Texturing Sculpties w Default or Planar?

Hello

I believe I understand most of the concepts behind Sculpties and LoD but I am wondering if the method that is used to apply the surface texture makes a bit of a difference. It seems to me that sculpties that are textured using Default hold their shape better than those textured using Planar. Is this truly the case or is it just a coincidence with the ones that I have looked at.

Thanks

Planar is for flat surfaces, i.e. plane. sculpties tend to be applied to curved prims, so default is best for them.

Just a note, if you cut a curved prim like a sphere, the exposed part is flat, so planar works here too, just not on the actual curved face.

Planar texturing is only for flat surfaces, and sculpties are rarely ever perfectly flat, so a planar texture would generally be a really bad idea for a sculpty, as it will be badly distorted. A normal sculpty is based on a spherical prim surface, so it has only one surface to texture, and that surface is, by definition, curved, even if you make it look flat by shaping the sculpty. So if you just make a normal sculpted prim, based on a sphere, you would never use a planar texture on it.

It is possible to create, via scripts, sculpties based on other prim types, such as a planar sculpty. One might possibly be able to use a planar texture on those, but personally, I doubt it would look very good.

I've done some very precise texturing on sculpties, and can tell you that they really are not very suitable for application of detailed textures. Since there is only one texture for the entire surface, you have fewer pixels to work with than, for example, a similarly sized cube prim. Depending on how the sculpty is shaped, some of the texture may not even be visible at all, where verticies are placed on top of each other to force a drisp edge, for example. Also, the precise positions of verticies of a sculpty change with level of detail, making it hard to get the texture to look good all the time. As a result of all these limitations, the level of detail on a sculpted prim's visible texturing is more fuzzy than on similarly-sized normal prims.

Sculpted prims were intended for simple organic shapes, like a mushroom cap. They work well for that, with simple textures applied to them. They are not well suited to uses that reqire accurately placed and detailed texturing.

Sounds like you're still using an older viewer, Ceera. There's no need to use scripts for that anymore, just so you know. You can now set the stitching type directly in the editor window. Options are sphere, cylinder, torus, plane, and none. (I haven't quite figured out how "none" differs from "plane", by the way.)



I would disagree, generally, with that statement. I put very carefully lit, high-detail textures on sculpties all the time.

As long as the geometry is well formed, and the textures are designed to fit, there's no reason at all why you can't use as much texture detail as you want.



That's not really a fair comparison, if the sculpties are being used intelligently. A cube has six individual sides (uncut), so of course it can have up to six times as many textures on it as any single sculpty. However, since it's pretty unlikely that anyone in their right might would ever devote an entire sculpty the replacement of something as mundane as an ordinary cube, there's really no need to make that consideration.

But if we do want to go that route, one could certainly put six sculpted planes together to form the equivalent of a prim cube, and the max pixel count would be exactly the same. The poly count would be relatively ridiculous, of course, so it's really not a good idea.

But then of course, there's always a tradeoff between poly counts and pixel counts anyway, and when you consider that you usually don't see all sides of all prims in any build, and that usually textures get spread across multiple surfaces anyway, there's absolutely no reason why a sculpty in normal usage can't have just as many pixels on it as any similar item made from regular prims.



Very true, but now that other stitching types besides just spheres are supported officially, there's a lot less pixel waste.

For a simple example, if you make a set of couch cushions out of a plane instead of a sphere, you don't need to include any hidden faces at all. The cushions will have no backs, no undersides, etc., so the entire texture canvas can be usable. Use the various stitching types intelligently, and you can cut your texture load by 75% or more, compared with similar objects made entirely from spherical sculpts.



I don't know if "hard" is the right word, but it does take some understanding and planning to make it work well.


Not necessarily. It all depends on what you're making, and how you've decided to put it together. It's entirely possible to make a regular-prim item texture "fuzzier" than its sculpted counterpart. There are infinite possible permutations.

All things being equal, though, a sculpted plane will have the same amount of pixels spread across it as any similarly textured single side of a cube. A sculpted cylinder textures the same way as the curved side of a regular cylinder. A sculpted torus matches up exactly with a regular torus.

