Inworld Sculpted Editor, Cloner, and Tools

Editing Note: I have not taken the time to read thru these postings to remove references to words that some Second Life members find repulsive. Please ignore words like 'Copy' or 'Clone'. The system is developed as a "MOLD" maker that can "CAST" a mold into a sculpted texture. The mold may be built around an inworld object, or, an existing sculpted texture thats saved offworld -or- converted into a notecard as PPM formated data. This allows the mold maker to have a good starting mesh, with an approximation of the starting object.

I have a set of tools ready for beta that allow in world creation of Sculpted prims.

PLEASE NOTE... This is a collision bounded copy of the object using a 32x32 mesh and a ruleset that only allows at best 1cm of accuracy. Primary use of the tool is to EDIT sculpted textures. The addition of the collision modeling was purely for the fun and the look of it in action... It does look rather cool while its running. It also allows you to start with an approximation of an object, so you can further refine and define the mesh. Rather then start out with a spherical map, you can start with something CLOSE to what you want.

In the tool kit are a pair of land/terrain modelers. These will allow you to create a rather detailed map of the land you own. I am placing these terrain tools open source, so anyone should be able to have some fun with them. I would ask only one thing, any and all terrain maps created using these tools should be created as free textures with full perms. This will allow anyone who wants to use them free access, without creating a scads of copies of the exact same textures. A pair of tools because one is rather quick and dirty, but it actually produces the best resolution and detail. The issue with it is simply that it can leave the mesh open, which creates some funny issues depending on the terrain layout. To solve those problems I wrote a more complex version that allows quite a bit of modification, and also, rolls the edges down to zero, and closes the mesh underneath. The amount of margin used to do this is configurable, but consumes quite a bit of the mesh in doing so.

In alpha now, and looking for a group of testers to help me finish up the UI and features set, is my SnurbO'Matic. It can create a nurb mesh inworld in any grid size you wish, and have the prims available. Starting at 32x32, thats 1024 prims. 16x16, 256 prims. You get the idea. You will need some space to play with this toy, or at least a very understanding sandbox. The idea is to rez up a mesh of nurbies, then manipulate the mesh by simply moving the nurbies around in world. When you are done, you can save the object as a finished sculpty. That last step requires chatting to my webserver to create the final texture, but any php enabled server can handle the task. For the beta testing, I will provide the service for free, but I am limiting the number of testers.. So if you wanna play, ping me early before I fill in all the seats.

SnurbO'Matic also can clone objects in world. Results may vary And the detail can only be assured to 1cm of accuracy due to collision bounding rules. Yes, it uses collision detection to manage cloning, so you can clone most anything, own it or not. Before you get all excited about a copybot, know that sculpted prims are not exactly gonna make a perfect copy of most anything. Best results come from organic shapes, round things. Animal parts, etc. Cranks out rocks like mad

I am working now to make the user interface friendly. Also have a slew of additional code that will make things easier that needs to be integrated. I would like to get at least a few people who are interested giving me active feedback on its use, features, and issues. This will help speed the product along the way and get it working quickly. I am not stingy with the code, so if you feel you got the skills to help out, let me know as well. We can work together to help develop this tool into a great example of open source community based effort.

Please email me, or ping me in world for details. As I do not have the time to support a large team of beta testers, I am limiting the initial release of SnurbO'Matic to a few people. I will choose the testers based on attitude and experience. The land mapping tools I will make available to anyone, with the caveat that ALL of these tools require server side support, and my web server is NOT free to me... So, you should be prepared to setup the server side on your own.

All of these tools utilize the PPM format for images. Portable Pixmap is a method to encode images using 7 bit ascii data. PPM in particular is perfectly suited to Sculpted Textures. The format describes, one pixel at a time, starting at the top left, and horizontally scanning across to the bottom right. It can handle 8 bits of data per color, allowing for the 24 bits needed by Sculpted textures. And, the data points in the file is identical to a sculpted prim! All you need is the Netpbm family of tools to manipulate. And its quite easy to get a PPM format data set from in world to off world, as its just plain old 7 bit ascii data. From there, a quick pass thru ppmtotga() and your all done!

