High quality download: NURBS2sculptieByScript.wmv
Note: The video is outdated. The newest version of the scripts behaves a little bit differently. Instead of creating a copy of the NURBS, it transforms the original object to a Sculptie-mesh object. Please also note, that we have meanwhile created the JASS-distribution, which also contains the nurbs2sculptie script and all necessary functionality to pimp up your blender to a fully working “sculptie studio”
The nurbs2sculptie User Manual
I have been investigating, how to convert a NURBS object into a Second Life Sculpted Prim. I ended up with creating a blender script for almost fully automated conversion.
Since NURBS are in fact nothing else than bended planes, their conversion to Sculpted prims is very easy and it can be done with blender within very few steps. I took the chance to learn a bit about automation in blender and the resulting script can help you to get your Sculptmap out of a NURBS object even quicker. From our further investigations we found some inconsistencies in blender and now my script takes care of these glitches so that you get freed from bothering.
Prerequisites:
- You must have installed Domino Marama’s Sculpty scripts beforehand. Otherwise you will get an error telling you, that the script “render_sculptie.py” was not found.
Download:
- Download the nurbs2sculpty script (12935 bytes of code) from the machinimatrix download page
- Please note, that the script is published under the same license as Domino’s scripts.
Installation:
- Once you have downloaded the script, please unzip it into the same directory where you have installed Domino’s scripts. Currently there is only one single file in the zip-file.
- If you have already started blender before installation, you need to “scripts -> update” from the scripts window. Or restart blender as an alternative.
Quick usage guide:
- Create a NURBS object, modify it to your needs. When you are ready for the sculpty creation continue with step 2. Please take care, that your Nurbs is the “active” object. This is almost ever true if you operate from the edit-mode. If you work in Object-mode, then take care that you have right clicked your object before proceeding!
- Go to the “Render” Menu and there click on “Nurbs to sculptie”.
- You will be asked to specify the sculptie type. The answer depends on which NURBS type you have selected. This is the matrix:
NURBS type Sculptie type Plane Plane Tube Cylinder Sphere Sphere Donut Torus - As a result your NURBS will be converted into a Mesh-object. This object is a bit more rough compared to the original, but this is due to the limitations of the sculpties.
- In addition the final sculpt map has been created for you. You can find the sculpt map, when you open the UV-editor.
Caveat:
- I noticed, that any object transforms, which you applied on object mode will not be taken into account, when the Mesh object is created. So for now you will have to manipulate your NURBS entirely in Edit-Mode (which i almost ever do anyways …)
Some additional hints:
- It makes pretty much sense to split your screen and open the UV-editor beforehand. Then you can see the Sculptmap been created almost instantly after you performed step 2 above.
- The script replaces the original NURBS. If you want to get back your original NURBS, you always can type CTRL-Z to revert the object conversion.
- After you have called the nurbs2sculpty script once, you can continue your work with the new object. If you need to rebake the sculpt map, proceed as explained with Domino’s scripts, i.e. “Render -> Bake Second Life Sculpties” will work on the new object (But not on the original NURBS!)
- I noticed that you can leave the type selector popup box without choosing a sculptie type. In that case the sculptie type is set to -1 and it can not be baked any more (The underlaying problem has been fixed with version 0.6). If this happens to you, here is a workaround:Go to the logic panel (F4). There on the left you find a table labeled “Add Property”. In that table you should find “Name::LL_SCULPT_TYPE” with a vlaue of -1. Set it to 1 for sphere, 2 for torus, 3 for plane, 4 for cylinder. Now you can bake again.
Have fun and please report back what you think about this script. I am eager to learn more and how i can make this script better suited.
Gaia
Gosh! My Windows left me a month ago so I’m using Ubuntu. Till then I was used to create using a mix of different 3D tools I found myself at ease. I cannot say the same about Blender {I would use the word HATE about this basterd ~ ugh…a citation… lol ~ of a tool!} and I’m really struggling to make it work. I feel like an idiot so please forgive my relatively stupid question but I really need it to not see my business crash {I need to fix some wrong sculpties else I’m lost} just before to start!
