Blender Sculptie Importer - Attached

Those are typical uses for sizing spheres

I'm still going to add the rgb ranges though as they provide additional functionality and can give different results than sizing spheres. So sizing sphere's will still be used for changing the float range that 0.0 to 1.0 is assigned to, and the rgb ranges will then adjust how that 0.0 to 1.0 is mapped to the colors. It gives a manual adjustment to the control that moving the object center and a sizing sphere allows, so I think it's a good thing to have.



To change this I'd need to override the Blender clone functions (which I don't think can be done from python) and introduce the unexpected result of creating new images rather than using existing ones. This behaviour would also need to be exclusive to the image assigned to the sculptie uv layer otherwise you get unexpected results on the textures.

It's a lot of work compared to adding a note in the user manual that "A new map image should be created if you are using clone to create a different mesh rather than a duplicate prim".

Even on imports this functionality was messy to add. I later took it out so both cloning and importing had the same behaviour, where adding a new sculptie map image separates the clone.

It matches the SL behaviour for prims too, where duplicates have the same sculptie map. So I really think this is a documentation issue not a coding one.

heyas;

does anybody have a step-by-step tutorial for baking a set of textures for an animated sculptie?

i loaded 2 obj files, and they overlapped each other properly. i selected both and hit the bake 2l sculpty. but i seemed to only get one map? i think i missed something somewhere.


oh the other question i had... it seems to me that when i bake a sculpty map, in the options dialogue... that 'fill holes' is turned on and 'normalise' and 'compressible' are turned off. is this actually the other way around?

I'm not aware of one. For the sculptie maps it should just be a case of selecting both objects and choosing Render - Bake Second Life Sculptie. Only the last baked will be displayed, but in object mode (so the UV image editor isn't locked to the selected faces) you should be able to choose from the list box in the UV image editor to display and save either.



Can you bake each map independently?



Yes it's the other way around. Though in the release candidate scripts, those options have been renamed to "Keep Scale" and "True Mirror" and the mirror is off by default. The reason for the change is so that the defaults are correct for all ratios. Some of the oblong ratios are not compatible with "True Mirror" (compressible) as their LODs don't all come from the even pixels.

I've not had chance to test the 1.22 rc client yet, but assuming that the vwr-9384 changes are in, the scripts should move to a 1.0 release soon and I'll focus on documentation then.

i've gotten the download and installed it into my scripts folder...
the problem i'm having is that i'm unable to export a second life file for some reason.
any clue as to why this happening?
thank you for your time and its a great downlaod ..the ablity to go straight to
second life is fantastic...just wished mine worked....lol

Not without more information. If you haven't tried the tutorials from http://blog.machinimatrix.org/ I'd start there, otherwise I'll need more info on what you are doing so I can try to figure out where you are getting stuck.

The release candidate scripts have been updated.

Improved alpha preview/protection with totally clear option.
RGB baking range options added.
Subsurf is now the default for new sculpties (tip: shift e will alter the crease value)
Sculpt map name is now updated at bake time when appropriate

Have Fun!

http://dominodesigns.info/second_life/blender_scripts_git.html

Hey Domino.. great work as always, loving the latest RC versions

One problem, not sure why but I am not getting any alpha channel generated, ie I take it into photoshop and i see only R , G ,B channels. I love the idea of protecting the map, i am missing something obvious im sure.. Any ideas?

-why

In the Scene buttons (F10), you need to set the format to targa and RGBA.

Yep that would do it!

ty!

hi , Domino , and 1st of all : thanks for these scripts to help sculpted creations in Blender to SL for everyone , very good job !

( NOTE : please leave me an answer in "good and simple english" , i m french and only 80% currently speaking english , thanks )

i have update my blender into v2.48 , and download the http://dominodesigns.info/downloads/second_life/blender_scripts.zip on your website ,
but i can t understand why my mesh cylinder is clean in Blender but the result in SL has a bad resolution ( see the following link for a picture of detail of the fork on a motorcycle creation ) http://i71.servimg.com/u/f71/09/01/12/89/fork_r10.jpg

do i need to download these scripts too ?http://dominodesigns.info/downloads/second_life/blender_scripts_rc.zip

what is the difference between the 2 downloads ?

Here is what i do :
i don t modify anything on setting of blender , i just use the basic method [ add scult mesh , choice 4 (cylinder) , and let all options as default , use scale , move , rotate on mesh/transform option ( shift when i rotate to be sure on 90° or 270 ° ) and nothing else , then i bake and save to upload in SL , i create an object > sculpted , i have selected cylinder in sculpted option on edit mode in SL ]

so how can i do to have a better result ? anyone can help me please ?
( the creation is a fork for a motorcycle )

The _rc one is the latest version of the scripts and I'd recommend using those now. They have a lot of new features so I'm giving people a chance to test and report bugs before I replace the other package with them.



