Sculpty exporter for Wings 3D

I tried my first sculpty with Wings ..... did all the usual created a sphere and pulled and pushed it all over the place. Didnt create any new vertixes then went to convert and it said it couldnt becasue it was in the wrong format.

As this is now the 4th attempt its getting pretty annoying seeing that I can have a sphere but when I try to change it it fails.

Unfortunately theres not much call for a scultie sphere in SL unless I fancy becoming an apple and orange salesman.



Marty

It's hard to say from your description. Try exporting immediately after you create the sphere. If it fails then, you probably have the sphere dimensions wrong. (The most recent exporter version provides pre-made templates, to avoid that problem.) If the initial export succeeds, start making changes, just a few at a time before retrying the export. When it fails, undo your changes one at a time until you find out which one caused the problem.

Wings doesn't make that obvious, does it? You're not the first to be caught by this. I've added a sentence to the instructions in the first post. Thanks for bringing it up.

Looking forward to your next tutorial!

Ok i need some help..im on a mac and i seen that people have said the directory is slightly hidden...but where is it!!! i cant find it... and in the Wings software the install plug in thing doesnt work, like it says the ' beam' file is read only or something.
Helpppp i just need too find the directory lol

I'll try to help even though I don't have a mac. You must take the .beam file Omei gives you and place it in the directory in Wings. It's a sub-directory under plug-in, the .beam


The hidden directories I don't know about. Unless your talking about when you open Wings some of the functions aren't shown. Example when you rotate the first function is blank even though it's there. But that happens on my Laptop. On my Tabletop everything appears as it should.

I hope I at least helped you on where to place that .bean file. Once you place it in that directory, you should be able to see secondlifebmp in your export menu.

Hey thanks for ur reply!!!...But thats the problem im having. I cant find the actual Wings folder import export file too put the beam into :/

ok i found the folder!!! ..but...lol always a but...
I have too drag the beam file too the import export right?..Well it doesntlet me .. it says ' Import export folder cannot be modifyed' :/

I've been trying to get this to work for two days. All I've found so far is that it's not working for me. Perhaps it's some step I'm missing. I am using version 0.98.36 of Wings, and 2.44 of Blender. I get no error regarding the number of vertices at any point.
Here's what I do:
1) Load the 32x31 sphere into wings (triangles) and export it as an OBJ file.
2) Import the OBJ file into Blender.
3) Modify the sphere without adding or removing anything.
4) Export the modified sphere to a new OBJ file.
5) Load the modified sphere OBJ into Wings.
6) Export the sculpt texture with the exporter from this thread.
7) Look at the texture and sigh.

I do use the sculpt feature in Blender, but when I check, the count hasn't changed.
Below are what I have, almost from start to finish. Maybe someone else knows what's going on...because to me the texture just looks the same...but corrupted.

The original texture:
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/7052/origkb1.png

The model in Blender:
http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/6663/blenderup7.jpg

The model in Wings:
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/9600/wingsgi7.jpg

The exported texture:
http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/1931/testwd1.png

Epiphany, it's not clear to me why you are sighing. If you are thinking that you should be able to look at the sculpty bitmap and recognize your object, don't fret -- you can't. Import the bitmap into SL and make it a sculpted prim. (This is a different process than applying a true texture to a prim.)

The folder has permissions that allow or disallow users from creating new files in them. You need to either

a) change the permissions on the folder, or

b) Open a terminal window and become the super user (root), and then use a command line copy or move.

Gobblydee gook, I know. I am not at my mac right now, so I cannot give better advice.

I would generally agree with you, but that's just not the case. No matter the shape I deform the sphere to I get the same output. Conversely, the importer simply does nothing (visible) to the model when I import the image that was output by the exporter. I also can see by simply looking at the output image (comparing it to the same object done a much more complex way, like at http://iramblesorry.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love_28.html)
that something is horribly awry. (Note the distorted appearing line at the top of the image I posted before)

I did find that if I don't use the models provdided that I can use Blender to create the displacement map using another model (one I created) and then import the map generated by it into Wings using your importer so that I can export with your exporter. But that's extra work that's essentially useless. Something that might prove useful to people using this tool, however, is that the import doesn't apply the displacement map to the object in the scene, but creates a new object based. Just a heads up for those creating fairly small objects that loaded the provided sphere thinking it would. From what I've seen the import/exporter is done well. I personally find it a bit too tedious, as I develop in Blender. There is a fast and easy way to do it in Blender, which can be found here: http://www.bentha.net/sculpted-tuto/Blender-export-template-tut.html
It may prove simpler/faster for Blender users. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the Sculpt tool in Blender.

I really didn't want to post, but I'm stumped.

I cannot get the sculpty option to appear in the export menu.

I've put the beam file in the import_export folder and restarted half a dozen times, nothing.

I even tried using the install plugin option in the menu, I get a successfully installed popup, but nothing upon restart.

The beam file is sitting there with several other beam files.... so I'm stumped, I've been reading through the posts here for over an hour now and I can't see anymore clues as to what could be wrong.

Thanks

I'm not familiar with Blender, so I can't follow everything you describe. But here's a couple of observations that may help you understand what does and doesn't work.

* The sculpty bitmap files you posted are in .png format, which the Wings importer doesn't understand. I converted http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/1931/testwd1.png, which is the one I think you were sighing about, to a .bmp file and imported it into Wings. I've attached the screenshot of it in Wings, and it looks to me like it matches your Blender screenshot.

