Rounded Corners - Wouldn't it be lovely ?

/me on topic: Yes

So back to off topic stuff, the true sculptie sphere is still 32 x 32 faces, but the top and bottom rows are triangles, not quads. Well actually, all the quads in sculpties are really two triangles too, but it's just the sphere type where only one triangle of the pair is used. So you always have to work with the full resolution on a true sculptie sphere rather than using subdivision to manage LODs.

Adding better support for triangle faces is on my todo list for Primstar. The baker supports them, but add mesh and import don't currently. So you have to do it by hand.

OMG yes........

An offset hollow function (up to 99.9% ideally) would be fantastic and save a lot of prims when it comes to windows and even doorways in walls for houses.

Can't be THAT hard for them to offer an offset hollow function, would have thought it would have been very very easy to do that.

Boolean operations to subtract one prim from another would be a more interesting option in my opinion.. use this prim as the hole in this one kinda stuff..

Well of course yes, but I'd accept that it would be VERY hard to do that.

Even 3DStudio Max (years ago) could not get that working right ever time.

Offsetting a hollow is just moving the 8 or less internal coord points about.

Have you seen, that this cube hasn't got any poles ? And the vertex distribution is optimal for linear texturing, for instance this cube can be texturised with flat images without distortions... Maybe that matters to somebody... (Not that it would make sense to create a sculpty cube, but this property can be extrapolated to other sculpties created in the way i have shown

Is there a record for most number of threads that somehow ended up as one?

Does this addition here create a new record?

just to drag this thread (kicking and screaming) back to my original question for a brief moment

I get the bit about having to put multiple vertices (perhaps not right term) near to areas you wish to have a more defined detail (sharper)

Though as yet not quite sure if there is a actual closeness they need to be or just close by eye.

But, do we need extra lines (vertices) in the plain flat areas between these points?

Imagine for example, a square column (or could be a chair leg)

Any size, but say you want the top and bottom to be reasonably crisp. so near the top and the bottom of the item you drag multiple points to make this work.

But, there is a large area of nothing (just the stretch) between the two ends.

Will this middle area keep straight, or do you need to keep (to use) points along the length of the item also to keep it looking good (so to speak) or are just good ends, and a long stretch of nothing fine?

You have to consider the UV map. If you stretch the points apart in the middle, you'll stretch the texture as well.

With sculpties everything needs at least 2 thoughts In this case your problem is probably completely different from what you think.
Actually you face 3 problems:

1.) You must take care of the intrinsic resolution of the sculpties.

You have only 256 possible positions for your vertices along each axis. The fatal point here is, that you get massive problems as soon as you try to put vertices too close to each other. "Too close" means "in the range of 1/256 of the objects bounding box size".
Maybe an example:

Assume you had a cube of 2.55 meters edge length. There you can place vertices on a grid of width 1 cm. so if you want to place 2 or more vertices besides each other "in the range of 1 cm", then you get very rough results, because the vertices will actually NOT be placed where you want them, but always moved to the allowed grid positions. The effect gets very prominent when you use sculpties which are massively stretched along one axis.
The ends of those objects are typically very rough (unsmooth).

conclusion: In most cases it does not make sense to collect many vertices into a tiny range of your sculpty to gain more resolution. In fact you will get more roughness and keep the resolution as it is.


2.) When you distribute your mesh points unevenly, then you have too take care a lot more about your textures. In the areas where you have only a few vertices, the faces will be much bigger, while in the areas of high concentration of vertices you will get very tiny faces. On the other hand your UV-map gives you exactly one square per face. So the textures for the large faces get stretched a lot, for the tiny faces they get compressed a lot. The problem withg this is that you will need by far more higher resolution textures in order to keep a reasonable good looking result.

3.) LOD could break your sculpty much more heavy than with evenly distribted vertices.

I do not say, that your approach is bad in general, but you need to take care a bit. otherwise you get the next unexpected result...

but but but but..................

Whenever you ask about getting a sharper edge to a sculptie shape you are told you need to drag extra (I'm still using the term vertices here) to the area (close together) to make sure you get them.

Now we're saying no?

That's not just dragging them close together, that's putting them in the same point.

I never said, that you need to drag multiple edges together in order to get a crisp edge. I said, that you need to do that if you must avoid lighting problems (in some other thread at some other time long before today...)

If you read my recent text carefully, you find:



SO you asked for better resolution by dragging vertices together, and i answered to that question

Having looked into content creation in Blue Mars, it is all external creaion, so the thing I will miss with that and more external creation tools for SL is the fun of building inworld or watching other people build or teaching each other to build. Where building external doesn't bind you to the world you're creating in the same way.
Building a building in world on a non flat block and editing the ground heights, adding prims and angling them to work with the terrain restraints rather than building on flat boring land because it easy to do.
The out of world building tools can be free and powerful, not necessarily easy to use, but again their traing YouTube videos are good , but not immersive like a class in SL is.
I've made sculpties, but just don't enjoy making them and I see too many avatars wearing round un rezzed balls to consider the prim savings as value.