3D Studio Max Sculpties

Hey everyone, this question goes out to everyone that imports sculpted prims with 3D Studio Max

My question is, how do you export the proper data from Max so it can be imported as a sculpted Prim?

What I have done was use the Render Texture feature in Max and rendered a complete map in TGA form, but when I went to import it into SL, the sculpted prim was some kind of flat distorted prim.

Anyone know how I could correct this?

What you baked was a texture map, which is useful, but you also need to bake a sculpt map. You'll find lots of useful info on Sculpties in Max in this thread: /8/09/256725/1.html

I took a look at the link, but I found it of no use to me, I'm still learning Max, so I have no idea what they are doing without step-by-step instructions.

Also, I cause use any external add-ons or programs that have to be imported into the Max directory (students can't mess with campus comps )

I'm looking for a simple walkthrough on how to export a readily made sculptie from a Max model from the program directly.

Max cannot do sculpties "out of the box". If you cannot either add shaders or run scripts you are truly gimped, and will not be able to generate sculpt maps. You MUST be able to modify Max at some level. Your school is doing you a disservice in regards to learning if you cannot modify 3ds Max. I mean that in a general way, not just in regards to sculptie creation.

If you follow the links in that thread you will see step by step instructions for most of the Max sculptie authoring schemes. http://home.comcast.net/~pixelforgeltd/Tutorial.htm and http://www.joe-brown.net/SecondLife/SculptTut/SculptTut.html both have step by step instructions. Prim Composer, http://liferain.com/downloads/primcomposer/ which has subsumed SculptGenMax, is pretty well documented too.

That forum link Chip gave is pretty much the condensed list of links on how to make sculpt maps with Max. At least one of the methods mentioned doesn't use plugins (though if I remember right, it does use a custom shader), but I have to admit that I didn't pay much attention to that one because I too am pretty new to 3ds Max and it looked intimidating at first glance.

If you can't install any plugins, I think you are going to be pretty limited, unfortunately.

My favorite method for Max is to use PrimComposer, which you can find at http://liferain.com/downloads/primcomposer.

You can use the shader method as long as you can load a material library to get the shader loaded into max. I assume you can at least open files from a floppy or thumb drive or somesuch. If you can't save it to the drive on the computer you'd just need to reload it each time.