Hello again! I’m back from a brief jaunt to the East Coast. While I was away, I’ve had a couple of requests to break down further the steps for using my little Sculpted Prims maker. So, I’m going to try to detail what you need to do, step by step, with the test bed.
- Download my testbed from my site. The current version is here: http://www.rabbitroo.com/SL/SLtest4.lxo. Store a backup copy in case you need a fresh copy later.
- Open it up in Modo 203. I have not tested it in earlier versions. You should should see my little test vase in the window. For the sake of this exercise, I’ll be referring to Modo’s default layout, so if you’re a little new to Modo, you should set your layout to match by going to the Layout menu and selecting Layouts -> “201 Default Layout” or similar.
- In the item list, select the “Mesh” item.
- Switch to polygon mode (the “3″ key) and double-click on my vase to select all the polygons. Hit the delete key
- Model your own object or paste in your own object by using copy and paste commands from the “Edit” menu. Scale to suit (I like to see that the grid size is 10mm)
- Let’s assume that you have your object in place by one means or another in step 5. It’s time to make a Spherical UV map of the object. This will be the hardest step, so I’m going to try to make it as simple as possible in steps 7 through 15
- In the upper right, next to the Item List, is a tab for the Vertex Map List. Select this tab, and then unfold (click on the triangle) the the item labled UV Maps.
- Delete any UV maps already in the list by right-clicking and selecting “Delete.”
- Create a fresh map by clicking on the “(new map)” item under UV maps. Name it “Spherical” and make sure the type is UV Map.
- We are going to switch Layouts again to make it easier to work with UV Maps, to do this go to the layout menu and and select Layouts->”UV Edit” Your screen will dominated by a window for the UV Map next to the toolbar on the left and a smaller window for the object in the upper right.
- Select the “Create Map” tool from the upper Left. The tool properties will appear in the lower left and you will select “Spherical” from Projection Type Setting, “Y” for the Axis Setting and “Automatic” For the Settings. Don’t fool with the other things if you don’t know what they do, because you’re more likely to confuse yourself. Click once in the UV map and your object’s map should appear. Don’t worry if it looks like a tangled ball of string at this point–it’s supposed to look like that for what we’re doing. If it looks nice and flat, all the better since it means that your object has good topological parallels to sphere which will make a nice shape as a sculpie. (Spheres and Cylinders will look the best.) Hit spacebar to accept your new map. You now have a basic Spherical UV Map.
- To better fill up the UV space, we’re going to clean up the map a little. Select the “Fit UVs” tool and when the dialog pops up uncheck anything that is checked, especially “keep proportions”. Your map will try to fill up the upper right quadrant of the UV space
- If you’re very lucky (e.g. your object was shaped like a sphere or cylinder) your UV map probably fills up the square space quite nicely. If it doesn’t, it’s best to do some cleanup of the UV map so that it covers the whole positive UV space (e.g. from 0 to 1 +U and from 0 to 1 +V). To do this we’ll be selecting either vertexes or edges (e.g. use the “1″ key or the “2″ key select points or edges in the vertex map.) The next step is only necessary if your UV map’s edges don’t fill up the square very well.
- To start with select points (or edges) along the left side UV map that would, if stretched to the left make a nice left edge of the UV square shape. With these points selected, use the tool on the left under “UV Align” that looks like a green arrow pointing to the left at a vertical line of points and edges. When clicked. your selected points will jump to the left. Next, select the points along the top edge that would make a nice top edge to the map. Use the tool that looks like a green arrow pointing up. Repeat this process to make a clean right edge and bottom edge, using the right pointing align tool and the down pointing align tool respectively.
- Congratulations, you’re done making the spherical the UV map–again, don’t worry if the center looks confusing and there are overlapping polygons–this will get sorted out automatically when we make the map.
- Switch back to Modo’s default layout for now by selecting Layouts -> “201 Default Layout” or similar. Use polygon selection mode (the “3″ key) and double click on your mesh to select all its polygons. With the “M” key, make sure the objects material is set to “Default”
- We’re now going to make sure the special textures to make a sculpie fit your object. Next to the tab in the upper left that says, “Tool Bar” is another tab that says “Render Settings”. Select “Render Settings”
- In the upper right, make sure the “Item List” is showing. In the list, there are three texture controls (called texture locators in Modo parlance.) They are named “Texture: Red”, “Texture: Green”, and “Texture: Blue”. Click on each of these items, and under “Render Properties” click the Autosize button once. This will fix your texture locators for your object.
- Now we’re ready to bake out a sculpie texture. Click on the top node of the shader tree that says “Render” and check that the Frame width and Frame Height are each 64 pixels (if you haven’t changed anything in my testbed, that’s what it will be.)
- From the Render Menu, select “Bake” It will very quickly make a little 64×64 pixel render. That’s it! This little splotch of color is your sculpie texture. Save this (I usually save these as a TGA file, but other format will work) and upload into SL. Create an object and make sure the type is sculptured prim. Use this little 64×64 texture and your object should snap into shape!
Thank you, Kerwin!!!