Cheers
Anjin Meili

anjin at elzbiet.net

I hope this doesn't clone sculpted prims, or you're going to have a major source of heat in this thread

and deservedly so.

yup.

also wonder, if someone spending the time to make a private sim terraform wanted their custom terraforms made open source by this tool. Bet they didn't.

Better rethink this. An inworld editor is a great thing - but making it easy to just steal other people's work isn't a very good idea.

1) You cannot CLONE a sculpted prim in world... Well.. Suppose you can if your handy with photoshop, take a snapshot at HI rez of a sculpted texture, and then resave and reupload. Course, you will have some jpeg artifacts to deal with. But, using collision boundries as a method is not feasible because Sculpties have a funky shape that has no bearing to the sculpted texture. So relax on that one.

2) Sim Terrain height maps... You can fetch that data for any sim that allows you to run a script. You could stick into your hair, clothing, any object on your avatar a routine that sucks the Height data from an estate or mainland sim. Its just a call to llGround(). So, um, do not get upset with me, or anyone else who is coding tools, because anyone can do it.

3) Regardless of how it comes, you ALL know this is coming. In world editing will be here via the client soon enough. Part of the exercise with this beta tool is to give some feedback on HOW to do this task. Usability of the interface, methods to manipulate the mesh, all these pieces will be very important information for coding the interface into the client. I am already in close discussions with a number of folks on the methods. With the goal of helping create the tools for the client. We need the research and information.

Sorry, Anjin My comment was contingent on the "if." Any time someone mentions the words clone or copy a lot of us get a little loopy. If this works well and lets people build sculpties in world then that's awesome, and kudos to you for doing it before LL. I'm looking forward to hearing more about how this all works.

I find this project intriguing. I'm not quite sure of the value of this prims-to-NURBS-to-sculpties workflow you've described, as it sounds pretty clunky to me, but I do admire the creative thinking behind the idea. It's certainly not something I would have thought of.

As for the fear of cloning that's starting to brew, I'll say three things. First, Anjin, if you truly did not expect a negative reaction the minute you used the words "clone anything whether you own it or not", then you were awfully naive. I smelled the blood in the water as soon as your post appeared. Next time, I'd suggest you choose your wording more carefully. Misunderstandings abound on these forums, and lots of people love nothing better than to panic over them.

If I'm understanding you, then it seems your technique would create nothing more than a loose approximation of an existing surface shape, not anything approaching an exact copy. Try to make that more clear upfront to people if you can.

Second, regarding sculpties specifically, relax guys. It doesn't sound to me like Anjin's method could possibly be able to copy the shapes of sculpties, at least not with much accuracy. If I'm reading right, the technique uses collisions to determine surface shapes, right? Well, since we all know collisions on sculpties are extremely imprecise, there's no cause for concern. It also sounds like this method wouldn't work at all for phantom objects, ever.

Third, again regarding sculpties, I hate to break it to everyone, but if someone really wants to copy your sculpties they already can. I won't say how, and please, for the love of God, no one else say it either, but the fact remains; it's been possible from day one.

As for the concern over terrain, as Anjin said, that's a non-issue. Terrain data has always been freely available to everyone. As soon as you set foot in a sim, you can map the terrain, as Cadroe Murphy demonstrated long ago with his way cool 3DS Max relief maps of the world.

Anyway, as I said in the beginning, I find this project to be an interesting idea so I'll be curious to see how it shapes up. I myself would probably never use it, but still it's interesting to me.

No worries Chip... I have seen your work, and really, kudos mon.

Think about it this way as well. If you own the object, you could add a script to each piece to report its prim parameters out. And then make a very accurate sculpted prim. Without owning it, its becomes a question of how accurate can you get collisions? Well, we all know the answer to that one 1cm period. Not exactly something thats gonna make the world flip upside down.

I started with the 'How to edit sculpted prims in world', and in that worked forward using the method that most folks use with Blender. Started out with a spherical object showing the mesh, and allowing manipulation of each point in the mesh. Along the way, I thought it would simply be fun to add in code to replicate objects by using collisions. Provided a nice distraction and gave some very coolio results.