Of course, as I mentioned a minute ago, poly count considerations make it unwise to replace any single cube-side with a whole sculpted plane. But that's obviously an extreme. With more normal use, well-textured sculpties don't have to throw your poly count skyrocketing, and the textures that are on them can look just as good as those on regular prims, if not better.


They were intended for organics, yes, but that doesn't mean they have to be "simple". If I could log in right now, I'd love to grab some screenshots of some well-textured sculpties to show you. I think you'd be surprised just what's possible, Ceera, based on what you've said here. I'll grab some shots for you after they've fixed today's networking problems.

Thanks for the replies. Here is a bit more information.

I do have a sculptie that I have mapped with Planar and it looks good. It even looks good to me from a distance right until it disappears. The problem is that it doesn't hold the same LoD for other users so I was wondering if switching to Default would help. The problem is that this sculpt map will not support Default so I would have to try to create the same shape with a different method. Since all my attempts to do this have failed, I was just wondering if I was wasting my time given that Default might not improve the situation.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say, Tatiana. What do you mean by "the sculpt map will not support default"? The sculpt map has no power whatsoever to dictate what type of texture mapping you choose to use. All it contains is instructions for how to shape the sculpt mesh. The actual UV mapping of ever sculpty is exactly the same, just a simple rectangle. So what exactly do you mean?

Some screenshots would probably be helpful, assuming you can get in-world right now to grab them.


So you know, when you're using default mapping, the texture is married to the UV's, as if it's been painted onto the surface. So as you stretch or bend various parts of the surface, you also stretch or bend the corresponding parts texture.

When you use planar mapping, you're projecting the texture unto the surface, similar to how a slide projector puts an image onto a screen. That's why planar mapping doesn't work well for curved surfaces. Imagine projecting a slide onto something rounded, like a beach ball instead of a screen. As the ball surface curves away from the projector, the image gets distorted. Only the parts most directly facing the projector will look normal. The only way a planar projection works in full is when it's aimed at a flat surface, hence the name "planar", which means "flat; of or pertaining to a plane". Make sense?



As for why others aren't seeing the same thing you are, that's extremely common. If your object detail slider and/or draw distance is set higher than theirs, you'll see all objects, including sculpties, at higher detail over greater distances. One important skill to develop in sculpty creation is "LOD-proofing". You want to set up your sculpt geometry in such a way that the basic framework of the shape doesn't change much (or preferably not change at all, although that's obviously not always possible) from LOD level to LOD level. Depending on what program you're using to create your sculpts, there are various methods for doing that.

The sculptie I am working with is a number of thin, flat, planes that intersect each other in the middle. So planar does work well with it. The texture lies straight/flat across all of the planes as it should.

When I say that the "sculpt map will not support default" what I mean is that the texture, instead of being straight/flat is swirled around the centre of each plane making it unuseable for my purposes. So I am saying that though I managed to create the correct sculpt shape, this shape cannot be textured "well" (i.e just straight across) using default.

From the replies here I am guessing that I should really concentrate more on the LoD rules rather than worrying about whether or not to use Planar of Default which makes sense to me and was the reason I was asking.

Thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Chosen. Guess it shows how much I've been head-down with my building projects of late. I haven't had much free time recently to experiment with non-spherical type sculpties. But much of what I said *does* hold true for sculpts based on the spherical type.

I can't get in-world either right now, so I am working from memory here, as well as on my previous post.

For example, I often use a one-prim sculpt created in SculptyPaint for a 12-step section of stair treads. It's based on the default spherical stitching, and obviously if I were to do a new one now, I would try again with the plane prim type... But with that spherical form, a 1024 x 1024 texture for carpeted stair treads is only able to use 1/4 of the texture width, while the rest is wrapped around the edges and underside of the prim. And there's also a large bit of waste at the top and bottom of the texture, as well as at each of the stair tread edges, which have doubled verticies. The end result is that even with the largest possible texture, the usable part for the top of those stairs is equivalent to no better than a 256 x 512 or smaller texture, in terms of the pixels that can actually be seen on the treads and faces of the steps.

From what you are saying, I could gain a lot of detail by using a plane-type sculpted prim instead, and not forming the undersides or even the edges of the stair treads. I'll have to lok into that, certainly.