Isn't the sculpty map just a targa image file? MoI doesn't have any tools for editing images.

jonah

Hi Rose, there currently isn't any way to do that, and most of the utilities I have seen are for going in the other direction, from some other format into a sculpty instead of the direction that you are asking about.

But it might not be too hard to create a converter program for going the other way though - do you have some sculpt maps that you can send to me for testing with? Either post them here or e-mail them to me at moi@moi3d.com and I will see if I can make a simple converter for you.

- Michael

Yes it is, but I was hoping to be able to import into, say, Wings 3d (which is possible) then save it as a file that Moi can open. So I can edit it in Moi then reupload into Second life. I just don't know what i'm suppose to be saving it as once I have it open in Wings, that will also work with moi.

Hi Jonah, they are image files but with the rgb pixel values meant to be interpreted as xyz coordinates for a kind of uv parameterized surface.

- Michael

Thanks Michael! i'll send some over to you.

Hi Rose, actually one thing that may be a bit difficult is that a sculpt map I think is meant to generate a polygon surface output.

MoI does not work with polygon data, MoI works with a completely different kind of data called NURBS surfaces.

Wings works with polygon data - that is why there isn't any way to export data from Wings into MoI because Wings is using a totally different method to define 3D objects than MoI uses.

For a sculpt map, I can try to do something that converts the data as a NURBS surface, but if just use the sculpt map's points as a NURBS surface the resulting shape will be a bit sort of "melted down" from the original shape that you see in SL.

So I don't know if a converter that does that (modifies the shape somewhat) would be useful to you or not.

- Michael

A modified shape of the second life version would be fine with me. I just want the general shape so I have something to work off of so I don't have to start from scratch. Would somehow importing the sculpty into say, Maya instead and saving it there work? Or does it use the same the same thing that moi does? I'm sorry if thats a stupid question but I don't really know much about the different types of 3d programs, even though i have a ton of them. I have maya I just have no clue how to use it but even if i had to go through 2-3 programs jsut to get it working in moi I would be happy...cuz I'd much rather work in Moi.

I also, wanted to add, that I love Moi!...Its so much easier to work with than all the other programs I've tried and I tell everyone I know in Second Life to try the demo because I know they will get hooked on it. It's pure awsome!

Hi Rose,

> Would somehow importing the sculpty into say, Maya instead
> and saving it there work?

No, probably not - Maya can actually work with both polygon data and spline data but probably it will import the sculpty as polygon data.

MoI is a bit different - MoI only works on spline data and not polygon (faceted) data.

Wings is the other way around, it only works on polygon data and not spline data.

- Michael

Ahhh. Must be somehing like Modo's 32-bit vector displacement maps...

jonah

Hi jonah, it's similar, except instead of defining a vector displacement from an existing point the sculpt map defines the base 3d point location itself.

It's not a texture that is applied to existing geometry, it actually defines a piece of geometry by itself.

- Michael

Post a sculpty map you want in MoI.

i see. so there really is no "mesh" object at all in the space? that's a pretty cool idea.

To BurrMan

Here's a couple basic sculpties for ya.

Hi Rose, I've made a converter program which you can get from here:
http://moi3d.com/download/Sculpt23DM.zip

Unzip it to get the Sculpt23DM.exe program and a couple of DLL files that should go alongside it in the same folder.

Then you can run the program, it will prompt you for an input .tga file and an output .3dm file and then it will do the conversion and create the .3dm file at the end.

There doesn’t seem to be any built-in way to determine if a sculpt map is supposed to be closed in one direction, for this conversion I just take a look and see if the points are sort of close together along one edge and if they are then I close that direction. It is possible that some sculpt maps may not end up being closed with this method.

But I hope this will help to be able to get some of your data into MoI.

- Michael

Hi jonah,

> so there really is no "mesh" object at all in the space? that's a pretty cool idea.

Each pixel in the sculpt map will become one vertex of a mesh object that is created from it.

It would actually be a lot easier if Second Life supported regular polygon mesh data instead of this kind of custom type of object, they seemed to develop this method since it would kind of fit within their existing image streaming type data flow or something like that...

The other thing for their purposes is you can easily do some stuff like sample a few points in it to make a rougher version.

- Michael

Hi All....

Any body can tell me what is sculpt map ?
How we can create it ?

When I open the Heel 1 I just see image below :


After convert using sculpt23dm :


So, the source file compare to the result is very different.

Oh my, that is just amazing! thanks so so so much Michael!

Hi Anis,

> Any body can tell me what is sculpt map ?
> How we can create it ?

It's a particular kind of file format used by the Second Life simulator/game software.

One way to create one is to create a surface in MoI and then use the 3dm2sculpt converter program available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/3dm2sculpt .

There is some more general information on them available here:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_FAQ

They are only of use if you are using the "Second Life" program though, they are not used by anything else.

- Michael

Thanks for your explanation. I imagine they could also resize the image "on the fly", and therefore reduce mesh density based on distance from camera. it's a very interesting concept...

jonah




"The other thing for their purposes is you can easily do some stuff like sample a few points in it to make a rougher version.

- Michael"