Converting polygons - NURBS

Hi you guys, I have a sculpture in Maya 3D sculpted in polygons.. But I can't seem to get the maps to work in-world. How can I make this work in SL?

It's not possible to answer without seeing what you've done so far. As you've discovered, there's no magical Make It Work button.

Depending on what you've got now, it might be convertible, but chances are you'll have to rebuild it. Screenshots?

Here are a few snapshots below

Can you explode the model a bit, to show the separation of parts? As it is, it's a little hard to tell whether it's workable or not. It looks like some of it probably is, but some also might not be.

this is the exploded version

Without seeing the wireframe, it's impossible to know for certain, but it looks like most of the parts can easily have the right topology, if they don't already. What happens when you bring it in-world?


In any case, whether the current topology is workable or not, you might want to reconsider your approach. You've got something like 20-25 individual parts there. At 2048 polygons per sculpty, that's roughly 40,000-50,000 polygons per shoe, or 80,000-100,000 for the pair. The entire avatar body is only about 7000. It might be wise to consider whether it's worth tacking another six figures, just for a pair of shoes. It looks like a lot of the parts could be combined, and others could be replaced with textures. I'd try to keep it to around 10 parts per shoe, or so, if it were me.

That said, I've made shoes even more complicated than yours for clients before, some with 40 or more sculpties per shoe, and I never received any individual complaints about lag. So it's possible it won't be a problem. I do have to believe, though, that such things would have to become considerable lag sources if more than a few people were to wear them at the same time in the same scene.

when i take them in-world there is no definite shape. just a whole bunch of jagged edges

Did you delete history, and freeze & reset transformations on all objects before you exported your sculpt maps?

no, but i just figured it wasn't working because i didn't use the whole surface of the scene.. ???

so i thought it needed to be nurbs

The exporter is optimized for NURBS, yes. So for best results, that's the way to go. However, it can also work with polygons, as long as you maintain the right topology and a perfect UV space. Just don't expect perfect duplication of a poly model without doing a lot of extra work. NURBS are a lot more straight forward.

But in all cases, regardless of surface type, removing all history and transforms from every object you are exporting is absolutely crucial.