another sculptie question

What I would really like is the equivalent of a jigsaw in SL

I want to make curved shapes out if a slab of material.
For example a maple leaf shape sawn out of a thick wood plank.

So far I use Tokoroten to extrude a cylinder in the shape I need and then clean it up in Wings3D

The sides never come out straight in SL although the vertices in the sides line up perfectly in Wings3D

Does anyone recognize this, or is there a tool that can make shapes with smooth edges ?


Thanks

I know diddley squat about the higher end of sculpting tools compatible with SL but what you are seeking to achieve is child's play with Sculpt Studio. SS is an in-world sculpting tool and if a dope like me can pick it up fast, anybody can.

SS doesn't seem to be so hot on organic shapes - possibly because the maximum number of pixels in the finished sculpt meshes cannot exceed 64x64 or permutations thereof (32x128 or 16x256 for instance). Personally, I suspect that achieving good definition is more than likely due to the level of skill of the sculptor but opinion seems to be very much divided on whether or not larger meshes give a smoother finish on fluid shapes in SL.

Some knowledgeable folk with plenty of experience create meshes as big as 1024x1024 in the quest for extra definition.

Sounds like you haven't been uploading your sculpt maps losslessly. Be sure you've got the little Lossless Upload box checked in the uploader, and that your maps are 64x64px.

Ephraim Kappler slaps his forehead: doh!

Hey Chosen, I did try various map sizes I thought larger would be better. Not to sure about lossless compression. I will try tomorrow

While it's logical to assume that larger maps might be better, it's not actually true. Keep in mind that the map simply records the positions of vertices, and that the vertex count is fixed. A larger map won't add any vertices to the sculpty mesh. It will just use more pixels to record the exact same information, and will make the map take longer to load.

The reason for 64x64 is twofold. First, image sizes in SL are restricted to powers of two. Second, the topology of a (non-oblong) sculpty is a 32x32 grid of quads, which means there are 33x33 vertices. The closest allowable image size to that count is 32x32, but that can't work, since it's 1 pixel too small in each dimension. 64x64, therefore, is the best choice, since it is the smallest size that has enough room for the extra column and row.

I have used Sculpt Studio for this kind of sculpt and it works really nicely. You are limited in how smooth you can make curves, but that limitation is really a sculptie limitation moreso than a sculpt studio limitation because of the resolution limitations. Sculpt Studio has oblong support so you can choose to have more slices at the cost of a cross section with fewer points, or have more points in your slices at the cost of using fewer slices... whichever will work out better for what you are trying to create.

Here is a sculpt I made that I think is kind of the same type you mentioned... you said a maple leaf, where you had the shape that was "sawed out of a wood plank". My shape is different, but same idea.... this is not one prim.... I used several prims to get this.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maurice_mistwallow/3511098429/

Yes, I'm a hockey fan

Sculpt Studio is really a great tool if you do much sculpting. Much much easier to pick up than something like Blender. I started sculpting with Tokoroten and Rokuro as well and went from there to Sculpt Studio and was able to pick it up pretty quickly. I highly recommend it. It's not my product so I don't feel guilty about plugging it