Blender Sculptie Importer - Attached

[http://www.dominodesigns.info/downloads/second_life/blender_scripts.zip

For some reason I am getting an error in the download Domino saying the file is invalid or corrupt as a zip. ???

Odd. I've just downloaded and tested and works fine for me. I'd clear your browser cache and try again.

hmmm, i was really excited when reading this cz i am a blender user.
but none of the links working for me. maybe the website service is down atm?

Sorry about the interruption in service I was doing some work on the server. Should be ok now.

PS: Anyone got a suggestion for an object to make in the next tutorial "Sculpting from scratch"?

yep its online now, but the file seems to be corrupted says my winrar and also 7zip. i tried with cleaned browser cache etc. what size should it have? cz the download is always 15kb.

*edit: maybe it works if you upload it to rapidshare or sometjing similar

Domino,

I find it very curious, that your approch appears completely different than the other methods of starting with cylinders and spheres of specific number of faces. It appears that Suzanne has no discernible poles to deal with.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been trying to work with previous Blender objects, mainly human figures, in order to start making statues for my clock business.

Your uv planar unwrapping still has me at a loss. Using your methods, I have actually managed to unwrap 2 joined metaballs, (turning in to a mesh of course).

I have been using Blender for several years and I don't understand the program completely myself. There appears to be a lot of interest in using Blender, and most people are totally new and completely lost.

Not for you to have to teach everyone Blender, but a tut using a simple shape and explain what and how uv unwrapping works.

My L$0.02,

Thank you very much for sharing this. I've been experimenting extensively with it, starting with very simple geometric shapes. Would you like feedback/results posted in this thread?

File properties shows the zip size as 14.6 KB (15,003 bytes) so yeah 15Kb for short is right. It was zipped with 7zip and and it's unzipping fine for me and others, so I really don't know what to suggest.

Sure, I'd love to see what people are doing with it

Looks promising, I'll be keeping my eye on it.

thanks!

-whyroc

*edit:
sorry for the trouble. i downloaded it now with a download manager and it downloaded fine, LOL. never thought i would use a DM for a 15 kb file. thx so much for sharing and now leave me alone=)) i need to start my blender^^

*edit: i have seen another had troubles too. i used for download this DM:
http://francis.dupont.free.fr/truedownloader/index.html

Until yesterday I found it curious too. Basically I started with the name "planar unwrap" as I knew what I wanted it to do. Basically reduce x, y and z to u, v. Fortunately for me, python has a command "atan2" which takes the two co-ordinates of a vector as it's input, this seemed a simple place to start experimenting. As it made sense to use the eliminated 3rd co-ordinate as part of both u and v calculations I started as simply as:

u = atan2( x, z )
v = atan2( y, z )

This unwrap looked like it needed a sine wave affecting the y direction so I got to

u = atan2( x, z )
v = sin( atan2(y, z ) )

And apart from a couple of scaling adjustments, that's what my planar unwrap does.

It wasn't until I was investigating alternatives yesterday and implemented a equal area cylinder unwrap that I knew what I was doing. This got identical results to my "planar unwrap" and a quick working through of the math showed this was indeed what I'd done by happy accident.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CylindricalEqual-AreaProjection.html

The unwrap is limited and is only one tool you can use for making sculpties in Blender. All these scripts do is replace the material baking part. You can still use the other methods for making the base sculpty and UV map, just skip the material part and use the Bake Sculpties option instead. Depending on the object I'll be starting from a plane or a cylinder in the next video. It won't use this unwrap script at all.



They'll be glad to hear the next over my shoulder session will have keystroke display so it'll be easier to follow.

It appears that my earlier choice of "Divine" was a proper description of your abilities!

/Yrrek, drumming her fingers, waiting for the next tutorial.

Some good time savers here, in terms of the 'bake to SL sculpted prim' script.

I'm wondering if you can confirm or deny these observations about unwrapping:

1. For an SL sculpt map, the unwrapped UVs don't need to be square or even aligned with one another, but they should fill up the square map as much as possible.

