3DS Max sculpty symmetry question

I spoke the other day with a friend who's been away from SL for a while, and who is now getting back into it. He's having a little trouble using Max to make sculpties, and since I'm not a Max user myself, I wasn't able to help him very effectively. I suggested he post his question here, but he wasn't too keen on that idea. I guess he had some issues with forum griefers before (haven't we all), which unfortunately turned him off of the forums altogether. So I'm taking the liberty of posting for him. Here goes.

What he's trying to do is create symmetrical objects. Coming from a traditional 3D modeling background, his instinct is first to cut a sphere in half, sculpt one side of the model, then mirror-duplicate it to create the other side, and weld the two halves together. Under normal circumstances, this is a fine approach, but for sculpties, it doesn't work. The UV's and the vertex ordering end up incorrect (not sure if Max cares about vertex ordering or not, but I'm sure it cares about UV's).

Were he trying this in Maya, I'd be able to help him straighten out the mess. But I don't know enough about Max to help there. Would a kind-hearted Max user please post some suggestions, so I can pass them along? Thanks in advance.

Hey Chosen,
Excellent question....one that I had not contemplated until you brought it up. So...after a little "try and try again"....I came up with something that may work. I am sure, however, that there is probably a better way...but its the first one I could think of. So here goes.....
For this example, I used a Standard Primitive > Cylinder. Made sure I had 32 height segments and 32 sides. Convert to Editable Poly. In the Modifier Panel, select the polygon sub-object > delete the caps (top and bottom) then delete one full side of polygons (I did the right vertical side). Next, in the modifier panel drop down, find and select Symmetry. Adjust the mirror axis as needed (and may need to turn on the Flip option). You should see the cylinder as a whole at this point. But don't edit it yet. Add a UVW Mapping modifier next. Choose the cylinder mapping option (since that is what I started with). This should conform to the object perfectly, if not...go to the lower part of the menu and click on the Fit button. Now we add the Unwrap UVW modifier. Click on the big Edit button and make sure the mesh is fitted properly in the grid ( mine are usually off, so I have to select all the verts and move them as a whole, into place....this is while I am still in the Unwrap modifier btw). OK...now that the mesh is set....go back down to the bottom of the stack, which will be the original Editable Poly and model away! Just make sure when you are done that you deselect any sub-ojects and go back to the top of the stack. Then you can render out your sculpty map. If you use the Render to Texture method...be sure to add, one more time at the top, a UVW Map modifier set to planer and Map Channel 2.
Should be all set to go.
I just did a small test and everything seemed to work ok. I checked it in Shack Dougall's SculptGenMax as well and did the preview in SculptySpace and it all looked good.

Like I said, there may be a better way than this, and there are more knowledgeable max people here than myself, and I would love to know a better way.

Hope this helps a little. And good luck to your friend.
Fast

Yeah, like Fastrak points out, if your friend has his UV chops down he can do the mirror and symmetry. None of the Max sculptie authoring processes I've seen require rigid vert orders to be maintained so it's all down to UV space management.

I'm not so sure of the exact steps Fastrak lays out because I've never done it that way. It might work, but I find if I have a UV modifier above my edit level in the stack it messes things up for me so I shy away from that sort of thing unless my modeling is finalized.

Max's cylinders already have a nice UV, so when I mirror or symmetry I drop the Unwrap UV on after that. Since you don't chop into the geometry when making sculpties the UVs stay normalized. After mirroring the sides of the model the UVs for both sides are on top of each other so it will look like you only have half a UV set when you edit them. You just have to manually mirror the UV's back into place. go into face mode and select one side of the object. move that side over .5 on the U in whatever direction and flip them over so the orientation is correct.

If you use mirror a good practice is to get into the habit of using Reset X-Form and then flip normals to account for the -100% scaling.

There are also a few scripts I've seen that will mirror over vert transforms creating morph targets that don't mess with UV's or vert orders at all. www.scriptspot.com should have something along those lines.

Thanks, guys. I'll pass this information along.