Gap in sculptie

Hello all,


I've recently started attempting to make sculpties, and I keep running into the same problem no matter what program I use to create the sculptie (I've tried both Maya and Rokuro).

The sculptie looks fine in the 3d application, with no gaps at all (in Maya I used Close surface to make sure everything is connected), but when uploading the sculptie texture to SL and applying it to a prim, there is a huge gap in the prim from top to bottom. I included a picture as what the prim looks like in sculpted prim preview mode.

I am completely at a loss as to what I am doing wrong. Any help would be much appreciated!


Thanks,
Relika

Yes I noticed this happening about a month ago.

In the preview I see the split, but when it uploads to SL it's fine. Are you seeing the same problem when its in-world?

I think it has something to do with the new Sculptie topologies , plane and torus. The plane topology will have a split if you apply it to a sphere based sculptie.

I think this could be a bug?

-whyroc

I'd expect to see that for a plane topology. Not sure why that is the default preview topology though.

The prim looks like that for me in-world as well. :/ It's quite frustrating since it has happened with every single sculptie I uploaded so far, even the ones I made using sculptie tutorials.

I included a picture of the sculptie prim with gap in-world

You might want to try setting the prim type with script:

llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "your sculptie uuid", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_SPHERE]);

Or maybe even flip the sculpt map vertically before uploading, it's worth a shot..

-whyroc

I noticed the last month in the sculpt previewer, shows it as 'plane' And renders it as 'sphere' when uploading it in second life.

I managed to upload lot of torus shapes created in sculptypaint, although you got to use a script like above to set them.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/00readme_settorus01.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/00readme_settorus02.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/settorus.txt

sculptypaint v.08 that support torus shapes atm (free to download for macosx / windows / linux)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/

(shameless plug, 42 torus shape examples I created in sculptypaint myself, and sell at the moment, but you can create those for free in sculptypaint)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/beanntoruspack512.jpg

Your example though, it looks good in the sculpt previewer, and bad in second life, maybe scale it to 128*128 or 256*256 so the jpg2000 compression doesnt hurt your sculpty?
Use nearest neabour though, when scaling it in like photoshop?

Although looking at the shape you want, you want a kind of torus shape. this means, left side is connected to right side. and top side is connected to bottom side. This you only can do with Torus type of sculpties at the moment.

I'd be willing to bet the problem is probably in the way in which you closed the surface. Rather than starting with an open surface and then closing it, which can cause bizarre behavior depending on the order in which you do things and the shape of the surface in question, I'd recommend you start with a surface that's already closed. Begin with a NURBS sphere and you can't go wrong.

What is the resolution of the texture? Try different resolutions.

Thanks all for your kind replies

I've tried flipping the texture in all directions, without any luck. The texture I use is the standard output of the SL Maya exporter, a 64x64 bmp file. I converted it when flipping the texture in Photoshop into 24 bits TGA, it became 128x128. Also, applying the script to the prim didn't work.

When making the sculptie in Maya I indeed didn't use a NURBS Sphere, but the CP/EP Curve Tool. It is very much possible that this is indeed the problem, since now I recall that I haven't used a nurbs sphere yet to create a sculptie from scratch. I will try this out tomorrow evening after I come home from my RL job and let you know my findings then.

Back again....(been sick for a couple of days)...and with some good news! I managed to get a sculptie without gaps into SL. The trick was indeed, as Chosen Few pointed out, starting with a NURBS sphere. I've tried making sculpties with a NURBS Sphere before which also resulted in gaps after uploading, but this time I must've done something differently as it turned out fine in SL.

Also, a very friendly and helpful person in SL has helped me figure out what went wrong with my file and several ways how to fix it. I will shortly elaborate on it here, as it may help others out there as well who struggle with the same problem:

* Moving the seam in the 3d app
* Closing the surface
* Centering the pivot, snapping it to the origin and freezing the transforms

Have a good Sunday,
Relika

Or, rotate - not flip - the texture 90 degrees to the left. That fixes it too.

Unfortunately, you see the gap in preview *either way*, which is extremely frustrating. I've gotten to the point I can basically see if there texture is wrong just by looking at the raw sculpt map, but its still a pain in the butt.

There's no good reason to have to start with spheres every time.

I'm having these gap problems too, but what I'm doing is basically taking a CV curve, drawing it on one axis, duplicating it, scaling it to the negative axis, (or mirroring it) reverse curve direction on the other curve, and attach and close.

I'm going to try molding it from a NURBS sphere to see what I get

Um, don't know if this is still relevant to you folks, but this seems the best place to put this information for posterity.

Lofted shapes in Maya always suffer with this gap after uploading to SL unless you do the following:

1) Select your lofted shape and click Edit Nurbs > Open/Close Surfaces.
2) Open the Channel Box, select loft1 (or whatever your loft shape is called), and change 'Close' value from off to on.
3) After upload into SL, drop this script in the sculptie prim:

string texture_uuid = "enter sculptie texture uuid here";

default
{
state_entry()
{
llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, texture_uuid, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_TORUS]);
llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());
}
}


voila. hopefully.

works for me.

I'm seconding what Reitsuki said. This just looks like another sculptie that needs its map to be turned 90 degrees (it doesn't matter which way). Apparently anytime you go through this "lofting"... I don't really even know what it is but there's a pattern here... you should check the sculpt map you create, to see where your poles are. You know you need to rotate it if you see flat, consistent color (the poles) down the left and right edges rather than likewise smoothly colored rows across the top and bottom (where SL says the poles should be).

Remember, flipping horizontally just turns it inside out, and flipping vertically does nothing. (EDIT: maybe I was off on the latter point there.)


All Walker is saying is that if you switch to torus topology, there are no longer any poles, and thus no effects from having the right or wrong sculpt map rotation.

In case somebody actually cares, any flip of the sculpty bitmap -- horizontal, vertical or diagonal -- will turn the sculpty inside out. It does that because the flip reverses the processing order of the vertices describing each face.

Unfortunately this doesn't work.
It's a NURBS surface which "spans" two or more profile curves pre-selected by the user.

Ie. Draw a curve, and close it. Now copy and paste a new curve, and place them alongside each other.



Hold down shift, select both curves, then click Surfaces > Loft.



I'm not concerning myself with creating a quality, closed lofted surface here. I'm just demonstrating what happens to Maya lofted surfaces in SL with a rough example.

OK. So we use Qarl's Maya exporter to create the sculptie map and upload it to SL. This is what happens when I apply it to a prim:



This is what happens if I rotate the sculptie map 90 degrees clockwise:



..and this is what happens if I switch to Torus topology using the above script: