Melt-y sculpties. What am I doing wrong?

Hi!

I've been using Wings 3D and Rokuro to experiment with sculpties on my Mac. Unfortunately, it has only been experiments, because all fo them I make look like ice sculptures in the sun.

In the below picture, you can see what I mean. The one on the left is purely Rokuro output. 256 x 256 image. The one on the right is a 256 x 256 Rokuro object I imported into Wings 3D and saved. I had the same issue with pure Wings 3D output, too.

Both should be a lot sharper than they are but, as you can see, they are all melty. So what am I doing wrong? Any ideas?

Mari

Actually, those look about on par with your average sculpty, detail wise. You can only force so much detail out of a sculpty.

As a note, I find 128x128 to be the optimal size for sculpt texture uploads... anything beyond that seems to be a case of diminishing returns.

Marianne, I had the same fustrations and finally got my answer here:

Reitsuki, didn't mean to belittle your post. That thread explains why some sculpties appear more detailed than others.

/me pulls the covers over head and hides

That is seriously unfortunate.



I swear I've seen untextured sculpties dat look way better. Like the free "plate" texture we all got in our inventory, and a couple other free/nearly free sculpt maps I've been given.

Weird stuff.

Mari

We are the guinea pigs for sculpites. There are a lot of different reasons for LOD which I am sure Reitsuki Kojima, Chip Midnight and others understand and can explain a lot more that my feeble brain can yelp you with.

It is my understanding, that if the tga file is uploaded as a 128x128 image, the compression is not as severe as a 64x64 and there is a chance that the detail will be less effected. There are quite a few threads on this in the Building forum that warrant some reading. If you pay close attention to Chip's head mesh, you will see that the detail is not all that great and with his talent, he was able to create the illusion of more detail.

As far as the plate, I haven't even looked at my inventory yet, there is not much dimensional data to distort and the simpler the mesh, the cleaner it will render.

I can only hope that someday, we will all look back at the First Sculpties, and all have a good laugh.

We can only be thankful for the Gurus that are blazing the trail for the rest of us and sharing their knoweldge.

Here Here!

Kinda. The compression ratio is the same for any size texture (so far as I know), but if you have twice the pixels devoted to any one data point, the compression doesn't effect it as bad.



Pretty much exactly right.

The plate is actually a really simple shape. It's not really all that detailed to begin with, so it fits easier in the limited amount of detail we can get in a sculpty. The more *areas of detail* you try to get, the less detail each one gets, basically. Remember, theres only (32 or 16, depending on LoD) points of detail in each direction on a sculpty. If you have a only a few details on an object, such as a simple shape like a plate, you can devote a lot of those points of detail to each individual detail. This gives a sharper result.

We also need to bear in mind that compression artefacts and round-off errors work on a very small scale as well. So.. if you put a lot of detail in a very small area, you're going to end up with a lot of concentrated inaccuracies - including jaggies and the sphincter effect around the poles. Overall, your best smooth shapes are going to be on large, sweeping curves.

I know this sounds self-defeating, but using more sculpties to create a more detailed object is the way to go. As Reitsuki pointed out, the more detail you try to create, the less you end up with. Instead of all the detail on one prim, using several sculpties, each with it's own detail, will result in a better build.

Sorry, we just can't do it with just one prim!