Downloads and Support

SculptGenMax

Frequently Asked Questions

Last Modified: 2008-01-16

What is SculptGenMax and how does it relate to Prim Composer?

SculptGenMax allows you to generate sculptmaps from sculptie-compatible meshes in 3ds Max. Once you have generated a sculptmap, you can save it to disk and then upload it to SL/OpenSim using the official viewer. You can also use SculptGenMax to load a sculptmap from disk and paste it into the scene to create a sculptie in 3ds Max.

Initially, SculptGenMax was released by itself. When Prim Composer was released, SculptGenMax was integrated into it.

Prim Composer has its own method of importing sculpties into 3ds Max, but SculptGenMax is still useful when you want to create a sculptie from a mesh that wasn’t created by Prim Composer. For example, if you create a mesh using the standard 3ds Max tools, it will not be recognized by Prim Composer. However, you can use SculptGenMax to generate a sculptmap from it and then to paste it into the scene to create a sculpted prim that Prim Composer will recognize.

In addition, SculptGenMax is currently the only way to create Tiny Sculpties.

What is a sculptie?

For general information on sculpties, try these links on the Second Life wiki. Some of the information is out-of-date, but it still provides an introduction and many good links.

• Sculpted Prims homepage
• Sculptie FAQ
• Sculptie Software Guide
• Sculpted Prim – Technical Explanation

A sculptie (short for sculpted prim) is a type of prim that allows the builder to specify its shape using a special texture called a sculptmap.

The typical size for a sculptmap texture is 64×64 (64 pixels wide and 64 pixels high). Pixels within the sculptmap use color to encode the positions of vertices relative to the sculptie’s center. Red encodes the X position, Green the Y, and Blue the Z position. Vertices within the sculptmap are automatically connected to their neighbors on 4 sides.

The edges of a sculptmap are a special case. There are three possiblities:

• An edge can wrap (meaning that a point on one side of the sculptmap is directly connected to its corresponding point on the other side)
• An edge can collapse (meaning that all the points on one edge of the sculptmap are collapsed to a single point)
• or an edge can be open (meaning that the points on an edge of the sculptmap do not connect to anything other than their direct neighbors)

Using these, LL has defined four topologies: sphere, torus, plane, or cylinder.

• Sphere (the default) wraps the left and right edges of the sculptmap and collapses the top and bottom edges to single points.
• Torus wraps on all four sides of the sculptmap, and loses the top row of data in the process.
• Plane is an open mesh that doesn’t wrap or collapse.
• Cylinder wraps on the left/right and is open on the top/bottom.

These topologies are just different ways of representing a 2d sculptmap texture as a 3d sculted prim. Any sculptmap can be rendered using any of these four topologies. In some cases, a sculptmap will look identical regardless of the topology used. In other cases, they will look very different. It is the responsibility of the builder to pick the one that is most appropriate for a given task.

When a new sculptie is created in Second Life, it has the sphere topology by default. The stitching type dropdown in the edit dialog can be used to change the topology.

What are some general guidelines for using SculptGenMax?

SculptGenMax works pretty well, but there are a few things that you should keep in mind.

• Save often and generate intermediate sculptmaps while you are working. Things can go wrong and will. To protect yourself, generate a test sculptmap when you start working and several times while you are working. This does two things:
  1. It makes sure that your object is a valid sculptie, letting you know if there is a problem with your UV map as soon as possible and before you’ve spent hours working on it.
  2. If you save the sculptmaps, it gives you intermediate savepoints, since you can always re-import the sculptmap to get to where you were at that point in time.
• Bake a texture to put on your sculptie. Sculpties look much better with a high-quality baked texture with shadows. Also, you might consider creating a more detailed version of your sculptie for the purpose of baking your texture.

SculptGenMax doesn’t work. I installed everything okay, but when I select an object in 3ds Max and try to generate a sculptmap, it fails.

There are two common reasons that sculptmap generation fails in SculptGenMax:

1. The object in 3ds Max is not sculptie-compatible.
2. The object is sculptie-compatible, but its UV map is incorrect.

You must begin your modelling by either importing a pre-existing sculptmap into 3ds Max (recommended) or by creating a sculptie-compatible object from scratch. In addition, the UV map of this object must be a nearly perfect grid.

How do I generate a sculptmap using SculptGenMax and save it to disk?

