My Sculpty doesn't not look like the original (blender)

Hello all,

I have learned how to use blender fairly recently and decided to take a crack at making a Sculpty. I followed this guide:
http://amandalevitsky.googlepages.com/sculptedprims

Instead of just sticking with the tutorial and making a vase, I tried to make a clock. After setting up all of the textures and points in blender I finally got my Sculpty image. When I the texture to it in second life, It looks slightly similar, but still completely wrong. Maybe some images would help more.

Clock that I was trying to model it after: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=fc5e57ba9bade79a86a499d1a4d80ea4&prevstart=0

Render of final clock in blender:


Showing all of my settings (Xred,Ygreen,Zblue):
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend3.jpg
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend4.jpg
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend5.jpg

Final object look in Second Life:
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend6.jpg
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend7.jpg

So where did I go wrong? Did I not include enough vertices? I didn't know what more info to add, but I'll happily provide you with any info you need. Even a slight nudge in the correct direction would be a great help.

Thanks in advance,
Kairos

Edit: for some reason the forum automatically added bbcode, but didn't parse it. I removed the bbcode to make it easier to read/copy-paste

The forum software won't post a url directly. You have to fool it into thinking you're posting a photo. Add a question mark as the last character in the URL and use instead of tags --->> [url]http://notarealURL.com/just_an_example.htm][/url] tags --->> [url]http://notarealURL.com/just_an_example.htm[/url].

Thanks for the tip

I'd set the material to Shadeless and turn off "VCol Paint". Set it's "Col" to black, and in the 3 textures change "Mix" to "Add" - well actually I'd just use Primstar

I've posted an easier way to do it without Primstar here http://dominodesigns.info/node/102

Thanks a lot, After baking it looked more like other sculpties I've come across. I don't have time now to upload because I have to run off to church, but when I get back, I'll try it out and post the results

Also I've never tried Primstar, so I'll look into that.

Thanks again,
Kairos

And i have translated that info into a video tutorial Look here:

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2008/08/10/from-nurbs-to-sculptie/

The technique is shown starting from around 5:30 until the end of the video.
BTW the technique shown in the first 5 minutes of the video has meanwhile been implemented into a Nurbs2Sculpt script for blender, see

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/nurbs2sculptie/

if you are interested in the details.

Have fun,
Gaia

I got a couple things to ask about (thanks again for the help so far. Your replies are quick and extremely useful.)
Okay, I've download and install the Primstar scripts. It came up with a dialog box telling me to save user defaults (Which I did). The only problem is that I don't see any changes (o.O)

Someone commented on the site that there should be a new "Sculpt Mesh" under the add menu, but I don't see that. The console doesn't show any new messages... I'm kinda lost here. Could it possible be that I'm using Blender 2.49a x64 bit?


Thanks for the video. I didn't really know where (or what) the nodes were, so this helped a lot.


Well, almost got it this time. The top half is perfect You can see in the picture that it worked exactly as planned out:
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend12.jpg

The problem is the bottom half, which I suspect the problem is not in the baking process, but rather how I placed my vertices/edges:
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend9.jpg
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend10.jpg
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend11.jpg

Here is the (correct) reference again to look at btw:
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/KairosDrasis/blend2.jpg

I again don't know how to troubleshoot this. I rechecked my seams, and there is one continuous one going down the side and one at the top. I imagine the problem lies somewhere in there. Am I suppose to seam the bottom? Am I suppose to seam everything at one time or does that not matter? What more information can I provide to you to make it easier to diagnose where I messed up?

Thanks again for all you help. You both are teaching me lots,
Kairos

Have you tried changing the sculpt type in SL? It looks like you are using sphere when from the model I'd expect Cylinder or plane.

Well the sphere looks the best. Switching it to Cylinder, plane (or any others) still keeps the jagged bottom, but removes the end faces on the top and bottom.

*shurg* Any other idea? I would be happy to try them.

Are you using a material bake or Primstar now? If it's Primstar, then I'd probably need to see the blend file to diagnose this. Primstar is more accurate than a material bake as it's fully aware of the sculpt map format at all points in the process in the latest versions.

Material Bake... but I found out my real problem that made me facepalm.

I found out the hard way that when extruding the bottom edge, it doesn't update the uv map, even if you still crease the edge. A very noob mistake, but I'm just hoping there is a way to correct this, or should I start over? I do have the primstar scripts installed, but have not had the chance yet to read the manual. I'm reading it now though.