sculptie tools limitations

I just started to learn 3D modelling for sculpties and started using Wings3D
It seems that SL will only accept a certain mesh type wich limits the things you can do like not extruding or adding vertices. The exporter can only work with a limited type of meshes. Is this a limitation that also applies to other 3D modelling software?
So far I have not been able to get to grips with Blender but maybe I should if it does not have these limitations.


Thanx

The limitations have nothing to do with Wings or with any other modeling program. They are imposed by SL, and have to do with what sculpties actually are. To be a sculpty, a model must be made in a very specific way.

The best analogy for sculpty geometry is origami. Basically, a sculpty is nothing more than a plane that has been deformed in 3D space to create (semi) complex shapes. The number of poylgons is fixed, so you can't add or subtract vertices. The plane's mesh topology and its UV map must remain intact and perfect. Just as a piece of paper remains nothing more than a 2D rectangle, no matter how you fold it in 3D space, so must a sculpty. Make sense?

I'd suggest you take a look at the sculpty wiki for more detailed information on what sculpties actually are, how they work, and how to create them. Then, if you have any further questions, head on back over here and fire away.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims

You'll find some tutorials for Wings and other programs in the 3D Software Guide section.

The main difference between the way the Wings exporter and the Blender exporter work is that my Blender scripts use the UV map as the sculptie surface rather than just the vertex position in the mesh. This gives a lot more flexibility in how you create the sculptie.

The scripts include smart UV mapping for all the different types of sculpties which let you work with the number of faces you want and still get a LOD ready sculptie.

Here's a 5 x 7 face sculptie with subsurf:


As you can see, the UV map is an irregular grid rather than neat little squares. This is so that the modeled edges align perfectly with the key pixels for the LOD levels of the sculptie.

Here's a slightly edited version reimported into Blender:


This shows LOD1 and the uv grid is now the standard squared layout for sculpties. It took less than a minute to create this sculptie. The only editing was to select the 5 edge loops at the corners and to set their crease value to 1.0

So the scripts do a lot of the hard work for you, but basically anything you can UV unwrap to a rectangular surface can be baked as a sculptie. Some users just model normally, then use uv unwrapping to map a number of sculptie surfaces to their mesh.

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/ has tutorials that will help get you started in Blender with sculpties.

/8/18/289217/1.html#post2191444 explains the limits on using extrudes.