Where the Sculpty gets saved!???
I thought to cheat Blender just using Ubuntu screenshot to save the UV area and edit that in Gimp but…. I neither manage to open the UV map in Blender! HEEEEEELP… pleeeease….
AlexanderD Schumann peels the skin off his own face with his hands, in despair.
Hi, Alexander
You find the image save button in the UV-editor. Click on Image -> save to get your image out of blender.
If you need more basic information about the “beast”, you can watch the blender primer…
BTW: Using screen grab to get the data is sort of a kinky idea. I love that one
good luck,
Gaia
Ops, sorry, i found out the problem now , is i forgot to uncheck the “keep scale” in the options window of “Bake Second Life Sculpties”
cheers,
hi, i tried to follow the step to create the heart shape then import to SL, but no matter how i try, all objects i made in blender will restore to it dimension (sphere, a ball shape) after i import to second life. i made a flat shape heart, it will show like a fat ball shape heart after i imported to SL. I’m not sure is i made some mistake or not……
did i make something wrong?
thanks……. suffering~~~
getting a 404 error
I just wanted to say thank you for this script! It’s sooo helpful, since when creating SL sculpts so many fun modeling tools are not available to use. I much prefer working with nurbs (when it fits the need, of course) so when I found this I was jumping for joy. Have only used it a few times so far but I’m so happy with the time I’ve saved. Again, thanks!
Hi, ive been having a little trouble with the script, or the manual procedure. Works OK if i start withh a NURBS surface, which is already in the form of quads. if I want to import an stl model file, it is in the form of triangles and then when I try to do the UV-unwrapper with follow selected quads, it says there is no face selected. This also happens with the script. If tried selecting the faces and doing a convert triangle to quads, but it makes no difference. Any ideas on how I can get my trainagular mesh to work with the script?
thanks for the work any way – a very useful script – i know im just trying to do what it wasnt designed for.
Interesting but does it apply to NURBS2Sculptie at all ???
The script is intended to be used with NURBS generated by blender.
But anyways can you provide a .blend file with an example object and
a detailed description of what you try to do ? I can take a look at it
if you like ( Send it to me at gaia.clary@machinimatrix.org )
well, the scripts is very good. thank you gaia.
I have 2 ideas. One is not new, instead of converting to mesh 32×32, be able to choose 16×16 or 8×8.
My second idea is be able to work with the middle of the nurb and after mirroring the other part with script.
Gaia – my problem with not being able to bake a map has been completely fixed with version 0.6, so thank you very very much for that patch! As of now, my only remaining big request would be to have the ability to create “oblong” sculpties. Once that is implemented, I’ll have a VERY powerful tool for creating sculpties. Bonus points for “doubling” and “quadding” options.
Also, I’m using one of the “Nurbana” branches of Blender to create NURBS with. Do you have any thoughts or comments on some of these branch builds designed to incorporate the “Nurbana” code?
Regards,
Elliott Eldrich
Hi, Elliot;
I sent you 2 emails recently. But got no answer, so here is the text again:
You can find my email adress in the SL forum. Just send an email to me from there.
Feel free to send your .blend and if possible how i can reproduce the error …
btw.:
You may have noticed, that i have again updated the script above.
Indeed there was a problem with the seams as i feared. My assumption about
using a plane sculptie for all cases was no good idea. Since blender does not
store from which NURBS type (donut,tube,sphere,plane) the nurbs
has been constructed, i am now thinking about how i can
automatically determine, which topology is the correct one to use.
