Sculptie Extrusion messing up UV Map

[Petite Pixie]

I've been working on making a sculpty belt and I've seen very good ones done in SL using other applications but I think they might have a better export to sculpty system that takes advantage of some tricks and flaws in the sculpty format.

One free tool is Sculpty Paint that allows you to make great looking stairs and some other amazing shapes but it is limited also. I'm not sure how these other people get belts to or other shapes to work where AC3D fails. I've done test after test and when ever theres a enclosed look even if not fully enclosed AC3D fails even with correct UV Mapping.

[Petite Pixie]

I did a little test using ROKURO Pro and AC3D. First I made a badly formed belt like pipe loop in ROKURO which came out in SL for the most part looking like it did using ROKURO but because it's limited to how much to can shape with it. I also exported it as an obj file and imported it to AC3D and UV mapped it without changing anything using the best results of the UV map and adjusting the points so it fill the box and not crossing my lines and then saved it as a sculpty and imported it to SL and it came out a mess. So I myself feel this kind of sculpty isn't possible with AC3D.

[lisa]

Originally Posted by Petite Pixie

I'm not sure how these other people get belts to or other shapes to work where AC3D fails. I've done test after test and when ever theres a enclosed look even if not fully enclosed AC3D fails even with correct UV Mapping.

Belts work best if you set your mapping mode to TORUS will llSetPrimitiveParams. This lets you have a hole in the middle. If you don't change the mapping mode, the hole may not turn out right.

As far as how to do pipes... easiest way is actually just to divide the existing cylinder and grabs the verts and rotate.

There's an example horseshoe bend in this file. I bent half the arch, then mirrored it and mirrored the UVs to make it:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...pted-prims.zip

[glebreck]

Originally Posted by lisa

Belts work best if you set your mapping mode to TORUS will llSetPrimitiveParams. This lets you have a hole in the middle. If you don't change the mapping mode, the hole may not turn out right.

As far as how to do pipes... easiest way is actually just to divide the existing cylinder and grabs the verts and rotate.

There's an example horseshoe bend in this file. I bent half the arch, then mirrored it and mirrored the UVs to make it:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...pted-prims.zip

Lisa that arch is almost exactly what I am trying to do. Couple questions...

Fist..When i do the divde i select the serface inbetween 2 sets of verts and click Surface---Divide. I then get the divide but it also adds alot of verts to the mix. Am I doing something wrong?

Next...When you say mirror are you using the mirror function under Object?

Next... How r u creating the hole on the middle?

and last... can you give a script example of how you get the hole to show in SL?

Thanks a ton!

[Petite Pixie]

Yeah I didn't know scripting was required. I don't script at all and don't even know where to start.

[glebreck]

hey Pix...the scripting part i can handle if you can help actually make the shapes.
For some reason when i do the divide i get a ton of extra verts so i must be doing something wrong.

Also if I export the files from AC3D that Lisa provided for us they look totally different then if I use the tga files she also provided.

[Petite Pixie]

Yes I also did that to see what would happen and got mixed results. I'm not sure why AC3D doesn't have an automatic system to map sculpties like some other plugins in other apps but i'm hoping they will come up with something soon. Using the UV Map seems like quick fix to making sculpties work but It's just not getting good results even on very simple shapes without a lot of editing. If nothing else there are some free apps like ROKURO that can get good results without all that extra UV map texture work. I kind of feel like maybe someday it will be looked at and a better way found but somehow I doubt sculpties is nothing more than a side line.

[lisa]

Other apps rely on having exactly 1024 vertices. The AC3D plugin uses the UV map not as a shortcut, but rather as a means to be able to import existing models that otherwise could not be made into sculpties. i.e. The same reason Maya uses nurbs for sculpties, it is a parametric representation.

It would be trivial to implement the methods other programs are using if its desirable, but you would be far more limited in the types of shapes possible.

[lisa]

Originally Posted by glebreck

Also if I export the files from AC3D that Lisa provided for us they look totally different then if I use the tga files she also provided.

What's it doing?

[Petite Pixie]

Originally Posted by lisa

Other apps rely on having exactly 1024 vertices. The AC3D plugin uses the UV map not as a shortcut, but rather as a means to be able to import existing models that otherwise could not be made into sculpties. i.e. The same reason Maya uses nurbs for sculpties, it is a parametric representation.

It would be trivial to implement the methods other programs are using if its desirable, but you would be far more limited in the types of shapes possible.

That's all good but it's confusing and the results are not easy to get right unless you know how to work it by knowing how the code works and as an artist I don't care about how the paint is made or all the ingredients in them I just want to know I will get results. I'm not a software person or technical users and that's the main reason I bought AC3D was because it's very intuitive and easy to learn but I baffled as why even simple shapes have holes that need to be removed in the UV Map and what is the best way to do this. I've done some pretty nice meshes that should be simple enough to export to sculpty but often with very crappy results after spending 3 times as much time on fixing the UV maps than I did making it and it's getting so when I think of making something in AC3D I often don't bother because I don't want to spend hours on something that won't work.

As for limits the biggest limit is not getting anything to work at all.