Creating Bas Relief Sculpted Prims

Hi. I'm looking for any help I can find in creating sculpted prims with bas relief. What software do I need to purchase in order to produce this effect. I am an artist who is anxious to create 3 dimensional versions of my artwork. Thanks in advance for any help, leads or information.

Grafix

You're gonna need to use a ton of sculpties to make a decent bas relief, but it certainly can be done. You won't be able to make a good relief picture from just a single sculptie, if that's what you were thinking. There's just not enough detail allowed. Every sculptie has just 32x32 vertices.

Of course, you could always fake the effect with a good texture bake, but if you're gonna do that anyway, then there might not be any point in using sculpties at all, depending on the piece; you could always just put a photo of a bas relief on a flat cube, of course, and it could look pretty decent. If you're a purist, you might want to sculpt every last detail, but that will mean using a LOT of sculpt prims. For practicality, you'll probably want to go somewhere in between, a moderate amount of sculpted prims to block out the major shapes with a nice lighting bake on it to simulate the fine detailing. If you know anything about surface transfer, this would be a good application for it.

As for your software question, I'd recommend using Maya with the Turtle renderer, but if you can't spend a few thousand dollars on this, then any of the other alternatives will do. See the software page on the sculptie wiki for a list of choices.

Thank you for the reply. The technique (as I am beginning to discover) involves using gradients and rgb channels. So far, all my experiments are coming out as vertex vomit, but I hope to solve it. Thanks again.

i guess the level of detail will be a matter for the artist to decide here. If you wish to do what you want, it is quite simple.

and you do not need maya blender 3dstudois, etc etc.

Take any graphics editor which allows you to mix rgb channels.
impose a pure left right gradient in red.
impose a pure up/down gradient in blue.

Use the green channel for your height map.
(you'll need to have actuall data that corresponds to height that varies on a greyscale 0-255)

you're result may vary from info more specific than this on account of how you save your work when done.
some editors will offer various options which when differently applied alter the sculpt as shown in SL.

So make a few test maps with appropriate/discriptive names.

like make one with the red gradient left to right dark to light
call it reddarkleftlightright.tga

etc.

one of these will be the outcome you are looking for.
best of luck and all that.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide

Chosen's explanation is right on (as usual), but I will unpack it into a simple to read list

1) Create a good image of your object, and put it on a simple flat prim. It might look pretty good.

2) Create a perfect bas relief. It will be hard, and will require a lot of prims.

3) Compromise. use a sculpted prim to create something with the correct rough shape, and then apply a detailed texture to add the fine details.

Thank you Zen. Your comments are in line with the helpful advice I received from another resident on the SLX forum. I also want to thank Chosen again and you, Lee;-- your insights and suggestions have given me some new ideas.

I jumped into sculpties as a newbie to SL back in June. But, my enthusiasm was muted by the limitations (spaceships exported from Wings3D kept turning out lumpy and organic looking) so, I decided to focus on regular prim building and come back to sculpties later.

Recently, after seeing the fantastic bas reliefs on display at the Sculpty Garden, I got excited about the possibility of doing something similar with some of my surrealistic Photoshop work. As that work is quite detailed, I now realize a detailed bas relief would involve much more than converting some Photoshop files.

Nevertheless, like all artistic investigation, my quest has lead to new discoveries and fresh inspiration. Learning the Photoshop channels technique has given me a new canvas for some interesting ideas. Also, I found an exciting tool by Cel Edman called SculptyPaint, and a helpful video tutorial by Ty Gould on the SL wiki about "painting" sculpties using Wings3D and Photoshop .

Instead of adapting old artwork to sculpties, I have decided to make new artwork using these newfound techniques and tools.

Thanks again to everyone who replied.

~ Grafix