The mysterious sculpty tree

I know a few of the sculpty tricks of the trade, like snapping points together and fun stuff like that. I've recently been trying to make a fairly simple tree. I'm getting a void sim soon and want to decorate it with two prim cherry trees. Originally I looked for some to buy, but didn't find anything usable besides some that were way overpriced for copyable versions. Anyway, I wanted to try making some myself, but I've hit a snag with the mapping. Most sculpty trees use a simple texture repeated across the faces, but I can't figure out how to set up my sculpty to do that. It works ok as it is, but as you can see from the Hexagon screenshot, the mapping is really not useful. Any suggestions?

(And no, that is NOT my tree texture. I was bored and just did something goofy as a placeholder )

try wings3D
or Blender

in my experience they are the best next to Maya in the freebie world for texturing sculpts.

/8/b6/284643/1.html

I explain the basic technique in Blender for a fire in that thread, but it's the same for a basic tree too. 10 x 10 faces is an odd amount for a sculptie, 8 x 8 will give better results.

Almia, I wasn't asking for what program to use. I use Hexagon mostly, although I have several others as well. I was asking how to set up the sculpt.

Thanks Domino, that's a useful tip. I meant I wanted more than two planes, but the basic idea is the same, so thanks very much I'm still having trouble with loss - the center doesn't stay together...I end up with a diamond shaped "hole" where the vertices are pinched together. Though I may end up using that, as it seems to help with texture sorting, oddly enough.

I use Hex from time to time, I was not aware you could snap the points together.
Perhaps that is what is giving you the hole?
I know that bunching the vertices together gives you more "edge" definition.
It is a fact that different exporters will allow different types of methods depending on which
exporter or program. When you say "snap the points together" are you in effect eliminating
a point?
And if that works, what other tricks do you know for hex?
Curious

By "snapping" I meant the points move to be at exactly the same spot in space. They're all still there, just all in one spot, perfectly aligned. The way you do it is hold shift while dragging a vertex (or group of vertices) with the move or global tool. I always use the two axis handle, trying to snap with just one direction actually tends to fling the selection off somewhere random. The selection will snap to a nearby neighbor with the two-directional handle.

My favorite "trick" with Hexagon is that, contrary to its documentation, it will export *anything* as a sculpty so long as it's UV mapped. Obviously only properly mapped objects will work correctly, but it still makes things much easier. Hexagon's sculpty starters are high poly, and I usually prefer to work at a smaller scale and subdivide later. Just create a new primitive, map it with spherical or cylindrical mapping, and model away. Hexagon will still export a good sculpt map, even if you smooth. As long as the UV map is flat it works. Hexagon can also import sculpties and export them again, which is useful for sculpting across multiple programs.

As for my tree, after trying several different experiments and talking with other sculptors, it seems to be that Hexagon's sculpt exporter isn't accurate enough to keep the sharp edges. It's great with organic shapes, but since it always exports a 64x64 map, it's not so accurate with sharp edges.