Sculpties Question? Need help with a project

I've been kinda away from SL for a little, and the whole sculpties thing kinda snuck in while I wasnt looking. So now Ive got a few questions that I'm having a little trouble finding explicitly.

1. Can scultpties be physical?
2. Can sculpties have scripts running in them?
3. Can scultpties be linked to non-sculpties and other sculpties?
4. Is 3ds max (9) perfectly supported in SL for uploading .OBJ's and the like?
5. Can a texture be applied in SL or does it have to be baked to sculpties before uploading?



You see, im trying to make a vehicle, with the chassis being fairly detailed (to many prims to be physical) and same goes for the turret. I've made the whole vehicle already using prims, but now I think using a few sculpties would work better to make it functional.


Please Help!

@1 yes
@2 yes
@3 yes
@4 ?
@5 yes

So do you think it would be a wiser (or even easier, at least in the long-run) decision to rebuild my vehicle so thats its just a couple of sculpties, rather than a couple hundred prims?


Oi, and what I meant with 4 is, I know Maya works really well at getting sculpties in game, but what about 3ds max (9), is it at least as supported?



P.S. So sculpties with a script will behave exactly like one prim will?

i've only used blender so i can't answer #4 for you. As to making a car the sculpties are gonna be rough looking not smooth shiny. so they'll be good for the cushions and dashboard?
floorboards? if you car has a ragtop that might be good too.

oops 'turret' you're not making a car are you? well the same applies just more genericly

and sculpts with a script will behave the same as a regular prim.
with the added bonus of being able to animate the sculpts by switching sculpt maps

lol, well the vehicle I have in mind is a little more rigid and angular, so that shouldnt be a problem

but animating the sculpties with a scultmap?? Is there anything you could link me too to show me what you mean.


Thanks for all the help, Zen

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Join Date: Jul 2006
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Posts: 307

Specifics on perms for animated sculpties
In order to keep your sculpty IP private. have a separate script to switch the sculpty animation on/off. Set the actuall animation script to (no mod, no transfer) then however you want to set the perms for the prim that contains your script is more at your own discrition.

-------------------------
script1 name=stopstart.lsl
-------------------------
default
{
touch_start(integer total_number)
{
llSetScriptState("wiggle",TRUE); state wiggleing;
}
}
state wiggleing
{
touch_start(integer total_number)
{
llSetScriptState("wiggle",FALSE); state default;
}
}
---------------

and your animation script...
-------------------
script2 name=wiggle
-------------------
default
{
state_entry()
{while(1){
llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "UUID", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_SPHERE]);

llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "UUID", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_SPHERE]);
}
}
}

//replace UUID with the actual uuid's of the different sculpty textures

Well, here are a few things to consider.

First, if making vehicles is what this is all about, you should know that no physical object in SL can contain more than 31 prims. For vehicles, it's actually 30, since the pilot avatar is considered a prim for physics purposes. So, if you want to talk about "wisdom" in making vehicles, investing a couple hundred prims into a vehicle is extremely "unwise" if you want the vehicle to function.

If all you want it to do is sit still and look pretty, or if you want to make it a faux vehicle by wearing it as an attachment or something, then by all means put as many prims into as your heart desires. If you want it to be physical, 30 prims or less is the hard rule.

Second, physical sculpties can be tricky. The physical shape of a sculpty is always a torus, no matter what its visual shape might look like. If you maximized scale when you built the sculpty, then that torus will be roughly the same size as the sculpty's visual appearance. If you didn't, then the physical size will be fairly unpredictable in relation to the visuals.

So, an entirely sculpted car may or may not behave predictably as a vehicle. Collisions may not happen as you would expect. To make the physics more predictable, you might want to consider encasing your car in transparent regular prims that loosely mimic the apparent shape, and keep the physical size of the sculpties really small.

Third, here's what to think about with all things, vehicles or otherwise, when it comes to deciding if regular prims or sculpties are better. There's a huge balance issue in play between prim counts and poly counts. I'll explain with an example.

For a project I'm currently working on, I need to replicate some RL gadgets in high detail. Sculpted versions of these items are coming out at about 25-30 prims each, and they look great. The regular prim versions I've made for comparison are weighing in at around 100 prims each, and don't look quite as good (although it's close).

