Art of Illusion - Sculpties - Textures

Hi everyone, Have thouroughly enjoyed SL since the time I have been on here. Loved building and texturing. Now Sculpties, ok I am not a computer guy, no 3-d experience, have just started recently using Photoshop for my own textures and honestly it scares the hell out of me but I have trudge through and been pretty satisfied with the results with no formal training. Now Sculpties, theory was exciting and I come on here and read the forums and honeslty - you guys scare the hell out of me. Want to learn , dont think I can do this one by trial and error. Reading all the responses and dont even understand them. I am not dumb, but feel like I am becoming dumb very quickly. I loaded and have even been playing with Art of Illusion - seems like if I could spend more time I may just learn.

Can anyone who is using AOI - list out very simply how I would take a file that I have *.obj. Tell me what I need to do with it to prepare for SL and then VERY SIMPLY list the steps that I would use to get it into SL and actually use it. I think if I start this way I will proceed forward without continually thinking about calling quits in SL grabbing a bottle and forgetting about this. I have invested huge amounts of money in SL and dont want to be left behind by all of you very creative people, I may lag behind but have never let anything beat me before, but this just may be the proverbial straw. Anyone, have sympathy, and help me and teach me like you would a child -

p.s. I know many of you may suggest Blender, I have it, but cant even open a file in that program. I have never been very creative in my entire life and SL has opened up an entire part of myself that I did not know existed. I get compliments on my creations and now just feel like it is time for everyone to laugh and point fingers at the old guy. I know - sound pathetic, feeling a little pathetice tonight.
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I dont get it either and I create textures using photoshop too . Tell me this what do I do with the sculptie texture? I uploaded one I got from the wiki and I dont know how to use it once I get it into sl into my inventory. Do you know ? lol

Elinah

hello!

check out a product called uvmapper at www.uvmapper3d.com

the object you made in wings (or maya or studiomax) is a mesh and is like chicken wire.
this program will take that chicken wire mesh and stretch it out flat.

you can specify which parts to stretch out ( inother words break your object into parts ) so you can know what it is you are texturing in photoshop. for instance if you made a chicken (sure why not?) the beak and legs might have same texture and you could seperate them from rest of body (which would get the feather texture).


texture editing is a lil tricky and takes a lil time to build up the skills and i refer to the actual texturing part, getting edges to line up etc.

In general this is what you are doing if you are making a shirt in sl and you download the upper body template. its an uvmap that you are texturing (go ahead download it and look at it. you can find in developers tools link from sl main page)

making a few simple tee shirts may actually help you visualize what to do with your uv map of your sculpty!

uv mapper is around $50 usd to get full version download, perhaps someone else may know a cheaper alternative. I hope this helps! Good luck!