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lathing a difficult shape for inflate

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 9:36 pm
by nonna
heres a difficult shape ive been trying to lathe a shape inside to make it into a sculpty. is it possible? not sure how to place a picture here i popped one into the beginners albumn under may name.

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 9:58 pm
by Simon
Image

I can see two ways to make this into a sculptie.

The first involves cutting it up into several simpler pieces and using the method I used for this sword to inflate simple lathes inside the pieces.

The second method is to apply the greyscale heightmap as a curvy map to a plane (a square curvy loft object) and save that as a sculptie. Then you can use a texture map with an alpha channel to cut-out the ribbon from the background. This technique gives you a hollow shell instead of a solid sculptie - but can achieve the complex shape in a single sculptie and should look good from the front.

thank you for your quick response

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 1:03 pm
by nonna
thank you for your quick response. in order to use this as an ornament for a chair i need it to be a solid sculpty. so i think maybe i will try bringing it into a 3d program as a mesh object from curvy and reduce polygon count and convert it to a sculpty.

lathing a difficult shape for inflate

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:38 am
by nonna
could you please elaborate on teh second method im having a tough time creating a square lofted object and im not sure how to do the rest iether, thank you nonna

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 7:01 pm
by Simon
Here is a flat rectangle file http://www.curvy3d.com/alpha/Rectangle.cvy
I drew it by selecting the Loft tool then drawing a capital I shape - first the vertical, then the two horizontal lines. Then I titied it up by selecting the curves and using Curve Menu/Straight-Line.

The next step is to apply your greyscale input image of the bow to the curvy map of this model - Right click the little grey square where is says Curvy Map in the Object Properties panel and pick your image from the file chooser.

It will work best if the greyscale image of the bow almost fills the image, with a small black border.

You may need to increase the resolution of the model (using the Resolution slider) but bear in mind the Sculptie is limited in how much detail will be preserved.

This model can now be exported as a sculptie. To cut out the bow from the background you will need to make your texture map with an alpha channel - I usually use GIMP and PNGs to make textures with alpha - I can't remember what is best for Second Life.