Having a peculiar problem with a sculpt surface

[Nacy Nightfire]

I've finally had some success with fractional sculpting in Blender (yay!), however I've come across an odd surface problem which I can't resolve.  I've searched the past forums without success (kind of hard to even to find words to search for this), so please forgive me if this topic has come up in the past.

Even before seperating the pieces, I get a weird ribbing effect that shows up on the sculpt on just a portion of the bar.  It doesn't follow the entire length and it's not symmetrical.  I've tried using both a  plane that I've bent into a tube and a cylinder (256 x 4)  in the same dimensions, both were created via primstar and baked using the primstar script.  And I've tried remaking it over and over again.

I don't see any defects in Blender.  I've tried various things such as isolating the area and applying smooth, resetting and flipping normals back and forth, etc.

I can't tell if its a SL rendering thing, a blender thing, a primstar glitch or human error.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Chosen Few]

I have no idea what the problem might be, sorry.  But perhaps you've found your niche as SL's foremost creator of nightsticks?  Paint that sucker black, and you're in business!

[Nacy Nightfire]

/me hits you with my new nightstick

[Dana Hickman]

Have you tried changing the stitching type on the SL object? Sometimes, and depending on the sculpt map, oddities like this can show up if the stitching type is set to the wrong one.

[Nacy Nightfire]

Something went terribly wrong with my last posting...I think it was the really terrible joke I made.  I won't risk repeating it.

Thanks for your suggestion, Dana.  I did check the other stitching options and they didn't fix the problem.  I think it was a problem with using a bad ratio (4 x 256).  (Typically only after I search and search the forums for a solution, and then break down and post, do I find a good link to a previous post on the topic.  Dang.)

[Gaia Clary]

May i ask you to publish the link you found ?

[Nacy Nightfire]

Just caught your post Gaia.  I'll gladly search thru my history to find the link.  I believe it was from the archived forums.  I'll do that later tonight or tomorrow and post the link here.

[Nacy Nightfire]

Gaia, here's the link to the only post I found with an image that is somewhat similar to the problem I encountered:

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/8/9a/278017/6.html

 

The poster didn't appear to have used primstar.  He did use the same dimensions that I did.  Might be an unrelated cause,  but this is the only dimension that I've played around with that had this strange ribbing effect.

[Gaia Clary]

hi.

Thanks for the pointer. So you found a historic document from the exciting time when oblongs where just introduced and primstar was still called "The Domino Marama Scripts" ;-)

However i think that in your particular build the problem should not appear like it does. Have you introduced any rotation in edit mode ? Or have you bended the object in some way ? I am just curious if it is a precision issue with the primstar baker or some other glitch. How can i reproduce it with primstar ?

And which exact version of primstar have you used ?

[Nacy Nightfire]

I just tried a few things...rotating, not rotating, scaling, etc. at both the obj and edit levels - same results.  And I uploaded on the mesh beta grid.  What a mess! Ribbing up and down the whole thing. 

However on  the main grid and the regular beta grid I get the same result..ribbed shading effect (doesn't seem like a deplacement) on just single off-center  portion of the "bar". 

I think I'll try making this in modo and exporting as an obj and attempting to use either the zsculpty or sculpty maker scripts and see what I get.  I'll report back.

I'm using primstar 1.0.0

 

[Nacy Nightfire]

Ok, Gaia.  I had no luck with Modo or zbrush/zsculpty etc. so  I went back into Blender and very carefully created two planes, one 4x256 and one 256x4.  I loaded them at the origin and in edit mode manipulated each into a bar using rotation and scaled them 5 unit in length.  Here is a picture of the result and I can't believe I spent most of the day on this waaaah. I don't even NEED this..mesh is coming.  Its just a riddle I can't put down. SL has a sneaky way of robbing me of my precious RL time.

 

 

 

[Gaia Clary]

I can not reproduce your problem with primstar-1.1.0 nor with any of the Jass-products.

I Kow that primstar-1.0.0 had issues with precision. Therefore i took special care about that in Jass. And meanwhile with primstar-1.1.0 the most apparent precision issues have been fixed too.

Maybe it is worthwhile to update at least to primstar-1.1.0 ? Or maybe you make something very different when you create the sculptie in blender. Hence it would stil be interesting to take a look into the blend file. But i am almost sure, that the problem vanishes once you updated.

I thought that i also have seen a note about python 2.6.5 having a more precise math module. So maybe just updating python would already fix your problem (that is just a weird guess though)

 

[Nacy Nightfire]

eeep.  I didn't have the most current version!  I'm all set Gaia..thanks so much. I was recently reading stuff on the Domino Design site and the most current version there is listed as 1.0.0 (unless I read that wrong) so it would never have occurred to me to look deeper into your website for a newer version, although I go there frequently to rewatch videos or check for new ones.

I now only have a single crease in that size and I can live with that.  I'm so glad you mentioned the new version.  Thanks so much for your help .

 

[Nacy Nightfire]

mini update:  Didn't have the energy to download python 6.6 last night, but did so this morning.  That took care of that lasts shading line in the bar. 

Beginners take note!  Keep ontop of the upgrades and upgrade.Thanks everyone who posted. (and don't forget to donate to those who generously provide tutorial websites!)