overall sculptie question

Hey guys i have a new question . it seems that every program i use has its limitations on what i can build to bring to sl. so my question is what is the best program to use to build scuilptie. i have used maya but i h ave alot of rules that i cannot break so i am looking to find a good program overall that i can make sculpties. Please help me

That depends on who you ask, what you want to make, how you want to make it, what you're comfortable with using, etc.

well i just want a program that like if i want to make rocks i can or if i want to make a tech chair i can like very few limitations i mean i dont care if it cost millions ( well id o but still ) jsut anything thats good to make no matter what i want

Maya should work fine.. there is nothing thats super easy to use that allows you to do anything.

Learn maya and how to use it for sculpties. No matter what progra you use there are rules about how to do it for sculpties. Sculpty-specifc programs are all very specifc.. symmetrical and such.

The hardest (imo) but best way to get exactly what you want is learn to edit sculpt maps themselves directly and make them that way.

with maya can i make like umm a cross a one prim cross i think i cant cuz it has to be all round and stuff and all has to star with like a sphere can i start with a nurbs cube ? anything other than a sphere ?

It has to start with a specific number of I think vertices and faces (Not certain). You can only start with very specific things, but then you can alter those completely. You can make perfect cubes out of the original shape. You can make whatever you wantt as long as you keep the original number of faces/vertices/ whatever it goes by.

There should be a tutorial here somewhere for maya...

Dylana, just because it needs to start with a sphere doesn't mean the end result has to be round. You can absolutely make angular surfaces.

The need to start with a sphere, has nothing to do with Maya, by the way. It's just how sculpties work. The same would be true no matter what program you're using. Sculpties, by default, just happen to have spherical topology.

That said, there are other types of sculpties that don't rely on spheres. I'll post more on that below.

As for your one prim cross, that's really, really, really easy to make out of a sphere. Once you know how, it's a 60-seconds-or-less project. Here's how to it:

1. Start with a NURBS sphere.

Yes, that's right, a sphere. Make sure to give it 16 sections and 15 spans. Due to the way NURBS interpolate to be drawn on screen, and the way the exporter works, starting with 16x15 is the best way to ensure that all your details will be preserved in the sculpty mesh, which will be 33x32.



2. Deform the sphere into a cube shape (cuboid).

By moving the control vertices (CV's) around, you can turn a sphere into a cuboidal shape very easily. The picture below shows the one I just made while I was writing this. On the left you can see it with its wire frame, so you can tell were the vertices are, and on the right, you can see it fully shaded.



Note mine has rounded corners. You can make yours sharper if you want by moving the relevant CV's closer to the corners. If you want a razor sharp corner, snap 3 sets of CV's precisely on top of each other. I usually keep my corners rounded a little because think things look more realistic with some beveling. No surface in RL can ever have a perfect corner, after all. Also, there's a bit more flexibility in the work flow when CV's have at least a small amount of space between them instead of being snapped together. That's just personal preference though. If you want yours to have sharp corners, go for it.


3. Narrow the cuboid into an elongated shape.

With the scale tool, narrow the sides of the cuboid so that the shape is significantly taller than it is wide and deep. This will form the vertical portion of your cross.




4. Expand a section of each side to complete the cross shape.

Grab a few rows of CV's on each side, and move them outward. Be sure to include enough so that you'll be able sharpen the corners of the protrusions, but also leave enough behind (both above and below) that you can also sharpen the corners where the two "beams" meet. Remember, sharpening corners on NURBS surfaces means moving adjacent CV's closer together, so you always need to plan with that in mind when deciding what to put where.



5. Sharpen necessary corners to complete the cross shape

Move rows of CV's upward and downward as needed to create the corners that form the shape of the cross.



And there you have it, a one-prim cross in 60 seconds or less. It probably took you more than 60 seconds to do it this time since it was your first one. But now that you know how, it'll go really quickly the next time.

As I so often say in these kinds of discussions, there's almost nothing that can't be made simply by deforming a sphere. Sometimes it takes a little bit of thought (and experience) to figure out the best procedure is all.






A default NURBS cube isn't actually a cube. It's six individual planes that happen to be arranged to form what looks like a cube. Start moving those planes around the scene, and you'll see they really have nothing to do with each other.

If you want to make six individual plane type sculpties (more on this below), then yes, technically you could start with a NURBS cube. I wouldn't recommend it though. There's no reason to use six sculpties when one will work just fine.



