Texturing a Sculpted Prim?

hey all,

Now that I *finally* got my sculpted prim looking the way I want. Is there any suggestions on how to go about texturing it? I am thinking it is quite different then a regular prim, and I some how need to create some kind of map. But, at the moment I only have Wings 3D and Photoshop. Any tutorials or anything?

Actually..texture basically the same as any other prim, just need to know where things are. I'm sending you a texture in world (Made by Chosen Few) that helps with this. It is a coloured grid to reference points on the prim.

Basically load the texture into photoshop, and paint over it (On another layer usually, for ease and accuracy) and see what happens.

If you'd like a bit more in-depth for using this method, contact me in world, I've usually got time, and can generally help. It's not too hard, in my opinion. Just as easy or hard as any other texture job, just organized a little differently.

ETA:: There are other methods too, this just happens to be my favorite method for texturing sculpted prims outside of a 3d application like Maya and Blender.

This tutorial shows how to enable UV Mapping in Wings3D and use it to guide your texturing:
http://www.mermaiddiaries.com/2007/06/day-279-sculpted-prims-tutorial-part-4.html

Basically, as Keira says, you will use a coloured grid that will show you where the points on your texture correspond to points on the UV map. Be warned that when you look at the texture in Wings3D, it's rather blurry (I think because of the low number of vertices), but you should be still able to read the grid well enough.

Using Wings to preview the texture gives you the advantage of being able to sculpt the object using the texture as a reference. But once you are done sculpting, I'd recommend using SculptySpace (an open source program) as a previewer, as it more accurately displays what you will see in Second Life:
http://sculptyspace.com/

While both Wings and Sculptyspace are useful for this, I honestly recomend just applying the texture to the sculpty in world, and looking at it and figuring it out, if your computer can handle it.

It's the most accurate method, since there may be odd things happening in your sculpty upload that will throw off the texture just slightly, and mess up the effect. But if you look at it in-world you already see it with the faults so you can more accurately texture.

If your computer can handle it, and you're up for it, for this method I definitely recommend using SL as your 'preview' for the grid on the sculpty and switch between SL and photoshop to see where to paint things.

Have fun, and good luck!

I see your point, Keira, but for me, I find SculptySpace much faster than the upload. Save in PS, click on SculptySpace, click "import" and la!

Maybe I just need more RAM (ah, I remember once thinking 2 gig was superfast...)

Well, it is faster to test new textures in something like sculptyspace, plus cheaper (10 L$ per upload, unless using beta grid, so yeah) but what I mean is just use the grid texture within Second Life as your reference, and switch between SL and PS for the initial painting (And referencing). Generally speaking it shouldn't really take any more time, though there may be a 1-2 second delay in switching between windows. While photoshop is up though, SL shouldn't take as much in the way of resources and you should be able to paint fine with most of today's computers.

Of course, older computers will be slower, etc, etc, and this is just my way of doing it.

I honestly test my textures in SL as well, just because I like to be able to show the progression of my works in-world, from start to finish, but generally speaking, sculptyspace and the like are just fine for testing textures to make sure they look good. My only warning is don't completely change a texture because it looks slightly off in sculptyspace. If it's something like that, where it's just barely off but breaks the effect, check it in-world before redoing it. The differences may be just enough to make it perfect in-world but not so much in sculptyspace and the like.