How to straighten out a sculptie car..?

I've just bought a few sculptie cars, they looked fabulous in the Slex pictures, however when rezzed each look like it's been in an accident (all bent and distorted..and that's before I've driven them). They each appear to be trying to straighten out but never quite make it. I did buy a motorbike a while ago that had the same problem but it eventually sorted itself out and I've had no problems rezzing it since.

Is there a tweak or preference adjustment that might help or am I destined to drive around the highways of SL in cars that look like they belong to the world's worste driver..?

I've rezzed them now on both the Island (where lag is zero) and on the mainland (where lag isn't zero), they look the same on both.

Thanks..Perre..

Actually I've now discovered another source of confusion..I logged in as one of my alts and the cars looked perfect..logged back as myself and they're still look like a pile of old knackers..

Sculpties are not perfect and there are different ways to make them.
Could be just badly made, trying to squeeze too much detail out of one mesh is the most common problem.
better to look at inworld examples first.

Truth is Perre, they probably look fine to most people, it is a rendering issue. When you logged in on your alt was it with a different comp ? The difference between the two will be your likely answer.....or does the alt use a different release client ?

Make sure your object detail slider is all the way on high. Also, clear your cache and relog to force a re-download of the sculpt maps.

Object Detail would be in the Graphics tab under Edit Preferences. I believe you have to push the "Custom" button in order to view all the options.

Unfortunately, Sculpts load slowly, and "Lossless Compression" sculpts load VERY SLOWLY. It took 2 full minutes for my client to download a lossless 64x64 sculpted Chair. Until it had loaded fully, it really looked bad.

My suggestion to sculpt makers, is to seriously consider how you're using sculpts.. Sculpted hair looks great, ONCE it's loaded. Before it loads, anyone wearing sculpted hair looks like they're being eaten by a mashed potato monster. Sculpted armor looks like you're wearing jellbeans on your cloths (in the best cases) and the michellen man (in the worst cases). I've been to stores that used sculpted stairs, and even sculpted ground.. and during slower times in SL, it might be 10 minutes or more before that sculpt loads.

That's 10 minutes standing around while your "sculpted grass" is a giant sphere blocking half your vendors. Most people aren't going to wait more than 3.

Worse is, just because it loaded fast for you, is NOT indication that it will be fast for everyone.

Honestly, in this artist's opinion.. sculpts are great, but they're no substitute for real prims. I've seen some amazing things done with them, heck, I've worked with sculpts myself, and I do love them...

But take the OP's situation into consideration. Most products sell by word of mouth. No one's going to ask "where did you get that awesome car" if all they see is smashed-up tinfoil, or a pile of beans.

If you MUST use sculpts, please use compression if you CAN, and PLEASE keep your sculpt maps to 64x64 or smaller.

...or you can continue to use sculpts, realizing that they will load and display properly most of the time - and that this sculptmap texture loading bug will eventually be fixed.

It's not as if LL doesn't know about this problem. There is a very active JIRA entry that describes this problem in detail. Qarl is working on it along with many other residents.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2404

Winter, I can't think of any technical reason why a lossless sculpt map should take any longer to load than a lossy one. Once the file is server-side, it's just a file like any other. The lossy vs. lossless part is only a factor at the time of conversion to JPEG2000, which happens a split second before upload.

While it's true that a lossless map file will be slightly larger than a lossy one, we're talking about a 64x64 image either way. Even if it were uncompressed, that's only 12K worth of texture memory. Compressed in JPEG2000 format, you're talking about 2-3K if it's lossy, or about 4K if it's lossless. So the difference as far as network traffic is concerned is about a kilobyte or so per texture. There's simply no way that extra kilobyte all by itself can make the file noticeably take any longer to load.

I would never advise anyone to let the visual quality of their work suffer just to save a kilobyte of network traffic. Geometry generated from lossy sculpt maps can come out all kinds of screwed up. Use lossless compression for sculpt maps, always.

That said, I'm not disputing that sculpt maps can take a while to fully load. They certainly can. But so can every other asset. Heck, I've had things as simple as gestures take several minutes to load before. There's nothing unique about sculpt maps, lossless or not, that makes them in particular take any longer than anything else. It's just a bit more noticeable when a slow item happens to be a sculpt map is all. If a surface texture is slow to load, you at least get the general sense of what it is, even if it's blurry, while you're waiting. But when it's a sculpt map, you just see a blob or a sphere for a while, which can make the problem feel like it's a lot worse than it actually is.

It would be nice if LL could find a way to give sculpt maps priority in the loading process. But unfortunately they haven't. I don't know if it's actually a bug, as Vlad suggests, or if it's just a lack of importance in the eyes of the powers that be at LL, but either way, the symptom is the same. Delivery time for any given sculpt map is just as haphazard and random for as it is for everything else. Losslesness doesn't change that one way or the other.

Well said, Chosen. Can always count on you for a big dose of common sense on any texture related issue.

The bug I mentioned is related to lossless sculptmaps as they load from the cache. Sometimes the texture fails to load properly from the cache, resulting in a distorted scultmap. I've only every experienced this once, but for some people it seems to more common

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2404

I think that giving low resolution textures a higher loading priority is a great idea. There is a JIRA entry about this topic as well:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3798

Thanks for the reponses and all the advice folks..I've figured it out. It was an 'Object and Flexible Mesh Detail' problem (Graphics Detail)..the problem being that I had them both switched off..or at least the sliders were set at minimum. I think I may have been tinkering with them a few days ago while I was trying for the umteenth time to get Windlight to work acceptably (and failed again).

I simply looked at my alt's settings and compared them to my own settings and there it was..a quich (possibly even 'quick') adjustment and the cars immediately adopted their perfect shape..which has to be said is rather impressive (a Porsche 911 and a Caterham 7).

Thanks again..I'm going to tear up the Old Continent now..

Perre