Sculpty exporter for Wings 3D

IF anyone hasn't uploaded any already. I made some simple cubes using spheres in three resolutions.

(I'm uploading them one at a time, because I'm making them as I post this. )

http://rapidshare.com/files/78353319/box8x7.wings.html (8x7 Prim)
http://rapidshare.com/files/78354536/box16x15.wings.html (16x15 prim)
http://rapidshare.com/files/78358085/box64x63.wings.html (64x63 prim)

Hi I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong, so here goes:

1. Downloaded the non-sphere template from the SL wiki.
2. Opened up teh 32x31 torus quad wings file into Wings 3D (0.99.00b)
3. Exported the basic torus into SL sculptie bitmap format (128x128, allow recentering).
4. Uploaded the bitmap into SL (turned lossless on in upload dialog).
5. Created a prim in SL, edited it, made it a sculptie, set the bitmap as the sculptie map.
--> now it looks like the torus, except the bottom end of the hole is filled up, like a container with a base instead of a torus with a through-hole.

I've repeated the above process with Omei's 64x64 torus released in this forum, but with same results.

I've tried uploading the texture using SLImageUpload, but kept getting a System.Argument.Exception: The path is not a legal form. I've got .Net 2 installed, and I've tried SLImageUpload on a second computer on XP (instead of Vista) and same error.

[EDIT] ok, managed to get SLImageUpload to upload, despite the error message. The resultant prim from the uploaded texture's UUID, set by script, is exactly the same as that from the previous manual-load method. So it seems the problem is with the torus. [/EDIT]

Am I doing something wrong?

Leonor, you're not doing anything wrong. There's just one more step. For no obvious reason, you have to use a script to set the prim type (aka toplogy) for anything other than a sphere. The following LSL command will do it when you replace the phrase 'your sculpty uuid' with the UUID of your sculpty bitmap. The " delimiters need to be there.

llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "your sculpty uuid", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_TORUS]);

Thanks Omei, that worked wonderfully!

Hi again,

Now I'm trying to make textures for my torus... I'm using Omei's template in Wings3D.

1. I selected all the faces of the torus, rightclicked and hit ".UV Mapping" once, and closed the AutoAV window.
2. I opened the outliner, and dragged auvBG2 to default.
3. Saved the torus as a obj file.
4. Imported the obj file into Photoshop CS3 Extended as a smart object. It recognizes the 3d shape, but doesn't detect tthe texture layer.

Any ideas?

Leonor, a couple of things might have gone wrong.

1) When working in the outliner window, make sure you select the line by clicking with the left mouse first. Then do the action. It has to be two different steps, and I consider this to be a UI defect with this window. When you assign the texture to the material (by dragging or with the commands), you should next get a window where you select the texture type. You didn't mention this window, which is why I wondered whether perhaps you hadn't selected the texture as a separate step.

2) Make sure you assign the texture to the material that is being used for the model. In my current version of the template, this material is named Default_Material, not default. (Wings has a tendency to create a new default material even if it isn't being used for anything.) If you assign the texture to the proper material, the texture should be displayed on the torus in the Geometry window.

3) I'm not sure if anyone has tested the Wings -> Photoshop CS3 Extended smart object object transfer below. But I confirmed that the Wings .obj exporter does create material and texture files that look to be consistent with the .obj file. Make sure that these other files are in the same directory as the .obj file when you open it in PS.

Assuming you get this working, would you add your new knowledge to the Wings 3D page on the SL Wiki? I don't think this topc is covered there.

Thanks for the quick response, Omei.

Indeed your point 2 was helpful, as I was dragging the texture (yes I did do it correctly, with the diffuse map option) to Default rather than Default_material.

<edit> found the error... somehow in Photoshop Windows, spaces in the *.mtl name cause the program to not find the material, and hence, the texture file. When I exported the *.obj file without spaces, everything worked fine. </edit>

If Photoshop CS3 Extended ignores the other files, that is a deficiency in its .obj file importer. Having separate files for materials and textures is the normal .obj file format. To my knowledge, there is no convention for embedding them in the .obj file itself, but I could be wrong about that.

If you want to explore the issue, you could put a texture on the model in PS, export it as an .OBJ file (assuming it supports that) and then see what it produces.

Hi Omei, oops it seems I edited the previous post whilst you were replying. Anyway, problem solved, all is well.

On another note, is there an easy way for me to edit the 31x31 plane you provided to get a 64x64 version?

Yes. Because sculpties are represented as standard bitmaps, many useful things can be done with them in any 2D imaging program, like PS. A few people actually make sculpties from scratch by directly manipulating the bitmap.

Just resize the 32x32 pixel bitmap to 64x64 pixels, using linear interpolation. Since each pixel in the bitmap represents one vertex in the model, you'll get a 64x64 (vertices) plane. Since I label my templates by the number of faces, not vertices, this will be a 63x63 (faces) plane.

hi out there,
i tried out wings 3d - great stuff, by the way, BUT:

instead of getting v.98.xx i got v.99.xx - does that matter? coz i cannot export my styles - a message occured: "unsupported mesh size"...

can anyone help?

installations:
wings3d-v.99.1
plugins:
all (4)you gave in your post...

greetings

Maxx, I haven't done a lot of testing with with the Wings v0.99 release, but the problem you are having isn't related to the new release. The "Unsupported mesh size" error is the most common thing new Wings sculpty creators run into, because they don't realize the sculpty exporter can't export an arbitrary Wings model. See
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D#Troubleshooting_Tips and the http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D page in general.

