Blocks.blend - example of disjointed sculptie
Here's a test file I put together for the new baker. It uses an 8 x 256 oblong map to give 16 separate blocks which should work on LOD2 and LOD3. Do an Image - LOD bake on the sculpt map to make studying how I did it easier.
Basically, I cleaned up and copied a 4 x faces, 3 y faces sphere mesh along the UV Map leaving a gap of two faces (for 2 LOD levels) between each. This let's you model without connecting lines as the baker will fill in the gaps. Just make sure the edge of each gap is drawn to a single point on the mesh.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| blocks.blend | 42.67 KB |
Updated baker to handle triangle edges
I've commited an update to the baker, using "Remove Doubles" will work correctly on this model now with the latest git checkout
I have been testing, started
I have been testing, started with a 4x3 cylinder, looks like it clears rotation and move edges around. Seems to be perfect in Blender but when I up-load to my opensim it doesn't look so cool. What I'm doing wrong? S.O.S, help!
/me spins, kick, double kick and says: "enough, enough, a glass of water, please"
my test .blend below.
Object mode rotations aren't
Object mode rotations aren't baked into the sculpt map. They should be reproduced in the LSL script that Export - Second Life LSL will produce. I've no idea what the level of sculptie support is in opensim. If it looks right on Image - Import as Sculptie after baking, then it most likely is right and the problem lies elsewhere. I'm assuming you are testing commit 88b3a00b, as earlier versions did have problems with triangular faces.
If you go to object mode, then when you hold down left mouse button over the sculpt map, it should display the actual RGB values. This can be handy to check what's going on. Turning off fill and finalise will result in just the edges being drawn. It's helpful (but not essential) to me if bug reports narrow down the problem to baker, fill or finalise as each affects the final sculpt map values in different ways.
I had to search the meaning
I had to search the meaning of "narrow down" you know it's not my first language so there are usages I don't really know. I think I understand now the meaning.
I'm not sure if it's a bug or what is it, but I believe , yeah, it's getting messy if I keep commenting errors and stuff like this. Could you create a new Forum topic? Something like: - Errors, Testing, Oddity - "Experimenting turbulence, not sure what's going on? This is your place in the world." So I keep all my stuff (testing reports, etc) together, and of course everyone else, experimenting the weirdness, I believe it's gonna be helpful for all of us to keep it much more organized.
If you do that I gladily move the testing comments over there to keep it tidy (if I can, not sure if I'm able to move content).
That Topic if created would be like a pre-bug report which I like, somehow it would incentivate us (the members) to participate if possible improving ideas on what is wrong and what is right while using Primstar.
Pre-bug reports
You can use the issue tracker. There's an option for "Support Request" in the category, particularly now with the manual needing a lot of work, that's probably a better option than the forums for some problems.
In cases like this, where you are experimenting with a technique mentioned in the forums, then adding comments here is the best approach, as all the information about that then ends up in one place.
As far as I know, SL still has problems with lossless textures not being lossless, so I trust what Primstar tells me about the map more than an inworld display. I'll be testing more inworld when I get to finalising the export features for 0.9.x. You can confirm for yourself whether it is a lossless upload / download bug by saving the sculpt map from SL and comparing to the original bake.
right on! I will do that.
right on! I will do that.
my blocks.blend test - second
my blocks.blend test - second chance - a little better this time: for some strange reason... it works in OS but it's not loading in SL. Image below and blend file. This time I didn't do "Remove Doubles" works the same I guess.
Disjointed Sculptie query.
I've been attempting, with moderate success, the disjointing process to make railings for a boat but I don't quite understand how you got to the apparent lack of connecting lines representing the link faces/edges.
I've started with a sculpty cylinder mesh and scaled two sets of adjacent nodes down to zero but it doesn't look as clean as your visibly separate blocks. Is there a step by step explanation available to help me understand?
