Sculpty exporter for Wings 3D

i get that error when i dont use a 64 x 63 sphere
when useing a 64x 63 sphere it works fine

If the error message says "bad match, Unsupported mesh shape", go back and review the restrictions in the initial post to this thread. If it says something else, tell me what does come after "bad match".

The problem appears to be that an 8x8 bitmap file doesn't get uploaded correctly. Upload any 8x8 bitmap and compare the results (as a texture, not a sculpty shape) against what the original .bmp file looks like in your favorite image viewer. My guess is that the JPEG 2000 coder/decoder doesn't handle 8x8 correctly.

It's probably a long-standing SL bug that no one has cared much about until now.

I went back and reread the first post. I created a 64 sections x 63 slices sphere, made an edit or two, then exported via the sculpty plugin, and got this message:

Exporter crashed: {badmatch,[]}
[{wpc_sculpty,getVs,1},
{wings_export,export,4},
{wings_file,'-export_filename/2-fun-0-',3},
{wings_plugin,command,3},
{wings,do_command_1,2},
{wings,raw_command,3},
{wings_wm,handle_event,3},
{wings_wm,send_event,2}]

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

you can't change the vertex count, looks like that's what happened.

just a tip for others using wings as an exporter from other apps - sometimes it crashes when I import my meshes from Zbrush after texturing - the way to fix that is to run it through something like UVMapper Classic and make sure that "don't save materials on export" is checked.

or you can edit it in a text editor if you feel safe with that sort of thing, but resaving in UVMapper is faster

I also just got a bad match error. I followed the instructions, downloaded .98.36, installed it, put the plugin in the correct directory, created a sphere with 64x63 sections/slices and then immediately tried to export, making no changes.

Screenshot with error message attached. I'm running Windows XP Pro, and fairly good hardware.

UPDATE!

I figured out what my problem was, and I was using "export selected" rather than "export", which was causing the error. I hadn't noticed this, since they're right next to each other and have the exact same options.

*sheepish grin*

So maybe that's your problem, Grafix?

Thanks for this
I'm finally able to ooh and ahh at mutilated creations


I also got those errors, but i hadnt restarted Wings after downloading the file. I restarted it and ta-dah.. mutilation on the grid

Thanks bunches. With your exporter and Hypatia's compatible sphere I can FINALLY get models from Zbrush to SL. WOOOHOOO!!!!!

This is not an error symptom I recognize. Try this. Create a 64x63 sphere and then immediately export it. If that workds ok, repeat your editing one step at a time, exporting after each step to see what edit operation is causing the problem. If even the first export fails, there must be something specific to your machine. Mac do seem to have more trouble with Wings than Window machines. In at least one case, the root cause was an out-of-date video driver, but I wouldn't expect a video driver problem to result in that particular stack trace.

Also, check to see whether a 16x15 sphere behaves any differently.

Interesting, Syless. Your stack trace matches that of Grafix, so maybe that is his problem, too. Thanks.

The cool thing I learned in all of this is that my SL problems stem from having a weak graphics card.

Yes!! Success. It was the export option that syless mentioned. I made a flying saucer and uploaded it last night. Ready to experiment some more! Thank you!

OK, best I've got has been by making a 32x31 sphere, editing that, then pixel-doubling to 64x64 before uploading.

Ummm...am I too stupid to see something obvious? whenever I try to save or export ANYTHING in either the stable or the beta version of Wings, the programme closes. Just like that. No error message, no nothing. I can't save anything. Haven't found anything on the Wings forum either...any ideas?
Am using newest openGL version with my ATI Radeon X600 card too....

Seifert, having Qarl say this is right adds a lot of credibility

And my experiments confirm that it is a good approximation. But if it were a completely accurate description, any pixel in the bitmap with an odd x or odd y coordinate (other than row 63) wouldn't affect the sculpty. But take a look at the attached .bmp file. This started out as a sphere, but then I manually tweaked some of the pixels that supposedly shouldn't have been sampled. The .jpg file shows what I get in SL. Those spikes are clearly not just JPEG compression artifacts.

I would like to have the exporter produce bmp files that, when rendered in SL, match better with what you see in Wings. To do that, it seems like I need to generate bitmaps that are larger than they mesh they represent. So I need to better understanding how SL interpolates from the .bmp file.