At first glance, the sculpties seem like the clear winner, right? Super low prim count, great visuals, what more could you ask for? Well, when you throw graphics performance into the equation, it becomes pretty clear pretty fast that there's actually a LOT more to ask for.

Every sculpted prim is made up of 1922 polygons. Multiply that by 30 for each item, and you're talking almost 58,000. Multiply again by 20 or so gadgets in the room, and that's almost 1.2 million polys! Ouch! Say goodbye to performance for anyone with a low end, or even a mid level, graphics card.

The regular prim versions, on the other hand, even though they require 3-4 times the amount of prims, are only comprised of about 17,000 polygons each. Putting 20 of those in a room will barely make a dent in performance for anyone.

In this case, the regular prims win. Spending a few hundred extra prims is by far the lesser evil than killing people's frame rates.

I'd advise you to make the same considerations when making your car. If it's 200 prims right now, chances are it's somewhere around 35,000 polygons. That's equivalent to about 18 sculpties. If you can sculpt your car with that amount or less, then go for it. If it's gonna take more than that though, then I would say don't do it. Make sense?

Incidentally, for an actual vehicle car, meaning a 30-prim car, you'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6000 polygons or so. That's about equal to just 3 sculpties.



You can use Max to make sculpties, yes. Don't ask me how though. I'm not a Max user, so I haven't paid much attention to the Max sculpty discussions.




Depends on your definition of "behave", but generally speaking, yes. A prim is a prim is a prim. Whether or not its surface shape happens to have been sculpted doesn't change the fact that it's still a prim.

hmm, "the physical shape of a sculpty is always a torus" ...i thought it was a sphere. Does one differentiate between the 'physical shape" and the bounding box? IDK. you can go through the middle of a large enough torus, right? I know you can't with ANY sculpty. But this does raise the other bigg concern with using sculpts for vehicles (how do you get in?). cuz when you make them phantom to avoid colliding with them then you have to ADD to your prim count to make a sit target.

Well, the vehicle I'm making is all part of a larger project enompessing other vehicles and the like, though I'd like to keep as much as possible under wraps till its presentable and ready to be played . The vehicle itslef is a tank, in the military sense. Im not really going to use the chassis or turret (sculpty or not) as the phsyical object touching anything (though I assume its still got to be physical), but rather alpha some rectangles to the front, sides ans rear, as a form of locational hit detection. I would do the same for whatever would be touching the ground, an alpha'd circle or the like.


Thats kinda my perspective on things. I should be able to make the chassis and turret with about 2 sculpties (keeping it around 6000 triangles), and adding the rest (alpha'd) should only be another like 20 or so rudementary blocks. Im assuming to get what I have now to work fuctionally, I would have to cheat and temp-rez a whole lot of stuff (keep it in a cycle though).

@1: Yes, only limited to sphere-based, no matter what shape the sculpty is.

@2: Yes.... like any other normal prims. If you meant LSL script controling the sculpty's vertex points? No. Only to apply a sculpty texture and topology.

@3: Yes, it can be in a linkset with any other prims... If you meant physically linked the meches, "welding" the polygons, then no.

@4: I wouldn't say perfect but yes, there's a working plugin for producing texture or even just use baking method. However, you CAN'T upload OBJ. format.

@5: No. You just apply textures like how you put textures on other normal prims.


Visit this page for more info.
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims

The reason it's a torus is so it won't fall over. Ideally, it would be a sphere, but since a sphere can roll indefinitely, the next best thing that SL already knew how to make was a torus. It's the closest shape to a sphere that happens to have a "flat" top and bottom.

I suppose a dimpled sphere would have worked too, but that's not what they chose.


It depends on the context of the conversation, but generally yes.


Strictly speaking, yes, but only if the hole is big enough. The physical torus shape of a sculpty has no open space in the hole.


Right, for the reason stated above.


You get in the same way you get in any other vehicle. Wherever the sit target tells your avatar to be is where it will end up. That could be on the car seat, on the roof, inside the trunk, under the wheel so you can run over yourself, 300M away, whatever you want. All the script knows is that it's supposed to place the avatar a certain distance from the center of the scripted prim. It doesn't matter whether said scripted prim happens to be a sculpty or not.


I'm not following what you mean here. Yes, you could make things phantom to avoid collisions and yes your avatar gets added to the prim count of a vehicle, but what are you trying to say one has to do with the other?

chalk the later two up to my ignorance about vehicles. i defer to those better informed.