Filter Forge - Second Life sculpty map workshop

Active Topics Search

Romaq Posts: 31 Filters: 1	This forum already has a discussion on making a new filter that created sculpties for Second Life. SL's Wiki Page gives an overview of sculpted prims, and there are links at the bottom of the page to cover technical details. I thought it may be useful to start this thread in the context of creating filters that would do the following: 1) FilterForge filters that create a sculpt map with a switch toggle. 2) The filter would also create a texture map that gets applied in the context of the sculpt map. 3) The filter may allow switches and deformations to both the sculpty map and the companion texture map that gets applied to the shape. An example may be a filter that creates a sculpty map of a sphere along with a mapping of a 1024 x 1024 texture map to the sphere... perhaps a rock texture. The filter has sliders to 'deform' the sphere shape so that perhaps it has sharp random deformations. The filter would then produce shadows that both deform the texture map as well as deformations to the resulting sculpty map. Another possible use would be a 'Filter Forge sculpty flower creation kit'. The controls of the filter would control things such as the petal and angle. One switch produces the sculpty map, the other switch produces the texture map. Perhaps a third switch does a representation of what the resulting flower will look like once mapped, though that would indeed be a technical challenge. But the possibility is there, and certain aspects of the work have already been done. Perhaps snippets and technical discussions can happen here and we may yet get a suite of filters acting as scuplty tool-kits for Second Life.
	Posted: March 25, 2012 10:59 pm	Details E-Mail
Romaq Posts: 31 Filters: 1	There is a http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculp...ife_viewer on Sculpties, and of interest to me is the one about LODs. Mongoose King created a filter that nicely creates a 32 x 32 matrix to output to the final image. 32 x 32 sculpties are not technically supported, even though the final resulting image should in fact be 64 x 64 because of Level of Detail (LOD) issues. Blip.tvhas a tutorial on using Blender which is useful for a discussion of LOD. One of the things that would be useful as a snippet would be to take a 'precision' generated sculpty map, say 1024 x 1024 and reduce that to a 64 x 64 mosaic, but use the do the following things: 1) Allow a slider for reducing the contrast which shrinks the sculpt-map, but helps it survive LOD much better. 2) Another issue may be 'fine' controlling LOD itself. There is a message on the SL Texturing Forumthat has a texture showing how LOD is mapped. At least, if you apply the texture, it shows where the vertices will end up on the texture including the next lower LOD. Suppose I had a 1024 x 1024 'sculpty'? Would it be possible to alter the weights of the sculpty in that 64 x 64 mosaic so that even if I only have 32 x 32 resulting vertices, I get a better LOD because of the way those extra 3072 pixels (64x64=4096 minus 32x32=1024) are used for the LOD? I do notice that both my version (made with precision fr om Blender) and TreeDee's version made from within Blender are ever so slightly truncated on the right side. I suspect this is because of how those other 3072 'unused' pixels determine wh ere the vertices actually end up. NT Using SculptyPaint to test at 32x32 or 16x16 vertices (the lower LODs) makes the problem even more noticeable. So I have to wonder if there is a way to jostle the extra 3072 pixels to 'correct' the final result. I also notice that the FF by Mongoose King survies LOD much better and does not appear to have the 'drift' that the other to results have. So a snippet that makes a better behaved 64x64 result would be quite welcome. Anyway, that's just a guess on my part.
	Posted: March 26, 2012 12:50 am	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Sculpt maps basic Specifications: Sculpties have 1024 vertexes* which can be arranged in the following configurations 3232, 6416, 1288, 2564, The TGA images used to store them however are double those sizes so a square is 6464, however, so there are redundant pixels which aren't used. Using larger sizes was popular in early SL when 128128 images were used, due to there not being the lossless compression, and due to imprecise conversions to sculpt maps in early converters. However, whatever size image, there are only ever 1024 vertexes. I've attached an image showing the exact pixels used in the sculpt fr om a 64X64 map. the black is what is ignored. Level of Detail (LOD): 3232 is the vertex count at Maximum LOD, (LOD3), followed by 1616 then 88, then there is technically 44 however that isn't ever seen unless in freak occurrences or if you deliberately turn detail settings below the minimum. The image I attached shows the LOD too, the shade of grey indicates the incusion in what LOD, darkest grey is only in LOD3, the white is in every LOD. * there is an exception with the plane configuration, which has an extra row of vertexes at the end which is fitted in as a row half the width of the regular double spaced rows... These are the bits along the two edges wh ere there are rows touching each other. They only appear in plane mode, and usually aren't used. Only a few sculptie programs make use of them, and most people don't know they exist. They appear in Plane stitching only, to replace the polygons that normally would join the sides together, I believe the top one appears in cylinder too, but have not tested that. really the statement should be there are always 1024 polygons. Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 26, 2012 8:43 am	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Oh, a note on the contrast shrinking trick: I find it is better to blend the sculpt map with 50% grey (RGB 127,127,127) which is the colour which represents the exact centre point of a sculpt. I find the using contrast has unreliable results. oh also: Stand by for some basic techniques for sculpt shapes in FF and basic shape sculpt maps... Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 26, 2012 8:52 am	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Just got a basic Sphere sculpt figured.... Here's a map of the output, this is as smooth as I can get it. Will submit the filter to snippets soon. Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 27, 2012 8:19 pm	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Here's what I get combining the sphere map with ThreeDee's planetry noise snippet. Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 27, 2012 8:24 pm	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Here's a test with a matching texture.. Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 28, 2012 12:09 pm	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Here's another type of texture.. Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 28, 2012 12:58 pm	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Superman hates this one... Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 28, 2012 1:05 pm	Details E-Mail
Mongoose King Mongoose King Posts: 257 Filters: 21	Here's all the presets I made for the sphere filter. It's looking pretty good. Will Submit this and the Plane one soon. Pondering if I should do a cylinder one next.. Release the Mongoose!
	Posted: March 28, 2012 4:54 pm	Details E-Mail
Morgantao Can't script Posts: 2185 Filters: 20	I wonder... Can you do a cone and a cylinder in the same filter? I mean, a cone is a cylinder with one end having a smaller (0) radius than the other end. It would be neat if you could have a slider that controlled the radius of each end. That being said, I don't use sculptys or Second Life, so I don't know if it would even be usefull.
	Posted: March 29, 2012 4:18 am	Details E-Mail