Ac3d

I've been playing a bit with AC3D for making sculpted prims and it seems to be one of the more easy to understand tools I've played with. Somewhere I remember reading that the tool is not bound by the bitmap limitations of other sculpt tools as long as you make sure the texture map "has no holes" in it. I have no idea, really, what that means, but the idea of the limitation being removed sounds wonderful.

I am trying my best to make a motorocycle exhaust pipe. Basically a long, thin, cylinder with a number of angled curves. I've tried doing this with the made-especially-for-SL cylinder model, but it doesn't have nearly enough segments to accomodate the bends in the exhaust pipe.

Can someone tell me what I can do to move past this limitation? I've tried starting with something other than the 3 pre-defined SL prims but the resulting bitmap is black and in no way resembles what I am trying to create when I import it into SL.

Any and all advice you may have would be greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,
Rutherford Beresford

These are ac files I made with the correct numbers of vertices for modelling a cylinder at highest (cylinder.ac, 32x33) or second LOD detail (cylod2.ac, 16x17 faces). They might be a better starting point. Distort to taste (then subdivde once if cylod2) before exporting. They must be used with the cylinder topology. You may want to snap the end vertices together to avoid nasty open ends. When the oblong sculpties find their way into the main viewer, I may make an oblong one that will be much better for long winding pipes. PS - Don't do anything to the UV map, and don't forget to use normalised export.

These look alright in ac3d, but the exported sculpties don't stuitch properly. That implies that the exporter doesn't do the cylinder topology properly. I am using a very old version though. Maybe a newer one would work.

With that many segments I bet I could even make the pipe very narrow and make an entire bike frame, don't you agree?

Thanks again!
Rutherford

With the 8x128 oblong, you could have 128 segments at the highest LOD. Yes. I think that would do the whole frame.

If I might ask a follow-up question... I've found, using the rotate tool and only selecting a portion of the cylinder at a time, repositioning it when I'm done, that I can make a pretty decent frame with sharp bends. What's the best way, using your new object as the starting point to make a frame with nice smooth curves, instead of the angles?

Thanks again for your help!
Ford

There is a free pipe making tool someone made in SL. IM me in world for a link as I cant remember offhand where i got it
it works great and would be perfect for your exhaust pipe.
search for Lex Labs
I believe it is the place you get Rez-faux from.

That would be Lex Neva, and her shop "Lex Labs" is in Suffugium. Not sure of the exact coords, but it's right across the street from the landing point. It looks like a porn store.

That's the place

Ah. I'm not going to be much use to you there. I like sharp edges. So here is some guesswork. Provided you have subdivided, or used the 32x33 cylinder, I think you won't get any smoother. There is an inevitable trade-off between the number of vertices you use for the basic shape and the number that can be used to smooth it. This is because there is a limit on the number of triangles (204. The only solution then is to make it out of more shorter pieces, each with more accurately specified curve. In the limit, you will end up being no better off than with a collection of normal prims. There are techniques for using less vertices around the section of the pipe and more for the shape, but this is harder without the oblong map. Maybe I'll have a go at making a sc file for that.

Oh dear. I tried these out, and I see now that (a) you have to rotate the map 90 degrees, and (b) itdoesn't stitch properly anyway. So I guess these are no good. Sorry. I will go back to making them with maths.