Deleting edges
There's a few different ways to do it. The simplest is to create a sculptie of the final size, say 4 x 128 with 0 subdivisions. Then in edit mode select sections of the mesh and delete them. The edges left over should both be drawn to poles. You can remove doubles on them too with 0.9.2 or later.
The test gui has useful information on the LODs which you can use to decide how much to delete. If you only want LOD3 to look right, then just delete the edges between the faces. For the 4 x 128 example, LOD2 is 4 x 64, so deleting one edge loop (which takes 2 faces of edges with it) would give a split that works on 2 LOD levels. LOD1 is 4 x 16 so you'd need to delete 7 edge loops to remove 8 faces of edges to maintain the seperation at that level. Just divide the desired LOD level into the maximum on that sculpt map to see how many continous faces need removing. 128 / 16 = 8 and remove one from that if deleting edge loops rather than face edges.
When deleting multiple faces, use the default sculpt map image (which can be recreated with Image - Bake Sculptie LOD) to make sure the selection is at the correct LOD points (brighter blue dots are used at more LOD levels).
Deleting edges.
Thanks for reply, Domino.
It will take a bit of hard thinking to get my head round your reply - you obviously have a much greater hands on understanding og Blender.
I'll work on it!
Not working in normal SL viewer
I found that map I baked dont work good in SL (in upload windows it's ok). I think that is the lossless problem.
Ahm...
Good work
SL upload problem?
Hi Dom and others.
I was working on a stair comprising a series of separate treads and worked up a mesh from a 4 x 64 sculptie plane mesh but when I uploaded to SL it screwed up big time.
I eventually remembered Dom's example blend of 16 separated cubes so baked that using the Primstar 0.9.10 release and tried to import it to see if I could identify where I'm going wrong. Every time I get crap results and have to ask is this a fundamental weakness in the SL upload process or am I doing something else wrong (as usual)?
I've tried with various viewers and attach pics of the results below.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
oblongs bugs/lossless - maybe -
Hi there, carbon, well until I know that's a LL issue, I think Domino mentions that around here, I have been testing on that like a month ago, and it's related to the oblongs and lossless (probably) bugs. I have successed up-loading the .tgas to my opensim server though, which means it's a LL thingy.
.blend and image here or just scroll up it's a couple comments above.
Hi Manny. Thanks for reply. I
Hi Manny. Thanks for reply. I confess I didn't check the details of your post. Apols.
So that's a bummer! I'm trying to save on prims in SL but I guess my expectations are ahead of LL's capabilities.
So far I've failed to manage to get OS working as a standalone sim so I can't even test there.
Ah well, that's (second) life!
No need to apols. Opensim is
No need to apols.
Opensim is relatively simple to install, I actually did it in a few minutes, no more than 10mins the first time, you have to edit a couple of files to run as standalone, (al least in the versions I have used/use) maybe that changed. There are neat tutorials on the net I bet, what is a little complex is migrating the database to mysql in my case, but also that's not impossible. But you probably don't need to do so, you can run it with the default database sql lite I think, or something like that. Only difference is that it will lag a little if you try to load too much stuff to it.
haha I'm listening to Mad Room Mania, funky, funky!
Lossless bug
There is a Second Life bug that can cause problems. There's always been a bit of a chicken and egg situation with sculpties and the tools to make them. Eventually I decided that a rock solid implementation in Primstar to act as a reference was the only way to break out of that cycle (oblong support was in Primstar before SL for example). It lets us create accurate maps so we can identify when SL is doing something wrong with them
I'm following a thread in the
I'm following a thread in the Building Forum on this same issue and there Gaia is reporting precise results using 1024 faces.
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=343081&page=2&pp=15
Guess I'll have to experiment further and hopefully get more details of where I'm falling down as so far I just can't get the disjointing to work satisfactorily.
It is a lossless upload problem
I've just tested this inworld and the results are attached. Blocks.tga is the original bake, it works fine in Blender and was uploaded to SL with lossless checked.
Blocks_save.tga is the result of the upload, saved from the SL client back to disk. It looked terrible as a sculptie.
