Sculptie Creation for Second Life with Maya

Setup: Install the Mel Script

1. Download the script: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/sculpt.mel 2. Copy entire script (to clipboard) 3. Open the Script Editor in Maya

4. Paste sculpt.mel into the editor 5. With the entire sculpt.mel script selected, File -> Save Script to Shelf

6. Give the shelf script a meaningful name, such as:

Setup and Define a New Project

1. File -> Project -> New 2. Name: flower 3. Select Use Defaults 4. Accept

Model
1. Set shelf tab to Surfaces

2. Create -> NURBS Primitives -> Sphere -> Option

3. Set sections = 8 and spans = 8. Sections and spans can be set to : 4, 8, 16 or 32. Sections do not have to be equal to Spans.

4. Switch to Select by Component Type

5. Use any Maya tool for editing control points (such as move, rotate and scale). Do not add or delete vertices. For more complex shapes, add more NURBS spheres. The ends, or poles, appear to be single points, but are rings of very close control points. Avoid manipulating the poles. 6. Switch back to Select by Object Type

Materials
1. Gather all source textures and copy to the project sourceimages directory. This is the flower petal texture (500 pixels x 500 pixels):

2. Right click on petal object Select Assign New Material -> Lambert

3. Open Attribute Editor (AE) 4. Change name to purple_petal 5. Set color to the file: purple_petal 6. Move transparency slider to the right about 1/4 of the way over 7. Set bump map (for this tutorial, use the same file as for the color map)

Lights
Since the flower will be lit in Second Life, the objective here is only to ensure that the texture details are captured in the surface file. We want to produce even, wellbalanced illumination. Here is a simple light rig: 1 overhead area light and 4 ambient lights for fill (one for the front, back, left and right). 1. Create -> LIghts -> Area Light position above (such as a large photographic soft box, or the sun) 2. Create -> LIghts -> Ambient set intensity = .2 for each position at left, right, front and back

Camera (Optional)
For a white background in test render, (default is black): 1. Create -> Cameras -> Camera and Aim 2. Select Camera and Open AE 3. Environment: Change Background Color to White

Render
Confirm materials and lighting result in even illumination. Adjust light intensity as needed.

Clean Up
1. Its a good idea to save the scene at this point, prior to deleting history. 2. Edit -> Delete by Type -> History

3. Modify -> Freeze Transformations 4. Modify -> Reset Transformations 5. Edit -> Delete by Type -> History

Select and Run Sculpt.mel

1. Select all sculpted objects in viewport and run sculpt.mel. (Do not group objects. Grouping will cause sculpt.mel to fail.)

2. Enter unique filename 3. Check Maximize Scale (we can resize in Second Life) 4. Check Correct Orientation 5. Check Bake Surface Texture 6. Check Include Shadows 7. Check Generate Primscript (Filename.primscript is written)

Confirm That Images Look Right

Sculpt maps should look something like this:

Surfaces (textures) should look something like this:

Surfaces will look similar to the original color map file, with highlights and shadows baked on (and taking into account any rotations).