Blender Sculptie Importer - Attached

Any clue on how to install the scripts on OSX 10.4?

Now I'm getting ValueError: face has no texture values

Can you make a more detailed tutorial on how to actually do what the script is trying to do?

The baker script converts the vertice positions to a RGB color and bakes them to a UV mapped image. "Face has no texture values" means that some faces don't have an image selected. Make sure all faces are selected in "UV Face Select" by pressing "a" once or twice (it's a toggle between select all and select none so depends if you have a selection when you press it). Then in the "UV/Image Editor" you can select an image by clicking the box with arrows to the right of the Image menu option.

The scripts are still under development so I don't want to waste time doing detailed tutorials on things that might change. There are a number of examples of using the scripts in this thread /8/ab/210627/1.html

If you do get stuck at any point feel free to ask as it helps me to know what to cover when I do the proper tutorials

I try to look for it and no matter where I look I can't find it. The readme file for the scripts states:

"**** Usage ****

Simply select 'Second Life Sculptie' from the "File - Import" menu and
choose the sculptie map to import"

Which map would that be? I find no map included in the scripts package. Perhaps it's a trivial question but I am seriously at a loss.

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Used an old TGA I made and my first observation is that I didn't get any choices about what kind of sculpt type I wanted. That can be fixed inside SL, but then the saving part? I really don't get it. I try to save and I cannot figure out how to save the imported map withought saving it as a .blend file. Should I simply save it with the bmp extension after activating the UV/image window?

I have tried to figure out the exporting options for Blender and Wings and I just cannot get to the end.... =(

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_Sculpt_Maps_and_Textures

There's a few there. You can save sculptie textures you have full perms on inworld by using the "file - save texture as" option. The import option is also handy for bringing sculpt maps created via other packages into Blender for texture baking.

There's some videos in /8/ab/210627/1.html that might help make things clearer

Thanks for that! Will do my best with the that help! =)

Well, I've been waiting down at the station, but apparently when the clue train finally pulled in, I was fast asleep on the rails.

Ok. I get Blender. Mostly. I can make stuff in Blender that looks exactly like what I want. I even get get which sculpt-type to use and I'm getting the hang of textures.

But.

The whole scale/dimensions/snapping thing? Clearly beyond my capacity for reason. I *often* get something in-world that's very close to what I want, but I'm not getting the consistent and beautiful clean edges I'm seeing on other folk's simple sculpties.

In Blender, exactly what settings are y'all using for scale and size? In the View Properties/Grid, what are you using for Spacing/Lines/Divisions? Are you snapping to the grid? What size do you make your initial mesh? Does it matter if you start with a sphere/torus/plane/cube?

I'm *so* close to getting it right. Any suggestions, other than to chuck the machines in the river and have another root beer?

Oh, and how in *hell* do I get the 3D view to NOT have the sculpted texture colors on it after I bake an image. I *hate* that.

Beyond that, I'm quite enjoying sculpted prims and am very, very grateful to Domino and Chosen Few and Hypatia C, all of whom have given a lot of time, for no payback that I can see. Thanks, y'all!

Could you load this image into your UV Image Editor for a sculptie with a problem and post a screenshot of the UV layout please?

http://dominodesigns.info/images/sculptie_grid.png



I use the default settings. If I need to snap a sculptie I scale to 2.56 in all dimensions then snap while zoomed in. Snapping to grid in Blender works to the visible grid so by zooming in I snap to 0.1

For most of the stuff I do this isn't needed, but when it is, that's how I do it.

I'd recommend starting from a cylinder (no end caps), a plane or a torus. Those are the easiest to UV map correctly. A sphere with the poles deleted is just a cylinder and a cube can't be uv mapped without texture distortion on the sides. A flattened cylinder will give better results.



That's how Blender works, usually baking a texture is to save on render times so it displays it instead of the material. You can change the image from the UV Image Editor after baking or set a different view type in the 3D window.



You're welcome!

Yeah, there's not much financial payback, I can count the donations for this work on one finger

But there's a lot of other people who also gave their time in creating the information on the wiki, here on the forums and in world at the lessons I attended as a new resident. So this is partly to pay that back to the community and partly because I think it's a win win situation when knowledge is shared.

Hah! If I weren't such an atheist I would worship you like god! Your grid image finally clicked for me, I think, so let me make sure I understand.

