Linking prims in Maya and uploading them as one sculpt

Is there anyway or any tool I can outsource too that will allow me to upload a sculpt map generated from Maya after I've linked more than one prim together?

I am trying to make a single primmed kitty face, not anything fancy, but I want to see if I can sculpt the ears and head in Maya, link it all together in Maya and then upload it to SL as a single prim.

Anyone have any ideas? Please and thanks.
Nezu

Maya doesn't use links, or even prims, so I'm not sure what you're trying to ask. SL's prims are parametric solids. Maya uses surface models. They're entirely different things.

If what you're asking is can you export a scene containing multiple sculpties, and then automatically reassemble that scene in-world, the answer is yes. See the following links for more information:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Advanced_Sculptie_Exporter_From_Maya
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Importprimscript

Note, you don't link the objects together in Maya. As I said, that's not how Maya works. What you do is select all the objects you want to export, use the advanced sculpty exporter to generate the sculpt maps, surface textures, and primscript file, and then use either ImportPrimscript or Qlab Assembler to recreate the scene in SL. Between the two, I recommend ImportPrimscript. It's a lot easier, faster, and more reliable.


If you were trying to ask something else, please explain.

Thanks, I'm new to this still so I wasn't quite sure how to phrase the question, but I think you just answered my question.

He e is speaking about using the combine option in Maya. I am trying to make a head with ears and jaw into one sculpt map . He was sweet enough to try to find the answer for me when I got frtrated with it . Is it possible t export a sculpt map from the combined object?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the combine option". There are lots of commands in Maya that could fit that description. Could you please be more specific with your terminology? What is the exact name of the command you're asking about?

If you mean Mesh -> Combine, in the Polygons section, you're barking up the wrong tree. First, the sculpty exporter for Maya is optimized for NURBS. It doesn't work very well with polygons, unless you force it to by employing some oddball modeling techniques, which I would NOT recommend trying at the stage you're at right now. Make NURBS-based sculpties, just like 99% of all other Maya users in SL, or else use a different program.

Second, and more importantly, every single sculpty is nothing more than a 2D rectangle, bent and folded in 3D space. It's like origami. In 3D, you can shape that piece of paper into a swan or a flower or a fortune teller, all day long, but at the end of the day, in 2D it's still just a piece of paper, nothing more than a rectangle. Sculpties are exactly the same. You can't just go arbitrarily combining meshes, any more than you could force two pieces of paper to somehow become one. That's just not how it works.

Remember, a (regular) sculpty is nothing more than a 32x32 grid of quads. That's not a whole lot of detail to work with. Unless you want your kitty face to be extremely simplistic, you're going to have to make it out of more than one sculpt.

This is precisely what the advanced exporter and the auto-assemblers are for. It's why they exist.

If one wanted to make a 1 prim sculpty out of multiple pieces, what program would be best?

You're still looking at it the wrong way. You simply can't combine meshes for sculpties in the manner you have in mind. That's not how it works, period.

Every sculpty, by definition, has to be ufoldable into a single uniform rectangle. Arbitrary meshes are not sculpties, end of story.

Might I ask why you're so averse to making this cat head of yours out of more than one object? You do realize this is how every other animal head in SL has been made, right? There's no reinventing the wheel here.


So, the answer to your specific question is none. No program is best at doing that which can't be done.

As for which one is best for making sculpties in the way they're actually made, ask a hundred people and you'll get a hundred different responses. There are just too many variables in play for there to be a definitive answer, even it weren't a matter of opinion, which it obviously is.

If you ask me, I'll tell you Maya is best, because Maya is what I use every day. Combined with the Turtle renderer, it's an absolutely fantastic platform for modeling for all realtime purposes, including SL sculpties. Other artists will each have their own preferences. There is no inherent best. It all comes down to what's best for YOU.

Some, like Maya, 3DS Max, and Blender, are full featured platforms, capable not only of creating models, but also baking the surface textures that go on them. Others, like Wings and Rhino, for example, are strictly modeling programs.

See the 3D software guide on the sculpty wiki for a list of popular choices. There are dozens to choose from.

Many of the available programs are free, and most of those that aren't do have 30-day trials. Run a few through the mill, and see what you like. Fair warning, though, they all have steep learning curves.