You can change the sculpt type in SL with a script to shapes other than spheres. You can make planes, toruses, and cylinders, in addition to spheres. Just keep in mind that if you're making a plane type sculpty, you need to start with a plane in your 3D modeling program, be it Maya or anything else. And if you're making a torus type sculpty, you start with a torus. And, you guessed it, if you're making a cylinder type sculpty, you start with a cylinder.

Keep in mind also that the sctulpty itself will always have the same number of vertices, no matter what the type. So always start with the number I outlined above. 16x15 always works out really well with NURBS.

Any of the four basic shapes can be deformed into just about any advanced shape you can think of. The only hard rule is that you don't break the topology. In other words, if you're starting with a sphere, the topology has to remain stitched on two sides, and polar on the other two. If it's a torus, it has to be stitched on all 4 sides. If it's a cylinder, it must be stitched on just two sides. If it's a plane, no stitching at all.

See the sculpty wiki for more information on sculpt types.

is there any way u can send me that file with the cube that u made out of the sphere. i tryed doing it but i cant find like somehow aligning them , is there an option ? where i can selete some cv's then click to aling horiz/vert ? thanks for all you help by the way

I could, but I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I did. You'd likely end up making all your objects out of that one cuboid, rather than learning how to make your own. And then you'd miss out on learning how to make all sorts of things, since knowing how to turn a sphere into a cube is pretty much the foundation of the whole thing.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm withholding, but trust me; it's for your own good. I'll tell you what though. When I have a little more time, I'll write a detailed tutorial for how to turn a sphere into a cuboid, and post it here. You should have no trouble following it. I can't promise to have it done by any specific time though.

In the mean time, if you haven't done so already, you MUST go through the tutorials in the Maya help file. Not only does it have an excellent chapter on the basics of NURBS modeling, but it also covers things like how to use snapping, which would answer your question about alignment.

To make the cuboid with perfect alignment, I simply worked with Snap To Grid turned on during the first few stages of the transition from the base sphere. That way, I was able to move all the CV's exactly to the grid lines, to make perfectly flat sides. I only turned the snapping off when it came time to make the rounded corners. Had I kept it on, I would have ended up with sharp corners, which I didn't want.

There's no automated "click to align" feature like the one you asked about (nor should there be, in my opinion), but you'll find that snapping works really well.

I thought about writing something to that general effect (You would be missing out on learning to do it right) but figured I should keep it to myself since it was directed at you lol...

ANyway, with just about anything you want perfect edges on, Dylana, you're going to want to use Snap to Grid. It helps with accuracy in general, even for making curves sometimes.

Get used to the tools in Maya and how they apply to making sculpties, and see how things translate into SL.

Ok thank you guys its just UGH!! that cube i made earlier was more like a blog than a cube where can i find this snap to grid option ? or do i have to like hold a key ,i will look at the maya help Chosen just wanted to see if it was possible o and about what u said about me making almost everything with that cube .. probably lol ill see if i learn to make y own till then ill look foward to your tutorial. Thanks alot for all your help. Everyone

You'll find the toggle buttons for snappings in the main tool bar at the top of the interface, a bit to the right of the middle. They each have a horseshoe magnet icon on them. The button collections on the tool bar are collapsible, so if you don't see the buttons you're looking for, try expanding everything by clicking on the thin vertical black lines between the groupings of buttons. When a collection is collapsed, you'll see a vertical line with a right-facing triangle in the middle of it, and the buttons disappear. When the collection is expanded, the triangle becomes a small box, and the buttons are visible.

Snap options you'll use often are are Snap To Grid, Snap To Curves, and Snap To Points. Keyboard shortcuts for these are across the bottom of the keyboard, as C, V, and X (respectively) if you'd rather hold a key than click a button.

The fourth button, Snap To View Planes, will constrain movement inline with your current point of view when you free-drag an object (drag the center box in the manipulator instead of the arrows). You probably won't use this very often.

The fifth button, Make Selected Object Live, is not something you'll use very often, if ever, for sculpties. But just so you know what it is, when a surface has been "made live", creation tools will snap to it. This enables you to draw NURBS curves directly onto surfaces, to create primitives that are automatically aligned with a construction plane, etc. It's useful for many things, but not really for sculpties.

thank you soooo much

look i made the cube .. sort off
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4653/cubekv6.jpg
lol it still needs its fixes but i got the shape down lol so now if u want you can give me what you made so i can see what i did wronge lol . Or or not ,ill still work on improving it till then thanks for all your help - Dylana