Sculpty stairs have all gone flat...

Hello, Builders. I bought many versions of a useful full-perm 1 prim sculpty stair over a year ago: Now when I try to use them, the step texture has vanished, and they all just form plain ramps. The sculpt texture is still there. As I used them on buildings which I have sold, and still have for sale, I am worried why this has occurred? Can anyone enlighten me, please?

I have contacted the maker but no reply as yet.

Best wishes from Ainee

There's a halfway step in resolving a sculpt that often makes a sculpted set of stairs look like just a ramp. Are you sure the sculpt has fully formed? Does it look that way for everyone, or just for you?

I've seen this effect temporarily, as the first thing I se after a distorted sphere shape, in stairs I made with Sculptypaint. But it always snapped eventually to the correct stair shape.

I understand what you are saying, Ceera, but the stairs have been this way for some time now. They appear as a distorted ramp, and stay that way. I cannot extract the sculptmap, although I bought it full perm. I bought the stairs as a fullperm prim; not as a sculptmap.

Is it possible that LL has deleted this sculptmap for some reason? If it was 'stolen', then I had bought it in all innocence well over a year ago.

Best wishes from Ainee

That is really strange. If the sculpt map did not exist at all, the bounding box and shape of the prim would revert to the flattened sphere it started as. Unless they used one of the less-common forms of sculpts, which could be applied to a plane or other geometries. I'm only somewhat skilled myself in making sculpts, so I can't say for sure. But it seems to me that it is more likely the texture data for the sculpt map has somehow become corrupted. Still exists, but is no longer what it was...

Maybe someone better at sculpties can make a better explanation. But I think your only real solution will require making contact with the maker of the sculpted stairs you used. Because they may well need to re-load the sculpt map and apply it to a replacement for your items. And that will be a MAJOR task to replace all those stairs.

Some sculptie makers ignored the 64 x 64 minimum size when that was all we had. They uploaded 32 x 32 sculpt maps and sold them without noticing that this was not a supported size and ended up as a 31 x 31 face mesh with texture jumping between the two highest LODs. With the introduction of oblongs, 32 x 32 became a supported size but now it creates a 16 x 16 face sculptie, so those old out of specification sculpties look worse still now.

Try clearing your cache first.

One of the sculpts on my own store build got corrupted overnight. It looked completely distorted and the sculpt map itself was affected as well. Your problem might be different, but definitely try clearing your cache. (And if it's not solved right away, wait one day. It didn't help for me immediately, but when I logged back in the next day the sculpt was fine.)

Thank you, all. I do virtuously clear my cache daily, and this problem has existed for several months. During this time I have been so busy building (with real primmy steps, ooh they do look so good compared to sculpted stairs!) that I managed to ignore the problem.
It does baffle me why they have reverted to distorted flat shapes, though. I have written to the maker, and await a reply.
But as it is likely that my old builds still contain the problem; replacing them all with 15 or so prims is going to be tricky.
I would be interested in buying good sharp full-perm 1 prim sculpty stairmaps made the modern way (tall and short stair varieties), if anyone can recommend some....

Best wishes from Ainee

Well, I have a pair of simple 6 tread and 12 tread sculpted steps that I could give you, for free. They are just a single-prim strip of stair treads that needs to be phantom and have a ramp under them, but they have been working fine in my own builds. They are textured as simple wood steps, with the top faces and front faces at different brightness levels for definition. Send me an IM in-world if you want them.

Nothing fancy, but it works.

I spoke with Ainee on the builder's group on this issue and also thought of a cache problem. I use Emerald so know about clearing the cache beyond merely pressing the button in preferences. That being said after talking to her I went through some old sculpties and one was corrupted to the point only the oblong spheres rezzed in all 3 copies I had in inventory. I did the complete cache clearing, manually going in and deleting everything in the folder and still got the same results. Since I'm an Emerald user, SL won't answer my support ticket other than to say "Use our viewer and clear your cache", so I suggest others check their old sculpts and see if any have corrupted.

Thank you, Ceera and Clyde! Phew, I'm glad its not just my cache which is corrupted, but that this is a genuine issue!
Ceera, I am grateful for your offer, but I tend to make my low-prim buildings as one solid item, for ease of rezzing (I provide the doors already sized). The reason I used these old (and now flattened) sculpties was because I don't like to mix phantom sections into builds with no rez-faux... I did discard many sculpties I bought precisely because of this annoying problem... the shading sounds effective but I am very fussy about the wood I textures I use, being a perfectionist RL architect... But I would certainly like to have a look at your versions inworld, please.
Sculptymakers out there! Only you can solve this problem! Please make some different sized sculptymaps (no phantoming) as there is a real need for them! 3-tread, 6-tread, 12 and 13 tread... Textures (pale stone and wood) showing shaded lipping to the steps would be a desirable extra... And so would a dog-leg effect for turning corners...

Best wishes from Ainee

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hermetic%20Palaces/118/119/26

You can find the stairs I mentioned in use in most of the buildings in the "RUCE 2" sim. Some use the wood texture, some stone, and some use a carpeted stair tread texture that I devised.

Eventually I hope to have the free time to learn more about making my own sculpties, and manipulating the bounding boxes so they don't need to be phantom. But for now, these do the job for me.

I'm going to have to go back to my original assumption as far as my inventory is concerned. After upgrading to Emerald 1.234.904, I cleared the cache a couple of times and low & behold my missing sculpt textures were back. I have heard this is true for virtually all missing inventory and that the 'Clear' button on the standard viewer doesn't do a complete job of clearing the cache, making it necessary to occasionally manually go in and delete the contents of the SL cache. Hope this helps.

Thank you Clyde, and especially for coming over to have a look at the problem today. It has become more complex when it appears that half the ppl looking at it can see horrible flattened ramps, and the other half see it as perfect. I'd post two snapshots, mine and another persons, but I can't seem to do that anymore...

So I have set out the photo of what it SHOULD look like beside the Palace with the problem... Everyone who has looked into this is baffled by it... Yes, I did try making the sculpty inside and mirror, and planar; no difference. There is a perfect (to me) smaller set of stairs beside the gate too, plus a borked one. The Borghese Villa is in the extreme corner of the Island, you can tp there from the mapboard at the gate.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hermetic%20Palaces/118/119/26

The real worry is that I have sold some of these buildings and ppl may be suddenly seeing them as borked...

Ah, the ever-deepening mysteries of SL....

Best wishes from Ainee