Sculpt Map Enlargement?

I have a sculpt map that a friend of mine e-mailed me (with full permission to edit/change as needed) but have a problem that I haven't been able to figure out.

The map is for a flat surface with a few bumps in it to produce a rippled water effect. It looks absolutely marv, except that I can't expand the prim large enough. No matter how much I stretch the prim's X, the sculpt stays about 2m or less visually. Can I (and if so, how do I) edit the sculpt map to increase the X width? The Y and Z are both fine (I won't be using the Z anyway and the Y expands to a visual 10m.) The final size of the sculptie should be about 7mx7mx.5m for a small pond I have.

On the same note, is it possible (I know it's not in SL) to tile the sculpt maps in PS and achieve a larger sculpt from it? In the map I have now, expanding the Y to a visual 10m stretches some areas, but I'd prefer a more detailed version such as the one the map produces naturally.

I'm not familiar enough with the graphics side of sculpts to be able to figure this out, having all my 3d building experience being prims in SL. I do have enough of a grasp on PS to be able to manipulate the sculpt map some, but I don't want to screw it up and end up with the shattered toothpick sculpt that any regular texture put into the sculpt map spot produces. And unfortunately, my friend just went on a 2 week holiday so I can't reach her to ask her to fix it for me.

I know I could just buy a sculpt map, but it defeats the purpose of learning something new. I want to be able to do some basics in sculpties and am working towards that end. Personally, I think she sent me this one to push me to learn to do it myself so I don't bug her anymore.

Thanks in advance,

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You cannot just "enlarge" a sculpt map in PS and expect it to work. The sculpt maps are not really graphic. They are really 3D data captured in a graphics format. You have to start with some 3D generator program that allows you to create a 3D image you want and then translate that 3D image into a sculptmap that you import into SL as a graphic image.

I had wonderful results on a recent project (a full hollowed out canoe) by using Wings 3D, which is free. You start with one of the spheres that they give you and you push and pull the points around untill you have the shape you want. They offer an addin that translates this shape into a sculptmap that you can bring into SL. They also provide a 2D texture map that you can use PS or even Paint to then apply texture and color to your object properly.

Wings 3D is easy to use and the website offers some very specific directions on using the Texture editor feature. The results were spectacular for 6 hours of work. Catch me inworld and I will show you the canoe.

Valradica Vale

To scale a sculpted prim you need to scale the prim itself. not the sculpt map that generates it. You can't tile them either. You'll need to use duplicate prims instead.

Careful when trying to tile sculpted planes. SL doesn't handle the edges of planes very well. You often end up with visible gaps where the edges meet. This is partly due to JPEG artifacting in the sculpt texture, but primarily it's due to the fact that 8-bit-per-channel images don't carry enough mathematical precision to make seams fit together all that well. Last I heard, LL was considering allowing 16-bit-per-channel sculpt maps to solve this problem, but who knows how long it will be before that happens.

I hope we don't have to wait too long because I really want to redo all my starship hulls completely out of sculpted planes, but I'm not holding my breath.

You can scale the sculpt map, but not by making the image larger. Load up the map in PS or Gimp or whatever you use and pull up the color channels. For a piece like this you will most likely see one of the channels full of barely visible bumps and the other two channels filled with gradient patterns. If the texture is not stretching all the way to the end of the area to another it means that the gradient patterns are not running the full range of 256 color variations. Since this is a flat piece with very little detail you could probably replace those gradients with bucket fill ones that run the whole color range.

Johan Laurasia (of Clockwerks) was kind enough to help me out with this issue. He looked at the channels in PS and the blue channel needed expanding. Once the new texture was uploaded, the sculptie expands to about 9 on the axis that was only going to about 2.

Thanks for all the replies, especially Jamay, which is what it ended up being.

Thank you Johan for your help!

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