly for one part of the object, but not all...what would be ideal would be a way to combine more than one texture/mapping into a single file so multiple mappings/textures could be applied to a single object to completely cover all surfaces...but I haven't yet a clue as to how to do this. I'd love a tutorial on creating a slightly more complicated texture map that would work in SL. Does one exist?

Thanks...LW

[Andy]

A lot of Lisa's messages on this forum will help you.

For a shape to work in SL, you need to get the texture map right. Lisa's fish has an example:

http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...rom_existing_3

Have a look through the forum though, there's quite a bit on this.

It's always best to start from the sample SL objects that come with AC3D (in the models/sample folder). Look at the TCE for these to see how the mapping covers the full area.

[LightWizard]

Hi Andy...I found that posting as one of the first I found, but it really doesn't explain how to create the texture maps for anything other than simple objects.

Note that I also did take the advice to use the existing objects for my 2nd object. For this, I started with a sphere. I then deformed it, being sure not to create any sharp corners or broken surface boundaries to create a slightly irregular pool shaped object (trying to make a stone pool for the bottom of a waterfall). The issue I have is that it is concave after this deformation of the sphere. Trying the UV map tool, I was unable to get a descent text map that worked. The default spherical one worked in that it looked concave (but had a linear gap down one side and had some nasty jaggies), BUT it was in fact not concave; if you tried to get into the concave area you instead stool on top of an invisible upper surface.

What I need is some instruction on how to deal with such an object. Visualize a round-ish tub and you get the idea. The sides slope downward at a fairly gentle angle, no 90 degree edges, no sharp surface boundaries...trying to be as kind to the surface mapping sw as possible.

Do I need to split this object into pieces? Do I need to just create a separate wire mesh for the top section? I saw some discussion about doing this, but don't know HOW to do this, nor do I know really how to split the object (I can split it, but what do I do about the cut away areas? Make it a big surface? I'm completely unsure of how to get started on this.

So, I'd really appreciate some help on this...guess I started by making 2 concave objects naively not knowing it would be complicated. I'd really like to get the pool out into 2nd life as we have a spot for it at the bottom of a waterfall and we're very anxious to see it complete.

Thanks all...LW

[Kireyo]

Maybe if you posted some pics it would be easier to see the problem and suggest a solution, preferably one of the object in AC3D, the TCE, and how it looks in SL.
A picture says a thousand words...