The point? To eliminate the perception that you must have expertise in tools that require lots of skill, and can cost a pretty penny. As well, to help define HOW to do this task in world. The first people I spoke with included Linden Labs. After discussion with Qarl and others, I felt that getting a tool into the client requires more knowledge from all sides. We cannot just assume it will do what we need. We must do some ground work, help Linden Labs out here, and work with various methods. This gives us the ability to give feedback before a tool is released in the client. Important questions like usability, functionality, etc. Using in world tools, we can quickly modify, change, and work forward until we can define a specification that works for most... So perhaps when the client does come with an internal editor, the user community has already had a say in how it functions.

BTW, its well known that one of the features planned for the client is the ability to convert an object into a sculpted prim.

And... The tools I wont be releasing... But again, are very simple to achieve... Is a set of scripts that can yank the mesh right out of the opengl stream using opensource and freely available tools and a few small pieces of code to glue the parts together.

Ill send you some samples though Chip...

I might also add, that using PPM as a format, one can also start the editor off using an existing sculpted texture. You can not only save a job you are working on, but load a saved job as well. You can also save the work into a notecard, and pass it to a friend, and they could use the notecard to edit the same project. Before converting to sculpted texture.

IMHO, the real piece of knowledge here is that PPM is a way to sculpted prims.

Cheers
Anjin

Hi Anjin,

When your software is due for release, feel free to upload here:

http://pkpounceworks.sljoint.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=28&func=select&id=2

Or, if you are hosting it somewhere else, I will create a link to its website.

Cheers.

I know already the ways it can be done - making it easy was my concern



I was more concerned about someone coming in a sim with the tool, maxing out the prim count because build is on, and then thinking they can clone clone clone. Need some clarity about what it can be used for.



and that's a good thing... wasn't my concern. Inworld tools and easy import methods are important. More important than cloning tools for terrains which are of limited use until we get a plane sculpt prim IMO.




Script kiddies generally use tools someone else made in good faith but they use it in bad faith They're by and large incapable of making their own of anything, just want it easy and handed to them.



Why did you mention cloning and Copybot then? Were you not here for the last fiasco? It's guaranteed to spark a flame. I was really wondering when you said that, because I know all the wrong people will be all over it.



Wings3d is free. But for nurbs, yeah... not much of low cost there that works reliably, except maybe Blender, but the UI on that is awful.

Would definitely love to see some screenshots of the results. If you're doing this based on collisions then replicating sculpties won't be possible at all since the physics engine sees a sculptie as just a bounding box. One thing I would really love to see would be the ability to export terrain to an external mesh. That would make planning builds in outside apps a whole lot easier when trying to build to suit a specific parcel. Not sure if that's possible from this or not, but it would be fantastic.

Chip,

The use of PPM as the data stream allows you to do just that btw. You can utilize the data in any of the many various formats that Netpbm supports.


Of note to others who have been rather stern with me over language... Choice of words like 'Copy' and 'Clone'

NO! I was NOT here for the copy bot issue! Do apologize for being only a few months on the grid. But, I had no other words to describe quickly the process of making a 'copy' of an object. In fact, I find it difficult right now to come up with a reasonable word to replace it with. I thought 'clone' was a nice word. But I have been 'schooled' very sternly now by not only thread members, but also piles of hate mail in my mailbox for the audacity to even think of trying to solve such a problem.

Heh... Really folks... Sometimes the results are really stunning, but its not like we are talking about photorealism here. So please, do accept my apology for using words that seem to carry such negative issues. And please, could some of you stop sending me buckets of spam because of it???? I really do not think such attacks against me are required... I really dont mind the chiding in the forums, I can handle some debate... But its harder to deal with the thousands of 'Gay Midget Porn' spam that my mail box is now full of with warnings that if I continue.... Sigh. How about if I just say please?? I have a wife and kids who sometime might peek over my shoulder... And its hard to explain to them why I have so many inbounds that insist I opted in for 'Taking Sheep like a Man' threads.