* As for the "distorted" line at the top of testwd1.png, it just shows that the north pole vertex has been pulled into the center of your model. I don't know whether or not you intended to do that.

* Before you import into Wings, I suggest you start with an empty model (File/New). Although it is perfectly fine to have multiple objects in a single Wings model, I'm wondering whether that it is contributing to some confusion.

Having said all that, if you're using Blender as your modeler and you have a differernt process that works for you there, by all means use it instead of going though Wings. The Wings exporter is just one of many ways to create a sculpty, and it certainly isn't going to be the best way for everyone.


Happy sculpting!

Check your Wings version (Help/About). It needs to be 0.98.36, because version 0.98.32a had a different interface for plugins.

If that's not it, then I'm stumped, too.

It seems to me that it shouldn't be to hard to write a Wings plug-in that takes the default SL scultpty sphere and converts it into a

box
cone
cylinder
sheet

and so on. Of course, this could also be a GIMP plugin or Photshop plug-in.

Am I crazy? Any gotchas? Omei already done it??

lee

/8/1d/193390/1.html

So, as soon as I post the previous idea, I find this in another thread. Apparently there are now sculpty tori and cylindi (a plural joke).

Still, my basic idea is the same. Rather than having externally created .obj files as starting point, have a Wings plugin as in

file>plugin>sculpty>Create torus

or something like that

This thread should be a YELLOW STICKY...

ahh yes it was my version

I didnt start with the beta

much obliged

There are two separate issues here -- geometry and topology -- which often get mixed up in informal discussions. The original implementation of scupties in SL only supported a sphere topology, but you could deform it into a large variety of geometries (shapes), e.g. a cube, a pyramid, a cylinder or an organic blob. Early on, Qarl said that SL 2.0 would support other topologies -- cylinder, torus and plane. It appears that some aspects of support for those may be sneaking in a piece at a time.

[If topology and geometry aren't part of your everyday vocabulary, you're probably wondering what the difference is between a topological sphere with a cylindrical geometry and a cylinder topology. The former has the tops and bottoms closed off, like the basic traditional cylindrical prim. Even though is has the shape (geometry) of a cylinder, it is still a sphere from the point of view of topology, because if you imagine the surface to be made of completely stretchable rubber, you could deform the sphere into the cylinder and vice versa. A topological cylinder, on the other hand, will be be open on the top and bottom. If you move the camera to the "inside" of the cylinder, you won't be able to see the cylinder at all, because you'll be looking at the back side of a two-dimensional surface, and the back sides of surfaces aren't rendered in SL.]

Anyway, I'll add support for the new topologies to the Wings plugins when they become supported in SL. Adding automatic generation of more geometries isn't a high priority for me. But of course, anyone who wants to tackle Erlang can write their own plugin commands for Wings. I know Strife didn't take well to Erlang, but I find it kind of fun. It's more like Lisp (with syntactic sugaring) than C. Try it! You might like it.

Even more important, I think, is for us to start refering people to the Wiki pages https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D and https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D_Exporter you've been working on, Lee. The Wiki is a much better place than a forum thread to consolidate information. Thank you very much for working on that.

Not that I know of, Kimmer. Sorry.

I agree the Wiki is good.


People, if you learn something useful here that is not also in the Wings 3D wiki pages, then add it...

lee

Hi,

First off, simply brilliant work Omei, and well appreciated!!!
If I see you inworld, I'll happily drop a few L$ on you !

That said, I'll also happily do the same to someone who accurately deforms the sphere to a Cube with UV maps for sculpt use - I guess the similar to the geometric shapes Lee is referring too

I think I have the same need as Lee : often you want to model something more resembling a cube or something else - in fact in my builds I use cube-type shapes most often, so to have a 32x32 pre-made / deformed cube would be great.

Probably I'm missing something here (as I read about using Erlang to create plug-ins) etc, but I'd have thought its simpler than that : as in deforming your default sphere to a cube and saving that as a template, then just loading that when required.

I've been trying to do that .... but its the first time I've used wings so inexperience is not helping. I have the cube shape with flat surfaces, but vertexes are not aligned - basically a boxed sphere I'm sure someone with wings knowledge could do it a lot quicker and better!

If somone has done that, or is willing to and doesn't mind giving it to me, or posting it here to help others, please do. Else if you'd like a few L$ for it, np : IM me inworld.

I believe adding some more basic shapes/deforms here will really help a lot more builders, and make this an even more popular sculpt tool!

But once again, brilliant work! And thanks!

No matter who does it, you're going to end up with a "boxed sphere" in the sense that you'l still have two poles with 8, 16, 32 or 64 meridians coming together. That's a constraint because of how my Wings exporter translates vertices directly into bitmap pixels. A more sophisticated exporter would be free to make up its own mapping from interpolated surface values to pixels. But that is a big project, fraught with potholes. I think others are working on that (not necessarily tied to Wings). But I've opted for a compromise between what's ideal and what I could do in limited time.

I say post your cube for those who haven't yet mastered even that. Maybe that will inspire someone else to contribute an improved version or new shapes.

Yea I have tried my hand at making a cube too, and while the cube looks exactly like a cube the faces are an assortment of sizes and shapes that I can't seem to align.


If anyone is interested I attached a cube, just in case anyone wants it.

I have also added a screenshot to show what I mean.