sculpties and polygons[maya]

I know how to model something with polygons i just dont know how to impliment it into secondlife. only one tutorial exists and its for NURBs, I hate nurbs. I can work with them but i hate nurbs.

if anyone can direct me to a polygon [sculpdy] tutorial or at least give me a few examples of the UV format that was mentioned in the Wiki i'm pretty sure i can figure it out for myself.

how ever without this information its probibly going to be a long process of trial and error...

Nurbs are like mother in-laws. You have learn to deal with it.

To have a polygonal object be importable as a sculpt prim, you must have a completely uniform UV layout, going to all 4 borders, with no holes, and no overlap. If you dont know how to do this i recommend purchasing a polygonal modelling book from Autodesk.

All you need to do to create a poly object with the correct UV and topology is create a plane with 32x32 segments. Bend it into a cyllinder and weld the seam. Select the top and bottom row of vertices and scale them each down to a single point (but don't weld them). You can then sculpt that into whatever shape you like (by moving vertices (not cutting, extruding, welding, or anything else that would change the topology or UV space). It works in Max anyway. I don't know why it wouldn't work just as well in Maya.

Disclaimer: I'm not a Maya user.

to Xenius Revere:

I'm not offended, honestly I'm not. I do have an education in 3d animation so I know how to create and minipulate UVs to be uniform and wrapping. I think phrasing the question as basic as I did brought you to the conclusion that i might be a novice user.

I like to research processes thoughly before i butcher the process ^^; since the tutorial listed dosent go over this aspect of modeling in any other way than passive mention it should be looked into, the true novice users who only know poliginal modeling pipelines are left in the dark.

by looking into some of your other posts I found out that the sculpte conforms to the UVs of the sculpted objects which is kind of backwards to my understanding of how importing objects usualy works. (reference here for post in question:
http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=1521413&postcount=11 )

in other games/platforms when importing geometry usualy the UVs have to be redefined. in texturing the UVs must first be defined to conform to.

by now knowing that once the UVs are defined on my model they will translate into SL I think i can attempt to get started on making some models, this still dosent cover my request for some UV reference to some Working poly based models.

I think a fallow up question is weather or now I have to completely weld all UVs to one contiguious shape. or weather or not the UVs can be divided into hulls.

The exporter written by Qarl for Maya seems to work better with nurbs patches and takes the loose 'sock wrapping over your model' approach.

Maybe you can experiment using the exporter for Wings3D instead. Its written to read the poly model at a per-vertex level, so you can work in exact 32x32 shapes.

The poly mesh can be exported to Maya. I personally use Cinema 4D to manipulate it, then export it back to Wings3D for conversion to the sculpty texture. I use the .3ds format, since the .obj format doesn't seem to convert properly between C4D and Wings3D.