It looks like you didn't select "Lossless" when you uploaded the sculpt map. Try uploading again and make sure you tick the "Lossless" box.

YES , YES & YES , it was the solution , my in-world sculpty is now perfect
http://i71.servimg.com/u/f71/09/01/12/89/fork_r11.jpg

a friend tells me it should the best for quality to choose 16x16 and not 8x8 when i do : add > sculpt mesh at the biginning when creating in Blender , is that true ? or not necessary ?
in this case of true , is there a function which can transform my blender file 8x8 to 16x16 ?

The settings you choose depend on the shape and prim count you want. In the most recent RC I've changed the default from multires to subsurf as I believe that will give better results in the majority of cases. All the default settings were chosen with quality and ease of modelling in mind. Not just at the higher LODs but across the 3 levels it's possible to support in a subdivision based modeling system.

Learning to see what the best settings are for a particular sculptie is one of the main artistic skills that will make a big difference to your sculptie making. If I was making a sculptie that was essentially a box, then I'd start with 4 x 4 with 3 subsurf levels. I'd make the basic box shape, bake then reimport that to get 8 x 8 with 2 levels of multires to model the detail.

The main advantage to subsurf is that it'll give LOD friendly texturing as the faces at higher levels are evenly spread over each of the 8 x 8 faces. As the lowest LOD is 6 x 6 faces ( 4 x 9 on oblong ratios ) we are already ignoring that, by modeling at 16 x 16, you are ignoring the 8 x 8 or at the least having to allow for it in your modeling. It's harder to do this and get a high quality sculptie (one that works at all LODs) than it is by modeling at 8 x 8 and letting the subsurf modifier calculate the 16 x 16 and 32 x 32 levels.

If I was modeling say, a 1 prim guitar, then 8 x 8 just doesn't have enough detail to get the full outline. In a case like that then 16 x 16 with 1 level of subsurf makes sense, but there I'm sacrificing quality for prim count. The better solution is to use 2 prims and model the body from one 8 x 8 (a cylinder with the ends closed by scaling to 0 on one axis) and the neck from another.

For motorbike parts, I don't think there's any that are going to benefit from modeling at higher detail. I'd stick with 8 x 8 as a base so the bike still looks good when it's halfway around the track. You can guide the subsurf by setting the crease value on edges (shift e) to get different degrees of curve. Have a play with a torus and various crease values to get a feel for how it works.

Once you have the 8 x 8 shape right, you can always change the subsurf modifier to 1 level and apply it, then add another subsurf modifier with 1 level. This is how to get to a 16 x 16 when you started with 8 x 8.

Alternatively you can bake and reimport to use mulitres for the final modeling. You can change the multires level between 1, 2 and 3 to work on any of the detail levels.

Most sculpties you'll use a combination of techniques, so it's worth spending some time playing around to get used to the options, then you'll be able to decide which is best at any point in your own workflow.

Dom,
Sorry to labour my query in other thread but I've been trying out the new scripts and still have question to clarify the naming process. Did I get it wrong thinking that in the RC amendment you'd resolved the issue I raised?

When I do a bake the name of the image in the UV/Image Editor Window comes in as the sculpty object name - e.g. test1sculpt_map. However, when I do an export of the LSL to directory, it still saves the image as sphere_map.tga while the lsl file is test1sculpt.lsl.
This still means that if I do 2 lsl exports in a row , the second sculptmap export overwrites the first unless I manually change the tga file name, and that in turns means I need to edit the content of the lsl file to keep it functional.

Just asking, mind you! I can work around.

Drifter

I think we both did

There were a couple of different issues with the naming. The one I've fixed (after another rc update today to support normal meshes ) is renaming of the default names to match the object on bake. The one you have is the same as when you duplicate a sculptie and have two meshes pointing to the same image file. Sometimes this is desired behavior (e.g a table with 4 identical legs), so I can't automate a fix for it. If you want a mesh to bake to a new image, then you need to create that image in the UV Image Editor and assign it to the "sculptie" uv layer.

Once the image name is not one of the default ones, then the scripts leave it alone. It's up to the user at that point to let Blender know when a new image is needed. You can use View - Image Properties to see the size of the original image if needed (eg with oblongs when you don't know the image size to create).

I'm not happy with the export_lsl script at the moment, I think some of the other changes have messed it's size calculations up, so I'll be making more changes before the 1.0 release.

So if you can describe a way to update naming that doesn't have adverse effects on desired behaviour, I'm happy to add it. But I think the current solution is probably as good it gets; I can't think of a way to cover all cases without user intervention.

