Kitely Forums

This may have got lost since I buried under snow from last year!
Maybe this is useful to someone..
..and a question for geniuses
Once I make a sculpt for my regions terrain..
1) is it better if I convert it to mesh?
2) if so what is best way to do that?

Once it is a mesh, is there an easy way to "cut off" portions of it?
- like if I wanted just a small hill from the region?

Thanks all.. and on to the tool..

There are certain tools I rely on for certain things, which is fine, but when one of those tools is an online tool then I'm at the mercy of the internet and whether or not that tool will still be available the next time I reach for it.

raw2sculpt is one of those tools, I use it for various things, like seasonal snow, skyboxes, etc
the tool is still available online, but to make sure I ported it over and now I can use it locally, yay! superfaster too!
if you'd like this tool for your own use the link is below.
unzip it wherever you like, then 'run' the index.html file and it will open in a local web browser and away you go...
it is virus-free of course, but you should go ahead run your own scan i suppose.
it is not an install, it is a js

[link corrected]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qqUVbP ... Jgq34FquzD

hmm i can not get there

hmmm... phpBB decided to mid-truncate the link for some reason...

[link corrected - thank you Ilan]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qqUVbP ... Jgq34FquzD

Hi Shandon,

Please use the link button to insert links, this will encapsulate your link in markup that will prevent it from being truncated.

Shandon Loring wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 28, 2023 10:49 pm

Once I make a sculpt for my regions terrain..
1) is it better if I convert it to mesh?

Well... technically yes but we're talking microseconds of frame time in a case like this and that's so marginal it's not worth the bother. Unless you want to edit the terrain of course; you can do that with mesh but not easily with a sculpt.

2) if so what is best way to do that?

Assuming you use Firestorm:

• Upload the sculpt map and make a sculpt of the terrain with. Plane/none stitching and texture repeats kept at 1. You probably want to scale it down to make it easier to handle (you can always scale it up again later).
• Save as Collada. Make sure all checkboxes except the "Save textures" one are checked in the Save dialog box.
• Import to Blender
• Type Ctrl+A and apply All Transforms
• If you're familiar enough with Blender, switch to edit mode and clean up the mesh. (This step isn't critical for something as simple as this so don't worry if you can't).
• Export as Collada, upload to Kitely and scale the mesh to the size you want. Use Level above for all LODs and High for physics. Don't touch any of the other settings in the upload window.

If your region uses the ubODE physics engine, the mesh you end up with will show up with a ridiculously high land impact but that's just a bug in ubODE. The mesh still counts as a single prim even if your viewer claims otherwise and unless you have hordes of avatars and NPCs trampling all over it, it shouldn't cause any performance issues.

Once it is a mesh, is there an easy way to "cut off" portions of it?
- like if I wanted just a small hill from the region?

Sure. Once you've got it into Blender, go to Edit mode and Face select and select and delete the bits you don't want.

One thing to be aware of though, is that a sculpt map only has a resolution of 32x32 vertices (actually 33x33 but the last vertice in each direction won't be used) whilst the map of a 256x256 region has - as the name says 256x256 resolution. So you'll only get a very simplified version of the original terrain. There are alo several other factors that will distort the terrain slightly during the convertion process. Whether it's detailed enough for you is hard to say. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

Thank you Tess, that is enormously helpful!
I'll have to try again in 2024 to learn Blender..
Mike has tried to teach me.. but I'm still not there.

Please use the link button to insert links, this will encapsulate your link in markup that will prevent it from being truncated.
- Ilan

Thank you Ilan,
I will certainly do that as best practice.
Interestingly in my second post all the links came out fine.. But an explicit call out in <html> would probably be more consistent.
Thank you for advice.