1. Create a 3ds Max object, modify it as desired, and select it. (see “How do I create a sculptie-compatible object?” for instructions on creating the object.)
2. In the SculptGenMax dialog.
   1. Select desired bitmap resolution. Then on the dialog’s menu bar,
   2. File>Generate sculptmap from selected
   3. this will generate the texture in the dialog.
   4. File>Save current sculptmap to file… — to save the texture to a file.
   5. Now, you can load your saved sculptmap into Second Life and apply it to a sculptie prim.

How do I import a sculptmap into 3ds Max?

Note: there is a better way to do this in Prim Composer. However, for completeness, here is how you can do it using SculptGenMax.

1. In the SculptGenMax dialog, select “File>Load sculptmap from file…”
2. In the file browser that pops up, select the sculptmap you want to load. You can change the type of files being listed: jpg, bmp, tga, etc.
3. Click “Open” in the file browser to load the sculptmap into SculptGenMax. Depending on the resolution of the sculptmap and the selected resolution in the dialog, it might not display fully in the SculptGenMax dialog. This is okay.
4. From the SculptGenMax dialog, select “Edit Scene>Paste sculptmap into scene (topology)”. Choose the topology (sphere, torus, plane, or cylinder) that you want.
5. Now, left click in one of the 3ds Max viewports to create an object from the sculptmap.
6. Once the object has been created, you can manipulate it as any other object in 3ds Max. And after you’ve changed it, you can also generate a new sculptmap from it to export the object with your changes.

Where can I find pre-made sculptmaps to import?

A few basic sculptmaps are included with SculptGenMax such as a sphere, a torus, a plane, and a cylinder. Look for the sculptmaps folder in the zip file.

I’ll be adding some more later. Obvious sculptmaps that are missing are things like a cube. If you have some that you’d like to donate, or if you know of a free distribution of sculptmaps (preferably on the web as opposed to in-world), let me know through the Downloads Contact Page.

How do I create a sculptie-compatible object in 3ds Max?

You can create a sculptie-compatible object by importing a pre-existing sculptmap (recommended) or by creating one from scratch.

For information about importing a sculptmap, please see “How do I import a sculptmap?”. After importing a sculptmap, you can convert the resulting object to either an editable poly or mesh, but not to NURBS. You can use any scultmap as your starting point, even sculptmaps that were not created in 3ds Max.

The other way to create a sculptie object in 3ds Max is to create it from scratch. Use this method if you need NURBS. Later in the FAQ, I describe how to create a NURBS cylinder, a NURBS sphere, a NURBS plane, and NURBS torus.

How do I know if the UV map of my object is correct?

Apply an “Unwrap UVW” modifier to the object, select the modifier, and press the “Edit” button in the parameters rollout. This will open a dialog that displays the current UV map. When you are finished looking at it, you can delete the modifier.

SculptGenMax requires a nearly-perfect grid that covers the entire area inside the dark-blue lines. Below are examples of UV maps that will work well and those that will not.

uv maps

My sculptie looks deformed or uneven. What should I do?

It depends on what you mean by “deformed”.

YOUR SCULPTIE IS SQUASHED, e.g, your sculptie is long and thin in 3ds Max, but it shows up in SL as short and fat. If this is your problem, then you have two options:

1. Make sure that “proportional” is checked in SculptGenMax before you generate the sculptmap. This will preserve the proportions of your sculptie at the cost of detail. In many cases, the loss of detail isn’t noticable, but it can be. Experiment.
2. If you are not using “proportional”, then look directly under the proportional checkbox and you will see X, Y, and Z numbers. If you set the size of the sculptie in SL to these numbers (or a multiple of them), the sculptie will look the same in SL as it does in 3ds Max.

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY is that your sculptie looks smooth in 3ds Max and has well-defined edges, but when you put it in Second Life, it looks bumpy and uneven. There are several things to look for here:

• Make sure that you save your sculptmap using a lossless format (BMP or TGA). Don’t use JPG.
• Make sure that you are using lossless texture upload. When you upload to SL, make sure that “lossless” is checked. Lossless upload is only available for small texture sizes, so it will be grayed out if you’re using a 256×256 texture. Try uploading a 64×64 texture lossless and the results will be better.
• Make sure that 3ds Max is saving textures without loss. In 3ds Max, “Customize>Preferences>Rendering>Output Dithering>True Color” should be turned off.
• If the sculptie looks fine up-close in SL, but looks deformed when you view it from a distance, then the problem might be LOD (level-of-detail). For better performance, SL reduces the number of vertices being displayed as the distance to the object is increased (it reduces the level of detail). At a lower level of detail, SL might only display every other vertex or every third vertex. To compensate, you can move more of your vertices to the features that are most important. If you want a well-defined edge, then put more of your vertices on the edge. A complete explanation is beyond the scope of this FAQ.

