Carrara Sculpt Baking

Finally!

Finished my Carrara tutorial for making sculpted prims - have a look at the Second Life wiki

wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Hypatia_Callisto/Carrara_Sculpt_Baking

As I haven't figured out yet if its possible to upload the files to the wiki yet, I'm posting the scene file with the sphere model and the shader here.

And check out my tip on making tiny sculpted prims with Carrara!

made a booboo with the torus - fixed now. Added OBJ formats.

Updated to add the new topologies - already uvmapped, in their own files. Presently can only view these by setting them by script. I also updated the sphere model.

a code example for viewing different topologies is:

default {

state_entry() {

llSetTimerEvent(30);

}

timer() {

llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "uuid", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_TORUS]);

}
}

and a little torus sculptie texture to test it with - make sure "uuid" is replaced by the UUID of the uploaded sculpt before (you can grab the UUID from your inventory by right clicking on the texture, and selecting "Copy Asset UUID"

[Thunderous applause] You win the prize for first out of the block, Hypatia! Rock on!

Hypatia, I just realized you posted these in Carrara format. Are you going to (could you) post them as .obj files, also?

I could - the sphere won't be useable for the Wings exporter though. (the poles are deleted) But may be useable in other programs, will export them

ok, they're all in OBJ format now, and looking over them again helped me catch a booboo in having the wrong file for the torus uploaded, so all is fixed as well!

Cool!

Potentially, I can get Wings export for these implemented pretty quicky. I made an initial stab, and ran into the following complications.

* The torus obj has a second model named _3 in the obj file. It doesn't have any vertices, but it does fool the exporter. After deleting it, I was able to export a sculpty map without further ado.

* The cylinder has 33 vertices in the un-stitched dimension. This isn't wrong, but to get the desired result (i.e. un-interpolated vertex positions) in SL, I presume we will need to use a 64x64 bitmap with the funky mapping for the last row. (Well, it's not officially funky. I guess I'm letting my biases show. ) I wasn't planning on supporting that in a first release. I figure it is a fairly low priority since it only adds one more row of vertices.

* The plane also has 33 vertices in each dimension. Presumably (again, I haven't actually tested to see whether that's the way Qarl coded it), this requires a 64x64 bitmap with the funky mapping in both dimensions. In addition, the vertex ordering of the plane departs from the row-by-row convention of the other topologies.

yeah, as they weren't made with Wings and are for texture baking rather than vertex export - I expected abnormalities when trying to use them with Wings - all texture baking really relies on is the UV map. Sculpts come in well.

Torus was probably because I exported it wrong, by exporting the whole scene rather than just the obj file. However that model came straight out of UVMapper Pro rather than as a Carrara primitive, so that might have been why it was able to export while the others could not.

I'll look at using a different method that may be useable with the exporter

Argh. I cleverly got Carrara *6*, so these [very nice] instructions aren't functional due to the aforementioned plugins not being C6-compatible.

Has anyone suceeded in baking sculpt maps using Carrara 6? If not, I'll try to do so when/if I get it figured out.

Thanks.

I am using Baker and shoestring shaders in C4 and getting very bad results. I am afraid I am doing something wrong with the UV map. The WIKI tute says the UV map must be a perfect sphere map before deforming. Question, in Carrara, what axis to use; as that choice changes the map. Also the mapped sphere example in C5 appears to fill the uv map square, but I can not get it to do that. I have tried using UV mapper but it also does not fill the square. If any part of the square is missing UV geometry the resulting sculpt map will fail. How do I create a proper UV map for this use?

Also I have downloded the OBJ files from this forum but when I import into C4, I can not edit them to create new deformed geometry; selecting them and opening the modeling room yeilds nothing.

Thanks for your help

Blue

Hi,

Seems there a bug in your Zip files, I can't unzip them with WinRAR and I can't neither fix the archives. Maybe someone could upload again the working files?

Thanks

I got the same issue with the Zip files. 'Unexpected file type' if I remember correctly. Could someone tell me if the method in the Wiki works with Carrara 6? If not I'll stop trying to figure it as it's pretty time consuming.

Uploaded files have an annoyingly short lifespan on this forum, I don't mind hosting them elsewhere if they are re-uploaded.

** hmm, just noticed how old this was when it started. Oh well, maybe my post will add some to it anyway. **
-------------------------------------------

I've been using Carrara 4, obj2sculpt, and Wings for my sculpts for a good while. Sometimes I use Blender, but my skills are lacking a bit there yet.

My first sculpts were started in Carrara, pretty much making the shapes starting with a grid in the vertex modeler. After making sure the UV map of the grid fit in the UV edit window correctly, I then changed the grid into a sphere or cylinder shape. I used the top and bottom as the poles and the two ends of the grid were brought together so there wouldnt be an open seam. From that I used the regular tools to add vertices, extrude, etc. Once done I exported as an obj, then ran that thru obj2sculpt. The sculpt map had some odd glitches at the very top and bottom, that I took care of in Photoshop in a couple seconds.

Now I use Wings along with Carrara. I exported the 32x31tri.wings sphere as an obj, opened it in Carrara and then used the magnet and other tools to make my sculpt shapes. Once finished, I export that as an obj, import into Wings, then export as a sculpt and up to SL.
While in Carrara I can export the UV map and open that in Photoshop to make my texture maps, often times having Carrara UV Editor open as well to get a good idea where details would be on the model as I painted the UV map.

db

** Blue, before opening the UV Editor, mapping is set to Custom and for Polymesh, I have Wrap U Values checked. When I open the editor, the Wrap U is still checked and the sphere fills the space, looking like a grid. In the Projection Tab, I have Box set from the dropdown.