How to make a sculpt map not visible?

Hello. I have seen this in a few objects I have purchased. A sculpt prim being moddable, but it's sculpt map hidden from view. how is this achieved? I am pondering about releasing some stuff but I want it to stay mod/copy/no trans, yet I'd prefer if the sculpt map itself is not shown. Thanks in advance for any response.

I've seen sculpt maps where the alpha channel was used to put copyright info. I guess if you fill it up it will overlay the visible part of the map totally.

You make a sculpt map transparent the same way you make any other image transparent. Give it a solid black alpha channel.

As for the copyright info thing, in that case, the alpha channel would be all black, except the copyright info would be printed on it in white.

Ok. So. just giving an alpha channel will not affect the sculpt at all, plus, the alpha part is what will be visible in the edit viewer?

EDIT: Well. I added the alpha channel and the sculpt map still survived. But as a texture, the thing appears as a full transparent one. This seems to be what I was looking for. Maybe I might add a copyright print later. Thanks all for the replies.

If you use Blender, Domino's scripts give you the option of concealing the sculpt map at the time of baking.

Glad you got it working. To answer your question, no the alpha channel can't affect the sculpty in any way. Sculpties take XYZ coordinates for vertices from the RGB values of pixels. You could have one additional channel in there, or a thousand, and it wouldn't affect the shape of the sculpty in any way. The RGB channels, and ONLY the RGB channels determine the sculpty' shape.

In gimp:

1. Create your trademark/copyright image the same size as the sculpt map. Make it white on a transparent background and save it as a png. You only need to do this once.
2. To protect a sculpt map, open it in Gimp and also open the trademark image.
3. Click the trademark image and click Ctrl-C to copy the image.
4. Click the sculptmap image window and open the Layers window (Ctrl-L or Dialogs->Layers)
5. Right-click the sculptmap layer in the layers window and click Add Layer Mask. This will open the Add Layer Mask dialog.
6. Select Black (full transparency) and click Add. Your sculptmap will go invisible.
7. Click the sculptmap image window and press Ctrl-V to paste the trademark. You will see your trademark in cool sculptie colours.
8. Click the Anchor button in the layers window to anchor the trademark image you just pasted.
9. Right-click the sculptmap layer in the layers window and untick Edit Layer Mask.
10. Save your sculptmap image.

As an experiment, I tried this.. When I try to nick it back with libsecondlife, I can simply load it in blender, bake, and it's' just the same as before without the alpha channel..

I was wondering.. What exactly does this process protect from?

People screenshotting the sculpt texture and cropping it down to use as a sculpt map without permission, essentially.

Since sculpties are so reliant on the texture, if you can screenshot a sculpt map well enough, you can easily claim the creation is your own, according to the SL permissions system.

Does anyone go to all that trouble? I would figure anyone who would be after something I made would be using copybot or libsecondlife's client instead of screen capturing each little prim one by one, editting them in photoshop, keeping track of which texture goes on which prim, etc.

I'm starting to think this is about as effective as the bazillion things on SLX that spam local chat with "!quit" when someone walks by. Albeit, silent and not annoying. =)

Some people will, sure. Since you don't need any outside program or anything, and just a very basic understanding of even MSPaint, it's really one of the easiest ways to steal sculpt maps, even if it is a bit slow.

Anyhow, above is also the 'adding a watermark' type thing, which can be used to prove that it is really your texture, you know?

It's possible (Though unlikely) someone made a sculpt just like yours, but why would they watermark it, you know?

More proof, more peace of mind, and so on.

I was thinking about this, too. But, I figure if they import/export it from a 3D package to ditch the alpha, then it would be altered enough that proving it was yours could be more difficult.

Makes sense, though. Kind of like those tiny padlocks on suitcase zippers.

Yes, it is no protection against copybot or the libSL client but it does protect against naive users simply taking a screen-shot of the sculpty texture. In my view it is worth doing and it also allows you to add a pretty trademark image to the sculpty texture (in my view, a nice professional touch).

If someone is determined to steal your sculpt they will succeed in any case - if it can be represented on your computer then it can be captured to disc. That is the case whether it is a texture, video, animation or sound.