I'm running the very latest wings 3d ( 0.99.00b ) wouuld this exporter work on this update or will i have to hunt around alot to find one that does ?

Poizon, I haven't seen any sculpty exporter problems with the 0.99x releases.

hey man , it driving me crazy , i instaled wings 3d 00.99.00b and the plugin from the first attached file from the forums ; now i can see the buttun secondlife buttun but when i try to export it as bmp to sl it say UNSUPPORED MESH SIZE , i tougth maybe i need new update for the plugin , well i dunno from where i can download it , wd be great if u can send it to me trough msn and yahoo or just give me the direct link to the download

msnlachx2@hotmail.com
yahoo:kyo03ma@yahoo.fr




TY A LOT

You're getting that error because either you're:

a) NOT using one of the 64 x 63, 32 x 31 etc. meshes that have links at the begining of this thread, as a starting point.

b) You ARE using one of the supported meshes but are performing an action that changes the number of vertexes (like "extrude" or "bevel"

Use one of the supported meshes as a starting point, then only perform actions like "Move", "Rotate", "Scale" and "Flatten".....there may be more.....

Mr. Turnbull,

I've been playing around with Wings3D and the SL plugin - much appreciation for all your contributions and help here!

I've been using the supplied meshes and of course, I noticed if I add or subtract vertexes to these, or try to use other shapes I get the error message as expected.

Admittedly, I haven't read through all of these 500+ posts but...

What exactly is the criteria for a mesh to be supported by SL? If I can, I'd like to start with meshes other than spheres on occasion. If I know the exact parameters that SL's engine expects, I might have more freedom here....

Thanks in advance!

I actually don't have a simple, but accurate, answer to that because of various subtleties. But the basic design constraint of sculpties is that the points in your model get mapped to a rectangular bitmap, with each pixel in the bitmap representing a point. Edges are assumed to be between points that are adjacent, either horizontally, vertically od along the diagonal from lower left to upper right.

In addition, there has to be some rule for how the edges of the bitmap get treated. Do they wrap around, like the lines of latitude on the Earth? Or do they get pulled together at the poles, like Earth's lines of longitude? Or do they just fall off the edge, like a flat earth? The answer in the case of sculpties is that you get to choose one of four options that are referred to as sphere, cylinder, torus and plane. These names describe only how the edges are treated, not the shape of the model you build with them.

Added to this are other practical constraints, both hard and soft. SL puts constraints on the dimension of the bitmaps and the exporter makes assumptions on how the vertices are numbered. So for practical purposes, you need to start with one of the templates that take all these things into account, at least until you've gained a lot of expertise (and carefully studied each of those 500+ posts.)

Thanks for your explanation - and yes, I agree: it sounds like at this point I'd better stick with the supplied meshes!

Anyone have a way to produce symetrical sculpties?

Whenever you use Virtual Mirror or Mirror in Wings3D on a sphere, it re-numbers the faces (e.g. the top 8 faces change from being #0-#7 to being #0-#3,#165-#16. This doesn't work with the Sculpty Plugin, which expects each row of faces to be sequential.

Thanks!

Yes. In Blender's sculpt mode, you can turn on symetry along any axis. I believe you can do the same with ZBrush.

DanielFox's SculptySpace has a mechanism that allows you to use Wings' Mirror function. He explains it here:
/8/b1/219540/1.html#post1742714.

You can download SculptySpace from http://sculptyspace.com/index.php?id=2

BTW, SculptySpace is a very useful tool. It deserves more recognition.

i been using wings 3d for about a month now, and learned about the mesh problems if you try to smooth or bevel or add vertices. but i encountered something yesterday that blew me away a little, i made a shaft with a washer and nut face on each end, exported it ok, rezzed it up in sl, looked great, great edges and all, just what i expected. so i log out, come back next morning, now the object is warped. so i took image and retired applyign to new sculpty, still warped. ok, go back to wings, export it again, rez it, looks great, log out and back in, warped.

now in the past i did some messing around and yes brought in warped objects (chewed up)
but it was rezed that way, but this is soemthing new to me with it rezzing ok and once you log out or leave sim, it gets warped permanent.

Any suggestions?

This would be an SL problem, not specific to Wings. It sounds like your SL client is rendering a low-resolution version of the sculpty. If it is a client/server communication problem, it will probably clear up spontaneously. If it doesn't, try clearing your cache, which will force the client to get a new copy from the asset server. Although it is posible that the copy on the asset server has become corrupted, this happens far less frequently than the first two.

Thanks Omei, but unfortunately SculptySpace is Windows-only. One of Wings3D strong points is that it's cross-platform (using a Mac here).

Perhaps someone has/could create a vertex-reordering plugin for Wings3D? I wrote one in perl for OBJ files (to get around the bug for now), but maybe the Sculpty plugin itself could do the re-order?



It sounds like you're seeing an LOD problem. Are you using WindLight?

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2404