Sculptie Question

I have a mesh that I have been trying to get into SL for month. It's very complex. My question is how can you take a non-SL ready mesh and convert it so it can be imported to SL?

Thanks.

Afraid the answer is either:

a) you can't, because SL has very specific requirements for what can be imported.

or (specifics I leave for the smarter set)

b) one could break up the object into smaller parts, taking extreme care with vertices count

or

c) (the way I'd do it)

Use the object as a guide to create an SL compatible object. Vlad Bjornson has a tutorial on how to do that in Zbrush using the Zproject brush:
http://www.shiny-life.com/2008/05/08/convert-objects-to-sculpted-prims-with-zbrush/

Many years ago, I created a 3D model importer for OBJ format. It's still functional, but the result is an object that has one or more prims per tri and quad.


Several attempts have been made to service a sculpty importer for this purpose.

The answer is to either recreate the mesh in sculpty form (see above), or use the Conform tool of your chosen modeling program to create a sculpt map (or series of them) from the object.

Shayna, I just saw your IM in my E-mail, so I know what mesh you're talking about. The answer is you can't convert it. That's simply not how it works.

The model you asked about is one I built myself. It took about a week to do. I'm aware that there are probably thousands of other versions of it out there, since the subject is a very popular character. I think one is available on TurboSquid, and I'm sure there are many others. None of them, however, could in any way work as sculpties.

Sculpties must be built in a very specific way, which is very different from how anyone would ever model for any other purpose. You cannot simply take an arbitrary model, and hit some magical "Make Sculpty" button. Nor should you, since using someone else's model without their permission is obviously wrong, not to mention illegal.

That said, you can SOMETIMES make moderatly convincing representations of arbitrary meshes as sculpties via surface transfer. The tutorial Virginia shows one way to do that in zBrush. Maya, Max, and other well-featured 3D modeling applications have similar functions. I should repeat, though, for something as complicated as the specific model you asked me about, it's not going to work very well.