Second Life Sculpted Prim TGA Resolution Question

[Severa]

Is there anyway to set to the out put for that second life plugin for this or within the program itself to be 512 instead of 64x64?


I tried looking but I just couldnt figure it out.

[lisa]

There's no user-configurable option to do so. Technically speaking, Second Life won't use a sculpt map above 32x32, as this already results in 1024 vertices in the mesh... as much as a torus, which is the other heaviest shape. At a distance, SL drops the resolution to 16x16, or 256 vertices. The maps generated by the exporter are at 64x64--even though SL can't actually render this--by recommendation of Qarl Linden. I assume this is both for future-proofing and to get a little bit of oversampling to hide the artifacts. A 512 map would be over a quarter of a million vertices, way too much for the SL renderer to handle even if they'd let you; and ironically, it will still have artifacts, as the issue is the limited numerical precision, not the texture resolution.

For what it's worth, internally the plug-in actually renders the image at a higher resolution and downsamples it to 64x64 to smooth the output.

Just curious, what are you wanting to do with a 512 map?

[Severa]

I was just hoping to get tighter detail to show up on the sculpt on the prims. I do a lot of detailed work and so much is lost. Thanks for the reply too.

[lisa]

Ah, gotcha. I think more detail is a big wish for a lot of people. :-) I wonder if there's a JIRA entry for more bits per channel?

Depending on your model, you can sometimes get more detail out of them if you adjust with the UV map. Since the AC3D plug-in renders the sculpty in texture space, if you increase the texture space of an area, you will get more vertices devoted to the area in the final sculpty.

Select the surfaces you want to get more vertices devoted to, then go into the texture coordinate editor and stretch that section of the map to make it larger.

[lisa]

Here's an example showing the *dramatic* difference adjusting your UV map can make.

The images show: the original test shape in AC3D, the default UV map, the UV map after adjusting to protect the "nose" of the sphere, and the radical difference in output when the two versions are rendered in Second Life. (Original uv map is on top, adjusted uv map is on the bottom)

[HD1]

Hey Lisa,
You seem to be the Second Life Pro here... , or one of them... so I'll try asking you. I'm using AC3D for creating sculpts in SL and am having great results using the prims supplied in the plug-in. But .. I would LOVE to know how to branch out some and import some other geometry. The problem there is the "perfect" UV map. Can you Direct me on somewhere to find info on learning to make these maps for new geometry ?

Below is a bike I did using sculpts created in AC3D for the Tank, Handle bars, Seat, and the exhaust pipes....

[lisa]

Sweet, nice bike! Does it drive yet?

I don't know how familiar your with UV mapping, but if you're new to it, here are a couple of links on texturing in AC3D in general:
http://www.inivis.com/ac3d/tutorials/carbody/index.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...18320165998532
http://www.inivis.com/forum/showpost...2&postcount=10

As far as getting the "perfect" map, it's really the same process as any texture, just make sure you fill up the whole map and there are no holes. If you use the UV Map tool on the Tools menu, and select Spherical, that's usually a pretty good start. After you've spherical wrapped it, stretch it to fit the whole map, then hand-tweak from there.

Oh! LL added a nice new feature that makes uv mapping a little easier. Using a little LSL script, you can change the wrap type so it doesn't need to be spherical. (You still have to use the whole map, but it doesn't have to wrap in all directions.)

If you add this line of code to the state_entry in your script, you can change the wrapping type:
llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "texture uuid", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_TORUS]);

The available wrapping types are:
PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_SPHERE
PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_TORUS
PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_PLANE
PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER

Texture UUID is the uuid of your sculpt map, which you can get by right-clicking on it. I think you can also use the texture name if you put the texture in the prims' inventory.

I hope this helps! If there are specific things I can give more details on, please let me know.

[Severa]

Thanks so much for the reply and information. I'll give it a try and hopefully put it to good use! :grin:

[HD1]

Lisa,
You Rock !! Thank you so much for the links, advice and LSL insight!! :-)
I'll be hitting you up as I delve into this with more specific questions I'm sure. Thanks for that offer as well. **Grins**
As far as the bike goes yeah .. It runs like a dream. Tell ya what.. Drop me your SL name either here or in private I'll throw you one so you can see it firsthand.
Thanks again for your help :-)
HD