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Fractional Prim Modeling

This is a method that makes sculpties appear to be several objects by separating portions of the sculpties by one-point poles.

If you look at the image here, the cushions on this chair are both the same sculptie prim. They are connected by a tiny, invisible line of points. I'll be showing you how to do just that. Before you read this tutorial, it's recommended that you go through the Precision Sculptie tutorial.

The method was developed by Aminom Marvin.

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You can make the illusion of two objects in a single sculpt map by separating pieces of a sculpt with one-point poles.

The Long and Short of It
(Or... just short)

Okay. You want to know how to do this? I warn you. You will gawk at the simplicity.

Select one loop of vertices and scale it to 0. (You can scale to zero easily by tapping S, then the number 0.)

Then select the loop just above or below and scale it to 0 as well. Be sure you deselect the previous loop. (Did you know that you can select a loop in Blender by holding ALT and right-clicking on one of the edges in the loop?)

Congratulations! You just made a fractional sculptie! If you bake this and import it into Second Life, it will look like two separate objects. Almost.

Almost? Yes. The pole will probably still show up. It will be thin, but it will be there, until you snap the vertices to the Precision Grid!

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Read through the Precision Sculptie tutorial to brush up on how to snap your vertices to the grid.

The Precision WHAT?

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you need to read through the Precision Sculptie tutorial. If you have read it, you might want to run through it again real quick, cause I'm not going to repeat much here.

Just remember that you need to set the grid to .01, scale the object to 2.55 x 2.55 x 2.55, line it up to the grid, then snap your vertices to the grid. After you've done this, you can bake your sculpt map and import it into Second Life and you should have completely invisible poles.

 

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I'm still constantly learning about Fractional Prim Modeling. Any new tips and tricks I learn, I'll add to this section.

Tricks:

Half Poles: This trick can't be summarized. If you're too lazy to read, just look at the pictures. :P

Tips:

Only use fractional prim modeling when it's necessary. In many cases you can get good enough (often better) results by using other methods of visually dividing a sculptie.

Notes:

Tricks, Tips, and Notes

For simplicity's sake I'm going to be referring to the separate sections of a fractioned sculptie as "pieces." So in the first example in this tutorial, the sculptie would be separated into the top piece and the bottom piece.

Trick: Half Poles

If the one-point poles are taking away too many points for you, sometimes you can get away with using what I call 'half poles.' This only works if an end of one of the pieces will end up inside of another piece - hidden. Like.... THIS:

A brief summary of what's going on here. I only pinched off a single loop, instead of two, then used it to cap off the piece that will have the visible end. Then I resized the other piece so that the end would fit inside the capped piece (reduces clipping and other uglification problems). Then I rotated the smaller piece and repositioned it so that the connected end is now inside the larger piece. All the crap in between the two ends is inside the larger piece. No one's going to see it, unless they're trying to figure out how you made your awesome sculptie.

 

Tip: Don't do it when you don't need to.

I've seen a few people use Fractional Prim Modeling in cases when it's really not necessary. Like... if you're making a 1-prim sculptie hamburger, you probably don't need to completely separate the patty from the buns. You'd just end up wasting vertices.

Often times you can get better results by using other methods to visually divide a sculptie. Be smart about it.


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Remember to play around with what you've learned. Experiment. Be adventurous. Make mistakes.
Nothing in Blender is precious.

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