2. You are manually manipulating the UVs quite alot to arrange and fill the map

3. there can be no breaks in the resulting UV map

4. texturing would be next to impossible on some of the areas where the UVs are very close together?

-whyroc

1) Yes, edge to edge is the most important factor.

2) Yes, but typically less than you would with other uv unwrappers on this type of mesh.

3) There can be breaks if all you want is a sculptie. There is a fill routine on the bake sculpty script that fills them in. If you plan on texturing then a full flat map is best.

4) Texturing, no. Getting that level of detail, yes. I'll be covering baking textures later in the series of little videos.

This one will leave you wishing it was 6 mins and not 5. If you want to see how the finished sculptie looks you'll need to have a go. Just finish squaring off the UV map and bake the sculptie

The keystroke follower leaves a bit to be desired, but hopefully better than nothing.

http://dominodesigns.info/downloads/tutorials/blender/wheels_of_time.swf

It's called wheels of time as they ran out on me, but I probably could have done it in 5 mins in another few takes, honest

Todays downtime on the server was to upgrade to the beta of Cherokee 0.6 which should be more stable than the cvs one I was running. Lets see if it holds up.. /me hits Submit Reply

I would love to try this but the zip file

http://www.dominodesigns.info/downloads/second_life/blender_scripts.zip

is corrupt. I have tried on various PC's and get the same result. Unexpected end of archive.

Has anyone got a good version?

i had the same pronblem b4, but the file is ok. its cz ur download is bad (maybwe too fast like mine). try to use a download manager and it works fine.
i used: http://francis.dupont.free.fr/truedownloader/index.html and got a clean download

Well I have finally got an uncurrupt download. I used that truedownloader suggested. But I dont understand it. I tried three separate connections, and different PC's. They all corrupted. Being too fast shouldnt make any difference. Unless there are problems on the server hosting the file which somehow this Truedownlader overcomes. Anyway. If anyone else has a problem and wants to download it. I have dropped it on my website for now. www.boblister.co.uk/blender_scripts.zip

Are you using the same browser on all machines? Quite a lot of people of have been complaining about corrupt downloads of small zip files from the forums, not just these. The problems originally started while the files were attached to the forum. That people are having similar problems after moving the files to my own site seems very strange and suggests it's client side not server side. So I'm curious what the failing downloads have in common.

Domino, I had the same problem getting a corrupted zip file from your site. I tried 2 computers with the same result. Then used the download manager that Abraham posted and it was fine.

Too fast? My connection is reasonably fast but I have never had that problem before.

Thanks for this Domino, you have taken sculpted prims to the next level. Now I really will have to learn how to use Blender properly - I picked up quite a few things watching your demos especially with the keystroke follower.

My favourite feature is being able to check the results of my work without going online.

A little off topic - I have just started with plane sculpts, but when I upload to SL one side is transparent. Is there some trick to this, or have I missed some important step?

No joy here either on the download...

I've attached the scripts to the first post again. If someone is willing to help me find where the problem with downloads is so it can be fixed it would be appreciated. I know it works downloaded with Firefox 2.0.0.6 running on Vista. It's not a corrupt zip as even people with problems have downloaded and unzipped successfully using the download manager. What I don't know is how the failed downloads were done. IE, Firefox, something else? XP, 98, Vista? Linux, Mac? There has to be something these failures have in common and knowing what it is will make it a lot easier for me to try and replicate it and see whether it is a config setting ( or bug) on my server they don't like or if it is something else.

when i first downloaded it i used the internet explorer and windows xp and half of the zip was corrupted. but like i mentioned: it works well with a downloadmanager like Truedownloader.

That's normal. If you want a two sided plane you have to fold it over or do the other side with another sculptie. I see this type as mostly useful for add-ons to existing prims. Eg making an end piece for a wall, you don't need to waste verts making faces where the end piece faces the wall, just have the edges of the plane run up to / overlap the base wall prim. There's also possibilities in using them for fake shadows and other types of decals.