.obj -> sculpties

Hmm... I didn't buy anything. I found a "Blender Noob to Pro" Wiki that's been very helpful with Blender in general. And on the Sculptie Wiki, go to the 3D Software Guide link, then scroll down to Blender, and read those articles. There are links to step-by-step guides for doing sculpties in Blender. That's what I started with. The Discussion page (link at the top of the page) for the 3D Software Guide is helpful too.

Thank you very much Domino.. That was exactly what I was looking for.
Because of that simple, down to earth, 1 sentence explanation I have now completed 3 tutorials.
I still have a long ways to go, But I now feel I am on my way.
A journey begins with a single step.

Hey Cindy, best converter on the net yet! It is simple, elegant, and to the point! Not to mention universally usable by all software. I think that each 3D package has it's own quirks when exporting things (like for me its 3dsmax), but there's nothing you can't do with a little experimenting. The "### pixels are BAD" thing is really nice too, useful for debugging bad UV's, not to mention that the UV coords are the same as max's, which makes texture baking easy.. oh, its just great If i find time, i could make a tutorial for 3dsmax using this converter.

Oh yeah, just some remarks... First - inside-out! Its easily fixable by inverting colours, but still. And second, can you add support for 256x256 textures? I know there is no visible difference after 128, but it's still a nice thing to have. Some commandline parameters would be nice too, especially for making batchfiles - a mirror-object function for example would be very handy.

Having some troubles with Cindy's converter. I seem to get noise in the conversion, even if I open up a premade OBJ in Zbrush, save it and then run it through. Not sure what's causing it, but its somewhat annoying. Maybe I have an older version of the program? I saved the image as a png to minimize loss, but you can see what I am running into.

I am also using zbrush and have been getting similar results with Cindy's converter. Cindy's own explanation of this is the special way zbrush does the uv map with tilies. I figured out a way to patch the noisy sculpty map in photoshop. The patched map sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Yesterday I switched to the Wings exporter which works beautifully. As long as you use Hypatia's sphere to sculpt and you don't add any polygons in your sculpting you can use Wings which is free. See /8/20/183764/1.html
Here is your posted sculty map after being patched in photoshop. I select the good pixels and copy them to another layer. Then I use the Flaming Pear (freebie) solidify filter.

Hmm, until something better comes along, solidify is doing the trick for me. Now back to my experiments. Boy LL must be making some coin off these texture uploads

Thanks for the Feedback, now i know how to continue.
I confess, i wasted a lot of time experimenting with
a Projection Algorithm (somehow like the Projection
Modifier in 3dMax). Well, i got the first Results that
look more or less like a Sculpty, but nothing useful yet.
If i ever get this working correctly, we wouldnt need
UV coords in the .obj File.
The UV's from ZBrush confuse me. If the Pattern is always
like this, so we can simply skip rows/columns, i can implement that.
Scaling the Output image by 2 or 4 is on my todo list, too.
Oh yes, and a few Command Line Parameters

A projection algorithm would be just awesome... Perhaps you can implement both the UV and projection algorithms, and have the user choose from the commandline?

Cindy, currently I have found the most success using your program with Mudbox and Sylvia's solidify trick, using Daryth Kennedy's cylinder as a base. Imports are good enough my main limitation is how much skill I have with mudbox.

Yes, thats what i want to do but as i said, the projection thing is not working
correctly (my math skills are weak) - and projection is somehow limited anyway.
Just for Laughs, i might even add my 'original' obj2sculpt Algorithm,
the one that only converts 32 x 32 Meshes to Sculpties (never released,
i thought it was useless) - you know, some Sculpty Exporters work like this.

By the way, did you see Gearsawe's Fence and Spiral UV Map ?
/8/9c/185426/2.html#post1524728
Awesome. Fabulous. Pure Genius. I still dont understand how it works.

Ditto

I've been having a lot of fun with your OBJ/3DM converters. So thanks for everything you've done so far

Cindy, thanks so much for your converters. Used together with MoI and Wings this to me is the easiest way to play around with sculpted prims.

I'm not an experienced 3D designer, so I'm not sure if I got everything right, but something seems to go wrong with the "North pole" in my designs -- it appears to be slightly off the centre when I upload them to SL.

I attach an example for illustration. The first pictures shows the design in MoI, the second one the wireframe view of what I get in SL (the issue is where the green and red lines meet in the centre of the image)

What do you think? Could this be a JPEG artefact?

