Sculpties and mega prims

Is it okay to use sculpt maps on mega prims? I have seen some landscaping items such as rocks and cliffs mix the two but is it okay performance wise for both the sim and the client?

yes but its not a good idea. most of the problem is finding a mega thats the right size is naturally made at that dimension not cut or dimpled.

most of the 20x20x1 platforms and stuff are actually 20x20x20 dimpled prims. so be careful on that.

Absolutely. Mega prims don't hurt performance, unless they're physical. Even then, they're often not much worse than a normal prim. The only detriment a mega sculpty might have is on slower computers, as rendering a larger object would technically take more resources. The damage is minimal though, really.

Nothing wrong with using mega prims for sculpts, at all.

let us not forget that SL still hasn't programmed surface calculations for sculpties so even tho it is sculpted it still has the surface of a cube and you'll end up walking on virtual landscape that pushes you like 20m in the sky as if your walking on a normal prim. so make sure to use phantom for like rocks/landscape/roofs/beds etc

Wrong..kinda. The collision shape of a sculpt isn't a cube. I believe the shape depends on the stitching type, though I could be wrong. Either way, I know that it's not (At least not always) a cube.

I know, I'm just nit-picky.

lol its ok
from what i understand the topology of a sculpty is always a cube/torus/plane
cube is used for generic sculpties. most people assume stiching means topology but thats wrong. plane and cube act the same pretty much. torus is as it implies a topology that has a hole in it. however you still cannot walk through it. you may have seen those neato sculpty stair you can walk on with no helper prims right

its simple to make.
just rotate the sculpty on the z or x axis depending where the bottom of the stairs are and rotate 45 degrees and wala instant usable stairs.

It's possible to walk on sculpts, though (Though you can't see where to walk...), and I've always noticed shape to it, not just a flat shape. They've behaved more like spheres in my experience, and torii (Though you can't control the shape, so the hole is too small to traverse)

Anywho, whatevs =P

afaik the collision type of a sculpt was a sphere, but stitching could definitely have something to do with it as well.

Also, if you need some specific size within a megasculpt, you can bring the size down using photoshop or Blender.

Photoshop, iirc, the trick is to either bring your contrast down, or darken the image.

or import to wings and scale and export

Possible in any 3d application that supports sculpts, essentially (And any photo editor that allows you to edit contrast)

Also, this will lower the quality of your sculpt. The smaller, the lower quality, I believe. It reduces the allowed color range of the sculpt map, and so reduces the possible location variation of the vertices in the mesh, which means any given point can't be as relatively accurately placed according to other vertices.

If that makes sense. Anyhow, it lowers the quality of the mesh.

a nightmare just occurred to me... megaprim flexy scuplties with glow and shadows..

prognosis 1 frame per 30 seconds.

While true in general, there is still a difference between resolution of points in space and precision of their placement. For instance, if your sculptie has a geometric shape which can be constructed with few vertices, even very low spatial resolution could result in high precise objects. I once produced a tiny cube ( i seem to get cube expert ) with a color range of 6 colors only, so the sculptmap was very close to grey, but the edges came out exact.

Don't forget to set that thing to spinning and animate its texture.

And temp rez it, of course!

Hmmm. Wouldn't you need 8 colors for the vertices of a cube?

It's actually not a sphere, but the equivalent of a torus with the Y hole size maxed. That was the closest thing to a sphere that SL already knew how to make, but that wouldn't fall over and roll away if made physical.

Getting back on the subject, I use 20x20 mega prims to make some sculpted 1-prim Trees and Plants and they look great! Come and take a look at them if you want

Thanks for the answers. I have been trying to create a balance of performance with content in my sim and it is so difficult. From all I have read about mega prims and sculpties, they seem the best way so far to achieve this by saving on prims and giving a more organic and natural look to objects not easily achieved with standard prims.

@Mikey: Since I have a forest (semi-forest due to performance issues) I am very interested in seeing your plants and trees. I will stop by when I have the chance to check them out.