The steps work out de facto, except for step 18: I had to select the Red/Green/Blue Luminous Color layers under the Sculpty node in the shader tree (hopefully my terminology is right; I am still fairly new to modo), rather than in the texture locater on the Items list. Selecting each of Red,Blue,Green Luminous Color layers, I just double click on autosize, and the planes center on my mesh.
Also, for some reason, my shortcut keys are messed up from one of the tutorials on the luxology site. When I press 1 and 2, it takes me to a weird zoom. I tried resetting layout, but that doesn’t reset the keys. Do you know how to reset keys?
Either place will let you size the texture locator. The purpose of a texture locator is to tell the texture (in this case a gradient) where to center the texture and how large to paint or project the texture on the object. In the case of our use, we want the texture to be exactly as big as our object and centered on our object–that’s what the “autosize” button computes. (The little white boxes show us the size, placement, and rotation of the projected texture on our object.)
To change the size of the baked texture is easy. In step 19 we look at the top of the shader tree to the node called “Render”. In the settings for that node is “Frame Height” and “Frame Width” — these will set the size of the baked texture (or any other final render.) You usually don’t have to go to big, because their isn’t a lot of geometry in a sculpie, so there isn’t much more detail it can reflect.
In Modo the keyboard editor can be engaged from the System Menu with the “Input Editor” (F2). You may have a non-default setup to complement a different mouse input mode. To reset this to Modo default, go into preferences (System -> Preferences) and from the “Mouse Input Presets” select “Default”. Modo has the capability of emulating other systems (like Maya and C4D), but when emulating them, sometimes the Modo default way of doing things (which is akin to Lightwave) gets over-ridden. Even though I use C4D and Maya a lot, I tend to stick with the Modo defaults because they’re well thought out and not that hard to learn in the end.
Happy Sculpting!
-Kerwin
I’m sorry, your tutorial looks great but I obviously missed something when I read it.
I’m using Modo 203 and I have done all of the steps, but when I Bake (or even just Render) I get a completely black result. No colours at all. I’ve checked the camera setting, and I can actually see the alpha shape of the vase after rendering, so the camera is centred on the vase, but no colour image at all.
What have I done wrong?
Cheers,
Bernard D
It sounds like your object isn’t getting the the luminous materials for the the default shader (there are no other lights in the scene.) Check the shader tree to see if there is some other material on the object. Also look at your materials in info panel to see if you have another material.
A second culprit might be that you don’t have your new UV map selected, but instead have an empty UV map selected–this will mess up the “Bake” function.
If you post your file where I can download it, I’ll take a look and see if I can spot something.
-K
Thanks for the quick response.
i had a look and realised that I now had a ‘Default’ entry in the Shader tree and it was imposing its settings on the sculptie.
I’ll get back to you if (when) i get stuck again.
Many thanks for the tutorial I was really looking for something like this.
Regards,
Bernard D
Good deal! Be sure to send me an example of your work so I can advertise your sculpie expertise. Feel free to contact me inworld as Kerwin Newall.
-K
i have the same problem as Beady. Can you take a look at my modo file
http://bboy16a.bb.funpic.de/prog/sltest4a.lxo
thanks
BBoy, I took a look at you file and it looks like an extra “default” material came along for the ride. In the shader tree unfold (click the triangle) for Render. You will see two material groups under the Base material, “Sculpie” and “(Default)”. “Sculpie” is the one you need. Right click on “(Default)” and delete it so that the “Sculpie” group is directly under the “Base” shader. When you Render -> Bake now, you’ll get a rainbow-rific, colorful sculpt map. Let me know if this works for you.
Cheers!
-K
Thanks, now it works fine.
I have made a simple quader, exportet the sculpt map and uploaded it in SL. There it looks not perfekt:
http://bboy16a.bb.funpic.de/bilder/quad_error.jpg
most objects are looks not perfectly
why?
(sorry for my bad english, i’m german)
BBoy,
Sculpies start their lives as spheres (hence we use a spherical map). The remapping of a cube to a sphere (by the UV process) and then baking tends to introduce more distortions, which is what you’re looking at.
As an experiment, start out with a sphere (say 16 longitudes and 16 latitudes) which will already have a spherical map (so you can skip the UV mapping steps later.) Now sculpt that sphere into a cube like form and bake it. That *might* give you slightly better results, because we won’t introduce a new UV distortion.
(By sculpting on a sphere that has already be UV’d, you have much more direct control of how the sculpie’s points will get distorted–which is what the bake-map does for sculpies. Sculpies at their highest level of detail start as 32 latitude by 32 longitude spheres, but you can start at lower details and deform spheres to your liking.)
HTH,
-Kerwin
(Your English is much better than my German.
)
Hi,
I’m new to Modo, with version 3.0.1. I seemed to be doing fine until step 16 and 17.
Some of the things you told us to look for, I cannot find in version 3.
Mimi, in step 16 try switching to the “Render” tab/layout in Modo 3xx. In step 16, the most important thing is to make sure the polygons are “default” material so they will take my special textures. Steps 17-18 will size those textures to match your object’s size.
-K
Thanks for the speedy reply, Kerwin! I will give it a try tomorrow. I got swamped with other work.
^_^