If you are doing variations of a sculptie with edit, export, edit, rename, export, etc, the rename should be both the object and the map image.

Here's a list of the choices of faces and subdivision levels that will give unique sculptie map sizes for modeling in Blender with the rc scripts.

For All Viewers:

8 x 8 x 2, 16 x 16 x 1, 32 x 32 x 0

Viewer 1.21 and later:

5 x 204 x 0
11 x 23 x 1, 22 x 46 x 0
11 x 93 x 0

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-9384 (maint-viewer-11 branch):

4 x 4 x 0
4 x 16 x 0
4 x 16 x 1, 8 x 32 x 0
4 x 16 x 2, 8 x 32 x 1, 16 x 64 x 0
4 x 32 x 0
4 x 64 x 0
4 x 64 x 1, 8 x 128 x 0
4 x 128 x 0
4 x 256 x 0
8 x 8 x 0
8 x 8 x 1, 16 x 16 x 0
8 x 16 x 0
8 x 16 x 1, 16 x 32 x 0
8 x 64 x 0

&fff8 patch (see vwr-9384 discussion for details)

4 x 8 x 0
4 x 8 x 1, 8 x 16 x 0
4 x 8 x 2, 8 x 16 x 1, 16 x 32 x 0

After adding the sculpt mesh, you can go to the UV Image Editor and select "Image - Bake Sculptie LODs" if you have the latest RC scripts. The blue dots show where SL will read the sculpt map, the brighter the blue, the more LODs use that pixel. It's normal for the Blender UV points to be at the bottom left of the pixel they refer to.

You can specify other values when creating your sculptie, and the scripts will find the nearest of these map versions to use.

This is just what I was looking for!!! ty..

Can you clarify for me... what is going to happen in the current main viewer if I create a sculptie at 8 X 32 - 0? What i think I am seeing, is its coming in at LOD 0 is this right?

It'll be trying to create it as though it's a 11 x 93 (from a map that's 16 x 64 ) so you should get 11 faces (mostly read from the middle of faces) by 63 faces ( from every pixel ) with the other 30 being degenerate with their start and end position the same.

Dom,
Just tell me to go 'bake' myself and stop niggling if I'm way ofline but I'm still trying to get my head round this renaming thing.

My process is I make a sculpt - say leftdoorsculpt - in Blender. First step is see what comes out of the pipeline, so I do a 'bake SL Sculpties' and - YAY! - get an image which has a totally relevant name - leftdoorsculpt_map - in the name box of the UV/Image Editor window. That's just what I want as it refers specifically to the object I've made a sculpty for and is readily identifiable in my admittedly untidy filing system.
However when I go to File/Export and choose SL LSL it still gives me one file which refers directly to the sculpty - leftdoorsculpt.lsl, but the other one is still cylinder_map.tga.
On the basis that I want to make all the components before going into SL to upload it is this tga file name which is giving me the problem in that I either need to put it in a separate file from the next component I make, or alternatively rename it which in turn means I have to open and edit the lsl file to ensure that the SL building script is looking for the correct image to convert to sculpty.

I'm in total awe of your programming skills in any case so am quite prepared for you to tell me that what I'm asking is totally out of order and apologise if I've overlaboured the point.


Drifter

It is a bug, I just discovered it myself as well. I was working on cleaning up the scaling in export_lsl so wasn't using my normal workflow of saving the maps from the UV editor first. Apparently the export_lsl script is looking at the image filename rather than it's Blender name, so the renaming is ignored. I don't normally get the problem as my filename is already correct due to the previous save. Stay tuned, there should be a fix later today

Edit: and here it is http://dominodesigns.info/second_life/blender_scripts_git.html

/me grovels at your feet.
Now also just tell me you look like Daniel Craig and I'm yours forever!

BACKOFF Drifter .. I already said I'd turn gay. LOL

Now back to normal programming.

I look like me, that's usually good enough

I've just posted what is hopefully the last release candidate version before 1.0 of the scripts are released. There are no known bugs in this release, even multi sculptie baking and exporting works fully now.

http://dominodesigns.info/second_life/blender_scripts_git.html

I'll be focusing on documentation now. As soon as that's complete, these scripts will get promoted to the 1.0 release version. So now's a really good time to test them out and let me know if something doesn't seem right.

Have Fun!

is there a possibility that one day NURBS Sphere will work in your future version ???

it s so easy to transform a NURBS sphere ( to create a tank or a seat for motorcycle )

i know the possibility with 'add testure 1 , 2 & 3 and set RGB properties & Unwrap , etc ... ' , but i m so boring of that ! if only it could be as easy as 'blender_scripts' By Domino

( I m only dreaming ... it s chrithmas season . i can , no ? )