Rethink your Sculpts for Mesh

First, let's go over the procedure for using sculpts you have made in Sculpt Studio.  For those of you not familiar with Sculpt Studio, this is Mesh Studio's inworld sculpting sister product.  Follow this link for more information.

In the latest Sculpt Studio version (set a new mat out if you haven't lately, this is how you update), is the "SS 2 MS - Dropbox".

In order to use a sculpt from Sculpt Studio, a copy of it must be on the server.  This means you must have just made the sculpt.  If you want to use a sculpt that is no longer on the server, you will need the notecard data for that sculpt and place it's -SCULPT card in the mat, rerez it and use the Sculpt Frame to generate a new sculpt.  This places it on the server again.  Sculpts are only on the server for approximately 24 hours after being generated.

1. Before you generate the sculpt through the Sculpt Frame, name the sculpt with the name button and then use the Sculptie! button to make the sculpt.  If this is a new sculpt, download the ZIP from your server page (this contains all files for your sculpt) and upload one of the sculpt tga maps.  If this is a regeneration to use a sculpt you made before that is no longer on the server, you don't need to download anything if the sculpt map is already inworld.  
2. KEY INFO: It is critical that the name of the sculpt on the server be the same name you use on the sculpt map; the names MUST match.  The names will be used by the drop box to match up.
3. Rez your SS 2 MS - Dropbox.
4. Make sure your sculpt map is full perm in your Inventory.
5. Ctrl drag a copy of the sculpt map, from your Inventory, to the contents of the dropbox (alternately, open the dropbox in edit and place a copy directly in the contents).
6. The map has been used to register and "mesh-ize"it.  This means the original in your Inventory is registered.  Mesh Studio will now recognize it.  Any sculpt you make from it, by putting the sculpt map on a Sculpt Type prim, can be used alone or along with prims in a linkset to genereate mesh with your Mesh Studio.

Recommendation: In the description field of your sculpt map, add Mesh Studio, so that you know this is a sculpt that can be used for mesh generation in Mesh Studio.  A folder for these "mesh'ized" items is not a bad idea either.  Do this to any sculpt made with this map so that you know it can be used with Mesh Studio.

SOME THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MESH-IZED SCULPTS

• Mesh Studio always loads sculpts at their highest LoD (comparable to resolution 4/24 in Mesh Studio) regardless of what settings you use on the Mesh Studio menu. This is because the Mesh Studio script can only affect prims and not sculpts.
• Poles, in these mesh-ized sculpts, will merge to a single point (also known as verts or vertices).  BTW, textures on these triangular ends (produced by the poles) will texture fine and not have the same radiating texture problems we have with sculpts.
• Wherever points are in the exact same position (example, double points, slices copied to the same position), these points merge into one single point.
• We do not have to reinforce points in mesh to strengthen LoD.

What was that last point?  We don't have to reinforce for mesh?

If you've been reading my articles, you have seen that we control LoD in mesh by either letting SL generate the lower LoD meshes, or better yet, we create them for exact control of the shape that each level degrades to as you cam away.

So what does this mean for sculpts?

You can:

• use as much or as little of the sculpt mesh as you want for your shapes.
• use separations in a sculpt.   If you will only be working inworld, separations between parts in the sculpt are done with poles as usual, but you only need one per separation; not two as in sculpts.  (ex. Table with legs: each closing end of the table top, each closing end, top and bottom of each leg all require only one pole for use in mesh.)  The poles will merge and give you clean separations on your mesh (one pole per each end on a separation).  If you use a 3D program such as Blender, you can remove the merged poles if you want to do anything different.
• use Cylinder stitch if you want the ends of your sculpt open.  As noted above, you will need poles to make physical separations so cannot have more than two open ends.

Here is an example of two sculpts done similarly (because I made a slight error on one and joined slices in the center that I didn't intend).  In figure 1, you can see the slices as they were setup for the second example I made.  The first example had slices evenly distributed and only the poles and slices were copy/pasted together producing the separations.  You can see the result, where I imported the dae into Blender, in figure 3.  You can also see that the openings made by using Cylinder stitch produced no mesh in the Blender examples.  There is a separation where there was a pole on each separating end and where there was one pole on top of a slice, and no pole on the next section (very bottom of object), the pole simply merged and closed the bottom and continues on to the next slice in a taper.

fig. 1

fig. 2

fig. 3

fig.4

In figure 2, you can see more clearly what the SS 2 MS dropbox (found in your Sculpt Studio accessories box) looks like.  You can also see each of the two sculpts I made.  If you look carefully, you can see the sculpt on the right has a slightly different look to the texture because of all the slices copy pasted on top of each other.  So in figure 4, that second sculpt is shown and there are 226 verts on the mesh because so many slices were pasted on top of each other.  All the points on top of each other merged into one.  The result is a less dense mesh with far fewer triangles.

One thing you can do if you are closing at least one end of a sculpt, for MS, is to, say, use a 128 slice stack because you wanted 8 points in each row.  You make your sculpt with the minimum of slices and then take all remaining, make them poles and put them in the same position as your last slice.  Remember all poles merge, so all poles on top of each other will merge, too.  Then you have a low poly sculpt that will be low poly mesh.

If you wanted the two ends of your sculpt open, you can collapse (copy/paste) the slices together one each end with no poles, set to cylinder stitch on the frame, and it will leave the ends open and MS will use that to indicate that no mesh should be created on the ends.

There is much more to explore, but this should give you some things to think about and play with.

Happy Meshing!
~ele