Blender-Primstar: 45 degree rotation issue and question about cylinder faces

I made a 1 prim sculpty with 16 seperated rectangular parts. These seperated parts are 16 'planks' of a wooden plank floor for a bridge.

I started with a 4x, 64y, 0-subdiv cylinder (no Subsurf). I rotated the cylinder 45 degrees (from top view) to get a good front view. Then I scaled down the necessary rows of vertices in between to zero to get 16 seperated parts. I baked the sculpt map at image size X=8, Y=512, imported it in Blender and started modelling the planks. After modelling I baked it again at 8x512. That all worked well and LOD in Second Life is okay.

But I have three questions:

1) When importing the first sculpt map in Blender, it is again at a 45 degree angle. Also the second baked sculpt map is at a 45 degree angle. When I import it in SL it also needs a 45 degree rotation, which is pretty awkward to handle and resize inworld. I think I understand the reason: the sculpt mesh was a 'cylinder' with only 4 faces, so it's not straight from front view. I rotated it in Blender, but that has obviously no effect. Is there a solution to make the 45 rotation in Blender permanent, so that it's entirely straight in Second Life?

2) I have tried many combinations of x and y faces for a cylinder, but I can't seem to make more than 16 seperate parts, considering that I need at least 2 rows in between every seperate part to create an invisible line (with 0-subdiv). I've tried it also with the default 2-subdiv, but it all comes down to maximum 16 seperate parts, whatever combination I pick. I am pretty sure though that I've seen sculpties in SL with 20 seperate parts and still good LOD. How can this be done? And is there an overview somewhere of the best x and y faces combinations?

3) I want to make a 'real' sculpty cylinder (so it also looks like a cylinder in SL) which has as much vertices on the y-axis as possible, in order to create as much vertical seperated parts as I can. What is the best or ultimate combination for x and y faces while still maintaining good LOD?

Blender and Primstar rock! But the prob is: the more I learn, the more questions I have

rotate the cylinder in edit mode, not in object mode.

I have been able to create a sculptmap of image size 4*1024 a few months ago. This was possible due to a bug in primstar. I believe that i could make 16 separate parts LOD resistent up to LOD0. But now this option is gone. So i do not see, how to create more than 16 separate parts with what we have now AND keep good LOD at the same time.



A primcylinder has 24 edges. A sculpty standard cylinder has 32 edges. With oblongs i think the best you can get is 22 x-faces and 46 y-faces. This is slightly less than with a standard cylinder but it gives you 47 rows of vertices in z. So maybe this is the optimum you can get...

Isn't that true for everything ? My list of open questions also gets longer and longer the more i am working with this toolset. So you are not alone

Thanks. Yes, I rotated it in object mode. I'll try again in edit mode.

Sixteen parts is enough, more than enough. But inworld I've seen 1 prim sculpties with 20 seperate parts (and more) and still good LOD. So there must be a way.

Thank you again. I'll try.

Hehe, yes true. But Gaia... there are Blender-Primstar users who are all very grateful, but most of them (including me) are not even in the same league as you and Domino. So I'm very thankful for your help and congratulate you also for your wonderful videos, including the xmas video