Can Milkshape be used to make sculpted prims?

Very simple question... I have Milkshape, having used it to make a few things when I was involved in making Sims 2 custom content. I haven't seen any definitive answer as to whether it can be used for making sculpties. Anyone know for sure?

It can't be use in the traditional sense, mainly due to the amount of detail that a sculpt prim holds. However, it would be very useful for say, taking a low-rez mesh you made in another app and exported into a sculpt, then tesselating it higher, sculpting in detail, exporting a normal map of the difference, then bring said normal map into maya, and baking out the texture. Its basically the exact same pipeline that most current gen video games are made using. (only Z-brush is the more common program used in this case).

WOOoooooooshhhhh!!!!!!!

(Yes, that's the sound of this explanation flying over my head. )

t can't be use in the traditional sense, mainly due to the amount of detail that a sculpt prim holds. However, it would be very useful for say, taking a low-rez mesh you made in another app and exported into a sculpt, then tesselating it higher, sculpting in detail, exporting a normal map of the difference, then bring said normal map into maya, and baking out the texture. Its basically the exact same pipeline that most current gen video games are made using. (only Z-brush is the more common program used in this case).

Ok, I'll break this down a little further. My apologees for the obtuse explanation, I was a touch rushed when typing it.

Basically, milkshape is a pure modeler so if you want to use it in a realtime pipeline like SL, you're going to need another application like Maya or Max. The process goes a like this:

1. Make a basic shape, something simple to get the contour of the object as best as possible in something like Maya or Max.

2. Export that object as a sculpt texture, bring it into SL, and apply. Now you have the basic shape of your object. But as we all know, sculpt prims only have so much detail to give, which is insufficient on its own for say a human head.

3. Import said object as an .obj into something like milkshape, mudbox or z-brush.

4. Tessalate/subdivide it to a much larger level. Then using the sculpting tools of that given app, make the object look like however you wish.

5. At this point, you now have a high-detail version, and the low detail one you imported into SL. At this point, there are a number of ways to basically turn the difference between these objects into a texture via render baking.

Its to complex and app-specific to explain this in a forum post, but basically what you want to look up reference for is texture baking. You might need to buy a book on it if you're interested. Be warned, its not simple stuff.

Hope this helped.

-Xen

I'm working on a Sculpt Map exporter for MilkShape. You'll have to start using a base "sculpt prim", which I've also written a plugin to produce, and you'll be limited in the operations you can perform. In short, you'll only really be able to move the verts around... no extruding, subdividing edges, flipping edges, welding, etc.

It basically works, I just have to learn enough about Win32 API programming to create control dialogs for the prim builder and exporter.

Thank you!!! ((((HUGS))))

Until then you can use the following method: get the freeware tool Lith Unwrap (http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198) and Rael Delcon's Obj2Sculpt program (linked in this thread: /8/e8/182763/1.html).

Import your Milkshape, OBJ, LUM, 3DS or DXF file into Lith Unwrap, triangulate the mesh if needed (Tools ---> Triangulate), select the mesh, assign a spherical UV map (Tools --> UVMapping --> Spherical; try out the 3 axis to see what looks best) and drag the vertices around to completely fill the rectangular map, since holes lead to "bad pixels" in the sculpt texture later. Save the finished map as a texture template, export an OBJ and drag it onto Rael's Obj2Sculpt proggie. Can be done with almost any mesh.

I wish I could take the credits but all of them go to Cindy Crabgrass that made the OBJ to Sculpt converter . I only started one of the threads ....

Hi,

- Where can I find it?
- Is it a stand alone program?

I'm having mediocre results with Blender and would like to try another converter.

obj2sculpt

your mileage may vary
yes, its standalone, needs .NET or might run with mono (at least one Person runs it on a Mac)

hmm.. something wrong with links today ?
well, you will find it.

Thanks, looking forward to it. May Philip Linden bless the 3D programmers

I'd be very interested in this plug-in for Milkshape ....