Glox

Hi all, Three cheers to Cindy for making an awesome converter! So awesome, I ended up being one of the winners for the contest! Woot! I really can't thank you enough. The things that were coming out before I found your tool were terrible. I was projecting the 64x64 sphere by hand, one vertex at a time to the underlying model. This, of course, sucked and the results were less than acceptable to say the least.

I used Blender to export a obj and then just dropped it in your program. Amazingly simple. My blood pressure dropped 100 points in like 3 minutes.

Anyways, do you reckon there's a chance that this tool could be ported to linux? Wine hates anything with .Net stuff in it, and I'd REALLY like to not boot to windows just to run this thing. I'm learning Python and have some programming experience, so I'd be willing to do the leg work if you're interested.

To the real winner of the Sculpty Contest..... Hurray Cindy!!!

Cindy, i was looking at a way to view and convert obj to tga, and eventually got here...

Ive had Intellicad for some time, creating boring stuff like circuit diagrams, but it has the ability to import and export obj files.

has anyone used it to make or modify obj files?

It uploaded your teapot perfectly,

http://www.incony.org/webpics/Cindys_Teapot.bmp

But ive never used Intellicad for that, and its just a real hard learning curve, logic isnt in it.. despite the help files, there should only be three simple steps to stretch an entity for example.. but damn could i do it.. no.. laughs.. and using the exporter should be easy too.. but could i save what i had uploaded.. nope..

So ive not been able to see what happens if i use Intellicad to modify an object, and then create a tga from it.. but i just thought i would see what is possible..

i will persevere.. it seems to hold some promise..

Im hoping that someone can tell me what im doing wrong. it should be really easy to modify and save obj`s ...

So after reading the export help again.. i saved the teapot using Intellicad exporter as an obj.. fine.. but from that to tga convertor.. i get this error.. no UV`s..

http://www.incony.org/webpics/error.bmp

so perhaps it cant be done.. oh well unless someone knows different it means Intellicad cant be of real use in obj mods.. unless the UV`s can be got back..?

I used:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/5169/software-and-tools/LithUnwrap---Free-UV-Mapper-for-Windows

so.. i can now modify an existing obj file in Intellicad.. (once i figure it out).. save it..and reload the missing UV map with LithUnwrap, providing i have the original or one i create i guess..

Lithunwrap is a really good piece of kit...it can do so much..it can retexture, correct errors.. one can preview the object and cross save/import.. ie import and export a UV map

Intellicad is very special in the way one can detail and interact with the object, learning that will be the road i am on now..

The result is i can now easily convert/modify an obj into a tga from scratch really.. its just time,,, laughs.. its taken me 6 hours to get to this point from my first post.

I am into organic construction.. i want decent trees... water that has texture..rocks and surfaces that have depth and character..sculpties enable that.. i am a happy chappy right now.

I'm glad everyone else is so happy with this. As usual it doesn't work for me. After trying 3 different modeling programs, various uv wraps and conversions, spend L$100+. I have yet to get a sculpty that looks anything like the object. Oh well, back to trying to do something with these barbaric prims.

Not trying to sound like a dumb, but probably will. I see where several people write that their new and working with little info on how to. I've worked with several programs and settled on two Blender and Wings3d. I spent several hours looking for step by step instructions after playing with the program first. Then I spent several hours going through the instructions only to find myself falling asleep.

I like the idea of 3D and being able to do it with my all thumbs hands. The only thing I have a problem with and it's probably because I didn't spent enough time looking for it is, Cindy's or anyone's converter and how to use it. Sorry if that sound dumb, but I have the sculpting down, now I want to upload to second life and I'm out of brain cells to do so.

Any help, thanks
Justin

Take your vertex .obj; triangles not polys, then just drag and drop onto obj2sculpty, It will probably give you an error message, I found UVmap to help, just filter and resave. Eventually you will get a 128 bmp of a sculpty. 1 problem, 128 means serious jaggies, and a useless item.
But you can upload as an image, now create a box, in the drop down menu for object select sculpty, it will pop up the default, click on it then select your jaggy 128 texture and look a nice jaggy object.

Manstan i have the same problem.. even though i can import Cindys teapot into Intellicad.. then save it.. with a new name.. upload that into Lithunwrap, then load a UV on that, error check it.. see a perfect teapot... save it.. as an obj pop the obj into the convertor and see what would appear to be a perfect copy of Cindys teapot bitmap, when either the bitmap or a tga made from it is used on a sculptie in secondlife it doesnt look anything like a teapot. Laughs.. so i can make and modify sculpties.. but still not get one made from scratch to work in secondlife.. At least ive not paid much money to do that.. a few lindens so far for the uploads.

something is not being done right i know.. so im looking for a method to convert a tga into an obj. then i can use a known working cube tga or bananna tga.. whatever and use that as a basis.. a cube .obj that works in SL would be great. Ive got cube tga`s that work in SL, just getting from that to an obj is what im looking at..

i sense your frustration.. especially as you have spent some money..

