Building and Texturing issues

Hi everyone...
(First of all, sorry about my english)

Finally I got the courage to post here, after about 2 months of reading and searching, exploring and testing. And now, I've encountered some issues that I cannot solve, and I would appreciate any help, tip or answer you can give me.

Well, Ill go to the point:
As far as I read, If we do the modeling outside SL, we cannot extrude (just an example) faces, cause if we do that, we change the attributes of the prim. But, looking around in SL, I found very complex objects, that I wonder how they was made. From weapons to boots.

At first, I thought that I should export every single modeled prim to SL, and in there, join all the parts. But after discovering such great creations, I cannot imagine joining them piece by piece. This is an example (of hundred):


So... I thought: "There is a way to do that without burning your eyes and spending 10L$ for every single prim". Dont know if you get the point ... If not, here are my questions:

I use 3Dmax. I downloaded all the tools and exporters, like blender and wings3D. Tested them, but I dont feel comfortable with them. I got PrimComposer and SculptGenMax, and Im ready to test them, but what I really want to know is:
¿Can we model a multiprim object and export it "linked" or "grouped" to SL? And if the answer is "yes": You pay 10L$ for every prim that is in the group, or just 10L$ for the whole group?

Then, assuming that I can export the hole group (this is a very important question):
What kind of UV modifier should I apply (or works better) in 3Dmax, to the group and to bake?. I think that could be the "Unwrap UVW" modifier, but which one of them: Flaten, normal, unfold? Or does everyone works with SL? I thought that only spherical UV mapping can be used in SL, but after reading and reading, I realised that this cannot be this way.

Dunno if Im missing something. And sorry if my questions are, "noobish" (or was answered in other threads). But I repeat: read a lot, and with all the options and information, I got confused, and I know that it is easier than it looks. So I hope that my questions, and your answers, could bring light to the new builders that are stucked like me...

Thanks in advance and sorry about the extremely long post...

Most complex-looking attachments in SL actually DO have huge numbers of prims, or they use sculpted prims, where you can distort a sphere covered with a 32 x 32 mesh grid into certain shapes, to make something like a digitigrade leg that uses only one prim.

I have rollerskates that use 40 prims per skate - 80 for the pair. I've seen hair that used hundreds of twisted torii for realistic ringlets. I've seen heads for a furry avatar that used well over 100 prims.

You will need to expand the limits of your imagination, because yes, almost 100% of those complex objects really were built in-world, with the normal building tools, and lots of skill and patience.

I do a lot of building in SL, and aside from textures and some sculpt maps for sculpted prims, I don't use any of those export/import tools that attempt to use external 3D apps to make things that may be compatable with Second Life. Most of those external building tools are very limited in their ability to import your creations into SL.

For external tools that create sculpt maps, yes, it's L$10 PER PRIM to import those sulpt maps, as each sculpt map is an individual texture that has to be applied to a prim in-world to make that acorn, or leg part, or single-prim 12-step staircase.

Though I hear there was once long long ago a sort of prim tax, as it is now,
prims themselves are FREE (with the important note that prims left around on/over land can only be 15,000 per sim, and this restriction can be subdivided). No fee per prim. However there is a special Sculpted Prim type, and the only charge is L$10 per each unique "sculpted" shape you upload (on which you CAN edit individual vertices, though you cannot exactly extrude), which is done in the form of an image file (one which usually looks like gradients of color). So, this works just like textures.

The boots I see in your image don't look like sculpted prims at all; too many sharp edges. To do them outside of SL, look for an external editor that works with regular prims, rather than just sculpted prims.

Hi Zakiel! Welcome to SL. I'll do my best to answer your questions for you.

No, SL chose not to use the industry standard 3d mesh when designing their 3d world. There is no extruding. There is also no bridging, capping, cutting, looping, merging, collapsing or welding. Get it out of your head for SL building. Right now in SL you have two forms of 3d building blocks available to you, prims and sculpties. Prims are mathematical functions describing 3d surfaces, similar to the basic objects like the cube and sphere in max, except you can never collapse them to a mesh object. You are limited by the variables LL allows to describe the shapes and the maximum size LL imposes oh them. The Sculptie is a mesh surface you can manipulate via a 3d displacement map. The individual vertices can be moved, but not added to, nor destroyed. So yeah, those boots are likely are made out of an insane number of prims.

Uploading prims from 3ds max Prim Composer to SL costs you nothing, nada, zilch, zip. Uploading image files costs you the normal fee. So if you have textures on the prims, that's a $10 charge per image you used. This means a unique texture for each side of a cube = $60L. Sculpties get charged $10 for the scultpie map, and then another $10 for the texture, if any. The exception is If you Instance (not copy) an object with maps Prim Composer will only upload the textures once (if you copy, it will upload each image on the the separate objects, even if they are the same image!)

There is a way around this. It's called Open Sim http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page. If you get that running you can basically have your own SL sandbox on your computer. You can upload like a maniac for free.

Prims and sculpties that are grouped together in Max will be uploaded to SL in a linked state with the costs noted above.

What UV modifier you use in max depends on what you are trying to achieve. Regardless of what you decide to use in Max it will not affect the UV of the prims in SL at all. When you upload a Prim Composer built scene you are uploading a description of what prim to use in SL or a map to displace a sculptie surface, not an actual 3d mesh you are manipulating in 3ds Max. In SL the UVs are already there.

I hope this helps you.

Also --- an obvious point but one that sometimes gets lost when we are talking about the cost of things in SL --- The upload cost is L$10 per file, not $10 USD. That amounts to about 3.8 cents per upload. It's not a very large burden unless you are planning on uploading a LOT of image files (although I'll admit to having uploaded a lot myself by now ).

My twopenceworth (coming from the other side of the pond from them using cents) is to use the Preview Grid to experiment/test/upload work in progress. SL give you L$6k or thereabouts to use for uploading stuff so you can see how things works before parting with the RL 3.8 cents (coincidentally fairly close to the twopence mention earlier at todays rates) to upload it to SL proper.

Thanks for all the answers guys/girls xD... And sorry if my reply comes 2 days after my posting.

Well, after posting my questions (those you kindly answered), I managed to set up and run the opensim in my PC, and there, tested a few things about PrimComposer, and other things that I left behind.

My questions came after lot of practicing in SL, building complex and simple stuff...

But in the sandbox, I saw very complex things, like a model of a transformer!... I knew that this could be achieved using just prims, and some sculpties...But i could not imagine doing this, prim by prim, in SL. I know it takes a lot of practice, patience, testing, etc. but just wanted to know if there was another way that I was missing, or you guys/girls, using.

Now I came across this PrimComposer, and noted that works fine, and it allows me, using 3Dmax, the placing and "grouping" easier, and not tested yet, the texturing.

About the L$s, I know that 10L$s is almost nothing in real money, but I think, that I cant just throw away like...dunno, L$200, just in testing =P. Before that, I would ask about the different path and tools I can follow and use =).

Well, thanks again for your answers...and I know, that you people (and your work), rocks!

Nope. Prim by prim.

If you are testing, why not use the test grid? You have a nice little account of lindens there and you can test to your heart's content, and upload the final product when you are certain it's ready. That way you can save yourself some lindens.

[edit] by final product, I meant sculpt textures. You will have to rebuild anything you built in the test grid once you go to the live grid as you can't transfer products across from test to live.