Blocks_diff.tga is a difference map (normalised) which shows the changes between the two maps. There are virtually none of the original map colours remaining according to this.
I read the thread at SL Forums
If it's not a SL bug what is it? I up-loaded the same .tga to SL & to OS using the same LL's viewer but only seeing the right shape once in-world in my OpenSIM: image I agree with Domino it's a lossless bug.
Was 8 x 256 - now 16 x 256
I've updated the blocks.blend file so it uses a 16 x 256 sculpt map rather than a 8 x 256. The larger size avoids the lossless bug, so hopefully it's more immediately useful as an example of the technique.
lossless upload bug ...
I have not read through the whole thread and i might duplicate information, but in case it has not been said before:
The bug appears only on sculptmaps with less than 1024 faces. The smaller the sculptmap is the more the sculptmap gets distorted. In fact under some circumstances you can get better results when you upload with Losslesss DISABLED. But all in all sculptmaps < 1024 faces are messy. there is a bug in the SL bug tracking system about that too. You can find a full story here:
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=320205
Another remark is:
I have been creating a sculptmap of size 8*512 and i was able to make 16 separated LOD resistant cubes up to LOD1 (3 levels of LOD) with that.
I'm trying to create a single
I'm trying to create a single prim for the spokes of an 8-handled nautical ship's wheel. This would require either 4 overlapping spokes or (if Blender can't handle that sort of thing) eight shorter non-overlapping spokes. Naturally the objects would be placed in a circle, instead of a row like the sculpty maps in this thread. Can this be done with oblong maps?
Where does one find the basics on how to create an oblong map?
the answer is there
I'm wondering if you re-check your posts, if you don't check it (this comment). I took the time to look after tutorials on how to reach that so you are able to read it and learn from it.
You can position the blocks
You can position the blocks how you like, so overlapping is ok. The basics on creating sculpties of all shapes and sizes is in the manual. You can change the size of the sculpt map after creation (before baking) by going to the UV Image Editor and pressing n to display the image properties. Just enter the new size you want.
I'll be covering the multiple shape technique in more detail when I do the mesh editing part of the manual. Generally speaking when I put up a thread like this with a quick example of a technique, it's to see what questions come up. Then I've a better idea of what I need to cover in the manual.
So "where's the tutorial?" only has one answer, it's on my todo list. If you can be more specific about which steps are giving you problems, then not only will I be able to help you more, you'll also be helping improve the manual.
Deleting edges to create blocks
I've attached another blocks example to help explain the theory behind this technique. In this one I've not actually created the blocks yet, it's at the step before. To get to this point I added a Cylinder sculpt mesh with 4 X Faces and 16 Y faces and 2 levels of subsurf. I then went into edge mode and selected the edges that will become connecting strings in the final sculptie.
So once you open the file, the first step is to press x to delete and choose Edges. If you then press a to select all, you can see how this results in a UV layout with separate blocks. We need to close the ends of each block so the gaps are filled with zero width faces when the bake is done.
Now you have 4 blocks each with 4 X Faces and 3 Y faces making up the sculptie. I could have got to the same point by starting with 4 X Faces and 3 Y faces, closing the ends, changing the map size to 32 x 128 then copying the block in edit mode and arranging the UVs for each block to form the same UV layout as deleting edges made.
Which method to use will depend on whether your blocks are going to be identical or not. The second method is better when they are, as you do the modelling on the block before creating the copies. If the blocks aren't going to be identical, then the edge delete technique is probably faster.
block2 edited
And here's an edited example where I've used loop cuts to add in the details where needed. I've only done the first block, you can see why the second technique is useful here, as I'd have to repeat the edits on the other three blocks to get the final shapes. It's obviously a lot easier to just delete the other three, duplicate the finished one, arrange the UVs and rotate into place.
Cross.blend
Here's another example of using the blocks technique. Here I've also used joined mesh techniques but on a single sculpt map. There's even a single unconnected quad face which brings the blocks string to a point in the middle of the cross.
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