Importing 3D Objects to use as Sclupted Prims

Hi, I have been looking for a while at ways of making Sculpted Prims outside of second life and importing them.

I am down to 2 choices, Wings which is free or AC3D which is not. But I would like to import some models I made in other packages and saved as .obj files into either and get them converted into sculpted prims if I can.


Is this is a practical option or am I best trying to remodel my items in whatever package I choose and going from there?

If it is possible to use them (even with editing) what is the best way of doing so. I assume SL has restrictions on faces/verticies for a scupted prim.

All my objects are sub 150 faces so not overly detailed, but where made originally using spline cages which there then filled in by the original software as that was my prefered way of modeling. There are no rogue verticies or faces etc, so each face has 3 or 4 verticies around it.


Any thoughts on if/how I can do this?

Thank you all.
Klaire

I think you will want to remodel. There is a technique where you put your old model in the tool, start with a basic sculpty mesh, mooge it around untile it matches, then delete your original model.

If your objects use the entire uv space available, with no gaps or overlaps, you might find that they work as-is. That's not terribly likely, though, so either way you will probably have to remodel them.

I tried Wings, and absolutely hated the user interface, so I gave up. I've used AC3D on several builds, and while it's not as full-featured as I'd like, it was easy to work with and produces very nice sculpted prims. The Second Life exporters for both programs come with a library of predefined shapes that are already properly uv-mapped so that you can munge them into the shape you want and export them, and this is generally what most people do.

There are some programs which attempt to convert arbitrary meshes in .obj format, but I've not tried them and cannot comment on how well they do.

.

Can you explain what you mean by Munge/Mooge? I am guessing you mean taking a copy of the object in the background and remolding the compatiable object into what I need or is there a way to wrap a flat mesh around my object to form a rough mold/copy of it?

Sorry I have never had to remodel like this and wondering if there is a simple way to do it or if I simply have to start totaly from scratch.

Thanks

Maybe your answer is burried within the 3 main issues with sculpties:

- the mesh size is limited and the mesh topology is fixed:
32*32 faces for standard sculpties. Other ratios are meanwhile possible (4*4, 8*8, 256*4, ...) But you can not create objects, which exceed 1024 faces in your model.

- in Sl sculpties are heavily influenced by LOD (level of detail). If your objects do not already take care of that, you won't get happy with them in world.

- the intrinsic spatial resolution is only 8 bit in each direction, hence the you only have 256 distinct locations along each axis, where your vertices can be placed.

These issues typically make it very hard to "convert" arbitrary objects to sculpties. You can use shrinkwrap techniques (as mentioned before and if the tool provides them), or you can wrap a plane around your object until it matches (also mentioned before). i personally would opt for remodeling from scratch while taking care about the above issues.

Also due to the limitations of sculpties you will most probably have to add detail through the textures, not through the model. So you may need to optimize your objects to allow for good texturing.

I can not give you any practical hints about wings or ac3d, because i have never worked with them. But i have severe doubts that converting .obj to sculptie will give you satisfying results.

I don't actually know the meaning of the word, I think it's made up. In programming terms, it implies modifying it until it's screwed up http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/munge.html

What I meant is basically what you thought I meant, meaning that you'd take the compatible object and, using your original object as a reference, make it the same shape.

As Gaia mentioned, there are some 'shrinkwrap' tools and techniques that may work, but I have yet to actually see it work well enough for the kinds of things I like to build. For the kind of complexity you described earlier, it might be quicker and easier to just start over with the 'edit a sculpt-compatible object to the same shape' idea.

.

The best technique to use will vary depending on the original model. All sculpties are essentially a plane, so for some models good results can be obtained by careful unwrapping (if your program of choice uses the UV map for it's baker).



That was one attempt at doing this. It took far longer to get that unwrap that it would have to just remodel with a sculptie compatible mesh around the original model. All the points marked in red are pinned vertices that were manually placed on the UV map. And in the end I wasn't happy with the results and had to do it again with a seam right through the eye sockets.

I didn't take a picture of that UV layout, but here's the final sculptie map to look at http://dominodesigns.info/images/second_life/suzy2.tga

So it is doable, but more often than not, it's the slowest approach. I did it for the technical challenge, but it's not something I've done since, I just remodel now.