One "ideal" sculptie is a grid of 32x32 points (really 33x33 but the borders essentially collapse into one another to avoid fenceposting), which means that the intersections/points on the UV grid should be: { {0,0}, {4,0}, {0,4}, {0,8}, ... , {256, 256} }.

I started with an 8-vertex open-ended cylinder with 8 vertical faces. I marked the top row of vertices to a seam and a single column of vertices as another to aid in unwrapping. In the UV window, I unwrapped and the resized the grid so that each point lined up exactly, using your grid as a rough guide, but mostly by turning on snap-to-grid and "View Properties" so that I could see the exact position of a selected point.



Here you can see the results with your grid on one and Robin Sojourner's on the other, showing the perfect registration. I increased the number of vertices in Blender gradually from 8x8 to 32x32 to maximize the points available for hacking, but for simple sculpties without complex texturing issues, I'm guessing that fewer points is better.

Thank you very, very much.

only a small example what i do with this plugin.
see the attachment
*edit: the blades only are sculpted

I can't seem to properly use your scripts to create scuplties.
By using EAC unwrapping, I always get holes through the center of the object.
attached is the images and uvmapping of my sculpt.
I started with a 64x64 sphere and used the sculpt tools to design the shape.

The EAC unwrap is really there for nonuniform existing meshes, it's a last resort not the first way you should try. It looks like you selected the wrong axis though, the poles are horizontal and on that mesh I'd go for vertical ones.

You'll get better results on a sphere by using "sphere from view" while looking at the front of an unmodified sphere. It's a lot easier to do the unwrapping before you start modeling and all the faces are still nice and even.

Ideally you'll want to setup a few starter sculpties with the UV unwrapping already done. Then you just load the appropriate type and start modelling. I've attached a file with plane, cylinder and sphere types with multires and uv mapping done. Just press shift F1 in blender and you can load one of the starter types from this library file.

Your pre-made objects were certainly a help. I was able to make a pumpkin and texture it.

However, I do belive that there needs to be a way to effectively import pre-made content like the following attached file into secondlife. No 32x32 low quality spheres required. I'm a much better 3d content maker than a sculptie maker.

With the limited size of the mesh, it's really better to model with sculpties in mind as it will let you concentrate vertices where you need them. EAC stands for equal area cylinder and that means you get a fairly even distribution of vertices, which is only suitable for some models.

The example you gave is very difficult to unwrap by other methods though as there are no clear seams to make getting a nice unwrap possible. I had a quick go using EAC which you can see in the attached image. To get this result I rotated the model in edit mode so the y axis ran where I wanted the seam. It's also slightly off centre to give more vertices to the face area. I then did an EAC unwrap with y axis. To give even more vertices to the face, I selected that area on the UV map and with proportional editing enabled ( o key ) I scaled on X a little. I cleaned it up more by moving points to the edges and then did a sculptie bake.

In the image, the model on the right is the sculptie reimported. There's still some cleanup to do around the poles, but I find it quicker to do that on the sculptie than trying to do it on the original.

I probably should have repeated the X scale on the UV map just for the nose section too.

wow domino. My hat's off to you. You know your UV maps better than I do. UV mapping arbitrary objects like that can be a pain in the arse. If you have any in-world UV mapping tutorials, I'd certainly would give it a go.

Thanks for these tool and the swf that explains them. I have been using blender for 7 years and Second Life for about 6 months. This is a perfect combination. BTW can you give any refereces or examples of what and animated scluptie is?

Animated sculpties are where you change the sculptie map to do an animated object. Say a crushable can. You'd have two models where one is a normal can and the second is the crushed one. These would have different heights, so if you wanted it to stay sat on a table during the crushing, the sculptie maps would need to have the same centre.

You'd load both can models into the same blend file and select both before doing the sculptie bake. This then uses the combined dimensions to set the X, Y, Z ranges for the bake. This way both sculpties will have the same centre so you only need to change the map to animate, you don't need to move the prim to keep it sat on the table.

Thank. I assume that you would need to write a script to attach with the sculpted prim to change the map in real time? I know that is off topic but I thought I would ask anyway.

Seeing as I've been pestered to write one of these, I feel the need to chime in.

Excellent work. While it's still a ways off from a "true" mesh import*, I applaud the hard work you put in to this project. The imports and exports I tried suffered a couple UV glitches, but overall, this is a step in the right direction.