What operations can I perform on a sculptie mesh in 3ds Max?

Basically, you are limited to moving the vertices. You cannot add or delete vertices/edges/faces, e.g., no extrusions, no welding. Also, whatever you do must preserve the UV map in a nearly-perfect grid pattern.

How do I create and use a NURBS Sphere with SculptGenMax?

Note: these instructions are for NURBS only. If you don’t need or don’t know what NURBS is, then follow the recommended method in “How do I create a sculptie-compatible object?”

Still here? Okay, here’s how to work with NURBS…

To create a NURBS Sphere for SculptGenMax:

1. Create a sphere
2. convert to NURBS
3. Select NURBS Surface modifier
   1. open Surface Approximation rollout
   2. select Tessellation Method – Regular
   3. set U steps to 32 and V steps to 32

This NURBS sphere will work with SculptGenMax. At this point, you could also convert the sphere to an Editable Poly or Editable Mesh. But leave it as-is if you want to work with NURBS.

The biggest challenge to working with NURBS in SculptGenMax is to make sure that a compatible UV Map is preserved. As you manipulate the NURBS object, 3ds Max will distort the UV map and cause problems with SculptGenMax.

There’s probably a way to “freeze” the UV map, but I haven’t found it yet. If you know how, please let me know. Until then, here is a procedure that will work.

After creating the NURBS sphere as described above.

Create a UV Map on Channel 2

1. Apply “Unwrap UVW” modifier
2. (optional) In Parameters rollout, press Edit. This will show you the current UV Map. It should be a nice grid pattern.
3. In Parameters rollout, press Save. and save the uv map to a file.
4. In Parameters rollout, change the Map Channel to 2. If you still have the edit window open, you will see that it destroys the nice UV grid. We’ll fix that in next step.
5. In Parameters rollout, press Load. and load the uv map that you previously saved.

Shape the NURBS Sphere. Make your object.

NOTE: You will have to click on NURBS in the modifier stack and this will pop up a warning dialog. Just say yes.

Generate the Sculptmap

1. Make sure that you select the top modifier on the stack.
2. Open SculptGenMax
3. Change the UV Map Channel in SculptGenMax to 2.
4. Generate sculptie and save to disk

How do I create a NURBS torus, NURBS plane, and NURBS cylinder for SculptGenMax?

Follow the directions for NURBS sphere, except start by creating a torus, plane, or cylinder. For the cylinder, you will have to delete the top and bottom.

Should I use proportional? I’m having problems with it? What was it designed for? Are there some reasons when it is useful?

Proportional was created for a good reason, but it has a couple of unpleasant side effects. I should really draw a picture here, but in the interest of answering this quickly, I’ll do my best to explain in words.

Let’s say that you create a sculptie in 3ds Max that looks like a box that is 10m wide, 10m long, and 2m high.

If you generate the sculptmap without proportional, and you apply it to a default cube in SL, then you will have a default cube. It will be 0.5m x 0.5m x 0.5m. You would have to manually resize it to make it look like the object in 3dsMax. If you generate the sculptmap with proportional checked, and you apply it to a default cube, you will have a cube that is 0.5m x 0.5m x 0.1m. So the sculptie will be proportional to the 3dsMax object without having to resize it.

Proportional is there because it is what most people expect. If they create a banana (a long thin object) in 3dsMax, they expect it to be long and thin when they apply the sculptmap to the default prim in SL. Without proportional, it would show up as a short, fat banana. Of course, you can always take the short, fat banana and stretch it once it is in SL, but most people don’t expect to have to do that the first time they import a sculptie.

That said, you shouldn’t use proportional for serious work. There have been reports of problems sitting on objects that were generated with proportional. Another problem is that proportional reduces the level of detail in the smaller dimensions.

Are there any tutorials for using SculptGenMax?

Not yet, but I plan to make at least a couple of video tutorials in the somewhat near future.