Sculpty exporter for Wings 3D

For some odd reason, when I install this plugin - the exact way its spelled out in the first post - it doesnt work! :/

Edit: To tell what is wrong, the choice for sculpties doesnt show up in the export list!

Can you try File -> Install plugin and manually browse to the sculpty import .beam file?

See the sculpty exporter trouble-shooting tips (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D#Troubleshooting_Tips. ). If that doesn't solve your problem, post again.

First off, thanks for the exporter & the various uv-mapped models.

Would you consider adding a properly uv-mapped 64x64 torus to the alternate topologies zip file? I made my own, but for whatever reason it's inside-out once uploaded in SL (nothing a quick vertical flip won't fix, but it's rather annoying to do this over and over), and the UV-mapping is less than stellar. =)

I'm glad you're finding Wings useful, Jack.

Here is my best quick effort. You'll notice that it isn't quite as smooth as one produced directly in Wings. That's because I created it by exporting the 32x32 torus, scaling it to 64x64 with the Gimp, and then imported it back into Wings. The interpolation worked well, but the quantization to 8 bits per coordinate introduced the noise you see.

It turns out that the torii created by Wings have a different vertex order than the exporter/importer expects, which presumably is why your attempt had the normals flipped when it got to SL. That's kind of a historical accident because I got the original torus model and UV map from Hypatia Callisto, and just worked off of that.

Try this and see if it works for you. As I am sure you know, the "perfectly" smooth curved surfaces you see in Wings never get accurately translated into SL, because of the sculpty format limitations. I don't know how much the double quantization will effect the ultimate sculpty. Hopefully, not much. If it does cause problems, though, ask again and I'll come up with something better.

Incidentally, my next tutorial shows how to make a torus from a plane in Wings. We're going to make interlocking rings in one sculpt map. So if you can wait a few hours, you can see yourself

I've noticed some strange behavior of the uncompressed option for sculp-map uploading with the current release candidate version of the viewer.

1. Old maps don't work properly, curious/wrong effects

2. Some operations also seem to work wrong with the current exporter and the uncompressed format, e.g. scaling/sliding - but I'm not sure... could be the reason for 1., too

Someone else here with experiences? Would be great to be able to use the uncompressed format at last!

I'm german, so please don't care for mistakes...

yes I've noticed that lossless uploading in the current RC is hit-or-miss. In the meantime, there's always SLImageUpload
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLImageUpload

BTW, the official JIRA status of not having lossless sculpty uploads is that it has been resolved. The fact that it is buggy is seen as a secondary issue. To voice your desire that LL actually makes it work reliably, you have to vote again to have it fixed. The place to do that is http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2404.

Hi I installed the SL Exporter for Wings V. 0.98.36 latest version,but it does not work.
I get a message "unsupported mash size" . But if i use the templates , it does work !

See the sculpty exporter trouble-shooting tips (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D#Troubleshooting_Tips. ). If that doesn't solve your problem, post again.

I used a package Wings3d-intel-0.98.34.dmg.zip to get wings to work on the OS X INTEL, but I cant get the plugin to work, I use the File|Install Plug-In menu, and it seems to work, but I dont get the expected export menu.

Any help would be appreciated.

Bert, I was hoping some Mac user would come to your aid. Since they haven't, I tried looking into why the exporter doesn't work in any previous versions of Wings. What I found is that ... it's a mystery to me. Some import/export plugins work with the older versions and some don't, and I haven't figured out what makes the difference. But I will add compatibility with Wings 3D versions back to at least 0.98.32a to my list of things to make work by the next update.

I created 32x32 vertex cylinder & modelled shape

one export I saved as .obj
another export saved as very tidy .UVS

I dropped .obj file into Cindy's prog
all I got was "obj2sculpt is not a valid WIN32 application"
so I dropped the .UVS file into programme, - ditto.
so I reinstalled microsofts .NET 2.0 and tried to load/run
that again without success, what am I missing here?

I ran explorer and tried again, I got the same error.
I ran the prog on-line, dropped the files into it,
no error code but the files shot right back out again,
I'm doing some thing wrong, I'm really sad about that
as a drag and drop .obj and .UVS ->.BMP or .TGA would
have been a dream come true.

I tried Blender (I'm a happy Milkshape and UV Mapper Pro
user) although when I tried to import the OBJ file, it
said there was an error reading it, despite it loading quite
quickly into 2 other programmes. so I couldn't do even a
quick test of Py based sculpty programme, (it wasn't my day!)

SO....I installed Wings3D, wonderful, easy to use and
Omei Turnbulls plugin easy to access on the menus.
so I tried again.....import OBJ file no problem...what
was that? I tried again...yipee!!! yes!!...my obj was
there on screen...with awe and trepidation I let my curser
glide swiftly down to the export/import buttons to
export as a sculpty,
'Unsupported mesh size'
export selected
'unsupported mesh size'


Cel_windows loads perfectly,

Test imported sculptymap to Wings3D, unpacks beautifully
with thousands of vertices...but I can't get mine to work,
theres a low vertex count and the size is average so what
can I be doing wrong ?

