Collada to Sculpted Prim?

[Mesi Emerald]

I need to know how to make a sculpy map out of a Collada (dae) to a sculpty map in blender. I know this is possible, just not exactly how. I know that there has to be no holes in the mesh of the file, but other than that I have no clue how. Help would be greatly appreciated :)

[Luc Starsider]

If you have a Collada file you can import that to Blender. (I would use v. 2.49b for this). Then you can use the primstar scripts (which is a part of Gaia Clary's Jass distribution if you have that, or you can download and install it from www.dominodesigns.info). 

Be aware that a sculpty has to conform to a few, important constraints found here. There is no way to directly create a sculpty from a model unless it conforms to these requirements. But read up on the primstar scripts and you might find tools there that help you greatly along the way.

- Luc -

[Mesi Emerald]

Hi, I've gotten advice on this from a few people, tried, and I have gotten a garbled up mess every time. I keep getting 2 main types of messed up sculptie maps, one where the map is almost completely light green, and a flat surface with a lot of points. I can't upload the pics because my comp won't let me, I'll have to try uploading on a different comp later. I really need help.And Luc,thank you for that page, it was very informative, I have it bookmarked. Can anyone help me, or tell me what I mightive done to screw up like this? I have the latest jass public.

[Luc Starsider]

Hmm...

It's a bit hard to imagine what  could be wrong. Perhaps you could upload a few pictures of the model and the UV map? It might be easier to spot issues in a pic.

Keep in mind that sculpties (the model and uv map) are fixed when it comes to the layout and the number of faces/vertecies. The model has to fold out to a square uv map with max 1024 faces. You also can not add or delete faces from either of these. The image you bake to has to be within a certain size. personally, I tend to bake to images of 1024x1024 pixels. The image does not have to be completely square but there are strict requirements on the width and height ratio. More info on that in the links I gave above.

{EDIT} What I said above is absolute nonsense. My excuse is that I haven't touched a sculptie since mesh went beta, and I had not worked with sculpties for that long to begin with. I tend to bake my sculpt maps to images of 64x64 pixels is what I meant to say. It should really be 32x32 - making 1024 px, but from what I remember there is something with the first and last row of pixels being the same so the pixelcount was doubled. I've never really understood this properly....{/EDIT}

There are a lot of tutorials on Machinimatrix which it may be an idea to look at. It will give you a better understanding of how sculpties work - they are far from your ordinary 3d model - and how to make them in Blender. After you have seen a few of those, I'm sure you will know what to do to turn your models into sculpties.

- Luc -

[Mesi Emerald]

Ok, so here are a few of my failed uv maps.

Click Here

 

What am I doing wrong? If I need to provide more pics, just ask for them.

[Luc Starsider]

I was thinking more along the lines of a screenshot like this, showing the model and the uv grid. Not necessarily in the same window, but both are probably going to give some clues as to what is wrong.

Btw. I imported the sculptmaps you linked to in Blender. Interesting, to say the least. I cant say that I managed to see what they were supposed to be...

- Luc -

[hibit Spad]

1. import the collada into blender. 2. use the jass scripts to make your sculpt mesh 3. manipulate the vertices on the sculpt mesh to make it look like the imported collada mesh. 4. remove the collada object 5. bake your sculpt mesh just like you normally would. Warning!!! I am willing to bet that any collada mesh you have has too much detail for a sculpty to give satisfactory results. Otherwise lots of people would have been doing this before now. To make what you want done work you will probably need to split the collada mesh up into parts, and fitting sculpt meshes together is a big pain. If you need further opinions about this then please throw up a screen shot or two of the collada object and you sculpt mesh.