Lathing Sculped Prims in BLender with Spin Function

I didn't realize it was possible, but thanks to Gaia Clary I've been educated. So, I decided to make a short tutorial (4:39) showing how to lathe using spin instead of the other method. This method is much quicker and more accurate as well. While there are still uses for the other method, for most lathing this technique will be the best way to go about it. This method works for curves as well, although I'm guessing you'll have to convert the curve to a mesh first before spinning.

Thanks to Gaia for showing this technique (not to mention coming up with sculptify to begin with).

The tutorial is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cx3spbreHs

Johan.

Ups... I was working on the same issue and i too published something 5 hours earlier this night:

/8/1c/358494/1.html#post2658376

I should have thought about that you would probably do something alike

Sorry for that!!!

Although both tutorials are substantially the same, there are enough minor differences to make both very worthwhile viewing for the blender noob like myself.

For instance, I first worked through Gaia's tutorial, but was having trouble placing vertexes close by each other. Switching to Johan's, I quickly found the solution - hide the 3d manipulators before adding vertexes. On the other hand Gaia spent some time showing how to align the start and end points in the x,y plane which was glossed over by Johan.

These points are not intended to be criticisms of either tutorial, rather my intention is to illustrate how the two tutorials complement each other. And I for one, am extremely grateful to both of you for the amount of time and effort you have put into creating your very helpful tutorials.

Oh that's OK You're the one who showed me how to do it anyways! I'll have to check out your video too

I learned a few things myself, like the trick she used to 'convert' the plane to a cylinder (effectively). As is often the case, it's useful to watch more than one tutorial on the same subject. Thanks for watching my tute ab, and happy sculpting!

now, after watching both videos, I understood, and could reproduce it - thanks

One question: Johan used the function Object/Scripts/Sculptify Objects - can someone explain a bit more, what that function does?

What makes a sculptie a sculptie ? It is the very special UV-map (typically named "Sculpt-map" in SL jargon), which is needed to create the squared colorfull image, which in turn can be imported to SL and magically transforms the default apple sculpty to whatever you have modelled in your tool. Basically the surface of the object will be mapped to a flat plane (a square).

Now an object does not have a UV-map by default. So it has to be created. And this is where Sculptify objects comes into play. This tool analyses the object mesh and tries to find the best fitting SL-conform UV-map for the particular object. (Note, that the UV-mapping can be completely different from what we use for sculpties. But for sculpties we MUST use the exact form of a fully filled square).

Do you remember Nurbs2Sculpty ? That add on script which i added to JASS a year ago ? This one could only translate NURBS to Sculpties. Sculptify objects was born out of this script and Domino enhanced it and then renamed it to "sculptify objects".

Please be aware, that a UV-map can NOT be found for any arbitrary object. So in many cases sculptify object just will return either very bad results or even completely wrong results.

For NURBS and for Objects contructed by Outlines as shown in the videos, it works perfectly.

I wasn't born in SL at that time - giggles... but I saw the Nurbs2Sculpty tutorials




One last question: Is there a recommendation for the number of x- and y-faces? Or doesn't that matter for Sculptify Objects?

Basically sculptify objects will do its job for any number of x/y faces. But it is wise to keep with reasonable values which map one to one to the final sculptie: The "default size" of sculpties is 32*32 faces. In primstar you will typically want to keep the default settings which "appear" to be wrong in first sight (8 x-faces, 8 y-faces) but with 2 additional subdivision levels for multires or subsurf, these numbers will be multiplied by 4, so you end up with 32*32 faces again. If you look at the add sculptie menu of primstar long enough you should eventually understand how this all works together

But sculptify objects will also create "oblongs" if it needs to do so. (oblongs are sculpties with non square sculptmaps).

Please note, that there is a long standing bug on the SL side which prevents from importing sculptmaps lossless when they have less than 1024 faces. Although blender and primstar will create smaller sculptmaps if possible, these will turn out as mega crap in SL when imported.

Is this the reason why sculpt come out looking so flipping small when imported back into Blender (as a test)? I have been pulling my hair out as to why everything I model turns out small when modeled using the lathe. (Small in comparison to the original model in Blender)

Also -- another couple of things I ran across. If I take my lathed model -- go into Top View -- then basically cut the model in half -- the rotation is wacked inworld -- and, I have seen sculpts come in as inside out.

One more thing - What is the best amount of steps to use for say -- a vase -- 8,16 32?


Thanks in advance

CC

While you are modelling you seem to work on a high scale. That does not matter because scale is relative. Only when you reimport a scupltmap into blender the scale becomes important. The sculptie is assigned to exactly 1 blender unit. So when you look up the object properties you should see the scale to be 1 and the dim to be 1 for all 3 dimensions. Hence the imported sculptie should fill out a unit cube. BTW i have seen some unexpected effects which i am currently investigating, as sometimes i see a deviation from the unit cube.

So either you take care about the scale during modelling, or rescale your sculptmaps when reimporting. BTW. If you import the sculptmap from the uv editor (image -> import as sculptie) then the scaling is preserved (taken from the original object)

I do not exactly understand, what you are trying to do here. Maybe a picture will clearify it ? The basic question is: when are you cutting the object into half ? before sculptify or after ? And are you using a mirror modifier ?

I have seen this too. I am not yet sure if this is a bug from blender or from primstar or just a bad combination of assumptions which lead to this effect. The workaround is:

- before you sculptify, recalculate the normals outside (mesh -> normals -> recalculate outside) But i fear that this only affects how the object is shown in blender. I suspect primstar to calculate the normals by itself and sometime just calculates them inverted. so..:
- If you still get inside-out objects, then go to edit mode and there: s x -1 this effectively mirrors your sculptie and it might not be what you want. If it fit better you also can do "s y -1" or "s z -1" but always use odd numbers of these transformations please If you scale first along x then along y (or any other combination of 2 mirrors along axes),, the inside out effect is back...


Currently i get the best results for 32*32 faces. I have experimented with oblongs and i found meanwhile that all sculptmaps with 4096 pixels work reasonably well. All other sculptmaps have problems. In particular the 22*46 map (corresponds to 64*128 pixels) produces very odd results (there must be a primstar-baker issue here)