SculptGenMax for 3ds Max 9

is this script supposed to work with nurbs?

not yet. working on it, but not yet.

very impressive exhibition of ballon bending...recognised your work in the sculptie competition at Luna...you should win...how you do that?

Just uploaded SculptGenMax 0.4 Download from OP.

"Missing Row" bug fixed, but the starting object must have 32 rows now instead of 31 as previously.

There's a lot of good things here.

Version 0.4 Release Notes
		
a) sculptmap now matches the 3dsMax UV map.
	You should now be able to bake textures using the UV map and they
	should line up with the sculptie in SL. NOTE: because I now use the UV map, if
	your sculptie looks inside out, then your UV map is probably wrong.

b) only one vertex is used in the top and bottom row of the cylinder.  The vertices
	used are the top and bottom vertices on the seam of the UV map, 
	i.e., the vertices at the top left and bottom left of the UV map.

c) sculptmap now has one more row of data.  The cylinder should be 32x32.
	sculptmap conforms to http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=1522861

d) smooth feature removed.  wasn't helpful.

e) 32x32 option removed.  64x64 is the lowest resolution sculptmap supported.
	I might change this later, but it needs work to support 32x32 properly.

f) now supports a NURBS cylinder. See instructions below.  Mesh cylinder is still supported

-- *** CREATING THE NURBS OBJECT ***

-- As of Version 0.4, you can also use a NURBS cylinder as your starting object.
--
-- 1) Create a cylinder
-- 2) Convert to NURBS
-- 3) Expand the "NURBS Surface" modifier and select "Surface" under it. Select and delete the
--		top and bottom of the cylinder.
-- 3) Go back to "NURBS Surface".
--		In the NURBS "Surface Approximation" Rollout, select Tessellation Method "Regular"
--		and set U Steps and V Steps to 32.

-- Now, you can NURB away.  Hint: Select NURBS Surface>Surface CV to see control vertices
-- When you're done, make sure that the object is selected and generate the texture.

sweet

Very god work Shack, i appreciate your work on this really, and the possibility to create a body out of NURBS is amazing. Keep on the great work.

Cheers

Mike

Mabe i should add that when you close the bottom and the top of your nurbs or vertics object you get better tops and bottoms of your prim inworld.

Cheers

Mike

Just released SculptGenMax 0.4.1. Download from OP

Poly, Mesh, and NURBS Sphere now supported!


Release Notes

-- 0.4.1 a) fixed bug with UV map. Now handles UV maps correctly that have more vertices than are
-- in the mesh
-- b) Poly sphere 32x32 supported.
-- c) NURBS Sphere 32x32 supported.
-- d) added drop down to allow you to change the uv map channel that is used.

In case it isn't obvious.

Use a NURBS Sphere. Version 0.4.1 (just released!) supports spheres now.

Hehehehe somehow it is still great to see you come along with this, thank you for you great works on it, it was only a thing i recognized.

*going to try out this new version now*

Cheers

Mike

Yesterday, I got NURBS spheres working, so today I'm playing with them and I've run into a UV mapping issue. Just wanted to give a quick description of what I'm seeing.

Basically, the issue is that 3ds Max is changing the UV map as I manipulate the sphere. This is bad. We want the UV map to stay in a nice square grid pattern, otherwise, our baked textures won't match up with the sculptie.

Also, if you stretch and twist the sphere enough, it causes the UV map to distort enough to confuse SculptGenMax and it fails.

Seems like I need to use the Unwrap UVW modifier in some way to permanently set the UV map into a grid pattern, but I don't have a good procedure for it yet.

That is going to be tough. I though as you model a Nurb that the mesh dimensions change. But I don't know a whole lot about them. can the mesh that makes the NURBs be locked?

Shack,

Max is doing something to the image when it save. I've notice this in my methods as well as yours.

This is part of a sculpt image blown up and contrast turned up to 95 to highlight the dithering effect max is doing to texture when saving.

The image on the left is the image opened in photo shop after it is save in Max. While the right shows a screen shot of the image and then pasted into photo shop. what you will notice in the yellow near the top is the nice smooth fade from yellow to red on the right while the left has a rather chunky hard steps. this weird dither like effect is happening to your GenScript and mine Render Totexture method. It is throws RGB values off buy a shade or two. not much but enough to make the object look more lump. I'm still getting mixed results between the screen shot version and saved TGA version. I have no clue as what Max is doing with the image when it saves.

Maybe try saving it as BMP or maybe PNG to see if you get the same results. Maybe even try JPG, but turn the quality way up.

I don't expect any of those to magically work, but I guess we should try.

BMP/TGA same result. JPG and PNG well they are just as bad. well heck I'm clueless

The only thing that I see in preferences is output dithering. In the online reference under "dithering (glossary)", it says that max renders 64-bit color by default. There's also a good explanation of dithering (if you're not familiar with the term).