Well I visited the wiki again and the layout has changed now.

It now reads:

(32,0) (32,0) (32,0) ... (32,0) (32,0) (32,0)
(0,2) (2,2) (4,2) ... (60,2) (62,2) (0,2)
. .
. .
. .
(0,60) (2,60) (4,60) ... (60,60) (62,60) (0,60)
(0,62) (2,62) (4,62) ... (60,62) (62,62) (0,62)
(32,63) (32,63) (32,63) ... (32,63) (32,63) (32,63)

I'm going nuts!. It's asthough people are just guessing how it works and dumping their guess on the wiki. I also tested your idea, Omei. I cleared some of the odd lines that aren't supposed to be used in a 64x64 texture and the resulting sculpty was a broken. So the odd rows were clearly needed.

<sigh>





Update:

I've just blanked out the rows in a sculpty map that are supposed to be needed and the the sculpty was fine. So it appears rows 1,3,5 etc are used and not rows 0,2,4...

Grrr

Hi folks

I tested arround with wings3d and the scultpy feature.
After I had to read most of this thread, finaly it is working,
BUT
If I model something in Wings3D it looks smoother in Wings as in SL.
I tested a lot of different spheres (16/15, 32/31, 64/63) and with every sphere
it is the same.
So I made ya 2 screen shoots with a 64/63 sphere so ya can see what I mean :

The Sculpty Prim in Wings3D :
http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=26639&stc=1
Wings3D_export.jpg

The Sculpty Prim in Second Life :
http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=26640&stc=1
Wings3D_export_inworld.jpg

What the hack is wrong with it ?
Any ideas ?
thx a lot
take care and
HAVE FUN
Cypher Black

In the Mac versions of Wings the location is here

Select Wings3D 0.98.36

Ctrl click, select "show package contents"... the path to where you place the plug in is:

Wings3D 0.98.36/Contents/Resources/lib/wings-0.98.36/plugins/import_export

Cypher, welcome to the wonderful world of JPG compression.

LL is supposed to be doing something about it soon.

Cypher, try taking the 64x64 .bmp file you got from the exporter and enlarging it to 128x128. If whatevever tool you use gives you a choice whether to use interpolation or not, do it both ways. That may give you better results. Please post the resulting SL images so we can see.

Thanks, My brother has been trying to convince me to use wings 3d for a long time but since I am a 3D studio max user I never saw a reason to play with it. Got both and working great thanks!

Hi Omei and all others

Before I made the try's with the 64x64 sphere, I had to tell about something that makes me go hmmm. .

I attachted 2 images :

64x63_sphere_as_W3D_File.jpg
Is a Print Screen of a 64x63 sphere native saved as *.wings file

64x63_sphere_as_Sculpty_Import.jpg
Is the Print Screen of a 64x63 sphere which was exported as a SL sculpty BMP file and then imported as a SL sculpty BMP file.

There seems to be the difference which I also see between the objects in Wings3D and the objects as a Sculpty Object in SL.

Is this because the exporter is not that accurate or is it a lack of Wings3D ?

All in all I'm still searching for a GPL 3D modeler and I'm quit happy with Wings3D.
Easy going interface, and a great exporter for SL.
So great work anyway if only it would be a little bit more precise

Thx a lot,
take care and
HAEV FUN
Cypher Black

I have have a problem importing a sculpty bmp with this script. When I try the first time it flashes Wings then nothing, try it again it crashes and writes to the wings crash dump file.

Attached is a zip with the Wings dump file and bmp I was trying to open.

Thanks
Jim

Cypher, I think what this pair of images is showing is the 8-bit bit quantization of each coordinate that occurs when a model is exported. SL only accepts images with 8 bits per component, so that's an inherent limitation in SL.

(BTW, I would recommend you not put any faith in Wing's "Quick smooth preview", if that is how you generated these images. SL doesn't do anything analogous.)

There are a number of issues, though, that can cause the exported sculpty rendered in SL to not exactly match the Wings model. Some, but not all, of these I have some control over. The flat spot on your first image seems like one that should be fixable. I asked you to do the tests to try to understand where the error is being introduced. It would still be informative if you can do that. But since I posted that request, another thought occurred to me -- that I might be choosing a scale factor too aggressively. If you can post your wings file and exported map, I'll check that idea out.