First of all, I like the fact that you a) used python documentation properly and b) integrated the tools into the Blender UI. I really should do this sort of thing more myself.

I also have a few technical issues I'd like to address, since I was actually on the verge of writing one of these last night before stumbling across this thread:

First of all. On the first attempt to just map a cube, I hit a fall-through in the script:


Second, it would be nifty if there were an option to allow an "I'm feeling lucky" operation if a texture isn't provided, which automatically performs the EAC step and adds a new texture to the image for the user. I've written at least one Blender importer/exporter that has done this before (for a little known engine), and the results were fairly good.

Third, there is still quite a bit of "manual churn" involved in properly exporting models. I of course realize it's difficult to "unroll" the correct shape of a model into the constraints of a sculptie, but I do have a couple ideas of how to streamline the process. I was of course *very* surprised at how little code was in this tool; it's a very elegant and professional implementation.


But at any rate, I personally salute you for doing this so I didn't have to. After my original importer, there have been many requests. If you would like this package posted up on my Prim.Blender SourceForge page, or if you'd even like developer access to it, please drop me a line.

Obviously, full credit, kudos, hippos, and free pie will be given where it is due.


Keep up the good work!

* This of course means that sculpties, no matter how elaborate, still fall short of an actual mesh import and has nothing to do with the quality of this tool. It's still a fine step in the right direction, though!

Thanks, feel free to post bug reports on the UV glitches, any problems I can repeat will be fixed. I'm thinking of making the "Remove Duplicates" off by default as I find that's what I use most. It does give a quick way to check for quantizing glitches though



Yeah, I've fixed that one in my development branch, but it's not ready for release yet.



With the EAC script, it's handy for a lot of stuff other than sculpties. It's likely I'll move this even tighter into the Blender UI. I think "EAC from view" would be a sensible way to go as it would eliminating needing to rotate some models to get a good unwrap. I'll also be making it check selected faces so it can be mixed with other UV techniques more easily. Given the choice between making something sculptie specific or adding a feature to Blender to make sculpties easier, I've been leaning to the 2nd option. When EAC hits version 1.0 I'll be submitting it for inclusion with Blender.

Having said that, eventually I want to get to a "Export to Second Life" option which will bake all sculpties, prims ( possibly done in the modifier stack ) and textures and generate the LSL script to rebuild the set in world.

Then it might even be possible to use the Blender game engine to do an alternate builder client for SL.



Thanks. Though I think you are overstating it's quality. I'm particually not proud of the triangle fill. This version I wrote the hard long way so I could understand it. Really need to rewrite it the Python way



I'm going to be integrating pretty closely with my website when I've time. I want to do things like an in world version checker ( probably a sculptie suzanne ) that will trigger URL opens for downloads etc.. I think I need to get my basic stuff down first before looking at wider options. To do list > time as it is

Yes, the baker does generate script fragments on the Blender console, but it's not currently doing full scripts. I'm not sure it ever will do full scripts for animated ones as there's too many variations possible. I should have mentioned, the dimensions are the same as well as the centres, so don't need to move or scale using this method. So the actual script would vary a bit from the fragments generated which are for static ones.

Some people have also experimented with using media streams with a sculptie map video but I think that approach is too laggy. Real time animated sculpties are a resource hog, so simple two state stuff like I described with the can is a good compromise. Though I do know some people have done multiframe animated sculpties with texture swapping. It depends on the balance of resources on a particular sim whether it's a good idea or not. I tend to target mainland with my stuff so low lag is a priority

Ok I have just been back to page 8 of this thread and it brought up even more question. When you say unwrap along an axis. Do you mean the mesh's local axis in blender or the blender global axis? Will that axis run down the center of the uv map in the uv/image window vertically or horizontally? What are the scale buttons for. Do they scale along the mesh's local axis or the blender global axis. Are they in Blender units,uv units or some other units.

Ok I guess that is enough questions for now.

Thanks.

With sculpties I tend to keep axis aligned with global so not 100% sure, but I think I coded the EAC unwrap for local. If rotating in object mode doesn't affect the unwrap unless you apply it, then it's definately local. In the talked about "EAC from view" version, it'll be based off the view co-ordinates so at that point it'll be the viewing angle that is key.



The seam runs down the left and right edges of the UV map. The poles are top and bottom.



On the importer they set the local scale of the imported sculptie. They are in Blender units.

Thanks. I am sure I will have more questions as I get into this deeper.