Really, I am just excited like a 12 year old on allowance day with candy and comics... I pointed myself at something, and came up with a working solution that has quite a few coolio aspects. Did I mention the bit where I can fill the void between nurb points on the mesh with polygons to show the surface? Or that you can save and reread the data for positioning of the mesh from the web or a notecard? Or like, the nurbs all change color on command to show you the current RGB value? How about the piece where its easy to couple to darwin (quicktime) and have an inworld preview?

So please... Accept my apology for failing to word my announcement in an appropriate way. It was not intended to offend anyone. It was simply my internal excitement that 'Look dudes!!! It freaking works!!!'

Btw, my email is now offline. I have killed the address and will not be releasing the new one publicly again. If you wish to contact me now, please do so via IM thru SL.

See you on the grid! Have fun and like.. Really folks.. Relax

Cheers
Anjin Meili

I've wanted that, and an ability to export the avatar shape as a mesh as well. Would make my life easier

I really can't see why it can't be done...

Accepted... sorry to hear about the spamming

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/copy

I'm partial to "facsimile" in this context. As in your tool can create "vague facsimiles," not "clones."


http://ogle.eyebeamresearch.org/

that would be very useful can make a mockup with regular prims and then spit out a sculpt... I could see myself converting my prim terrains with that pretty easily, and saving myself some prims.

That's the kind of stuff I like to see Still, I'd need a plane prim to get better collisions though - that's mainly the trouble with sculpted prims and why I haven't started to try to convert my rocky coastal area yet.


Johan, you werent supposed to mention that I was meaning, it would be nice if the client would do it instead of me having to install that thing. :/

Either one can be done. For the terrain you'd just need to scan the terrain height in a grid pattern and use the values to make a grayscale heightmap. I think that's how Cadroe does it. It's beyond my abilities though and I haven't heard of any freely available tools to do it.

For getting shapes out, we'd just need LL to release the all the morph targets. Then it would be possible to translate slider settings to any app capable of doing multichannel morphs (max, maya, and probably many others).

Looking forward to it - when is it available plz? It's great for ppl like who don't know how to use 3D softs but can build stuff in SL with the basic tools. My dream right now is to be able to make/edit a piece of virtual land and stick it on a water lot, to make it look like a little island and do some nice landscaping/building/shaping etc... Maybe soon SL land will be water only even 5twelvers will have their mini floating paradises... I am really serious, it is ready for testing I am up for it. In fact I did ask on a thread and was willing to pay for a sample so I could play with it. Please do it quick

yeah just about any terrain editor would then rebuild the terrain.

hm, didn't think of that idea about making available the full morphs. That would be easy for them to do. But usually we just make the avatar in world, and it would be easy I thought as the avatar is entirely client side, to have the client deform an avatar mesh and allow saving out the result. I know the default textures are client side, and I see a lot of mystery files that look like it could be the avatar mesh.

... so I am curious and I open the file "avatar_upper_body_1.llm"

and I see a lot of compiled code, except at the bottom it says -

End Morphs



I really suspect the avatar is sitting on the hard drive

Being able to export right from the client would be great. There's also the UVs to worry about. They're altered on some of the morph targets.

? unsure what you mean... morph targets just deform mesh, its a given that the UVs will deform along with the mesh, and not be as they were. Well, they stay the same actually - there is just more distortion.

of course, the avatar is badly uvmapped anyway, I guess you mean it makes that worse?

Gina... As Chip has pointed out, in todays world... (caveat because LL is working on the collision boundary), sculpted prims are not objects you can expect folks to just wander around on. You need to essentially set them phantom, and then add prims into the shape that allow an avatar to walk. This is obvious in stairs. The cause is that sculpted prims, today, are handled as a kinda blobbish sphere. So the detail in the sculpt is not the boundary. Its the blobbish sphere around it.

No, some of the morph targets have altered UV mapping so that some of the mesh vertices aren't in the same spot on the UV map. That's done to minimize some of the texture stretching on some of the more extreme morphs (like full gut for example). So not only is the mesh morphing, so are some of the UV points in relation to the mesh.

interesting, didn't realise that. I was thinking of it more in the realm of making sculpted prim clothing though - so the textures weren't that large of a concern.