A benefit of time limited software trials is the ability to see what works and doesnt for just some of your time and effort.. not real cash..

i am close.. getting a working obj would be great..

EDIT: something else is odd about SL working tga`s, Lithunwrap doesnt see them as windows 32 bit files.. so i cant get an SL working tga into Lithunwrap.. maybe its that road thats causing the route to Cindy`s teapot not coming out as a teapot but more of a crunched leaf. I use PSP to convert and modify tga`s.. it doesnt change anything.. even MS paint can change the bitmap made from a known working tga..copied and pasted back into psp and saved, one can create some wierd and wonderfull sculptie shapes from the working tga in SL.. but.. Obj cube that works in SL would be the place to start.. everything else can be done for free..

FWIW, AC3D will import .OBJ files and then you can use Zora Spoonhammer's free AC3D export plug-in to output a scupltie from that file. You may still need to do some fine adjustments to your mesh though for best results.

More info can be found at http://www.ccccybernetics.com/

Zee the problem isnt the .obj. there are tons of them out there.. its getting one that works not only in everything else.. but SL as well, when converted into a tga..

As an example.. i can load the avatar mesh that linden supply into intellicad.. and see a perfect tessellated 3d avatar.. so i figure that i should be able to use just its head .. the joy at cutting that off cannot be described..

if someone has cube .obj configured to work with Cindy`s script.. that will then turn into a cube tga like the one in the sculptie example downloads, i would like that..

Hmm... np. I'll have to give that a shot and see what happens. I know that I've watched Zora use the cut tools in the program to split an object in half and then output the halves correctly. But maybe I'm missunderstanding still.

.tga to .obj? Have fun, I've seen several programs that supposedly will turn a picture in to an object but I have yet to see one that actually would.
I could also cut my object apart in Hex2 to lay it flat, but this is usually as much if not more work then making the object in the first place.
I'm not saying this is a bad app, it is actually nice. But a bit too unstable; very picky about it's .obj and what it gives you is of such a low resilution as to be useless. IMHO
I have seen Atlas on the Spiral graphics forum make much better sculpties with a texturing program. What I am working on now is combing his build for making sculpties with an object uvmap. No luck so far

the problem is.. Cindys bmp isnt working for me at least.. its not loading into SL as a teapot when used as a sculptie texture.. even though programs like intellicad, see it as one when the obj file is used.. i posted the pic.. some replies earlier.. now what i want is a proper verticed cube that when converted into a tga.. is a cube in SL.. the obj when cnverted into a tga.. should look like the example given in the linden labs download.. the obj files ive found so far of cubes, look like cubes, but wont run in SL. the vertices are not correct or they dont have a uv map.. sure i could eventually figure out the grid... or tesselations that are required.. build one and uv it, like blender does.. but.. i figured that someone might have made one.. it would save me time.. and effort..
i dont know the required vertice info yet.. im just on trial and error..since i cant find the info anywhere.. everyone is either messing around with blender.. ok so could i.. but ive been using intellicad for some time... not in this way.. but ive got it.. its free to me..

with a cube obj that works in SL, i can learn backwards.. its how i do things.. take something that works.. pull it apart.. see what makes it tick.. then build one of my own.. specifically what i want.. not what a program designer has decided i should use..


its an engineering mentality.. i work in electromechanical engineering, i build and fix things, its about spacial awareness, i see the picture, its inside my head..

right now i want a cube obj, that when converted into a bmp or tga, loads into SL as a cube when used as a sculptie texture.

when you want to build a house.. you might want a brick.. or some wood.. thats what the cube obj would be for me.. a building block.. it should work across the board.. in all programs not just SL.. if it doesnt.. there should be a simple way to make it do so.. not some convoluted method that depends on the deepness of ones pocket..or the method used to create it.. a brick might be complex.. but it should be just as easy to use as any brick..and there should be bricks everywhere.. to use by everyone..

its worse if the bricks are hidden.. not for the builder, but the hider.. the builder will find a way..the hider can keep his hidden brick hidden... its why web search engines are so usefull, what might have been hidden for ever in a book on a shelf isnt going to be..