Advanced Sculptie Exporter From Maya

(this is bare bones template for communal work - please, PLEASE, feel free to rewrite every word here. in fact, the first person to do a major clean-up becomes my new best friend. an original copy of the tutorial (complete with graphics and witty banter) is available at http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=49 ALSO - if you feel so inclined, feel free to improve upon the codebase here.)

Overview

the idea here is to take an entire maya scene (modeled with NURBS, that is) and import it directly into SL, complete with surface textures and baked lighting and all position/scale/rotation information. it builds upon the maya exporter we released with the initial sculptie launch.

first-up in an example maya scene. here we have a generous contribution from Bret St. Clair, his ant: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/ant.ma (can we store these files in the wiki itself, so that they too can be modified?)

with the maya scene open, now execute this mel script: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/sculpt.mel

the option to "Bake surface textures" will do just that - create one surface texture per prim, to be applied later. unfortunately, our maya ant has no interesting textures (he's white) but we do capture his lighting (and shadows.) you also want to click "Generate Primscript" which creates a file describing the scene.

the next bit is tedious. first, create a prim called "qDynaPrim". into this place all the textures above (you'll want to bulk upload them) together with the following scripts:

• http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/prim
• http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/texture
• http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/transform
• http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/shape

the scripts were generated with my qLab code - which may explain why they're a bit funny.

now create another prim and call it "ant maker" (this name isn't terribly important) and put the "qDynaPrim" into it (THIS name is important.) also put http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/primscript into it.

this "primscript" script will read your primscript file - rez copies of the "qDynaPrim" - and send them commands to control their shape/position/appearance.

now you need only invoke the primscript command (which listens on channel 500.) create a notecard containing the primscript, get its UUID, and say /500 primscript -script 32fad6a2-630e-aaf0-2659-817ea00b1052. course you'll want to replace that UUID with your own - especially if you want to make something OTHER than ants.

hope you enjoy.