Maybe i can conclude from checking the number of duplicate vertices,
something like:
no duplicate -> plane
32 duplicates -> cylinder (sphere is a special case of cylinder)
64 duplicates -> torus
where 32 and 64 probably is wrong in general and does not work with oblongs…
But that can be sorted out…
Another idea: Create a common GUI for Domino’s scripts and the
nurbs2sculptie script… Then you could easily open the sculpt-menu,
choose the topology (sphere, cylinder, plane, torus) and select,
how you you want to work (NURBS|multires|subsurf) …
Then the script can create a NURBS and add a property to it, which later
can be used to convert the NURBS into the proper sculptie…
You still would have the option to use NURBS or import NURBS or whatever.
In that case the script does not see the nurbs type property and hence it asks
for the sculpt-topology as my version 0.2 currently always does …
Would that be a convenient way to go ?
What do you think about that ?
Gaia – I’d be very happy to send you a .blend file, and am also completely willing to do anything and everything I can do to contribute to your development efforts. You have my email address, but I don’t know where to contact you, so if you’ll send me an email then I can reply with a .blend file and also follow up with a couple of other questions and suggestions.
I’m going to test out the new 0.3 version right now, thank you for posting that. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Regards,
Elliott Eldrich
@Elliot. Can you provide a .blend script and possibly a method how to reproduce the error ? I can check what happens on Windows-xp then… Meanwhile you might want to checkout nurbs2sculptie-0.3 ? I just changed this page to point to the newest version … Maybe you problem is fixed with that version …
Concerning your ideas about OBLONGS let me see if i can do something. But don’t expect things to change within the next few days. I have too many other pending tasks right now, but thanks for you input anyways… It is good to get feedback and i encourage others too to send in your opinions/suggestions. I always have an open ear for your ideas
I’m running into a recurring and very frustrating problem with converting nurbs to sculpties. For some reason, Blender seems to get into a mode where it will simply refuse to create the sculpt map. It makes the copy of the shape, asks for sphere/torus, etc… then I select the command, and nothing shows up in the UV window. Nothing at all. Furthermore, once this “mode” gets into place, NOTHING will export as a sculpty any longer. The blender file appears to be utterly corrupted. Creating a fresh torus and attempting to export does nothing. Restarting blender and/or rebooting the machine does nothing. Only starting over with a fresh blender session, and creating a new shape from scratch seems to work. This is proving to be VERY frustrating. I’m using the version of Blender for OS X, version 248.1 – any and all help with this problem would be very appreciated.
I’m working with the new “nurbs2sculpty” script now, and am getting very good results so far. Thank you very much for this!
My only request at this time would be to have the option of outputting “oblong” sculpties from my NURBS models. For example, being able to have a 64 slice output with 16 points per slice could be very handy for certain things, or even 128 slices with 8 points. Or, conversely, 16 slices with 64 points, or 8 slices with 128 points.
Then, if you really want to go for style points, have an option for doubling / quadding up outputs, as in “64 slices, 16 points each – reduced to 16 slices with four points per corner” (each slice and point having four vectors” – this is for improving LOD issues in SL. Maybe handle the option as “double slices” and “double points” – then have a quad option as well.
Don’t want much, do I? Well, you asked for feedback…
In Windoze Vista using defaults the blender scripts are in:
*drive*:/Documents and Settings/*yourid*/AppData/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender/.blender/scripts
where on my system drive is C: and *yourid* is Harley.
Hope that helps with the install on vista machines.
The best bet for windows is either:
- {application folder}\.blender\.scripts
- {personal settings folder}\.blender\scripts
- c:\program files\blender foundation\blender\.blender\scripts
Please view our blender installation tutorial at http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2008/07/12/the-blender-installation-guide/ to see a convenient way to define the place for your scripts (look at the last 2 minutes of the video) . Indeed it is highly dependend on the operating system and some installation choices.
I hope that helps
I think I read that the Windows version of Blender puts the scripts somewhere else. ‘C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts’ is where mine is
hey i got a problem with importing the scripts propperly.
the “scripts” folder was not in my .blender folder so i created one, and installed them there, some scripts work but most dont, some dont show and such.
im using the latest version of blender. is that the problem?
cheers learned a lot from this tutorial any who ^^