So, try turning off dithering. In Customize>Preferences>Rendering, turn off True Color and Paletted. See if that make a difference.

Whether or not it helps, we are probably seeing an artifact of 3ds Max's 64-bit color getting converted to 24-bit.

THIS FIXES IT! (I think)

I started digging around in MAXScript. From there, I don't have much control over how the bitmap is saved, but MAXScript 9 has a new function that lets you compare two bitmaps.

So, I put in a check. Right after I save the file, I added a check to see if the file is the same as the bitmap in memory. With True Color dithering turned on, the saved bitmap is always different from the one in memory. With True Color dithering turned off, they are always the same!

So, my only question is what I should do for my script? I can leave this check in the code and add a dialog saying "Blah,Blah, Turn off True Color dithering, Blah, Blah" if it detects that the two bitmaps are different. This could be very helpful. The downside is that it would mean that the script would definitely only work in 3dsMax 9.

What do you think?

Edit: I did a couple of experiments to see if I can see a difference in the sculpties and I can!

Okay, I have a working procedure for NURBS now!

Step 1: Create your NURBS Sphere (same as before)

1a: Create a sphere
1b: Convert to NURBS
1c: Surface Approximation - Tessellation Method - Regular with U Steps and V Steps 32

Step 2: Create a UV Map on Channel 2

1a: Apply "Unwrap UVW" modifier
1b: (optional) In UV Modifier Parameters, press Edit. This will show you the current UV Map. It should be a nice grid pattern.
1c: In UV Modifier Parameters, press Save. and save the uv map to a file. You only have to do this once.
1d: In UV Modifier Parameters, change the Map Channel to 2. If you still have the edit window open, you will see that it destroys the nice UV grid. We'll fix that in next step.
1e: In UV Modifier Parameters, press Load. and load the uv map that you previously saved.

Step 3: Shape the NURBS Sphere. Make your object.

NOTE: You will have to click on NURBS in the modifier stack and this will pop up a warning dialog. Just say yes.

Step 4: Generate the Sculptmap

4a: Make sure that you select the top modifier on the stack.
4b: Open SculptGenMax
4c: Change the UV Map Channel in SculptGenMax to 2.
4d: Generate sculptie and save to TGA

Step 5: Bake a texture

5a: Put a light in the scene
5b: Render To Texture
5c: Set the Mapping Coordinates channel to 2
5d: Add an Output, e.g., Complete Map
5e: Press Render button and save baked texture.

Step 6: Upload to SL

6a: Upload sculptmap and baked texture.
6b: Put them on a prim. You shouldn't have to do anything special. The baked texture should line up perfectly.

And the result!

That seems to have done it here turning off Dither for True Color. Thanks. Was driving me nuts.

I still dont quite understand. Could you give a simple explanation/ example? Maybe I to stupid or I just dont understand balloon animals. I cant see how a baloon (animal) can have holes in it without losing its air.

Of course I would be glad if anyone would answer. This is not just directed to Gearsawe.

Thanks in advance,

Eddi Masala

Does anyone know if there is a video that shows the creation of a Sculpted Prim and then create the texture. I have tried every script and tutorial and I have still not came out with the final result of the multicolored tga file that you should see.

Hmm, trying this with 3ds Max 9 32bit and I get an Exception when I try to generate the sculpt texture:

"-- Unable to convert: undefined to type: integer"

In this part of the script:

(
-- if anything goes wrong, make sure that we delete the temp copy of the
-- selection. If we don't, it will show up in the scene.
delete selectedPoly
throw()
)


It highlights the "throw()" part of the script.

*edit* to add to this, it seems it made a front facing UVW map when I checked the UVW unwrap modifier, "edit uvws" viewer and moved the uvws out of the blue box border where maps are supposed to be, and even if I load the previous uvws I saved before it stays the same. As if it reset the uvws.

I tried deleting the unwrap uvw's modifier then adding it again, I looked at the map and it was fine, changed it to channel 2 and it messed up the uvws as expected, but it won't load the previous uvws with the good flat unwrap again.

If I leave the map on channel one, and sculptgen on map channel 1 it gets about 1/4 way rendering the texture but then says: Runtime error: Epoly vertex index out of range: <1 or > 1089: -1

I think this does not work with 3D Studio Max 6, nor 8. I tried it and I can't even install the script . (I try running it and 3D Studio does nothing)

I only have Max9, so I haven't tried it in previous versions, but I would think that it works in Max 8.

Note that, in addition to running the script, you also have to add it to the toolbar.

<code>
-- Customize>Customize User Interface...
-- click on the Toolbars tab. Select Category "SecondLife". Drag SculptGenMax to one of the
-- toolbars.
</code>

But if you've done that and still can't get it to do anything, then I don't know.

Well, is just I can't get the shortcut to add to the toolbar (it does not appear, nor the category "SecondLife" or anything related) :/