What our project is isn't really any of your concern because really, there is no need to be snide or act like a jerk about it.

Secondly, the question was simply asked as a way to save on prim space for rezzed objects. Yeah, we know how animal heads in Second Life are made. Willow and I are both furries and make furry AVs, so trust me when I say that we know.



We understand that meshes are not sculpties, but we are also talking about making a conversion. If it is not possible to make a singular sculpty map out of "combined meshes" in Maya or whatever, then how about combining sculpty maps pre-uploading them into SL?

A lot of obtuse sculpts in SL are made and that do not easily translate back into a rectangle as you state but can fit into a sort of generation grid. Look at single prim trees for example. I have seen some pretty complex trees made out of a single complex sculpt. No, the trees didn't have any leaves but they had a trunk, a body and many many branches spread throughout. What we are asking is essentially the same thing. We know it can be done, but if not made of three meshes "combined" into one, then what about a severe manipulation of the Maya, or whatever, prim?

Ummmmmm..... "snide"? ..... "jerk"? A bit oversensitive this morning?

Excuse me, what?

Look, you came here to ask for help. I don't know what you had in your head when you read the question, but the only reason I asked it was so I could better to steer you in the right direction toward accomplishing your goal. If I know what you're doing, I can much more effectively offer advice. I would have thought that was rather obvious.

I can't imagine what other possible motivation you might have thought I had, and frankly I don't really care. All I'll say on the subject before moving back to the actual topic of your questions is take a breath, and don't be so quick to bite the hand that's feeding you. People are a lot friendlier than you seem to want to give them credit for, myself included.




OK then. But quite obviously, you DON'T know what is and isn't possible with sculpties, which is why you came here in the first place, right? I'm sorry if you didn't like the answer I gave. Would you have preferred I lied and said what you want to do actually is possible, even though it's not?

In any case, the most prims you should need for an animal head is maybe four or five. That's hardly enough to cause a rendering hit to your avatar. I appreciate that you want to keep it as light as possible, and that's good, but really, the presence or absence of four or five sculpts will not make or break anyone's frame rate.




Again, not possible. If it were, everyone would be doing it. As I said, there's a reason why everything you've ever seen in SL has been made the way it has.




Absolutely not true. Again, by definitition, sculpties use rectangular 2D topology. There's no other way to describe it. If you choose not to believe me on that, well, that's your prerogative. But your own wishful thinking about how you'd prefer it to be won't change the truth of how it actually is. Sculpties work the way they work, and that's all there is to it. Again, I'm sorry if you don't want to like that answer, but it is what it is.




No, it's not the same thing at all. The kinds of trees you're talking about are made by using what's called the "loaf pinch" technique, which I'll explain in a second. It works because tree trunks and branches are essentially cylindrical, and only require a small amount of detail.




Basically, the way it's done is you snap a couple of rows of vertices to single points, and you end up what appears to be a line segement connecting two larger pieces. That segment has no width, so SL doesn't render it. Do that a few times to an otherwise cylindrical mesh, especially an oblong one, and you've got yourself an object that appears to be made of several cylinders. Move those cylinders around a little, and you can form a tree.

That's a far cry from doing a shape as complex as an animal head, though. That is, unless as I mentioned earlier, you want it to be extremely simplistic. If cartoonish minimalism is what you're going for, then you might be able to make it work, at least from close up, at maximum LOD. Just be aware, that you're very, very, very likely to run into problems when the object is viewed from a distance, since LOD on sculpties gets culled very quickly as the camera moves away.

We figured out a way to make it work and was able to narrow a relatively decent head shape down to two prims. The head, including ears, and the jaw. Because of what we intend to do with this project, we can slip by with texturing the rest, like eyes and whiskers.

What we did was we made the sculpts the way we wanted them, combined the meshes together and then using a larger Maya prim, we manipulated the larger Maya prim into the form of the desired shapes. Basically tracing the idea we wanted. And yeah, it came out pretty good. Even seen from a distance.

Did you manipulate the larger prim by hand or did you use a (projection-) tool for this ? I am curious to see how good it came out at the end. Can you provide a picture or a location in world where it can be seen ?