Can anyone help?

Yours,
sobbing & whimpering,

Iota (dimwit) Vita

Wings 3D can read (and write) a wide variety of model formats. But to use the sculpty exporter, your model has to be constructed with certain constraints in mind. If you don't keep to the constraints, the exporter will simply say "Unsupported mesh size". So the Wings sculpty exporter isn't a way to convert an arbitrary model into a sculpty.

Blender, on the other hand, uses more general techniques that will attempt to convert any model into a sculpty bitmap. You may or may not be happy with the result, but at least it will give you something. So for transforming something you have already built into a sculpty, Blender is a viable option. The drawback with Blender is that it is significantly harder to learn than Wings.

I don't know Blender, so I can't give you much specific help on how to get it to read your model. You may be able to take the model you imported into Wings and export it in a format that Blender will accept. But if you create a new thread with that specific question in the title, I am sure you will get a response from Domino Marama or someone else who knows Blender.

Happy sculpting!

Ah! thank-you its been bugging me for 2 days and then I re-read this thread through and found this link;

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D_Exporter

which explains everything ! its so simple now ! there were tears in eyes this pm!

I love what I've seen in Blender, but 3D isn't my work, & I'm used to my progs. I'm wondering if meshes built to Sculpty specification and saved as .obj data from other 3D platforms can be imported to Wings3D then saved as .wings data, before converted into SL Sculpty maps....I'm going to try that out. I'll also experiment in my UVMapper.

Thanks again...

Iota (who will pay more attention) Vita

Yes, that works very well. The easiest way to get the starting mesh is generally to start with one of the Wings templates and transfer it to your favorite program as an .obj file. You can try creating a rectangular mesh in your own program, but if you do, I suggest you transfer the starting mesh to Wings and then export it as a sculpty before you put any work into it, just to make sure the exporter will be happy with it.

Happy sculpting!

Got this odd crash when Importing a sculptie from PloppSL.
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.5.2 [async-threads:0]

Eshell V5.5.2 (abort with ^G)
Reading preferences from: c:/Documents and Settings/Thunderclap/Application Dat
/Wings3D/Preferences.txt
1> Trying OpenGL modes
[{buffer_size,32},{depth_size,32},{stencil_size,8},{accum_size,16}]
Actual: RGBA: 8 8 8 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 Accum: 16 16 16 16

=ERROR REPORT==== 10-Oct-2007::01:30:20 ===
Error in process <0.36.0> with exit value: {function_clause,[{wings_pb,calc_pos
tion,[{state,200,1,[[],"importing"],0.000000e+000,0.000000e+000,{1191,997820,26
000},undefined,undefined,[]}]},{wings_pb,loop,1}]}
Fatal internal error - log written to c:/PROGRA~1/WINGS3~1.36/wings_crash.dump

Dump written 2007-10-10_1-30
Version: 0.98.36
Window: "<Unknown Window Name>"
Reason: {function_clause,[{wings_pb,calc_position,
[{state,
200,
1,
[[],"importing"],
0.00000e+0,
0.00000e+0,
{1191,997820,260000},
undefined,
undefined,
[]}]},
{wings_pb,loop,1}]}

Short stack trace:
[{ets,lookup_element,3},{wings_lang,str,2},{wings,halt_loop,1}]

Long stack trace:
[{ets,lookup_element,[wings_lang,{wings,halt_loop,2},2]},
{wings_lang,str,2},
{wings,halt_loop,1}]

So what happened?

Something seems to have gone wrong in the Wings internals. If I am reading the bread crumbs correctly, the Wings progress bar determined that the current time was identical to the time at which it was initializized, which violated an implicit assertion that the time would always progress.

Based solely on what I have looked at so far, I would guess that this isn't a result of the model pe se, but is a result of fragility in the UI code in combination with a very fast machine and/or defective time updating. But if that is the case, I would expect this not to be a reproducible problem tied to this specific sculpty bitmap. Is that the case?

BTW, I have imported at least one sculpt map from PloppSL, and didn't have any problem.

Well, what I was importing was a boot. And I recently upgraded the memory in my system to 768 mb, so I don't think the fast system would qualify.

Is it reproducible? That is, does it happen every time you try to import the boot? Only once? Occasionally?

I reimported the boot and it didn't happen so I think it might have been my system didn't give it enough resources.

You said you imported a ploppsl sculptie, did it appear all twisted at 128x128? Just curious.

The overall shape was what I expected. There was a lot of twisting between nearby edges, yes.

I am having the same trouble. I have the correct version ans, on my export menu I have 10 options for export, but *not* the SL Sculpti option.. any suggestions?

Stang, go to https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D#Troubleshooting_Tips and follow the procedure there. If that doesn't solve your problem, post again.