Need help creating Second Life Sculpties

LightWizard · 1st December 2008, 06:12 PM

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?

1st December 2008, 06:12 PM	#1
LightWizard Junior Member Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 11	Need help creating Second Life Sculpties 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?